Kahoot or Quizizz - Game Based Classroom Response Systems

These two free, device neutral, online resources are sure to bring high engagement and active participation into any classroom.  The idea is simple, students answer questions in a competitive atmosphere, there will be a winner.

For both Kahoot and Quizizz, the facilitator creates a series of questions to be answered by the participants.  Each question can have a time limit before the participant must select a response.  The quicker the participant chooses a response, the more points they earn providing their choice was correct.

Using Kahoot, the questions are asked to the participants one at a time.  Participants view the projected screen, answer a question by selecting the corresponding color on their device, points are awarded, and a new question is provided.  When finished, persons with the most points will be displayed.

Using Quizizz, the facilitator starts the activity at which time participants are given questions in a random order.  The participants read the questions on their device and answer them at their own pace.  Once all participants complete the activity, persons with the most points will be displayed.


Quizizz would be a great tool to use for an entire class, or as a center since it is student driven.  Kahoot is teacher driven providing time for discussion between each question being asked.

I've tried using both resources with groups of at least 40, and each time they worked fine.

Both Kahoot and Quizizz allows teachers to create their own questions, which can include images. When finished with the activity, the teacher can save the data describing how students answered each question. Teachers can explore through the many public assessments created and shared by others.

In either case, these opportunities provide a nice review experience or possibly a motivating pre-assessment experience.  Definitely stated, the experience will be fun, highly energetic, and competitive.

Google Classroom Releases Their iPad App

Google Classroom released an iDevice app, available for both the iPad and iPhone. Requires IOS 7 or higher.

 

The app interface to Google Classroom is very similar to the online interface.  This should be an easy transition. One difference is when posting, find and use the plus down in the lower right hand corner.

What I like about the app is you can add photos from your camera roll to include on any post.

 

I also like the ability to switch classroom accounts by clicking an icon.  This will come in useful in scenarios where there are multiple students sharing an iPad in a classroom.

Classflow - an Engaging Presentation Tool

Imagine presenting to your students a typical PowerPoint or Prezi.  You have a great presentation planned with images illustrating key ideas instead of a screen filled with text.  However, this presentation is still in the form students watch while teachers present. 




What if you can push individual slides of a presentation to student devices, so those sitting in the back row who forgot their glasses aren't squinting to see the slide?  Those that are losing attention because they are looking over a half dozen other students, can now maintain focus because the material is 6-12 inches in front of them.

And what if students could respond back by adding content to an existing slide, in which the instructor obtains x number of alternative results from students and can select which slide or slides to display in front of the class.

Classflow is a free online tool allowing teachers to have engaging presentations with their students.



Some of you are asking, but "Nearpod" does that already.  Correct, this is very similar to Nearpod.  One difference is Classflow also integrates with an existing Interactive Whiteboard, the Active Inspire or Promethean environment.

First step is to create your free online teacher account at Classflow.

If you are an Active Inspire user, give your students the class code and have them join your Classflow session.  Students can join using the Classflow Student app or connecting through classflow.com/student. 

Start by pushing out flipchart pages to student devices with a click of a button inside the software.

When you want the two way engagement piece you'll need to toggle over to the Classflow website.  Send students a slide in "Ad-hoc mode", which keeps your students in the same class as they are when you're using Classflow inside Inspire.

With the Classflow Student app, students can use pens, shapes, text, and even add images from the camera or their photo album.

As a teacher, you also have the traditional student response opportunities like multiple choice, text, numeric, and true false for questioning the class.

Another nice student response feature is the Word Seed.  Great for brainstorming ideas with your students as they enter in their text response, and words are placed in a circle around the slide as they send in their results.


Once you begin using Classflow, look into more advanced features like integrating Active Expression or assessment activities, or individualizing content by providing students with web links and videos during a lesson.

If you do choose to use the web based Classflow presentation platform, you can upload existing Promethean Flipchart or SmartBoard Notebook presentations.

Classflow is a program that may take some time learning, so be sure to check out the Classflow Youtube Channel.

Yooukids - Monitor Youtube Playlists for Kids

Yooukids is a nice free iPhone and iPad app allowing you to create playlists of videos to younger children keeping them from surfing Youtube for anything and everything. 


Once the app is installed, the default mode is "kid" mode, where they have access to playlists.

 

In order to put on additional playlists, you set up a 4 digit PIN, login to your own Youtube account for personal playlists, or search for public playlists.  After you find the playlist, you can either sync the entire set or sync individual videos.

 
Yooukids would work great in Primary classrooms with iPods or iPads.  A teacher could sync playlists of a variety of books read online, like Storyline Online, and students could watch or listen on their own without the teacher in fear of kids wandering into Youtube cyber space.

Professor Garfield Digital Citizenship Apps

 Keeping the conversation going with your students about digital citizenship and teaching digital literacy is important.  The Infinite Learning Lab  has created free apps for the iPad that would be a great tool to add to your curriculum.

• Professor Garfield Online Safety
• Professor Garfield Cyberbullying 
• Professor Garfield Forms of Media
• Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion 

Each app contains a comic strip story which contains click and drag style questions as they move through based on what they are learning in the comic.  Because the comic strips do not read aloud, these would work best for independent readers, upper elementary through middle school.   

The most power would be to incorporate these apps into a discussion on the topic.  Some students may find it too easy to drag through the comic and then click and drag until they find the right answers.

Word Families with Kindergarten and Kids Doodle

It's always fun spending a morning with Kindergarteners!  Ms. Evans has been using the Kids Doodle app with her 5 and 6 year olds to practice their word families and I was hearing great results about it so I went to check it out.   


Kids Doodle records the drawing as they create, allowing them to replay their drawing.  In this activity, students are practicing their word family words for the day and drawing an image for that word.   For the teacher it allows for her to have conversations about letter formation as she circulates and they are sharing their videos with her.  Students are saving their image in the built in gallery, though the app does have the ability to save as a movie to the camera roll on the ipod or to send images via email.  

Ms. Evans uses the free version of the app, note that it does contain banner ads across the top of the screen.  App free is available for $0.99.
As with any behavior in the classroom by utilizing repetitive practice, clear expectations and consequences, the ads cause few issues.    She manages her iPod time by having pictures of the apps on her chart by the rug, this way students know which app they need to go to and what it looks like.  It also will show any apps they are allowed to go to after they are finished.  With kindergarten, it's also important to use picture prompts for students to learn which buttons they need to push in the app. 


The engagement and creativity of this app activity and the ability to watch their drawing allows for Ms. Evans to take a worksheet activity and make it more interactive and along with giving her feedback on their letter formation.  Students revisiting their old movies in the gallery were reviewing past lists and practicing their word families.   Additional skills from this activity that students were practicing include letter formation,  cvc word families, relating words to everyday objects, and following multi-step directions.  And they did great!



  

Annotating Online Articles Using Noteability

I happened to be in a third grade classroom observing students reading an online article from Tween Tribune, a very worthwhile resource for reading. The engaging piece was they were annotating key words, questions, and phrases using an iPad app called Noteability ($1.99).

Students scan the article using a QR code reader, then copy/paste URL into printfriendly.com to download the article as a PDF which opens directly into Noteability. 

Since this classroom is not 1-1 iPads, there are a few hardcopies of the article for those that don't have an iPad for the lesson, and associated QR codes for those students that do have an iPad for the lesson.

GroupMaker - a Great Teacher Tool

GroupMaker is a free iPad and iPhone app that allows teachers to upload class lists and organize them into groups quickly based on various characteristics, such as gender or academic level (based on a 1,2, or 3 rating). 

Once your students are uploaded, adjust and regroup as needed.  The ability to add photos for quick reference is great and by using the PICK! feature let the app choose a group or student to answer, discuss, or present first!     

Group sizes can be one to twenty.  Create as many Group configurations as you would like and save them within the class for quick access! 

GroupMaker is an easy app to add to your teacher toolbox.  

Evernote for Eportfolios - NCCE 2013

Agenda

February 26, 2013 

Joe Buglione and Heidi Paullus
from Intermountain ESD in Pendleton OR

GTKY : Skitch n share

• Photo of you, include text about where/what you do
• Explore skitch
• Pair up n share about you, 5 sec recap of evernote experience
• Groups of 4, introduce partner to other two
• Repeat with new groups of 4, new partners
• email to portfolio

 Activity : ePortfolio Wordsift

• create list of words you think of describing eportfolios, Click to enter those words here
• Google Form then Wordsift those words
• what is your reflection?  what do you want to contain in student portfolios?
• email to portfolio

Post a Pic:

• Walk about and take a picture of some identifiable with NCCE
• Post this picture in your evernote
• Post the picture with text which reads why it is identifiable for you to your portfolio

Using Your Evernote:

Work in with a partner to help each other out through the following topics:

1. Can you post different types of items; prompt "information about NCCE"? text, picture, voice, webpage, combination
2. Can you view your notes using web interface, app, software?
3. Interfacing with Evernote, do you know how to use the following: evernote website, web clipper, software on computer, with mobile device, via an app paired with evernote)
4. Limitations using Free Account
5. Sharing notebooks and privacy settings: Can you share a notebook with another evernote user, with the public?  Can you view a notebook being shared with you from someone else?
6. Searching Evernote:  Can you search evernote and obtain what you want?  Did you realize you can search for text within pictures?
7. Organization of posts: Can you create a Stack?  Can you modify stacks and move notebooks?  Can you move notes?  Can you work with Tags?
8. Create a quick video using Tellagami describing what you learned about Evernote, Save to Camera Roll, then email to your portfolio.

Ways to Organization your ePortfolios

• Under your account
• Create Stacks and Notebooks
• Students email using correct syntax
• Limitations on total Evernote uploads
• Teacher has total control over content
• Can share notebook as necessary
•  Student creates their own account
• They share notebook with you
• If free, you can not edit notebook
• Students can upload easier with mobile devices and such
• Students can upload more, with higher limits per student
• Teachers organization still the same
• Teacher has little or no control, just observing
• Post a reflection of how you want to implement an eportfolio design with Evernote; email your reflection to your portfolio.

Evernote Trunk and other apps

• Skitch
• Penultimate
• Evernote Peek
• vJournal
• Everclipper
• Evernote Food

Posting from Explain Everything  (the app ExplainEverything)
Posting from BaiBoard (the collaborative screen casting app BaiBoard)

Evernote articles and resources

• True Learning - A teachers journey as she implements eportfolios during 2012-13.
• Group vs Individual Accounts with Evernote Portfolios - One post from a blog reflecting on the use of Evernote in the classroom. Be sure to read through other posts on the blog.
• 3 Keys for Successful eportfolio Implementation

 Other eportfolio options

• Google Blogger
• Google Website
• Three Ring

Turn Your iPad into a Document Camera

I visited with a teacher last week, and her document camera isn't working well.  Not sure what was wrong with it, but the first thing that came to mind was "use your iPad".  This teacher already had been using her iPad that way.

Then later in the week I come across the app called Stage.  This free app is designed to turn your iPad into an interactive whiteboard or document camera.


You have the ability to annotate over the top of the iPad camera, live, without taking the picture.  Tools include a Pen, an eraser, several colors, and sticky notes.  The only tool missing is a highlighter pen.  The app is only a couple months old, so I'm hoping an update will provide enhancements.

If you are using Apple TV or Reflection, you don't need to be tethered to  your document camera, as Stage will let you take your document camera with you.

 A few possibilities include

• annotating on top of a worksheet without importing the image into another app
• annotating on top of student work
• annotating on top of a student science lab experiment
• annotating on top of math manipulatives constructed by a student
• annotating on top of a student's art project 

Watching Videos in Class

iPads can bring a shift in the way teachers facilitate the classroom.  From a teacher directed setting there are many more opportunities to shift into student directed environments.  Here is a guest writers thoughts on how his students view short video clips, rather than show the one video to all students. 



"I'm finding that the iPads are a very useful tool for showing video clips as part of a lesson.  In my health class, I wanted the kids to view some video clips from Discovery Education as part of a lesson

Using my account with Discovery, I created a "lesson" that accessed several short clips.  This process in Discovery creates a student access code and a private URL link for each video clip that I can share with my students through an Edmodo assignment.  The students all have headsets (or they can bring their own) that allow them to quietly watch the videos on the iPads without disturbing others plus they can work at their own pace.  They can review the video as many times as necessary to complete an accompanying assignment, either on paper or on Edmodo.  It has been quite interesting observing a class of 30 students doing their lesson this way.

When using the iPads in this manner I have found it is more effective to use several short clips (1 to 3 minutes) instead one long video. This makes it easier for the student to replay the parts they missed. Another great thing is that the students can access the Discovery material through Edmodo outside of school if they missed class.  Discovery allows for student accounts, but this isn't necessary with the private URL that can be shared on Edmodo.

The "old way" would have been to show the full video to the entire class at once.  They would see the video only once, there would be the usual classroom distractions, and some students wouldn't be able to see the classroom screen from the back of the room.  They also wouldn't be able to rewind the video for review." - Rob Doherty, Science Teacher at Armand Larive Middle School in Hermiston OR.