Turn your tablet or Chromebook into an interactive whiteboard

Turn your tablet or Chromebook into an interactive whiteboard

Many teachers create lessons for their students with their SMART Boards. Some even record these lessons so that students can review them at their own pace. Here are some alternative tools that you can use with a tablet or Chromebook to pull together sketches, pictures, video and audio to create a stellar lesson. Both of these have similar features to the SMART Notebook software, but with the added benefit of being more portable on tablets.

Lensoo Create
Chromebook, Android, iOS

"Lensoo Create turns your iPad or Android tablet into a virtual whiteboard with voice recording and smooth digital writing. Using Lensoo Create you can quickly share your ideas through email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn from virtually anywhere. Whether you are a teacher looking to instill knowledge, a student wishing to present your ideas or simply a person with an impressive skill to share, Lensoo Create is for you."

They also have a collection of recordings made by other people that is sorted by subject and is available on their website or within the apps. A big benefit to this tool is that it is available for Chromebooks in the Chrome Web Store so students and teachers can use it on the approximately 3400 Chromebooks in circulation within our district.

Explain Everything
Android, iOS

Explain Everything is a unique interactive whiteboard and screencasting tool used by over a million students and educators. Teachers can use this tool to create engaging presentations with many elements. Students can also use this tool to creatively demonstrate understanding. This app is a paid app and will cost you $2.99 on either platform.

"Create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage.

Add photos, videos, shapes, import PDF documents from local storage, Google Drive, Dropbox or insert a fully functioning web browser window. Export MP4 movies, YouTube videos or save Explain Everything projects locally, to Google Drive and to Dropbox.

No account is necessary to use Explain Everything and share creations."

Piktochart, Easelly, and Google Drawings

Piktochart and Easelly

Teachers and students can create beautifully visual informational graphics, posters, summaries, and more from a variety of templates with Piktochart. Click here to watch a short video! 

These items could also be created with Easelly. Click here to watch a short video.

Google Drawings as Collaborative Space for Students

Use Google Drawings as a collaborative space for concept mapping or brainstorming . Simply create a new drawing in your Drive and share it with students allowing them access to edit. 

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.

Turn a Google Document into a Google Form

Turn your Google document...

into a Google Form...

Have a paper test, quiz, or survey that you would like to make into a Google form? GFormIt is a Google document add-on that will allow you to take questions and answers and translate them into a Google form with the first submission of the form being an answer key for grading using another add-on like Flubaroo. Check out this video on GFormIt. 

To use GFormIt...

1. Install GFormIt as an add-on in your Google document.
2. Create questions and answers as with the same format as shown in the video.
3. Run the GFormIt add-on. A link to the form and the form responses will be emailed to you. GFormIt will take your answers as the first submission to create a key for grading with another add-on like Flubaroo.
4. You can edit the form after it is created to change the theme or questions.

Google Educator Certification

This week is the last week of the certification process. This week we are working on the elective lessons and taking the exam. Click here for training page. Remember that you will have to pay $15 to take the exam and will reimbursed for the cost of all of your exams upon completing the certification. If you need any help, please email Cassie or Matt!

Upon completion of the certification click here to submit for reimbursement. You will need to provide links to your receipts and links to your exam certificates. If you choose to do two electives you will be reimbursed $90.00. If you choose to do one elective you will be reimbursed $75.00.