Increasing student engagement with Poll Everywhere + Upgrading your digital assignments by adding comments

Audience response system

Poll Everywhere is an audience response system that fits seamlessly into the Google Slides presentations that you're already using. Audience submissions appear live in Google Slides, so teachers can check for understanding or gather data in the moment.

Great ways to use Poll Everywhere:

• Use poll everywhere as a warm-up by asking a question like, "In three words or less, what is occupying your brain right now?"
• Encourage collaboration and promote higher-level thinking with a crowdsourced Q&A that lets the students upvote the best entries to the top.
• Add live audience engagement to your direct instruction and give all students equitable access to a response.
• Gather the main ideas of a large audience with divergent solutions to complex problems by generating a word cloud response. 
• Check for comprehension, gauge the temperature of the room, or host a real-time voting ballot. 

Add the extension here

Click here to watch a 2-minute intro video

How to introduce polling as a presenter.

Presenter "getting started" guide

To see other ways to amplify the functionality of Google Slides, check out our previous post on recent slide updates, the Pear Deck add-on, and the Unsplash add-on.

Make a copy (with comments)

Google Docs has a new feature that, with a little tweaking, can give teachers new ways to provide support for students in their assignments. When you make a copy of a Google Doc, you are now able to also copy any comments that are in the document. This can be a creative way to proactively provide additional resources, links, and assistance to your students in their projects. Teachers may include comments with additional directions, hyperlinks to resources, voice recordings from the teacher, or a checklist of items for the student to resolve. 

For a specific example, make a copy of this document

For more details, including step by step directions, check out this blog post from Eric Curts

White Bear Lake Innovation Spotlight.

Today's classrooms look eerily similar to the classrooms that I experienced in my own K-12 education. That's not bad per se. I mean, I know a lot of great people that are products of the traditional, factory-style, approach to teaching. This model is tremendously successful at preparing workers for an industrialized society. 

By and large, today's educational workforce are products of the industrial style of education. We teach learners how we were taught and we don't know what we don't know.

The rub, for me, is that our world has enough adults that show up on time, tie a Double Windsor, and color inside the lines. That doesn't cut it, anymore. We require world changers. Young people that are creative, gritty, well spoken, critical thinkers, innovators, and problem solvers. An approach to teaching that is direct-instruction-centric, with assessment valuing regurgitation of googleable facts, will fall short of our ideals. If we continue to teach the way that we have always taught, then we can expect the same results that we have always got.

What does it mean to equip students to be future ready? In the name of overused clichés, take inspiration from the immortal words of Walter Gretzky, as passed on to the world through his son Wayne: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

If you accept that education would benefit from a makeover, then how do we promote change? Dean Shareski, insightful educational thinker, thought that investing equal parts promoting ideas with highlighting innovation that is happening would be a good start. 

Our district is filled with innovative people, spaces, and ideas. The innovation spotlight highlights innovation worthy of replication.

The first installment showcases Michael 'Mick' McCollough using a Google Forms, Google Docs, and a Google Sheets add-on, AutoCrat, to efficiently create a behavior and effort self-assessment for students used to drive conversations at parent-teacher conferences. 

My next effort highlights Amanda Vernon and the innovative process that Amanda uses to prioritize content mastery in her math class. Her students were so focused on points that they seemingly forgot about the learning. Instead of using homework completion to determine grades, she assessed on whether students could tangibly demonstrate understanding.

#BlackHistoryMonth + Templates in G Suite + ISD624 Twitter PLN

Black history month provides a tremendous opportunity to celebrate Black American culture and praise diversity and inclusion. Google Arts and Culture is one great resource available to us. Discover thousands of artworks, artifacts, and stories from cultural organizations across the United States. 

• Discover African American art
• Check out the story of inspiring choreographer and activist, Alvin Ailey, or Edmonia Lewis, the 19th Century African American Sculptor. 
• Take a virtual tour of key locations in civil rights, like Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma or Little Rock Central High School.
• Watch Key moments in civil rights history, like JFKs Adress to the nation on civil rights or a clip on the Tuskegee airmen in WWII.

Want to connect globally with other educators doing the same thing? Follow and Engage with the twitter hashtag #BlackHistoryMonth

(Google Apps For Education has recently been renamed to G Suite.)

G Suite has recently enabled the ability to create templates. A template is a file that serves as a starting point for a new document. When you open a template, it is pre-formatted in a useful way. Here are some examples of why you would want to create templates:

• Use a template in Google Docs, so AVID students could create a copy of a Cornell Notes template in one click. 
• Use a template in Google Forms, to start every Google Form by asking first name, last name, and email. 
• Use a template in Google Slides, so your students can work together to show mastery or create a resource by using a collaborative slide deck.

For step by step directions on G Suite templates click here

Here is how ISD 624 employees can access the templates specific to our domain.

 

Here is how you can add templates specific to our domain.

If you would like to go more in depth, from a comfortable source, check out what the Sync Sisters have to say about G Suite templates. 

To see more from the Sync Sisters youtube channel, click here. 

If you are interested in learning more about getting started with Twitter, check out our blog post from January

For those of you that have recently started your journey towards becoming a connected educator, here is a second chance to join the resource of twitter handles from ISD624 teachers to share across our district. Twitter handles collected from this form will be available to ISD624 employees via this blog and emails from your Digital Learning Specialist. Fill out this form if you are interested in sharing your twitter handle for other ISD 624 teachers to follow:

ISD624 Twitter PLN

Pear Deck Classroom Climate Feature + Inserting Special Characters

Pear Deck Classroom Climate

Classroom climate data provides you with a new layer of information to help you engage your students and teach to the whole person. Watch the video below to learn about Pear Deck's new Classroom Climate feature.

Click here for an overview of Pear Deck's Classroom Climate feature as well as step-by-step instructions for enabling it and using it. 

Click here for more information about using mood data in class.

Tips for Inserting Special Characters (Symbols) in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings

Watch the video below for tips on inserting special characters into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings. A new feature enables you to search for a special character by drawing it in your screen. 

Google Slides Templates + Student Gmail Groups + New Google Forms

Templates for Beautiful Google Slides Presentations

Creating a visually appealing Google Slides presentation can take quite awhile if you're starting from scratch. Now you don't have to. Slides Carnival is a website that has templates complete with background images, layouts, fonts, and re-sizable icons. The best part is that they are all free!

I've added all of their templates to this Google Drive folder for you to easily access. After opening the one that you would like to use just click "File" and then "Make a copy" to start crafting your own stunning presentation.

Here is their latest template for Halloween 2015. 

Student Gmail Groups Synced from Skyward

Groups of student email addresses are now automatically generated for every class that is in Skyward.  No more creating email lists for your students in each class.  These can be used to send emails to classes, to enroll students in you Google Classroom classes or push Android and Chrome apps to student accounts.

Here are the steps to finding those addresses (if you prefer a video see below):

1. Go to groups.google.com

2. Click the "My Groups" button

3. Click the "isd624.org" link (under the Red Create New Group button, last one on the right)

4. Open the Group for the class you are looking for

5. Click the "about" link on the right side

6. You will see the address for that group.

100 second video shows all the steps.  https://goo.gl/xTs2zc

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Pushing Android Apps

Pushing Chrome Apps

The New Google Forms

Have you seen the new Google Forms? They just made a few changes including a more simplified design, new themes, and a faster way to view the summary of responses.

Get started with the new version of Forms

You can learn more about the new features here.