As we all know, one of the Common Core ELA shifts is to build knowledge through content-rich nonfiction text. Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant- daily news. The articles on Newsela allow you to differentiate to different Lexile levels, with a minimum of a 440L and maximum of 1210L on most articles. Even if you are not an ELA teacher, please take a look at their website. There are articles in science, social studies, arts, technology, and other categories that could possibly align with your content. These articles could stem discussions and debates, prompt writing assignments and projects, or you could just use them to teach students close reading skills. Check out their website at https://newsela.com/ and use the Quick Start Guide to get started today.
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It is important to make sure that you actually “end the meeting” when your virtual class is over. If you just close your tab or browser, without actually ended the meeting, then the session remains open. When a session remains open, it continues to send and receive data which can cause technical issues after a long period of time. Latency issues, sometimes permanent and irreparable, can and will happen to rooms left "open.” Not to mention, if your meeting is not ended then students can still enter the meeting and possible use an open pod. It is best practice to go to Meeting > End Meeting when class has concluded. You can even enter in a custom message for students to see when you end the meeting.
Kahoot is a completely free game-based platform that is appropriate for all grade levels and all content areas. Students join with a pin number and answer a collection of questions, creating a social, fun, and game-like learning environment. Students can earn points for correct and timely answers, and teachers can run reports of the student responses. With the ability to ask a multiple choice or open-ended question and upload an image or video, the possibilities for integrating this tool into your classroom (or virtual classroom) are endless. Set up an account and start Kahooting today….your students will thank you! For more information or to get started, visit https://getkahoot.com/. Check out some interesting ways to use Kahoot here.
Go Formative is a completely free, next-generation student response system. As the name implies, this platform is perfect for formative assessment. This tool goes beyond multiple choice questions, giving students to option to type, draw, or submit images to demonstrate their understanding. Teachers see real-time answers from their students as they are typing or drawing and auto-score or manually score their responses. Teachers could use Go Formative for do-nows, checks for understanding, exit tickets, quizzes, and more. What differentiates this tool is that you can upload existing assignments from pdfs, Word, and Google Docs to make them interactive. Your existing printed lessons and resources can find new life in a digital format. It is much more impressive in action so check out this video. Go to https://goformative.com to get more information and get started today!
VideoNot.es provides students with an easy way to take notes that are synchronized with online videos. Each line of notes that is typed has the time of the video automatically recorded next to it. Later, just click on a line of text to make the video jump to the relevant parts. Videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Khan Academy, and other providers stream in a split screen with your notes. You could even create your own screencast or instructional videos and upload them to YouTube for flipped lessons. VideoNot.es syncs with your Google Drive account, creating a new folder in Drive and making sharing incredibly easy between students and teachers. Check out more information and try it out for yourself here.
Are you tired of calling on the same students to answer all of the questions? Get more students engaged by creating your own random name generator with this Google Sheet template and Flippity. This random name generator allows you to draw a random name, lineup, group, team, or seating arrangement. It’s easy to use and your Google Sheets are always in your Drive for future editing. Visit flippity.com for instructions to also create a gameshow-like quiz, flashcards, and more with Google Sheet templates.
Google released several updates for Google Apps for Education users last week. Here are just a few:
1. Share to Classroom is a new Chrome extension that will let you push web pages to your students’ screens. They will not need to click any links, the pages will just appear on their screens. Read more about it here. 2. Explore is a new feature of Google Sheets. Explore provides suggested graphs and charts based on the data in your spreadsheets. Click here to learn more. 3. There is a new way to access the Google Drive templates gallery. Watch a video here to see the new option. 4. Voice typing is now a native feature of Google Documents. It works quite well. See it in action in a video here. You can get creative with Adobe Connect by having students collaboratively fill out graphic organizers. You can search the internet for a blank graphic organizer of your choice, download it and either set it to be your meeting background (meeting>preferences>general) or insert it into the meeting with the share pod. Students can insert in their comments via chat pods placed on top of the background image or by using the text tool to draw on an image through the share pod. See the examples below for a Venn Diagram being uploaded as a background image, with chat pods placed on top and a Frayer Model uploaded in a share pod, with both chat pods and drawings on top. When complete, you can use the pod options to email the chat transcript to yourself or export a snapshot of the annotated share pod. Build these out in a separate layout so that you can make easier to see. You can even place the attendee pod in the presenter only area so that it doesn’t take up space on the student's’ view of the layout.
There are some free apps that you can add to customize your Adobe Connect meeting, such as a countdown timer or random name generator. To find and download these apps, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect/apps.html and select “Learn more” to download the file. Be careful because they are not all free and some just have a free trial. The app will appear as a .swf file in your Downloads folder. Now just go into your meeting and insert a share pod. Within the share pod, select “Share a document” and locate the .swf file in your Downloads to add it to the share pod. This will take a few minutes, depending on the app. Definitely test these apps out before you plan on using them with students. Instructions can be found on the Knowledge Bank site as well.
There’s a tool for Google Docs that is similar to the Track Changes tool in Word or Pages. If you're reviewing a document and want to suggest changing some text, you can suggest edits to the owner of the document without affecting the original text. Your suggestions won't change the original text until the document owner approves them. If a suggestion is denied then it reverts to the original text. These suggestions are easy for the owner to see because they appear in green text with a detailed comment on the side of the document that shows the actual suggested change. Once you are in Suggesting mode, you just need to start typing to begin suggesting edits. Using Suggesting mode is more efficient than just leaving comments or actually changing the owner’s document. This feature of Google Docs is great for proofreading, grading, and peer editing.
Deliver videos like you teach with eduCanon. This free online tool can be used to enrich instructional videos with powerful questions. This tool allows you to interject formative assessments during the delivery of a video, giving the opportunity for student explanations and immediate answer-specific feedback. It is very easy to create and share a “bulb” or eduCanon lesson, with a variety of formative assessment tools and all of your favorite video streaming services available. Keep students engaged in online video and hold them accountable for actually watching video with eduCanon. This tool is perfect for flipped lessons on the student’s independent work days. Sign in with Google and check it out today!
If you want your students to enter into a lobby area then you should just create a new layout from the layouts bar to serve as your lobby. Title the layout “lobby” and add any pods that you would typically see in a lobby. Have the meeting opened up a few minutes before the start time so that the students have to review the content in the lobby. It is best practice to have the daily agenda, materials, and objectives posted here, as well as a warm-up activity. You can have even have downloaded music playing via the share pod. Always do a soundcheck before switching to a new layout for the lesson. There is no separate function for creating a lobby in Adobe Connect.
To see what the students' view looks like in an Adobe Connect meeting, just make yourself a participant. Simply drag and drop your name to the participants list in the attendee pod. Alternately, you can select your name and "make participant." Switch back to host view with the same steps.
Your favorite table formats from MS Word and Pages are also available in Google Docs with the Table Formatter add-on. From any Google Doc, just go to Add-ons > Get Add-ons... and search for Table Formatter. Add this add-on to create professional looking tables in Google Docs very quickly and easily.
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AuthorKristen Wolf Archives
June 2016
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