Zaption is an interactive way to watch videos with your students. They call them "Tours" and you can add images, text, quizzes, and discussions to existing videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Teachers get immediate feedback on how their students interact with content and understand important concepts. This is a great way to differentiate instruction, help students watch a video critically, or even to keep yourself from getting bored by watching the same video in class six times! You can add questions to the video and the video will automatically pause until your students submit their answers. This is also very easy...& FREE!
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Ever ask yourself what teachers in other schools are doing to solve the issue I'm dealing with right now? Do you go to conferences to try to get ideas that will help you in the classroom and find great stuff...only to forget what you learned once you get back to class? I admit that I dragged my feet on the whole twitter craze. There is just so much time in a day and who cares that you are eating a sandwich at 7:00 am? There are more important things in life to spend my energy. Well, things change. People change and social media evolves with these changes. I am really getting into this twitter thing! I don't use it to keep up with what my friends and family are doing every minute of every day, but I use it to keep up with what's happening in classrooms and schools across the state and the nation. I follow some really cool people who are doing some pretty amazing things with students. Last night I joined a #michED twitter chat that concentrated on conferences. There were a couple of moderators and the discussion flew...fast! These #michED twitter chats takes place every Wednesday between 8pm and 9pm. If you miss them, there is a storify created so you can see the discussions. You can find last night's discussion here...#michED So, before you head to your next PD or conference, make sure you get your twitter account up to speed so you can take part of the "behind the scene" discussions (back channels). I promise you will learn something from the people you follow and they will probably learn from you too. Happy tweeting! Google Classroom Google Classroom makes it easy to use Google Drive with your students. You no longer need to set up individual class folders and share them with your students or have your students share their folders or assignments with you. With Google Classroom, the sharing is done instantly. You can also communicate with your students using announcements and assignments so students will know exactly when assignments are due and can turn them in with a click of a button. Another great feature is that you can add Google Drive documents, other documents, and YouTube videos (you know...those great animation videos you created on PowToon) to enhance your lessons or help with flipping your classroom. There are numerous possibilities and it's easy to learn, just watch the tutorial video below. You want to utilize tech in your classroom...but what do you do when it's not available? What about if only a small handful of students have a smartphone or tablet , but not all of them? Plickers is a wonderful resource for teachers to use in the classroom. It's easy to set up and encourages class participation from every student. All you need to begin using plickers is a smartphone or tablet and some paper! Plickers is a FREE student response system that uses one teacher device and paper...that's all! Go to plickers.com, create an account and follow the simple directions. It's easy to set up a class and print out the cards. The best part is...you can use the same cards over and over. You can create multiple classes and use the same questions for each one or create different ones. Both you and your students will enjoy using the cards to answer quick response questions where you can post the results immediately. You should give it a try! |
AuthorErica Trowbridge The LibraryA place to study, read, research, find books, and learn. Archives
November 2015
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