This week while working on the resources for the monthly Digital Teacher Challenge in my district, I spent some time digging into Apps. Our theme for February is Get Appy! I concentrated on apps for all different tools as we have Chromebooks (Chrome Webstore and connected Apps), iPads (iOS Apps), and Android Tablets (Google Play Apps). Through this research I came across so many great resources both app and web-based, I thought it was a shame not to share here as well! So here's Five for Friday!
Read with Me - This great app helps teachers to assess fluency in students using custom options. Some of the custom features available in the app are the ability to add your own miscues, name the miscues in a way that makes sense and the ability to count or not count the miscue in the score of the student. Additionally the reports look to be quite complete. They are integrated with Google Sign-in and Schoology.
FlipQuiz - This jeopardy style review game is a simple fee way to make review games with kids. Find quizzes already built or create your own. You can add answers to the game board if you choose so that you can be hands-free and host the game as you walk around the room. Because all the answers are built in, you have the ability to send students a link to the game and they can play and review at home! This is a free resource but with the PRO version you will will get in-game score keeping, the ability to add your personal images, and many other features.
Hstry -This great resources allows you or your students to build a historical timeline rich with media (images, video and audio) in addition to the engagement features of commenting and quizzes or checks for understanding. Timelines can then be shared and easily embedded on a website or blog using the embed code generated on the site. With the free service you can have 200 student timelines. Explore this amazing timeline from their site on Life in the Colonies.
Algebra Calculator - This great resource is a calculator that gives a student step-by-step help on algebra problems. Students can use this to enter a problem and instead of the calculator generating just the answer, it generates each of the steps to get to the final answer with a short explanation of what those steps entailed.
Periodic Table - Chemistry Tools This is a free interactive app for exploring chemical elements and their dependencies in the periodic table. The app allows students to see the elements in various ways and makes the periodic table interactive. See the elements, details, atomic structure, boiling point and more. Student s can sort by properties, classification or state.
There are a number of review tools available for teachers to use to add interest to studying information. I hear the sounds of Kahoot, Socrative and Formative and I get encouraged by the excitement that is stirred in students through gamifying studying that I remember being boring a laborious. Another resource that I came across on Twitter today adds to the growing number of resources that can be used to encourage the excitement. Quizizz allows for multi-player practice encouraging collaboration. It does require that students under the age of 13 have parent permission, but it also has a way for students to play without registration. Similar to other resources, once a teacher initiates a quiz, a code is generated for the quiz in which students enter to play. Students answer the questions at their own pace and once they complete the question set, the can review their answers while awaiting the rest of the class to finish. Quizziz has many already created question sets of which you can try out. Give it a try. Here's a quick video walk through.
Additionally, Quizziz has added a feature for homework in which you can launch a quiz using the homework feature that will allow you to set a deadline for the homework. The assignment displays live and the reports feature will tabulate during the window of which you set for the quiz. They have recently added a feature to this that allows students to resume a homework game that they may have started before. This would be a great test review in which students begin in class and then finish at home!
Quizizz keeps a blog with some great tips that is worth checking out. I'd love to hear from anyone who give this resource a try! Let me know how it goes!
A while back I learned about Slides Carnival as a resources for some great presentation templates to dress up Google Slides. I used many of them and was pleased with how easy they were to copy and use. Slides Carnival not only provides you with great templates but each template has some awesome presentation tips and guidelines for creating better presentations. The second slide of the presentation generally give instructions for use as well as the attribution requirements for the graphics within the slide making it easy, clear and fun to build off of some great ideas.
This week I revisited Slides Carnival to see if there were new templates I might use and was pleasantly surprised to find that they have added several new ones. And they are FREE! Specifically the Halloween 2015 Slide Carnival Template Deck would make for a fun Halloween themed lesson full of pumpkins, cats, spooky font and more. Check it out by clicking here.
From the last time I visited, only a few months back, there are 8-10 new templates for various topic and styled presentation. They are so useful for their flowcharts, graphics and backgrounds. Most of them include tables and maps but they all have a series of icons and clearly support a one color presentation styled focus.
Give Slides Carnival a peek to add some variety to your classroom lesson slides. Communicate creatively!
I am always looking for an easy way to digitally complete formative assessment for teachers. It seems like there are always so many different hoops to jump through to get to the actual assessment piece and so when my friend Tim Childers tweeted out about Formative, a great tool for collecting live formative results from students, I investigated. (Actually, for most people who know Tim, we all listen when he Tweets, posts or otherwise makes his digital mark. It is always good and you should all follow him here @tchilders.)
Formative assessment is loosely defined as assessment used to collect feedback that guide the lesson, and learning for the students. Generally they are low stakes assessments that help personalize and support the flow of the instruction. With that in mind, Formative is a tool for collecting information that helps the teacher better know what students need.
One unique feature of Formative is that it allows for personal responses in the form of written responses, drawings or even through the submission of an image. With the ability for a student to submit an image or drawing it opens opportunity for creative unique responses that are otherwise hard to collect. A sample of the tutorial drawn responses is shown below.
With Formative teachers will be able to view live results of the students as they work in class. Another great feature is the ability to share an assessment with other teachers.
Upon logging in as a teacher you are presented with the Formative dashboard and a tutorial and sample assessments to help you get going. Formative also has this great Google Doc to walk you through their product. Formative has a channel on YouTube full of various topics in which you can learn all you need to know. They are very well done and brief enough to allow you to select only those that you need to get going. The introductory video is here and should give you a great overview.
Formative's claim is that the tool works on any platform. I have not tried it on all devices but I would guess that some forms of entry, such as drawing a response, would be easier on a tablet device than a Chromebook or computer. Additionally, it is important to know that Formative's Privacy Policy requests that if a child in under the age of 13 that consent is obtained by a parent or guardian.
I am really excited to see how Formative can be used in various classrooms. Please share or comment if you are or have used it!
PowToon announced today that they are giving away $10 Million of classroom accounts for the school year! How cool is that? Wondering what PowToon is and why you might want to sign up? Read on....
PowToon allows you to create great animated lesson plans and presentations that are fun and engaging. All the animation tools are right there in the dashboard to get you started in creating great videos. The dashboard will guide you through the process of creating the videos. Once you finish you can download the video to keep forever or push the video to YouTube. PowToon is a great alternative to PowerPoint or traditional slides. Give it a try!
With this great FREE gift from PowToon you will get:
The Complete Slides pro package
24/7 premium support
HD video for teachers
Up to 60 students having access for free
up to 15 minute videos + presentations
Royalty free styles, tunes + images
As I know it always comes up, the statement below indicates that they are COPPA compliant. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance We are in complete compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). We do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products, and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years or older.
I recently had the pleasure of attending my high school aged daughter's parent teacher conferences. She's a really good student and so I always enjoy going as I know it will be positive and fun educational conversations. This term was not really much different although I got to hear her Honors English 10 teacher rave about a website she has discovered. I sat back and took in her excitement, recognizing that moment when a teacher is "on fire" with a new tool for their classroom toolbox. She excitedly told me about No Red Ink. I decided to check it out and this is what I learned:
This website is built to help kids learn to be better writers through the use of grammar instruction. The site polls students about their interests, favorite books, movies, peers, etc. and then uses those results to build grammar questions about those things in which they are interested. The work kids do is adaptive and keeps records for teachers all while scoring the work for them. The site is free for parents, students and teachers. There is unlimited practice so that the class time is not taken up with grammar practice. A great introductory video is included below. Winder if this might fit in your classroom? Me too?
Oral reading fluency can be so difficult to assess naturally with students as well as time consuming. As an educator collecting running records from students I have often wondered about the students who get nervous reading aloud to me and how that affects their performance. Then I heard about Fluency Tutor by Texthelp, and I can't wait to see it in action.
Fluency Tutor is an online tool, available in the Chrome Webstore as an app for both students and teachers, that supports oral reading fluency and comprehension. The software incorporates Lexile-leveled passages for students in elementary and secondary levels. Students are able to work independently to practice reading, record and submit assessments and monitor their progress. Educators can assign specific passages to practice or assess, collect and listen to the students' submitted work and then mark or score them when time allows. Teachers can set targets for students including Correct Words Per Minute and Lexile levels. Parents have the ability to listen to the information the students have recorded as well.
After learning more about this resource, I wondered about that shy or those that get anxious about reading in the corner or hall to their teacher of reading specialist. This resource seems like it would break down this barrier for many students. I am excited to explore this software with students!
Sometimes we all need a little help. Time is short and we need to get to the point. Sometimes you just want to get the general gist of something before you invest too much time in a resource or topic. That is what TDLR can do for you! This week, Todd Bugnacki (actually his daughter shared it with him first), shared TLDR and it intrigued me. I looked into it and this is what it is all about:
This is an extension for Google Chrome. An extension is a feature or functionality that can be added to your browser (Chrome) that will allow it to do something it does not normally do. TLDR or Too Long Didn't Read is free in the Chrome Webstore here when used on a webpage, will create a summary of any web article that your browser is displaying all while staying on that page. The extension will appear as an icon to the right of the address bar in your Chrome browser once you add it. The user has the ability to choose how condensed the summary is of the page. Choices span from a summary, short, medium or long version of the page. These versions map the length of the article from 25%, 50%, and 75% of the original article length. Information from the reviews also indicates that it supports German, French and Spanish as well..
Summary in Medium
The use of this tool for personal reasons seems endless as we seem to take in so much more of our information from the web. News, media, etc. can be time consuming to take in and a shortened version might be a real time saver. I am curious how you might make use of this resource in the classroom or if it might hinder learning. Feel free to comment regarding this below.
A brief tutorial for the use of the extension from the makers of the extension is below.
One of the great Add Ons in Google Docs that I love to share with teachers is g(Math). This tool allows a math teacher to be able to add graphs, complex formulas and equations. With the addition of the Add On Menu in Google Forms, you will find that g(Math) is also available. This make for a great tool in the math teacher's tool belt when using Google. Check out how it works:
Once in a Google Doc or Form go to the Add On menu at the top of the page:
Select "get add ons" from the menu and look for g(Math) as pictured above. Click on the add on to view more and then the button or just the from the original menu.
Once the user accepts the permissions, this will add g(Math) to the Add On menu and allow the user to execute it on any document going forward.
To use g(Math) once added it opens in a document from the AddOns menu at the top of the document. It will open on the right side of the screen. This tool is also available in Google Forms making the creation of assessments in the classroom a breeze!
Read with Me - This great app helps teachers to assess fluency in students using custom options. Some of the custom features available in the app are the ability to add your own miscues, name the miscues in a way that makes sense and the ability to count or not count the miscue in the score of the student. Additionally the reports look to be quite complete. They are integrated with Google Sign-in and Schoology.
FlipQuiz - This jeopardy style review game is a simple fee way to make review games with kids. Find quizzes already built or create your own. You can add answers to the game board if you choose so that you can be hands-free and host the game as you walk around the room. Because all the answers are built in, you have the ability to send students a link to the game and they can play and review at home! This is a free resource but with the PRO version you will will get in-game score keeping, the ability to add your personal images, and many other features. 
Hstry -This great resources allows you or your students to build a historical timeline rich with media (images, video and audio) in addition to the engagement features of commenting and quizzes or checks for understanding. Timelines can then be shared and easily embedded on a website or blog using the embed code generated on the site. With the free service you can have 200 student timelines. Explore this amazing timeline from their site on Life in the Colonies.
Algebra Calculator - This great resource is a calculator that gives a student step-by-step help on algebra problems. Students can use this to enter a problem and instead of the calculator generating just the answer, it generates each of the steps to get to the final answer with a short explanation of what those steps entailed.
Periodic Table - Chemistry Tools This is a free interactive app for exploring chemical elements and their dependencies in the periodic table. The app allows students to see the elements in various ways and makes the periodic table interactive. See the elements, details, atomic structure, boiling point and more. Student s can sort by properties, classification or state. 
button or just the