1. Bubblegum Oldies This is my ALL TIME favorite station for the classroom! Bring the 50's vibe into your classroom with this station. It is perfect when students are up and moving. Use this when students are having group discussions, changing stations, or completing active lessons. 2. Vitamin String Quartet This is a student favorite! Vitamin String Quartet takes billboard hits and creates instrumentals with just violins! From country to hip hop this station is great to keep students productive and moving. 3. Easy Listening Radio This station is all about smooooth listening. This station is great for high schoolers when working individually. Features artist like Adele, Jason Mraz, Micheal Buble, Glenn Miller, and Frank Sinatra. 4. Sinstrumentals Radio Perfect for productivity! The beats on this station are great when you need your students to work at a steady pace. Completely instrumental but with an easy hip hop edge that your students will love! 5. Nature Sounds with Music Radio
Create a calming atmosphere when necessary. This station plays slow instrumental tones with nature sounds like rain, thunder, or birds in the background.
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Document cameras can be the fastest and easiest way to integrate technology into your classroom. However, it is SO much more than just a camera! In our district, most document cameras have pretty advanced software that can be used for a multitude of activities. Read below to find out new ways to use your document camera! Document Camera Tools Most document cameras have software that supports the following features:
How Can I Use These Features? Record Everything! I can't stress how much time you will save by recording lessons, notes, explanations, etc. Examples:
Interactive Notebooking Hit record and demonstrate how-to cut and paste work into an interactive notebook. It will save to the archive manager, and you can later share it to individual student devices, or share whole class. Students can watch it as many times as necessary without you having to repeat the instructions multiple times. I LOVE interactive notebooks, and this was a lifesaver! Reading Outloud Place a book or novel under the camera and zoom if necessary to visually enlarge the pages for students. Demonstrate active reading for your students by using the annotation feature. Take notes in margins, highlight main ideas, or underline new vocab terms. Hold a quick lesson on punctuation as well. Jumbotron My students always loved this! When students are working in groups appropriately, turn the camera on them and show them on the "jumbotron." This is a great way to get off task kiddos back on track. Sometimes, I would capture the group's photo and leave it displayed on the screen for the next class to see. The next class would work hard in groups to see if they could get their photo on the "jumbotron." You can also use it to display exemplars in student work! Webcam Use the camera and audio feature just like a webcam! Take digital field trips, connect with another class, or video conference with a colleague or guest speaker. Absent Students Take photos or record work during your daily lesson. Share it with students who are absent. Student Projects Let students or groups record themselves presenting a project. This could be simply presenting a poster, letting a student present a lesson, or having them create a fun news broadcast. You can archive the videos and then upload them onto a class Youtube page for students and parents to view. Save and Share All images and recordings automatically save within the archive manager in the document camera software. Scan student work and share it on your class website, with parents, or students. Create folders or "stack" as the software may call it, and keep them to use the next year. Show and Tell Younger students can show off objects they bring to class, by zooming in, rotating, and even recording themselves presenting the object. Whole Class Discussion When presenting a document or picture, allow students to come up and write or type in thoughts or answers using the annotation tool. When finished, make sure to take a quick snapshot of the document to store in your archives. Before and After Use split screen to display how work should look before and after. Scan Mulitiple Pages Use the time-lapse feature to scan multiple pages or images quickly. You can then open the images and annotate them. Keep in mind each document scanner brand and version does slightly vary. If you need help locating these features, or would like a session on how to use them, please email [email protected].
1. Extra Credit You know those students who always bug you for extra credit? Well know you can easily assign an extra credit assignment to a specific student. They can work on the assignment outside of class, and ask any questions through Classroom's comment features. This way, you aren't bothered with extra credit during crucial class time. 2. Extra Practice Share resources, games, or extra assignments to students who need a little extra help in some areas. 3. Tasks for Early Finishers We have all had those early birds who finish their assignment at lightning speed for one of two reasons. 1) They mastered the material and need something more challenging 2) They didn't understand the assignment and rushed through it just to get done. Usually, if students know there is a task waiting for them when they are finished with an assignment, they are more apt to focus on the assignment at hand. Nevertheless, you will ALWAYS have early birds. Use the differentiation tool to assign "tasks" or "challenges" for those students to complete once done. Taking paper task cards you may already have, and turning them into digital tasks is a great place to start. 5. Differentiated Assignments Create different versions of an assignment for students who are accelerated, average, and struggling. You can even make sure to include any modifications in with the assingment instructions. Separate rubrics can even be given as well. 6. Group Work
Create group projects or, assignments for each group to complete. Share the assignment with only members of that group. This way each student can view their group assigment on their own device, sit together as a group, or even work together from an assigned seat. 5 Must Try Extensions in 2017Okay, so none of these extension are new to the edtech world, but they may be new to you! Committ to giving at least one of these a try this new year!
By now, almost every educator on the planet has wandered over to getkahoot.com to see what all the fuss is about. If you are one of the lone few who has yet to give Kahoot! a try, pencil it into your lesson plan for tomorrow! Trust me, your students will thank you. Kahoot! is an extremely simple, yet very rewarding game that teachers can create to maximize student learning! For those of you that have used Kahoot before you know the joy that comes across a student's face when the fun, bubbly, Kahoot! music starts. Kahoot! is a great tool to use when you want to assess knowledge levels and have some fun at the same time. Did you know Kahoot! can do way more than assess your students? Yep, Kahoot! has developed many ways in which you can use their platform in the same simple, yet fun fashion. JumbleJumble is Kahoot!'s newest addition. Jumble works the same way the original Kahoot! Quiz works, except instead of choosing one answer choice as the correct option, students must put all answer choices in a sequential or chronological order. Teachers can create their own Jumble and watch the higher order thinking skills begin! Jumble still focuses attention to the front of the room by displaying the question and answer choices. The students' job is to shuffle the colored blocks on their device into what they believe is the correct order based on the choices seen at the front of the room. Ways to use Jumble:
Tip: To save on time, have students in pre-determined teams and have one device out and ready for each team. Have students play in team mode (see below), to help organize their answers together. This is an easy and fun way to wrap up class and test knowledge! PodiumNext time you create a Kahoot! Quiz or a Jumble, make sure to toggle on Kahoot! Experiments and Podium! When Podium is toggled on for your game, the top three scorers will get to see their name at the end of the game! We all know how competitive a Kahoot! game can get, so why not let more students experience the feeling of winning a Kahoot! To turn on experiments and Podium, open an existing Kahoot! or create a new one, select game options, and toggle on Kahoot! Experiments and Podium. Team ModeKahoot! is all about teamwork! Instead of having students play in individual devices, place students into teams, with one device per team. One student enters the pin number for the Kahoot! and then players can enter individual nicknames. Now students must work together, discuss thoughts, and collaborate on an answer. This lends to differentiated learning through collaboration, and concept awareness. Higher level students will be able to navigate through questions and explain their answers. Lower level students will become more aware of the concept and connect the question and correct answer. Not to mention, team mode is a time saver! Ghost ModeRepetition at its finest! There have been quite a few Kahoot! games my students have played that ended in a demand to play again. What?! My students wanted to play the same game, with the same concepts, same answers, with an increased opportunity for the concept to stick in their minds?! Score! This is where ghost mode comes in. When a Kahoot! is finished, the option to play the game again in Ghost Mode will appear. The Kahoot! will still be live, but student names will appear twice, one with a ghost symbol beside their name. As students play the Kahoot! their goal is to beat their previous score. Each time they play the Kahoot!, they should score higher than the last, until mastered. Blind Kahoot!ingThe purpose of a blind Kahoot! is to introduce completely new concepts that students have not been taught. So, instead of using the Kahoot! Quiz as a review game or assessment, it is made to build knowledge through each question. You create a Blind Kahoot! the same way you create a Kahoot! Quiz, except your questioning should be different. Since you are building new knowledge your questions must be set up like building blocks in order for students to gain new information. To find out more about how to question and set up a Blind Kahoot!, read the Art of Blind Kahoot!'ing. Discussions and SurveysDont' forget about Kahoot!'s awesome option to create a discussion or survey. A survey can be set up to find out what knowledge students already have on a topic, or to poll the students. Surveys are taken without the competition. There are no points awarded to players, and no right or wrong answers. Kahoot! Surveys are great for gathering student opinion! Discussions can be used to help facilitate classroom communication on a specific topic. When you create a Kahoot! Discussion, you can only assign one question. This way you can push the Discussion to your students quickly, receive feedback, and begin a realtime discussion in your classroom. Kahoot! ResultsDid you know that each Kahoot! your class plays is saved under your results?! You can access the results right after a Kahoot! is finished, days later, or even years later. To find My Results, you would click on your username in the Kahoot! toolbar, then click on My Results. Each Kahoot! that has been played will be shown on the screen, similar to above. The Download button opens the results in an Excel spreadsheet with multiple pages breaking down each statistic and question for you. One of my favorite things to do as a classroom teacher was to open the results and see which questions were missed the most. I would re-teach those concepts, then replay the Kahoot! at a later date. Many times, we would repeat this process until all students mastered the questions AND the concepts. Clicking the Save button will automatically save your results to your Google Drive. It even allows you to choose which folder you would like the results to be sent. I always created a Kahoot! Results folder at the beginning of the year, so anything Kahoot! related could be saved.
The Ghost Mode Play Again option allows your students to play against a previous score at anytime during the year. If my students played a Kahoot! after a lesson was taught, we may play the same Kahoot! again in Ghost Mode two weeks later as a test review. Students should still remember the concepts, and should score higher since all material has been taught. The Share Link button enables you to copy the link to the played Kahoot! and send it to students, other classes, or other teachers. Those classes can then play in Ghost Mode and try to beat your scores! Share the link with a neighboring district and challenge them to beat your scores, or vice versa! |
About Our BlogOur blog is intended to highlight our instructional technology thoughts. We hope to bring you creative and innovative ways to use technology in your classroom, as well as a little educational inspiration every now and then! Archives
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