1. The world is innovating with technology quickly. How quickly? Let’s find out in this Kahoot! Head to kahoot.it.
The Voice of the Active Learner: Education from a Digital Native’s Perspective (YouTube link)
Click here to see Matt’s slides from this workshop.
Reflection questions. We will answer each question individually.
Moonshot thinking (YouTube link):
Shared presentations. Create a presentation with one slide per student and give students permission to edit it. Then assign an activity — some quick Internet research, a writing prompt, an image search to find an example, etc. When they’re done, show the presentation on a projector. It’s student work instantly on display.
Graphic organizers. Drawings gives users a blank canvas where they can add text, shapes, lines, etc. When done, they can save their work as image files or PDF files and can add those images to documents, slides and spreadsheets. It’s a perfect medium for creating graphic organizers. I’ve created 15 of them that can be copied, saved, changed, tweaked or completely redone to fit your needs and your students’ needs.
Animation. This is a great hack (i.e. non-traditional use) of Google Slides that could take some time to complete but yield amazing results. Check out this video, where the creators made an impressive animation with 450 slides in a Google Slides presentation just by clicking through the slides quickly.
Interactive whiteboard. Create a Google Drawing and share it with students, giving them permission to edit. Display the drawing on a projector screen. Students can add text and shapes, draw arrows to important ideas and connect concepts with lines. Everyone can make changes, and anyone can watch — in class or away.
Real life comic strips. Take photos of students using a webcam and add them to a Google Drawing. Add speech bubbles to the photos. Then save those images and add each one to a different slide in a Google Slides presentation. Here’s a Google Site about Comics with Google Tools and Creativity Games for examples and more details.
For more fun, creative uses of Google Apps, go to:
The smartest person in the room is … THE ROOM! Let’s harness that power by collecting some of our best teaching ideas. (Click here if you can’t see the form below.)
Look at all of our ideas in the spreadsheet below! (If you can’t see them, click here to view the spreadsheet.)
Take your classroom beyond the four walls of the classroom!
These days, where powerful technology lets us connect with others and share ideas, there has to be a better option than buying the same textbook for every kid.
Open educational resources (OERs) may be the best option available right now. It’s also a great option for adding unique experiences to the lessons you already teach.
These resources include individual reading selections, videos and PowerPoint presentations. They progress all the way to entire pre-made textbooks OR customizable ones.
Here are 10 open educational resources worth checking out:
1. Boundless (boundless.com) – Boundless offers content that ranges from searchable lessons all the way to entire digital textbooks. It provides teachers and students with adaptable PowerPoint templates and pre-written quizzes.
2. SAS Curriculum Pathways (sascurriculumpathways.com) – My favorite feature of SAS Curriculum Pathways are its interactive animated lessons. It drops students into an attractive lesson that engages with audio, visuals and interactive elements. SAS Curriculum Pathways offers content in English, math, science, social studies and Spanish.
3. LearnZillion (learnzillion.com) – LearnZillion offers entire lesson plans and video lessons from more than 4,000 videos on English language and math. Its resources are linked to Common Core State Standards.
4. OER Commons (oercommons.org) – OER Commons houses lessons created by educators. It includes subjects like history, law, social science and more. OER Commons digital librarians have also curated collections of professional learning resources like game-based learning, arts integration and building text-dependent questions.
5. Curriki (curriki.org) – Curriki wants to create the largest global community library of OERs. Its library includes thousands of educator-vetted, openly licensed materials. It has curated collections in math, science, computer science, English and study skills.
6. PBS LearningMedia (pbslearningmedia.org) – More than 100,000 digital resources. 205 media partners. Kids have been learning from PBS for a long, long time. Now, schools can bring harness its power with tools like lesson builder, storyboard tool and quiz maker.
7. CK-12 (ck12.org) – CK-12 has been around for about eight years, providing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) content resources. It includes everything from lessons to assignments/quizzes to entire customizable textbooks in STEM content areas as well as English, SAT prep and history.
8. engageny (engageny.org) – This site, maintained by the New York State Education Department, helps students and teachers align to the New York State Board of Regents Reform Agenda. Its resources, though, are available to anyone. They include thousands of videos and lessons on all grade levels — prekindergarten through high school.
9. HSTRY.co (hstry.co) – This new tool lets teachers search through and create interactive timelines based on history. Pull in video clips, audio of historic speeches, primary resources, documents and more. Add questions and other interactive elements.
10. Coursera (coursera.org) – More than 1,000 free courses are available on Coursera from universities and other educational organizations. Topics include social sciences, business, life sciences, computer science, arts and humanities and more.
A paperless classroom shouldn’t be created for the lack of paper or the love of technology. It should create effectiveness or efficiency that didn’t exist before! Here are some tricks and tools I used to make my class more paperless (in a meaningful way!).
Click here to see the resources for “A Day in My Paperless Classroom.”
*** Formative (goformative.com) — Formative lets teachers ask a question (or questions) to students through the students’ devices. When students answer, their answers immediately appear in the teacher dashboard. Teachers can then assign a grade or (coming soon!) add a comment that students see immediately. Question types include fill in the blank, multiple choice or (my favorite!) “show your work” where students draw the answer.
Paper by FiftyThree (fiftythree.com/paper) (iTunes: free) — Paper is a sketching app. It gives you (or a student) a blank piece of paper and plenty of tools to turn it into a work of art (or a place to jot down ideas). Tools include a fountain pen, watercolor paintbrush, fine point/wide point Sharpie pen and pencil. Create flowcharts or organize with “smart shapes” you can move around. Available for iPad and iPhone.
Google Drawings (drive.google.com) (Not available for iOS) — Google Drawings lets students add elements to a blank canvas, including text, images, shapes and lines. It’s a very simple Google App, but the options for its use are endless. Some ideas include interactive posters (see how in this blog post) or graphic organizers (see 15+ free graphic organizers here).
Kahoot! (getkahoot.com) — Kahoot! turns your classroom into a game show. Create your own questions or choose from millions of publicly available Kahoot! games. Students see questions on the screen and select the correct answer on their own devices. Track who has the most points with a leaderboard after each question. Fun music and flashy graphics make this one a crowd pleaser!
*** Quizizz (quizizz.com) — lets you turn your multiple-choice questions into a class game show. Students join the game and progress through questions at their own pace. They see the questions and answers on their own screens. The faster they get the correct answer, the more points they receive. Plus, the memes that appear after a correct or incorrect answer are a lot of fun!
Plickers (plickers.com) — Don’t have devices for every student? No problem. Get instant info on what your students know with Plickers. Students hold up cards that represent the answer they choose (A, B, C or D). The teacher scans the room with his/her phone/tablet camera in the Plickers app. Plickers summarizes student answers and provides quick results.
Quizlet (quizlet.com) (iTunes: free) — Quizlet is online flashcards with a twist. Teachers (or students!) can create their own cards by typing terms and definitions. From there, students can take simple quizzes, flip through their flashcards and even play games. Space Race and Scatter are student favorites! Plus, their flashcards can be accessed on their phones. With your terms in a device that’s constantly attached to their hip, how can you lose?
*** Quick blog with Google Slides (drive.google.com) — Make writing assignments more collaborative with this quick blog. Students don’t have Google accounts? No problem! Create a Slides presentation and set sharing to “everyone with the link can edit”. Create a slide for every student … this will be their writing space. Students write and then write comments on each other’s writing, much like a blog (or — gasp! — social media!).
*** TodaysMeet (todaysmeet.com) — Brevity is a virtuous quality in writing. TodaysMeet is a messaging site (think of a chat room that’s created only for your class). Students can write answers, questions, sentences — even links to other sites — in your TodaysMeet room. They’ll have to keep their answers short, though — there’s a 140-character limit! (If they don’t keep it short, they can always submit multiple messages to make one longer message.)
MakeBeliefsComix (makebeliefscomix.com) (iTunes: free) — Comic strips can make writing fun even for the most reluctant writer. MakeBeliefsComix lets students create comic strips with original artwork. Each character has multiple poses so you can pick the perfect one for the situation in the strip. Add speech and thought bubbles, props, backgrounds and more. Then email or print the strips!
AudioBoom (audioboom.com) (iTunes: free) — AudioBoom gives students a voice in class — and a way to share that voice. Students can record audio directly from the site (or using the iOS or Android app). Once uploaded to the site, each recording is saved in student accounts and is given a unique URL. Students can share that URL with the teacher, on a class website, in an e-portfolio or with friends or family. It’s a perfect option for audio podcasts, song parodies or more!
*** Garage Band (on the iOS App Store) — Go farther than recording audio. Add some music! Garage Band lets students play a multitude of different virtual instruments and record them all together in a digital jam session! Save student creations and host a student-produced symphony during class!
Maps and mapping tools can reach so many content areas and grade levels:
These mapping tools can take students places the bus can’t:
Take your students on the streets almost anywhere in the world with Google Maps Street View. Drag the little yellow man onto the image to explore. (Click image to see full size.) (Screenshot taken at maps.google.com)
1. Google Maps Street View — Street View makes it possible to drop your classroom virtually onto almost any street in the world and walk around. It uses panoramic images that let you turn around, zoom in and walk down roads to check out the scenery. Just grab the little yellow “peg man” and drop him where you’d like to go. (See animation at right.) For practice, try dropping yourself at your doorstep of your school if you’ve never used it before.
2. Street View Treks — Once you’ve seen your school from the curb on Google Maps Street View, take it to the next level with Street View Treks. These custom-produced exploration experiences are awesome for students. They provide information about the location and videos that pair nicely with the panoramic views. Locations include Nepal, Gombe National Park, the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Barrier Reef (a Street View Trek underwater!) and more.
3. Walking tour screencasts — An extension to Street View and Treks is to let students take you on a walking tour of someplace in the world. They do some research and collect some facts about the location first. Then they load up the location using Street View or Treks. They start recording a screencast video (a video of what’s happening on their screen with their microphone recording their voices). Some free screencasting tools: Snagit for Google Chrome (my favorite), Screencast-O-Matic and Screenr (there are others). Students narrate the tour as they “walk” the streets using Street View or Treks.
4. Google Cultural Institute — These virtual tours don’t have to be confined to what you can see from the street. Google Cultural Institute gives you access to top-notch art collections from around the world (Art Project) and modern/ancient world heritage sites (World Wonders). Witness significant moments in history with Historic Moments, giving students a version of a field trip to the past.
Kurt Wismer created this map of his travels, complete with year visited and images. Students can create similar custom-built maps with MyMaps. (Screenshot from Kurt Wismer’s map)
5. Mapping fun — Creating or viewing an interactive map with images and information can be the next-best thing to visiting a location, and students can create their own. Kurt Wismer’s great resource site for using Google Maps and Google Earth shows you how. Have students create a map using MyMaps. Select locations, use custom icons, add photos and share.
6. Geoguessr — This game is like a surprise virtual field trip every time you play. Geoguessr uses Google Maps Street View and places participants in a random location somewhere in the world. By panning around, zooming or “walking” down the street, participants place a pin on a map to guess where they are. The closer they guess, the more points they win. It’s great for critical thinking and using context clues.
7. Smarty Pins — Smarty Pins is like Geoguessr’s cousin. Granted, it’s a little less like a virtual field trip, but it does use geography-based questions to play. Participants answer questions by dropping a pin where they think the answer is.
Hold on, because they’re going to come fast and furious! 60 useful digital tools in 60 minutes. Go to: http://DitchThatTextbook.com/lightning for the entire list!
Let’s take some time to process what we’ve learned and thought about today. (video)
Click here to learn more about Matt. Click here to see Matt’s book, Ditch That Textbook, on Amazon.
Matt Miller is available to present at your school or event! He presents to thousands of teachers all around the United States on a wide variety of technology and innovative instruction topics. See his “Work With Matt” page for more details.
Click here to see Matt’s slides from this workshop.