Monday, September 28, 2015

Apps for Tablet Notes and Quizzes

Tablets might be just what you need to get students to understand new ideas and collect the data you need!


Try Kahoot!  
An online quiz with a presentation on a class shared screen.  Students can use any device to log on and view material for each customized question.


Try Socrative 
An online class quiz for formative assessment and teacher decisions.



Try Nearpod 
A tablet presentation that coincides with shared screen information.  All students see the same screen.  Many options for quiz questions, interactive slides, and polls.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

How to Tie An Assembly to Real Learning

We plan on taking pictures, uploading them, and having students curate their own poster to summarize the event!

Websites for Student Projects Online

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Behavior Management with Classdojo.com

Wondering how to start the school year off with a solid behavior plan and data collection system with easy ways to communicate to parents and fun incentives for kids that are free and fun that is easy to modify as the year goes on and can focus on a wide variety of positive skills?

Phew.  That was a lot, right?  Well, try www.classdojo.com.  We are using it with 5th gradersWe also found some awesome freebies that add to the experience here:

Student Introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaeNSYJvrn0

Fun, Free Incentives:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Class-Dojo-QR-Code-Behavior-Rewards-840653

Summary Points Tracker:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Class-Dojo-Point-Tracker-Freebie-2003264

Monday, August 31, 2015

Brain Pop Be Poppin'


Brain Pop is like a safe, educational youtube for your classroom.  I always check to see if there's a supplementary video for my lessons in Science and Social Studies.  Also, I choose one for morning work or dismissal and let students take the quiz whole group style. But wait, there's more...

There are lots of great features such as:

1. Standards search to find videos for all subject areas in your state:

2. Teacher and student account for individualized assignments and testing:  http://educators.brainpop.com/getting-started-mixer/

3. Teaching with games and even platforms for kid designed games:

There's a lot to this service and if your school already has an account, there is a strong chance that you are not using all of the features that are available!  Check it out!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Google Certification Training

2 Day Google Training


FRIDAY Links

Google Add Ons- Grammarly  https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check


www.Edpuzzle.com - Videos and engaging students.


www.Padlet.com - Class can post on one wall!  Digital dashboard for today!  Put vid, links, text, Use as an exit ticket.


www.Todaysmeet.com - A discussion board for anyone with the link for today! Add link to give to classroom and text dashboard.


www.Pixlr.com - free photoshop


www.Geoguesser.com - guess where you are game










Add-on: www.Fluberoo.com  Grades a spreadsheet from google forms for you!


Forms consist of 3 areas- 1. Form editor 2. Live form 3. Spreadsheets of responses
Form editor can be filled out to schedule teacher conferences!


GOOGLE CLASSROOM (an lms) (workflow management tool) (released in august-june, 70 million assignments) (co teacher!, drafts!, mobile apps!)


  1. only used with academic accounts in the school district
  2. classroom only exists with google apps for education


THURSDAY links-
https://www.remind.com  Send a text to all kids and it hides phone numbers


Google Keep- notes
Tasks in Gmail- To do lists in gmail


http://www.symbaloo.com/  a note pad with symbols




www.Viewpure.com - this site strips videos of bad things and ads


http://www.movenote.com/ talk over documents or presentations, create video of presentation

www.Flippity.net - Use google drive (spreadsheets) Jeopardy template, random name picker, randomly assigned grouping of different amounts, progress shower, flashcards.


Here is a google doc opened in Drive.
  1. Highlight text (Ex: “Larry Page”)
  2. Click Tools (in top bar)
  3. Click Research
  4. Use functions in research bar: Citations, Maps, Images, etc.
  5. Scroll down to Websites.  Use 3 options: preview, insert link, citation (as seen in pic)


ADDONS!!! Super cool ways to improve using Drive functionality
GOOGLE CITATION-
  1. Add ons (voice recorded feedback on page Kaizena, easy bib, rubric maker!)
Examples of addons: Orange Slicer, Kaizena Mini, Easybib, Grammarly)

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Google Trends

It looks like this free tool on Google might lend itself to some amazing lessons on compare and contrast, data analysis, search, and literacy.  I can't wait to try this with fifth graders this year!



Here's one I've set up:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01kmd4%2C%20%2Fm%2F01jz6d&geo=US&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4


Monday, June 1, 2015

http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/starter-kit-differentiated-instruction/

Differentiation Ideas

Monday, February 9, 2015

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Engage Your Students

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept14/vol72/num01/Motivated-to-Learn@-A-Conversation-with-Daniel-Pink.aspx

Do you want compliant students or engaged students?  Here's an excerpt that was well done, so I figured I'd share.  There's a subtle line between leadership and management.  In light of the recent outcry against the PARCC test, the last paragraph is particularly insightful.

I don't have all the answers, but I'm looking for meaningful learning tasks on a daily basis, and providing autonomy, strategically, is one way to make that possible.

"In your book Drive, you wrote, "While complying can be an effective strategy for physical survival, it's a lousy one for personal fulfillment." Nevertheless, people spend a lot of time complying in school. What needs to change?
There's a huge difference between compliant behavior and engaged behavior. With compliant behavior, you're doing what someone told you to do the way they told you to do it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's different from engagement. With engagement, you're doing something because you truly want to do it, because you see the virtues of doing it.
Now most good teachers don't want compliant students—they want engaged students. It's more fun to teach engaged students; it's kind of dreary to teach compliant ones. Human beings, whether they're 6-year-olds in a 1st grade classroom or 46-year-olds in a corporate boardroom, don't engage by being managed or controlled. We engage by getting someplace under our own steam.
So if we really want engagement rather than compliance, we have to increase the degree of autonomy that people have over what they do; over how, when, and where they do it; and over whom they do it with.
Students don't have a lot of autonomy in school—but neither do their teachers. Many trends in federal policy, especially over the last decade, have focused on constraining teacher autonomy. Now when I say that autonomy leads to engagement, it doesn't mean that you have to turn the autonomy dial up to 10 in every circumstance. If you really want to get people engaged, you have to find ways to increase autonomy the right amount at the right moment.
Now what does this mean in practice? It means not having a system that requires that every 3rd grade teacher everywhere in the country on the second day of March is teaching the exact same thing in the exact same way. That's a disaster.
What it means in terms of students is giving them some discretion over what they study, which projects they do, what they read, or when or how they do their work—just upping the autonomy a bit. We're not talking about a wild and wooly free-for-all where everyone does whatever they want whenever they want to do it.
What I am suggesting is that our default assumption, for both students and teachers, should be this: Let's trust people with autonomy instead of assuming they can't handle it.
But here's the challenge: At some level, compliance is a lot easier for the people at the very top of an education system. It's a lot more convenient if you have compliant teachers and compliant students. And management is all about getting compliance. Even if you sand off the rough edges and oil the gears, the technology of management is still designed to produce compliance.
We need something different—something beyond management, whatever the next iteration is. We need leaders, both in organizations and in schools, who create an atmosphere in which people have a sufficient degree of freedom; can move toward mastery on something that matters; and know why they're doing something, not just how to do it.
And this leads to another challenge, an uncomfortable question for legislators, governors, and presidents: Are our education policies designed for the convenience of adults or for the education of our children? Take high-stakes testing—it's easy, it's cheap, and you get a number, which makes it really convenient for adults, whether they're taxpayers or policymakers. But is heavy reliance on punitive standardized tests the best way to educate our children? Probably not. Doing what we truly need to do for our kids is going to end up being pretty inconvenient for a lot of adults. But to my mind, it's the only way to go." -Daniel Pink