Shanna Martin 0:19
Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use your classroom. I’m your host, Shanna Martin. I’m a middle school teacher Technology and Instructional Coach for my district.
Fuzz Martin 0:31
And I’m her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin. And podcasting is fun. It’s a great way for me to pass the times. Oh, clever Times newspaper
Shanna Martin 0:40
newspaper, like New York time. Yeah. I like it. Okay. That goes with that. Teacher Appreciation we Teacher
Fuzz Martin 0:52
Appreciation Week. Now. There was some, as we all know, that we saw some people were posting my teacher appreciation week last week, but they were wrong because the week starts on Sunday friends,
Shanna Martin 1:03
right? Well, there’s there’s National Teacher Appreciation Day, which is one day. Okay, which was last week. That was last week. Okay. The day was last week. But if you search online, at least here in Wisconsin. Yeah. Teacher Appreciation Week is the first full week in May in a week starts on Sunday isn’t
Fuzz Martin 1:24
always the week before Mother’s Day
Shanna Martin 1:27
the week before Mother’s Day. Yeah. So I guess we celebrated my
Fuzz Martin 1:32
birthday and Christmas.
Shanna Martin 1:36
Feel so special. But anyway, yeah, the eighth through the 13th. So Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, you were all so appreciated. There’s so many things that teachers do beyond just teaching. And I know I get it. So yay. For you. We’re gonna be awesome. Yes, way to give back to the world. We appreciate what you do every day is give back to the world agreed. So this week, I was on the hunt. So this, this week’s podcast comes out of I wanted my kids to make a cool like newspaper with their text. And there’s a million different templates out there. And even creating Google Slides and Adobe, like there’s so many ways to make a newspaper. I know. I’ve tried lots of them. But I was looking for a quick like, can you drop some text in and make it look like an old timey newspaper? Like that’s where I was headed with this. It wasn’t making a school newspaper where everyone’s gonna spot. And it wasn’t just like a headline where you can make like fake Twitter accounts or things like that. This was I want to make an old timey newspaper with some of the writing, what can I make that look like? And then I ran across the sites, which turned into way more entertainment than actual I mean, it did meet the needs of what I was looking for. But also other fun things along the way. So I figured I would share those with all of you. So you already started playing around with them again? Yes.
Fuzz Martin 3:09
I wrote a full newspaper I already published it.
Shanna Martin 3:12
So the first site we’re talking about, and again, none of these are like, super, I don’t know, heavy duty websites, like there’s not a ton like this is just for fun. That’s the end of the year, we’re having some fun. funsies Okay, so the first site is called Fodey, maybe
Fuzz Martin 3:30
Foty. Yeah, I think
Shanna Martin 3:32
F O D E Y.com. Okay, and it’s a generator site. This is one of those where you like, throw some text in and it cranks out something. Okay. So it’s not overly there’s no, like real editing to it. It’s just you throw in your text, and it will make it for you. So Fody dot. It’s, there’s different generators. You know, we love a good, like dice generator, a random name generator. This is a text generator, folks. So the first one met my needs. Because it is a newspaper generator, and it makes it look like a little like clip out of a newspaper. So you throw in your title, your date, your headline, copy and paste, whatever text you’re gonna put in there, probably from like, a Google Doc or something. And then you click Generate. And when you generate, boom, boom, there’s a little like section of a newspaper with a title and some text that you created. There you go. Tada. But wait, there’s more. So this one turned into, oh, well, there’s a movie clapper board generator that’s like that white and black like thing that you like, and action? Yeah, like one of those. And it can create one which I think then this would be a great if you’re like me to sign for your classroom or if your students want to like clip the picture and then use it as a image and a Google slide. Like you could use these for anything. But wait, there’s more. Well, there’s talking squirrels. So Have you type in the text, then these little like mini squirrels come up and they have a whole conversation with the text you drop in there. They also have talking tomatoes, because the talking types, you can make them talk. There’s just little speech bubbles that I mean, this is like, yeah, it’s like a little Yeah, it’s not, it’s not overly complicated, but would be super fun for kids to like, entertain them with some text. Again, we need engagement, because we are in May. I also and I might try and because you can generate this one and then upload it I might try and put on my Twitter this week, is that it gives you like one line. And then you click Generate, and it’s called ninja text generator, and those little ninja hops around on your screen, and then spells out what you just wrote. And then you can drop it to Facebook or to Twitter or Google Plus. So then he like, skips around and like writes the text that you write, but you’re limited on characters for that one, Google Plus is dead. Yeah, that is no longer a thing.
Fuzz Martin 5:54
It’s no longer there.
Shanna Martin 5:55
But it’s, yeah, a
Fuzz Martin 5:56
lot of sites, you can tell the last time they were updated, because they’re just like, plus that went away, like four years ago,
Shanna Martin 6:03
actually, like fully ended. I think last summer, really, that was like the last of the last. But there’s wizard texts, you can have a little wizard hop around on your screen and write little messages to people. You can have talking flowers, and also talking cats. So clearly, they are very important ways to share text. I think it would just be fun to have your students like create these things. Because sometimes you need a little something like Oh, hey, like, write an inspirational quote, or leave a nice message for somebody, or where you can start from is the newspaper thing, which is what I started with. And it makes a little newspaper. So bodi.com fun little generator of entertainment for students and teachers. You can even like Teacher Appreciation Week, you can send a little cat meme to your teaching partner. Oh, you know what, like, I appreciate you. You’re a perfect teacher.
Fuzz Martin 6:50
Oh, look at you, right, and pawns. That’s
Shanna Martin 6:52
cool, you know, stuff. So anyway, it’s a fun one to play around with. It’s quick, it’s easy. It’s just really drab, like drop text in and it will write it for you. So fodey.com generators, just super fun. So then the next one I came across, also a newspaper generator. And I think this is one that you were just creating with, as we were talking earlier. Yep. It is. Newspaper generator, like you would literally type in newspaper dot Jaguarpaw.co.uk. Yes. And, and it is a free newspaper generator. So you type in your newspaper name, you type in the headline, the author, you can put a picture and if you choose to throw in the article text, and bam, there is an old timey newspaper created for you. Now the
Fuzz Martin 7:49
difference between this one in the photo doc harmonize this one, I’ll give you the full newspaper, correct it but it’s a PDF and not an image. Also correct me because me with my correct statements.
Shanna Martin 8:01
So what’s fun about this is that when you create it, too, it gives you a full newspaper. Yeah. So the the other the photo you want, it’s just like the corner when you see here, it looks like a newspaper clipping. This one, if you type in your text you put in it looks like old timey like crinkled newspaper, you can drop images into this one too. So there can be an image with it, if you choose to, it creates this PDF, but it also adds its own text in to make your paper look like a full newspaper. So there’s always the last two articles that are their own, that the drop in. And one of them is the International moose count under way, which is like just nonsense and information. But it’s kind of funny. And then grantee wins World Wrestling Championship. So this is you can write as much as the kids can put in as much content as they want to. And then or you can because you can make this like, you know, you can make like a real newspaper, it looks like a newspaper. Yeah. And you can fake out your students like oh, and at the end of the school year, we’re gonna have seven weeks worth of finals, you know, we can just torture them in some capacity. But um, then whatever space in the newspaper that you don’t take up all your content, they plug in these last two articles. So that way the newspaper looks full, which is kind of fun. And it makes a two page newspaper so you can print it front and back. But yes, it turns into a PDF. So this is your tax, and then it goes right into a PDF. And then you have it created, which is kind of fun. So they also have if you want to go a little bit fancier, if you click on it, the link takes to them to like a premium newspaper generator, which there’s more details
Fuzz Martin 9:39
with selling teen boxing for a year. Yeah.
Shanna Martin 9:44
So this kind of just leads you to the fun. Yeah, the fun one then leads you to like a paid version. So that is just a newspaper generator again. I was searching for oh, how can I make a cool, cute, quick look in real newspaper and then I just ran into the site. And then the last one because I was talking hunting down templates. And there’s lots of Google and Microsoft templates and all the templates because you never enough templates or time to sort through all the template. Correct. The last site though, the third one is template.net template.net. Simply net, and it has all the templates, including one for Teacher Appreciation when I see that that’s cool natural National Teacher Appreciation Day, which was last week. But that’s okay. You can use it for Teacher Appreciation Week. So yeah, they’ve all just fun little templates that are for everything from an Instagram post to a flyer to a newspaper to Google Sheets, which I appreciate Google, and they have Outlook. And they have Excel and they have publisher, like they have all the templates, some are free, some are paid. But there is a whole collection of templates for all of your needs. Mother’s Day is coming up, we need a quick Mother’s Day something that’s available. So templates.net as a collection of all the templates, and if you just scan across the top, it gives you all the tools. So from MS Word to publisher to Apple Pages to design the PDFs to whatever you need backgrounds, they got backgrounds, you can do all the things, which is cool. So then you can sign in with Google and you have free versions. And there’s also paid versions. So just be aware, you can search through, but there are 44,000 free templates on template.net. Yeah,
Fuzz Martin 11:34
they give you everything from Google slides to PowerPoint slides to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, all that stuff and coloring
Shanna Martin 11:43
pages too. Yeah, tiger cub coloring page, you need to make a flyer
Fuzz Martin 11:47
for you know, like, your Field Day coming up or something like that. You can do that easily.
Shanna Martin 11:53
Yeah, that’s really fast. And it’s cool. So templates, dotnet templates. dotnet. Need to create another newspaper, go get our newsletter type deal. Template. dotnet. Yeah, those were like I just started exploring. And then I ran across all these things. And then I made squirrels talking to each other. And then I wrote a newspaper about a grandma in a wrestling tournament. And then I found another way to make a newsletter from a classroom. Paul. I ended one afternoon,
Fuzz Martin 12:18
told Chet GBT to write me a newspaper article about a horse named fuzz who won the Kentucky Derby
Shanna Martin 12:25
and and then now it’s in a newspaper, newspaper that we created. So
Fuzz Martin 12:29
now we’ll publish it. Again, we’ll think it’s real.
Shanna Martin 12:32
I don’t think so. No, no, no, I don’t think so badly. Fake News. Good. Literally fake news. Awesome. So there you go. There’s some fun little text ways to create all kinds of free text related stuff with your students. And as we crank through May, and Mother’s Day and Teacher Appreciation Week and summer newspapers and summer camp stuff, and all the information has to go home. There you go. There’s some ways to help you out and some fun free tools to check out.
Fuzz Martin 13:02
Check them out.
Shanna Martin 13:04
So thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Twitter at Smartinwi. And if you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smartinwi.com. If you’d like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or to visit buymeacoffee.com/smartwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening, go educate and innovate.
Fuzz Martin 13:35
The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi website are those of the author Shana Martin and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast? Please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we sure hope they do.
