Teaching with Technology

Using educational technology to enhance the learning environment and increase student engagement!

Technology in the Classroom: Teacher Goals 2018-2019 Edition

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Hello, and happy Wednesday! Today was an emotional day for me – our daughters went back to school, and we now have a 2nd grader and a Kindergartener. Ohhhhh the emotions! I made it worse last night by looking through my girls’ baby pictures, watching videos of when they learned to walk and talk … the waterworks were in full force! However, I did NOT cry today as we walked them to their classroom and both girls had an amazing first day of school. We’re going to have an awesome year! My school year officially starts tomorrow – I don’t really count the before school meetings as “back to school” because my students aren’t there – and I’m experiencing the same feelings I have the night before school starts that I have every year since I started teaching. I’m nervous and excited to start year ELEVEN – that doesn’t seem possible – and am excited to share some of my teacher goals with you for this school year!

Intentional Tech Integration 
As you all know, I am a HUGE proponent of intentional and purposeful technology integration in the classroom to enhance learning – hence the name of my blog and the focus of my book 😀 As I emphasize in Illuminate, tech integration should be intentional and meaningful, and the focus should be on how tech can enhance learning. I’m constantly searching for new ways to incorporate technology to enhance learning, and am excited to use InsertLearning this year to encourage my students to connect more with resources and information that we use in class.

Flexible Seating 
I’ve excited about and interested in flexible seating for YEARS but am finally making some strides in that direction. I’m fortunate enough to have 6 bungee chairs in my classroom this year and I am PUMPED! I hope to eventually have a few tall, round bar-height tables and bar height chairs, maybe a couch, a rug, and a few tables to provide my students with more options and choice for where their learning takes place. Fingers crossed!!

 

Make it AWESOME 
This year, I want to continue to focus on creating a learning environment that students actually want to enter, and where they feel like they can learn safely and effectively. I want our classroom to be an inviting space where everyone feels like they’re a valued part of our community and my students know that I’m there for them – to help them learn, to challenge them to understand and apply a concept at a deeper level and to encourage and motivate them to be successful.

Thanks for reading 🙂

P.S. –> I’m adding a new option to my Hashtags through History extension activities! Download your copy of “If we had Twitter when …” today!

Back to School Planning Series: Google Classroom Updates

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Hello, and happy Tuesday! In case you missed it, Google announced today that they’ve made some great improvements to Classroom, hopefully making it more user-friendly and efficient for teachers and students! Let’s dive right into the updates to Google Classroom.

Separate Stream and Classwork Tabs
Do you ever look at an update from a tool that you love using in your classroom and think, “YAASSS! This is going to be so much better!” That’s exactly the response I had when I noticed this change in Classroom. One of the chief complaints that my students have while working in Classroom is that everything is too “smushed” or “jumbled” because assignments, announcements, questions, etc., are all in the same spot. And, prior to this update, I totally agreed with them. Yes, I used the “topics” feature to make locating resources, assignments, etc., easier, but the fact that everything was on the Stream was just a bit too much. Now, Stream and a new tab “Classwork” are two separate entities within the Classroom section, allowing for teachers to create assignments (and soon, locked quizzes!), questions, and topics (used for units) on the Coursework tab and announcements on the Stream tab. Woohoo!

New and Improved Grading/Feedback
Perhaps my favorite update to Classroom is the grading feature. Teachers can now open student work through Classroom and toggle back and forth between student submissions without opening new windows for each individual student submission. As you can see in this article from Google, teachers will be able to open a student submission, add comments (and even quickly add often-used comments!), and move to another student’s work without opening a new tab. WOOHOO!!!

Topics 
Ok, so I know I just said that the grading/feedback option was my favorite, but the new Topics option is a close second … maybe tied for the favorite spot. The Topics feature has been around for quite some time in Google Classroom and has done wonders for “cleaning up” the sometimes messy Stream. NOW teachers can use Topics to create units in the Classwork section – almost like folders where students can easily access all of their work and information for a given unit. WOWZERS! Check out this GIF for more details.

Long story short – I am PUMPED about the new features that have been added to Google Classroom. Soon, teachers will also be able to assign a Google Form as a quiz through Classroom (on managed Chromebooks) in “locked” mode – I can’t wait to see how this works!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Back to School Planning: Kahoot Update

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Happy Sunday, all! I’m continuing today with my back to school planning series, and focusing on one of my favorite tools – I know I say that a lot! – Kahoot! The great people at Kahoot introduced a new game option on Twitter last week, and teachers around the world will love it!

 

When launching a Kahoot activity, teachers have the option to use “classic” or “team mode” as well as the following:

You’ll notice that “enable 2-step join” is listed as a game option. Turning this feature on will require students to jump through an extra hoop when they join a Kahoot game which will prevent (or at least drastically reduce the chances) random people from popping in your class activity!

I’m not saying that my students have suddenly appeared in another Kahoot game by typing random numbers as a game pin, and I’m not saying that they haven’t 🙂

As for the other game options – here’s a quick rundown of the features we use in my classroom:

–> Answer Streak Bonus — use it and love it!
–> Name Generator — we tried it once and my students much prefer to enter their own gamer tags (Check out Chapter 8 of Illuminate for more info on gamer tags!)
–> Podium — yup!
–> Randomize order of questions — we definitely use this option because we review content frequently in my classroom, and I don’t recreate a Kahoot every time we review that content!
–> Randomize order of answers — same as above 🙂 The point of reviewing the content we learn frequently is not to determine whether or not students can memorize which color goes with each answer option!
–> Enable 2-step join — super pumped about this one!
–> Display game pin throughout — most definitely! This is especially helpful for students who have wifi difficulty or come to class late
–> Show minimized intro instructions — nah. My students are QUITE familiar with the ins and outs of Kahoot
–> Automatically move through questions — nope. I do not use this feature because, depending on the responses from my students, I may spend more time discussing the content of specific questions to ensure understanding before we proceed.
–> Require players to rejoin after each Kahoot — nope. I’d rather not focus on “hey what was the pin again?” as we proceed through the class period!

What Kahoot game options do you use in your classroom?

Thanks for reading 🙂

Back to School Planning: Edpuzzle in the Classroom

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Hello, and happy Saturday! I hope you’re having a great week and are enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. If you’re like me, you probably aren’t quite sure what day of the week it is, but you know that it’s most likely not August – #teachersummer – am I right?! In keeping with my back to school planning series, I’m sharing one of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE tools today – Edpuzzle. If you’ve read my blog over the last few years (thanks!) you know that I’m a huge fan of Edpuzzle and use it daily in my modified flipped classroom. Edpuzzle has recently enjoyed a makeover and you may find yourself searching for some necessary features – like the assign button! No worries, you can still assign videos – multiple videos at once – through the sleek, redesigned Edpuzzle page.

Check out the video below that details Edpuzzle’s new look – and please ignore the sound of my children playing and cackling in the background 🙂

As I’ve shared before, my students use this great tool daily in our classroom to view and interact with instructional videos. I love the fact that I can not only monitor their progress individually and as a class on each video, but can also provide quick and effective feedback on embedded formative assessment throughout the video. This allows me to provide more individualized help and instruction to my students – it’s awesome!

Learn more about using Edpuzzle in Chapter 1 of Illuminate!

Be sure to sign up for the Illuminate: Technology Enhanced Learning giveaway! I’ll be giving away a signed copy of Illuminate every 7 days through August 18 … click here for more details.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Back to School Planning: Using InsertLearning

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Happy Sunday, friends! A few weeks ago, I tumbled down the Edu-Twitter rabbit hole and found an amazing digital tool – InsertLearning! After a few minutes of digging, I realized that this is a fantastic tool that will help me design lessons around digital resources that easily integrate with platforms I already use, including Google Classroom and the fabulous Edpuzzle. What is this great tool and why am I so excited about it? I’m so glad you asked!

InsertLearning allows teachers to embed resources, discussions, and questions in any digital source using their Chrome extension.

Here’s how it works.

–> Access the site
–> Select “Log In”
–> Sign in with Google
–> Select your role in education
–> Add the InsertLearning extension to your browser

–> Choose a digital resource (Google Docs, website, etc) that you’d like your studets to use
–> Embed questions, discussions, videos (video lessons from Edpuzzle!!), and highlight text with the InsertLearning menu (There are DOZENS of additional embed options as well!)

–> Assign the resource to your students by either creating a class section within the site or by exporting your Google Classroom sections.

That’s it! Teachers can monitor student progress and provide feedback from within the InsertLearning dashboard. I have soooo many ideas swirling around in my head that involve using this tool to illuminate learning. Do you use HyperDocs in your classroom? Think about how you could use InsertLearning as part of a HyperDoc! I can’t wait to use this with primary and secondary readings in my high school Social Studies classroom!! Did I mention that you can also share your InsertLearning activities with other teachers? Hello, collaboration! 

Users have 3 different pricing plans ranging from free to customizable for the size of your school. The individual teacher plan (which I’ll be using) is $40/year HOWEVER, teachers can “earn” free months by sharing this great site with others.

Do you use InsertLearning in your classroom? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading 🙂