Get ready for a game changer! Google Slides now allows you to review and respond to audience questions as well as keeping track of those questions and allowing your audience to vote for the questions they want you to answer. This new feature will appear as an option when you enter presentation mode.
When you choose "Presenter View" you are able to use the new Q&A feature along with your speaker notes. You can choose to share questions as they come up, or wait until the end of your presentation. This is helpful to both you and your audience as you preserve the flow of your presentation, but they don't forget the questions they want to ask.
Your audience will see a link at the top of your presentation that will allow them to both post questions or vote on other audience member's questions. Questions may be asked anonymously or by using your Google sign-in info. The presenter can then choose whether or not to share these questions with the audience and how to respond.
For the time being, it seems that if you're in a school-domain using Google Apps for Education, only members of your domain can participate in the online question submission. But you can easily work around this by using a free Google account to create your slideshow.
You could use this to allow students to, anonymously or not, ask questions, or you can pose questions and allow them to post their responses. The audience "voting thumbs up or down" feature could likewise be used in a variety of ways.
Timelines can look professional and polished while reinforcing a number of research and digital citizenship skills. The amazing folks at the Knight Lab at Northwestern University have created a template that, with a little help, anyone from upper elementary students to high schoolers, and beyond can make amazing embedded timelines.
Students make a copy of the template in their Google Drives and then enter dates, headlines, links to audio, video, or images they've found online along with their citations. Then following a few step-by-step instructions, they are able to get either a link or embed code to share their timeline with anyone they wish, from their teacher and class to a worldwide audience! Think of all of the ways timelines can be used in your classroom!
This is the vision of Google Expeditions. At the moment, the official Expeditions program is in limited areas and consists of a guided exploration of a location through a class set of cardboard virtual reality headsets. However, even if you're not lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of this program, you can bring a similar experience to your students for a nominal cost. Google Cardboard is a free app that runs on most smart phones and iPods running iOS 8.0 or later. There is a long list of compatible apps from race-car games to Google Street View and this is where the magic happens. In order to use the app, you'll need a viewer. These range from the simple, folded cardboard devices the program is named for, to higher-end, durable viewers made from molded plastic or metal. The idea is simple and emerged in the 1800's with the invention of the stereoscope.
I bought a simple cardboard model online and was using it within minutes of opening the package. It takes a minute to get used to virtual reality, it can make you a bit dizzy or nauseous and some may notice that it bothers their eyes after a few minutes, but the effect of standing in the middle of Venice, Rome, Paris, or even under the sea at the Great Barrier Reef is worth the odd sensations that come with VR.
The cardboard model I bought only cost $9.99 and does a perfectly acceptable job, but it is cardboard. By the time I'd passed it around the 8th grade French class, the edges were looking a little grubby, so I ended up duct-taping it to reinforce the joints and protect the surfaces. But, once you've bought the components (lenses, magnet, NFC tag) you could easily replicate the structure and reuse those parts to save money. Alternately, I'd suggest buying a few of the more durable (and disinfect-able) models and using it as a small-group station. Maybe buy a few and check them out from the school's library. The potential experience is worth the small investment and as time goes on, the apps available with certainly increase in number.
Check out this cool quiz-creation tool! Quizzizz works in a similar way to Kahoot with a couple of key differences. The student sees both the question and answer choices on their screen and you can set question time up to 5 minutes.
Both have an extensive bank of ready-made quizzes that you can use. Check out this quick walk-through to see if it could work in your classroom!
Whether you want to quickly assess your students understanding after a discussion or would like to have students perform assessments of their peer's understanding of their presentation, Kahoot can add a fun, gameshow atmosphere to your class. Use iPads, Chromebooks, Lab computers or the students' smartphones!
So often, students give presentations, receive their grade, and that's it. But wouldn't it be great to find out if their audience actually learned anything from all of their hard work? Wouldn't student audience members pay more attention if they knew they were going to be playing a game using the information their peers shared?
Kahoot does what all of those sets of "clickers" and fancy software packages promised, but without the hassle of additional devices and almost no learning curve!
Once you've gotten an account, you log in and choose what type of questions you want to ask.
Then when you're ready, project your quiz screen and students will see something like this.
Students would just need to go to Kahoot.it (on ANY device with internet access) and enter the game's pin number, enter a nickname (I'd suggest 1st name or Google username) and when you (or the gamemaster) starts the game, they'll see the 4 choices on their screen.
Please let me know if you'd like to start using this in your class, I'd be happy to co-plan a lesson with you!
In Classroom, when students open an assignment, their document will open in a new tab, leaving the assignment's instructions hidden on their previous tab. Alice Keeler's come up with a brilliant solution for this in the Classroom Split Chrome Extension. Give it a try!
Go to the Chrome Web Store and add the extension.
Once you've added it, open an assignment in Classroom and click on the extension.
You will now see your screen split into two parts. One with the assignment's instructions and the other with the copied document.
Tech Tip of the week #2 is also from Alice Keeler! It is a quick settings change that will allow you to automatically convert any Word Docs that are shared with you into Google Docs.
Step 1: Open your Google Drive
Step 2: Click on the gear icon at the upper right
Step 3: Click Settings
Step 4: Check Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format
Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning & Children's Media has created several apps for young children. My favorite is Alien Assignment. It's a free app available in the Apple app store (it's an iPhone app bus can be used on the iPad or iPod as well- iOS 4.3 or later). Children are introduced to the Gloop family of aliens whose ship has crashed landed and who need the child's help to fix it.
Through the camera feature on the device, children are asked to find objects and photograph them as examples of items the aliens could use to replace the broken parts of their ship. Directions are spoken and children must pay close attention so that they know what their photo assignment is. The open-ended assignments can lead to some
creative and out-of-the-box thinking when children are looking around the room. For example, the assignment to find something with buttons led to kindergartners locating buttons on classroom snowmen, a teacher's sweater, and the keyboard of the computer. Children can then be asked to justify their choices when reviewing their photos with an adult.
This one, simple, free app encourages active listening, following directions, creativity, critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and camera use. It is recommended for ages 4 and up and would be an excellent choice for grades K-2. Extension activities could include partners assigning each other items to find and photograph or having children write their explanations for their photo choices.
When you hear someone say augmented reality, you may imagine a future time where hologram phones beam the person you're speaking with right into your livingroom. While we're not there yet, augmented reality is a real and useful tool for learning and sharing information.
Through Aurasma, a free iPad app, students in 6th grade created video overlays for their wall display of frequently misspelled words. Aurasma works by using a still image as a trigger point. When you're logged into the app and you hover over the trigger image, the student-created video content begins playing automatically and appears to be hovering in space above the trigger.
For FSCU teachers, you can access our instruction sheet through this link.
In the case of this 6th grade group, students were creating the overlays or "auras" but there are lots of ways that teacher-created auras could be useful. For example, if your students have access to a device with the Aurasma app at home or in school, they can use them as an extra helper in their independent work. The teacher can create a video demonstrating how to work through a math problem and when the student hovers their device over the problem, the teacher's explanation video would appear to help them. Conversely, students could each create an aura of themselves working through a problem and then have a classmate watch it and confirm if they did it correctly.
Unlike using a QR code and code reader to take you to a specific URL, the Aurasma app contains the video or animation in one place and can be kept private or public at the users' discretion. Augmented reality and Aurasma are being used to enhance customer experiences. Check out the way Marvel Comics has incorporated it into their content:
Try hovering your Aurasma app over logos of most professional sports teams and instantly find info on the team, key players or the team's twitter feed. Corporate marketing is already diving into augmented reality- give your students the tools and knowledge to create this content themselves!
Looking for a way to edit pictures or create illustrations in the cloud? For Chrome users, there is free and easy way with the SumoPaint app from the Chrome Web Store. There are hundreds of tools available without the need to download anything.
This free app allows users to create, manipulate and export images with ease. The learning curve may seem steep because there are just so many options available, but there's a SumoPaint YouTube channel with tutorials on everything you may want to do from basic to advanced creation and editing. If you've had any experience with PhotoShop, you should be able to jump right into creating with this robust tool.
For the first time bringing out iPads in kindergarten, we decided to make it a "Teacher Table" center that groups of four would rotate through. This worked well since work centers are already a part of the classroom routine. With only 10-15 minutes per group, we were able to cover some basics and allow the students to focus on working with one app.
Students first washed and dried their hands (it was kindergarten after snack time). When they first sat down, I had the stack of iPads in front of me and introduced the home button. Although many students had already used iPads, this common language of calling it the "home button" is important to clarify. Then I gave each student an iPad and once they'd swiped it on, had them practice with the volume button. We set all of the iPads to mute and talked about why this was important if we didn't have headphones and were all using our own iPads.
For the first app, we used the free Geoboard. Since actual geoboards were one of the other stations, it was the perfect time to talk about how they were similar and also discuss the differences. This free app never runs out of rubber bands, they never break, they can stretch an infinite amount and the shapes can be colored in.
That's it. We didn't use any bells or whistles, there were few directions and no one was named the winner, but it didn't matter. The students were creating patterns, shapes and designs of their own and challenging their friends to do the same.
Want a place where you can search over 87,000 streaming videos, activities, images, website links, lesson plans and students printables by National or Common Core Standards, grade level and specific subject areas? Would you like access to all of this for FREE?
VT PBS LearningMedia is an amazing resource that is available for FREE to VT educators and their students. They are currently featuring resources for National Anti-Bullying Month (October), but the range of video content and concepts covered is truly amazing. There's even the option to build lessons and quizzes on the site and assign them to your students. The lessons & videos will stream on iPads & Chromebooks too!
From Martha Speaks & Kids In Motion to NOVA & the Ken Burns Collection, content and supporting materials are organized and searchable. Go to VT PBS LearningMedia, create a free account and get started!
Looking for a new way to allow your students to practice their online reading comprehension, analysis of infographics, charts and maps? Need read-aloud support for differentiation? Take a look at ThinkCERCA's free option. Although the free version does not have the same level of depth and complexity that the subscription one does, as a starting point, it's extremely user-friendly and has authentic texts in leveled bands from 3rd to 12th grade.
It takes only a few minutes to explore and will give your students valuable experience in reading for understanding online and allow them to practice the type of multiple-choice questions that they will encounter when taking the SBAC.
It has never been easier to go paperless in your classroom. Google Classroom is now available to all Google Apps for Education schools and allows seamless integrating of your Google Drive, online class discussion, collaboration and more. For a quick guide to getting started, check out this video:
This iPad app acts like an interactive whiteboard on your iPad. You can import or capture pictures and then write on them, record themselves describing them, or have students talk through and show through drawing and photos how they solve a math or science problem.
If you have an Apple TV, ask students to share their ShowMe with the whole class.
Great app for: showing math work, drawing, explaining reasoning.
TopNotes is an iPad app that allows you to take notes, insert images, highlight and more all within the app. Pair with an Apple TV and allow your students to show their work with the class. Does not have the recording capability of ShowMe, but it's very easy to use.
The demo video shows the process of opening the app, creating a note, & inserting a photo. If you still have questions, let me know and I'll come by your classroom for a live demo!
Great app for: showing math work, storytelling, annotating images.
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