Warm-ups With Google Forms + Differentiating News Content for the Classroom

Warm-ups With Google Forms 

Bell ringer, eye opener, lightbulb question... I've heard class warm-ups called many different things. It's no surprise why so many teachers choose to add some sort of warm-up to their class routine. They can help students remember elements from the lesson the day before or be used as a pre-quiz to get a better picture or your students' prior knowledge on a new topic.

If your students have access to a computer, using a single Google Form for all of your warm-ups is an easy way to take this snapshot of student understanding in your classroom.

How-to

1. Create a new form in Google Drive and create two questions, one multiple choice and the other paragraph text.
2. After getting the form looking like you want it, shorten the URL to the form using a service like bit.ly or goo.gl.
3. Students can bookmark the link on their own devices or you can have the short link written somewhere in the room so students can navigate to your form easily.
4. Anytime you want to do a warm-up just post a slide with your multiple choice question or extended response. Students will fill out the generic form.
5. You can now see all of the class responses populating in the spreadsheet that your form will create. Use this information to steer the discussion for the day.

Newsela - Differentiate The News

It is often difficult to find text that is appropriate for all of your student's reading levels. If you teach current events or are looking for some good articles for class, check out Newsela. Newsela is a collection of news articles that is updated daily and each article is offered at 5 different lexile levels. Using this tool allows you to deliver the same content to all students while differentiating for their individual needs. There is also a quiz feature built in so that students can test their understanding of the article.

eduCanon + Favorite Chrome Extensions

eduCanon 

eduCanon is an online learning environment to build and share interactive video lessons with your students. You can begin with any YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video content (screencasts, Khan Academy, Minute Physics, TED, NOVA, etc.) and transform what is traditionally passive content into an active experience for students. At certain points in the video you can add a number of different questions to assess understanding of what they are watching. You can also monitor their responses in real-time and decide how to proceed with your lesson. Oh yeah, it's also free! Click here to give it a try.

My Favorite Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions add exciting new functionality to your Chrome web browser and help you get things done. There are thousands of them out there so it's hard to know where to start! Here a few of my favorite that I use almost daily. 

Nimbus Screenshot - Capture Web page, a part of it or the whole browser window, edit screenshots and save the images to Local File or Google Drive.

Adblock Plus -  The free adblock tool for Chrome: Blocks annoying video ads on YouTube, Facebook ads, banners and much more.

Clipboard History - Roll back your clipboard! The product keeps a history of a content, which has been recently copied to the computer clipboard. By selecting any last copied text you automatically copy it into the clipboard again. You can also see the time every text was copied. Don't lose your information!

Tab resize - Split Screen made easy. Resize the current tab and tabs to the RIGHT into layouts on separate windows. With multi monitor support.

ShortenMe - Quickly shorten links with goo.gl, copy them to the clipboard, and generate QR codes

OneTab - Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once.

TechSmith Snagit - Take a screenshot, screen capture, or screen video recording. Collaborate and show what you know. (works on Chromebooks too!)

Google Educator Certification

This week we are working on the Calendar lessons and taking the exam. Click here to find the lessons. Remember that you will have to pay $15 to take the exam and will reimbursed for the cost of all of your tests upon completing the certification. Cassie or Matt will be available from 4:00pm - 5:30pm in South Campus Media Center on Monday, January 5th to offer help on the course. You are not required to attend these help sessions and you can move through the modules at your own pace! Please email ahead if you plan on attending the help session.

10 Tips for Becoming A Google Educator

Formative Assessment with Pear Deck & Nearpod

Here are your Tuesday tech tips!

This week's tech tips feature two great presentation tools that can be used to increase student engagement and gather formative assessment data from students.

Tip #1: Pear Deck

Pear Deck is an app that connects to your Google Drive account allowing you to take existing Google presentations or PDFs and turn them into interactive lessons with embedded formative assessments. Students can join the presentation and participate through their devices. You can also create new presentations in Pear Deck. Click here for more information (including some great videos) on using Pear Deck.

Tip #2: Nearpod

Nearpod is a website that functions similar to the Pear Deck app in that it allows you to add interactive formative assessment features to existing presentations or to create new presentations with these features. A Nearpod app is available for Apple and Android devices allowing students to easily join in on presentations. Click here for a video overview of Nearpod and visit Nearpod.com to get started.

So which should you use? Give both a try! Both have features that the other doesn't. For example, with Pear Deck you can ask "pop" questions that weren't initially part of the presentation and with Nearpod you can ask questions in which students can submit a drawn or handwritten response.

Blendspace and Collaborating in Schoology (December 10, 2013)

Here are you Tuesday Tech Tips.

Tip #1: Meet Blendspace

This tool allows you to collect digital content from around the web and compile it into organized lessons that students can work through at their own pace. You also have the ability to create quizzes right within your lessons that can be used for formative assessment. In Blendspace you are able to include any of you Google Drive formats or add content YouTube, OpenEd, Flickr, Educreations, Search Gooru or Dropbox. You can also upload media files from your computer or add a web page.

Photosynthesis example in Blendspace

Get started here or check out these webinars to see how teachers are using Blendspace in the classroom.

Creating Collaborative Research Projects

Digital Storytelling and Student Creation

Flipping and Blending The Classroom

Tip #2: Sharing is Caring (and time saving)

We collaborate in almost every aspect of our teaching and we often encourage students to do the same. Fortunately, Schoology has a feature that allows us to share the resources we create just like we do in other aspects of our job

Start by selecting 'Personal' from the 'Resources' drop down menu

Click the file box icon to add a new collection

Click the 'Share' button to add other Schoology users as collaborators to the collection

Anybody that was added as a collaborator will now be able to copy resources from that collection and add it to their courses. They are also able to add their own resources.

Splitting the workload between teachers and creating a great collection of instructional resources! What's not to love? The best part is that you will be able to pull from this ever growing collection to build your courses next year.