Class discussions are one of the better ways to help students develop the valuable skills of creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Discussions enable students to ask probing questions of each other, listen to and respond to classmates clearly and appropriately, challenge ideas and expand upon observations, and view topics with a circumspect lens. The benefits of class discussions are numerous; however, there are some obstacles to productive discussions.
One is time. By their nature, class discussions can take a while to develop. Oftentimes, the most interesting parts of a discussion are discovered long into the examination of a subject. A related obstacle is equal time for all students. Some students speak a lot, and some speak a little, and some might not even get the opportunity to speak. Also, some students may just be reluctant to speak in front of their peers.
Digital or online discussion boards have been used to mitigate these obstacles, but they can often lose focus the longer they go on and the further they become removed from the discussion topic. Discussion or message boards make it difficult to retain the context of the conversation at hand simply by the user-interface of the board itself. This brings me to an excellent solution: NowComment.
NowComment is a free (yes, free) web app that allows for dynamic and engaging discussions of online documents, articles, videos, and more. What sets this educational tool apart from the others are its unique user-interface and features.
NowComment uses a brilliant two-pane user-interface that contains the article or video on the left side of the screen and the discussion of it on the right side. The article or video can be marked with annotations that link to specific discussions and comments about that particular sentence, paragraph, or section. NowComment keeps everyone on literally the same page, and the discussions become more relevant and engaging. Here are two short videos that demonstrate NowComment's awesome features.
My school uses a myriad of educational software and online learning programs. In order to see if these are meeting the needs of the teachers and students, I developed an evaluation rubric to conduct a comprehensive assessment of each and every one that we use. I would like to share it with all of you, so that you can use it for your own evaluations, or even tweak it to reflect your unique needs. You can download the rubric here. Finally, I would like to give a brief explanation of how the rubric works.
I identified ten areas by which to evaluate a software application or online program:
Curriculum & Standards Alignment: How does the program align with our curriculum, standards, and learning goals?
Depth of Knowledge: What Depth of Knowledge level does the program mostly align with?
Authenticity: How is the content presented in an authentic, real-world manner?
Personalization & Adaptability: How does the program personalize learning and adapt content for students?
Instructional Feedback & Reporting: How does the program offer monitoring and reporting for the teacher?
Relearning Opportunities: How does the program offer opportunities to re-answer questions, and what helpful information does it provide?
Ease of Use: How easily can people use and navigate the program?
Redundancy: How redundant is the program based on any similar programs we use?
I also included detailed descriptors for each of these areas, so evaluators will be on the same page. The final score is out of 50 points, and there is a space for comments at the bottom of the rubric. You could also turn this rubric into a Google Form or online survey to enable faster data-gathering and more dynamic analysis. Hopefully, this will help you conduct a comprehensive, objective, and methodical assessment of any educational software or online learning program you use.
In honor of it being National Cybersecurity Awareness Month,
I thought it would be apropos to share a somewhat-related story of how my
school is teaching digital citizenship and safety in hopes that it may help
other schools and teachers do the same. I
have a link to our program at the end of this post. You can also read my previous writings on digital citizenship here. Digital
citizenship and Internet safety are critical concepts that students must
understand and apply in their own lives as their access to web-connected
devices and services begin earlier and earlier.
After all, these devices and online services are tools, and, as with any
tool, we must teach the uninitiated how to use them responsibly, safely, and
intelligently lest they get themselves in trouble via misuse.
Not long after I started working at my school, I recognized
the need to gather feedback, insights, and questions from the staff about the
technology used throughout the school.
The effective exploration and integration of technology (or any other
thing) are predicated on open collaboration, detailed planning, careful
execution, and thoughtful reflection. To
this end, I formed and headed up the Technology Committee.
Last year, our main goal was to develop a unified series of
lessons in Grades 3-5 to teach digital citizenship and safety. Some teachers were already teaching various
aspects of this, but there wasn’t a common curriculum. We, the Technology Committee, sought to
remedy this by creating a consistent and scaffolded program of lessons, so
there were no overlaps or gaps in teaching these integral skills and the lessons
would build on each other throughout the grades. We also wanted to schedule these lessons at
the beginning of the school year to lay a solid foundation on which to build
later and head off any student misuse of technology. Finally, we understood teachers have much to
teach already, so we focused on core lessons and divided the teaching of those
lessons between the classroom teacher, the Library/Media teacher, and the
Makerspace teacher. I went into the
classrooms to teach some lessons as well, which was very fun. We thought it would be beneficial for the
students to learn about digital citizenship and safety from different people,
who could offer unique perspectives on the subject.
Like any good creator (or artist), we took bits and pieces
from existing lessons and resources, modified them to meet our vision, and
quilted them together in a final product.
We didn’t want to rely all on one source for these lessons. To promote unification and scaffolding, we
borrowed an idea from Google’s Be Internet Awesome program and put our lessons into four pillars or units
that would cross all three grades: Be
Digitally Kind (Unit 1), Be Digitally Safe (Unit 2), Be Digitally Responsible
(Unit 3), and Be Digitally Savvy (Unit 4).
Each grade would be learning lessons in the same pillar at the same time
to bring a cohesiveness to the program. We
put three lessons in each of those units:
one for the classroom, one for Library/Media, and one for
Makerspace. We chose lessons that would
complement the theme of those units, put them in an order that would build on
each other, and ended each grade with a lesson that we felt synthesized all the
units. In total, we had twelve lessons
for each grade. Our goal was to complete
one unit each month: Unit 1 in
September, Unit 2 in October, Unit 3 in November, and Unit 4 in December.
Thus far, our program has been going very well. Of course, this is our first year implementing
it, so we are actively reflecting on it and looking for ways to improve
it. Also, we will brainstorm ways to
build on these lessons later in the year to reinforce the learning. We are thinking of having each grade do some
kind of project-based/real-world assignment that can authentically make use of
what they have learned.
I wanted to share the program we developed with all of you in hopes that
it may be of some help teaching these valuable and essential skills. Click here to view it. If you have any questions, please feel free
to reach out to me via Twitter. My
handle is @BurchTech.
The students who are now in our classrooms are digital
citizens through and through, having grown up with computers and the Internet
at their fingertips. Teachers are asking
them to become more than digital consumers.
Students are now being given the opportunity to become digital creators,
which activate and strengthen many important skills. One tool that teachers can use to not only
improve classroom communication, but to also allow students to be digital creators
is the new Google Sites.
The new Google Sites is a vast improvement over what is now
called Classic Google Sites. The new
Google Sites offers trendy modern aesthetics, increased ease of use, and
adaptability to PCs and mobile devices.
It provides many other cool features that you can explore once you get
into it. Since many schools use G Suite
for Education, the new Google Sites is a perfect tool to integrate into a
classroom as it works seamlessly with all the other G Suite apps. Teachers can use it to give their students,
families, and coworkers a look inside their classrooms. Students can use it for a variety of projects
for different subjects. I’m going to
give you a tour of the new Google sites below.
You get to Google Sites in Google Drive, and all the Sites
you create will be in your Drive. Just
right-click in Drive, and you’ll see the following menu.
At the top of Google Sites, you’ll see a place to name your
site as well as buttons for undo, redo, preview, link, share, options, and publish.
You can also add a logo that will appear as a small image in
the upper left corner of your Site. You
even have the option of using the color from the logo as a color theme for your
Site.
You have three options for the size of the banner: large banner, banner, and title only. The “title only” is the smallest of the
banner, making the content of your website appear farther to the top of the
page.
You can change the background image of the banner to one of
your own images, or you can choose one from Google’s gallery of images.
Double-click anywhere in the blank area of your site to make
the insert menu appear, where you can insert a text box, image, or file from
Drive. You can also use the menu on the
right side of the screen to get insert options.
If you want to add a footer to your website, you can do that from the
insert menu as well.
The menu of insert options on the right side of the screen
provides more features, such as inserting a divider, YouTube video, Google
Calendar, Google Map, or something from Google Drive. You can also easily move these items around
your page and resize them to fit your layout.
The Pages tab is where you’ll go to create, name, and
organize pages and subpages on your Site.
You can style your Site with any of the available themes
under the Themes tab. If you know the
hex color code for a particular color, you can configure that too.
Click the gear near the top of the page to choose between
top navigation or side navigation. You
can click the eye icon near the top of the page to preview your Site and how it
would look on a PC, tablet, and smartphone.
Finally, you can publish your Site by clicking the Publish
button at the top of the page. Here, you’ll
get access to publishing settings and the ability to unpublish it if you want
to take it offline.
Google Sites gives teachers and students many exciting opportunities to
become digital creators and integrate multi-faceted learning opportunities into
classrooms.
Google Sheets is a powerful tool in the G Suite line-up, but
it’s not all formulas, pivot tables, and data.
Google Sheets can become a fun, interactive learning opportunity with the
help of the Flippity add-on. With Flippity,
you can quickly and easily turn a Google Sheet into an engaging learning
activity for almost any content area.
The first thing you will have to do is install the Flippity
add-on for Google Sheets. You can get
the add-on by clicking here. Once you
have that, you can begin creating Sheets and turning them into fun activities
to use with your students. Flippity offers
15 different games, tools, and activities to use. For each one, Flippity provides a demo
version, instructions, and a template, so you don’t have to do much of the work
on your own besides plugging in your own content to customize each template.
Flippity is a great tool to bring some fun, engagement, and
interactivity to any learning activity for any content area. Plus, it is easy to use and (the most
important part) free. To learn more
about Flippity, please click here.
There is one skill that is absolutely valuable no matter the
future goals and careers of our students.
That skill is the ability to be an effective reader, writer, and
communicator. Communication skills
routinely top the list of attributes that employers seek in candidates. While students are still in K-12, having
sharp reading and writing skills will help them across all content areas. And maybe, just maybe, those skills will help
them to enjoy reading a good book for fun.
Teaching reading and writing is a daunting task given the
complexities of language and the diversity of students. Tack grammar onto that, and it gets even more
arduous. By their nature, these are difficult
and time-consuming skills to teach. Here
comes technology to the rescue!
Quill is a powerful, but easy-to-use online program that teaches
ELA skills in a personalized, adaptive, and real-world system. Once teachers create their classes on Quill,
they can assign units, lessons, and activities from ready-made materials that
are CCSS-aligned by grade. Teachers also
can see the names and numbers of the standards to narrow down what they want to
use. If teachers already use Google
Classroom, then they can create their Quill classes with only a couple clicks
as Google Classroom is fully integrated in Quill.
Then, teachers can give diagnostics to their students to see
which standards each student needs to address to become proficient. Quill will then automatically create individualized,
“just right” lessons and activities for the students to address weaknesses, but
teachers can also assign materials themselves.
Besides creating their classes on Quill, teachers do not have to create
anything else. Instead of creating and
correcting assignments, teachers can use their time to better understand their
students' ELA skills and simply assign them the lessons they need.
The lessons and activities on Quill are adaptive, adjusting
themselves in real-time to the answers of the students to provide personalized
exercises. Students also get immediate
feedback, help, and multiple tries when doing activities. Additionally, students can re-take lessons as
many times as they want.
Teachers get detailed reports with in-depth information on
their students’ performance on specific ELA skills and standards, showing their
proficiency percentage on each one.
Teachers also see which lessons and activities their students completed
and when.
I saved the best thing about Quill for last. Quill teaches ELA skills they way they are
supposed to be taught: within the
context of real literature and writing.
Quill does not teach these skills in an isolated, fill-in-the-blank,
multiple-choice form. Students work with
real written passages in order to gain an understanding of how language
actually works and how context, word choice, and sentence structure affect the
overall outcome. For example, if
students are working on subject-verb agreement, they not only have to correct
errors, but they also have to re-write the incorrect sentence and make sure
they use correct spelling and punctuation in the re-written sentence. Other exercises like figuring out how to best combine many ideas into one cohesive sentence or re-wording sentences for clarity are what set Quill apart and make it a comprehensive and effective learning tool. Quill provides an authentic, real-world, and personalized
way for students to learn ELA skills, and it makes it quick and easy for
teachers to use.
Quill provides five unique tools to teach ELA:
1. Quill Diagnostic – "Quickly determine which skills your students need to work on. The diagnostic covers vital sentence construction skills and generates a personalized learning plan based on the student's performance."
2. Quill Lessons – "Enables teachers to lead whole-class and small group writing instruction. Teachers control interactive slides that contain writing prompts, and the entire class responds to each prompt. Each activity provides a lesson plan, writing prompts, discussion topics, and a follow-up independent practice activity."
3. Quill Grammar – "Over 150 sentence writing activities to help your students practice basic grammar skills from comma placement to parallel structure. Activities are designed to be completed in 10 minutes, so you have the freedom to use them in the way that works best for your classroom."
4. Quill Connect – "Using the evidence-based strategy of sentence combining, students combine multiple ideas into a single sentence. They then receive instant feedback designed to help them improve the clarity and precision of their sentences."
5. Quill Proofreader – "Teaches students editing skills by having them proofread passages. Students edit passages and receive personalized exercises based on their results. With over 100 expository passages, Proofreader gives students the practice they need to spot common grammatical errors."
There is a free version that is comprehensive by itself. The paid versions offer more features and are
very affordable. Below is pricing information and a video about Quill.
Finding interesting ways to bring history to life and make it relevant for students can engage and intrigue almost any learner. One of the more exciting ways to do this is through the use of primary resources, such as documents, photos, videos, and maps. The National Archives has a fantastic online resource that provides digital copies of these first-hand resources as well as pre-made activities you can use with your students.
DocsTeach is a service provided by The National Archives that curates, organizes, and supplies digital primary resources and activities to teachers and students for free. Once teachers register for a DocsTeach account, they can find, modify, and save pre-made activities as well as create their own from the thousands of primary resources available. The National Archives adds new resources all the time. The resources, documents, and activities range from lower elementary to high school.
Documents and resources are organized and grouped by historical eras, which are the ones included in the National History Standards. When searching, you can browse by era, media type, or search with keywords.
DocsTeach also provides seven tools that are designed to strengthen particular critical thinking skills.
Finding a Sequence: Putting documents/resources in chronological order
Focusing on Details: Doing a close reading and analyzing details
Making Connections: Exploring the relationship between events and the concept of cause-and-effect
Mapping History: Gaining a geographical context of history
Seeing the Big Picture: Matching resources that are related to one another in a concentration style game
Weighing the Evidence: Evaluating the strength of resources in proving a point
Interpreting Data: Assessing the source of a document
With DocsTeach, teachers and students can explore history and geography by bringing it all to life with interesting and interactive primary resources and activities. Here are some helpful guides from DocsTeach:
Sound may be one of the more captivating, moving,
and dynamic stimuli. A certain song can
instantly bring you back to a special moment in your life. A specific sound can make you calm or
alert. A soundtrack can heighten the
emotions and ambience of a film. I’m a
big fan of the composer Hans Zimmer, who has scored many
movies. When listening to his scores, I
can create a crystal clear mental picture of the movie scenes while also
experiencing the mystery or suspense of those sequences. I discovered an online service that uses the
power of sound and music to create an immersive, engaging, and creative reading
and writing experience. It’s called Booktrack Classroom.
Booktrack Classroom is an online service for teachers and
students. It provides a library of
e-books that contains soundtracks and sound effects to amplify the reading
experience. As you read, the score, ambient
sounds, and sound effects perfectly complement what is happening on the page. I found it absolutely immersive as the sound
sparked my imagination to better visualize and experience the story. Booktrack has smart technology that
automatically adjusts the score and sound effects to adapt to your reading
pace, but you can also manually increase or decrease the reading speed to
ensure the sound seamlessly matches the story.
Additionally, you can adjust the volume, pause it, and start the audio
back up again by double-clicking on a word if you want to re-read it or if you
lose your place.
Teachers can get a full-version account for free, but it’s
only available for a limited time. I
checked today, and this offer is still valid.
Once teachers have an account, they can create specific classes within
Booktrack Classroom, add students to it, assign individualized books to each of
their students, monitor and track their progress, and much more. These classes also integrate with Google
Classroom, so teachers can send anything in their Booktrack Class to their
Google Classroom. Booktrack Classroom also
keeps track of books you or your students want to read, are reading, or have
read in “My Bookshelf”. According to
Evidence-based Educational Outcomes in Literacy by the University of Auckland
and NYU, contextual soundtracks helped students increase comprehension by
17%. This study also found students read
for 30% longer and reported 35% higher satisfaction when reading with a
Booktrack. Now, here comes the coolest
part of Booktrack Classroom.
Students and teachers can create their own Booktracks for
any book in the Booktrack Classroom library.
For example, teachers can have students create their own Booktracks for
a chapter out of The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz. It gets even better. Students can create their very own e-books on
Booktrack Classroom. They can write
their own stories and choose from hundreds of professionally made music tracks, ambient
noises, and sound effects to match the mood and setting of their stories. Additionally, they can create a book cover and then publish it for others to
read and enjoy. There is much potential here
for the four Cs (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication).
I encourage you to read a book on Booktrack Classroom
yourself because the experience gave me a huge “Wow” moment. When my eyes came to the part in A Christmas Carol when the bell in
Ebenezer’s bedroom mysteriously rings, and then the sound of a bell rang while eerie music played
in the background, I was as shocked as Scrooge but in a good way.
Booktrack Classroom works on any computer, and it has an app for Android
and iOS. You can learn more about it
with these videos:
If academia had a scarlet letter, it would be
P. Those who dare to claim somebody else’s
work as their own or even leave sources uncited would be branded with a gasp-inducing
red P. If you haven’t guessed it, I’m talking about plagiarism.
All kidding aside, people have lost jobs, students have been expelled,
and publications have lost credibility because of plagiarism.
In my day, we had to pore over citation manuals or just
memorize how to cite common sources in the most popular styles to write our
research papers and works cited pages. Only
for the styles to change the next year! Now,
there are a few tools out there that will do all this work for you…and do it
flawlessly. The tool I’m going to focus
on is one I think does it the best and offers additional useful features.
If you’ve heard of or used RefME before, then you should
know that it has changed its name and all its services to Cite This for Me. You can create your free account on
its website. The first neat thing about
Cite This for Me is that all your references, citations, work cited pages, and
notes are stored in the cloud, so you can access them from any computer,
tablet, or smartphone once you sign in to your account.
Cite This for Me has a great Google Chrome extension that
allows you to cite, quote, and save any reference you access online through
Chrome to your account. You can get this extension by clicking here. Once you have
the citation information, click “Add to bibliography”, and you’re done. Here’s what that looks like:
Cite This for Me can do citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, and
Harvard styles. You can see all of its
features for creating a works cited page below:
Cite This for Me provides many other great features, such as
topic ideas, a plagiarism checker, and a spelling/grammar checker. Also, it has an add-on for Microsoft Word, so
you can seamlessly import citations and works cited pages from Cite This
for Me directly into Word.
Now, you can go forth and live an academically sinless life!
The worksheet - the old, but reliable, teaching material that we all know and love. The worksheet has been maligned in recent years as we transform our classrooms into differentiated and dynamic student-centered learning spaces for the 21st century. The paper-and-pencil and one-size-fits-all paradigms of worksheets are outdated. However, the underlying concept of worksheets is still valid. We just need to adapt it to our modern world, which leads me to Wizer - an educational service that enables teachers to create and share interactive and dynamic digital worksheets. Let me give you a rundown of its features.
First, the service is free for teachers. Although there are premium levels a teacher or school can purchase to gain access to additional features, the free version is still very powerful. Teachers can create and share digital worksheets in which they can embed video, audio, images, links to websites, and much more. Additionally, Wizer has a gigantic gallery of worksheets that other teachers have created. You can search these by grade and subject, and all of them are free to use.
Second, there is a nice variety of question types to use: open response, multiple choice, fill in the blank, fill in the image, matching, completing a table, etc.
Third, there are many creative themes and backgrounds to choose from to make a visually appealing and fun digital worksheet.
Finally, Wizer offers automatic grading of worksheets, and it integrates with LMS, including Google Classroom. You can create a worksheet, and then send it to your students in Google Classroom in only a few clicks.
The premium versions offer more features, such as text-to-speech, differentiation, school repositories for all teachers to collaborate, administrative controls, analytics and reports, and intervention alerts.
To learn more about this great tool, check out these links:
Almost any teacher understands the struggle of trying to get all the students in a class onto a specific website or other Internet resource at the same time. Students may type the website address incorrectly. They may accidentally close it and don't know how to get back to it. They may just not even go to it in the first place. We have high speed Internet now, but trying to share Internet content with students in the classroom in real time can take a long time. Alas, there is a better way!
Meet the Share to Google Classroom Chrome Extension. With this extension, you can push (send) something on the Internet to each of your students' screens instantly. If you want them to see a specific website or video on the Internet, then simply use this extension to push it to their screen. No hassle, no struggle, no time wasted. Here's what it looks like:
Once the extension is installed in Chrome, click on its icon (looks like Google Classroom logo). The above will appear, and you can push whatever website you're currently on to your students. That website will open in a new window on their computers. There are also other options available under the extension you can explore. Students should have this extension installed on their computers as well. Students can also push Internet content to the teacher too.
Here's how to install it in Chrome:
1. Open Chrome and click this link.
2. Click the blue "Add to Chrome" button in the upper right.
3. The extension will install, and you'll be good to go!
Now, you can instantly share anything on the Internet with your students in real time without any hassle because, as we all know, sharing is caring!
Having your students watch and interact (note-taking, annotating, researching, analyzing, etc.) with YouTube videos is a great instructional tool to add a dynamic and engaging layer to any lesson. Some students learn better with visuals, and all students can enjoy the ability to pause and/or playback certain parts to help them understand the content. However, YouTube has its faults when used in a classroom. Almost any teacher has experienced the following things on YouTube that are inappropriate, distracting, and disruptive:
Inappropriate suggested video thumbnails after the video ends
Distracting "Up next" videos on the right side of the screen
Crazy comments below the video
Not being able to automatically start and end a video at a certain time
Here comes ViewPure to the rescue! ViewPure is a free website that will solve all those problems and more. It will remove the suggested videos after the YouTube video. It will hide the "Up next" videos on the right side of the screen. It vanishes the comments. And it allows you to set a custom start and end time for the video, so you don't have to worry about wasting any class time to show the relevant ten minutes out of the hour-long video. After using ViewPure, you get a ViewPure web link to the video you want to show. Going to that link shows the video and only the video - no video thumbnails, no comments, no distraction.
Here's how to use it:
1. Copy the web address of the YouTube video you want to show.
2. Go to viewpure.com. Click the gear icon. This is what you'll see.
3. Paste the web address of the YouTube video in the "Enter YouTube URL" box.
4. ViewPure will create a custom link for the video automatically once you click "Purify". However, you can create your own custom link in the "Enter custom URL" box if you want. To make the link easy to remember, you can name it viewpure.com/hailstorm if it's a video about hail storms. This step isn't required.
5. You can create a password for the video, so only those who have the password can watch it. This step isn't required.
6. If you want, set a start and/or end time to show the specific portion that is relevant. This step isn't required.
7. Finally, click "Purify". You'll be redirected to a webpage with the video. Copy the web address for that page, and then use it for your class. The web address will be live until it has fewer than ten views in a six-month period.
But, wait, there's more! You can use the Purify button bookmark on the ViewPure website to purify any YouTube video in one click. Go to viewpure.com, and look for this:
Click and drag the orange Purify button to your bookmarks bar. Then, when you're on a YouTube video you want to purify, just click that Purify button in your bookmarks bar, and you'll be brought to the webpage with the purified video. Use this only if you don't want to do any of the customization in the above steps.
Now, you and your students can watch YouTube videos in peace!
Learning and understanding words are essential life skills that help both children and adults. In the past, if we came across words we didn't understand, we had to interrupt our reading flow by finding a dictionary, looking up the word, reading the definition, figuring out how to pronounce it, checking synonyms to gain context, and then go back to whatever we were reading. Now, there is a tool that doesn't interrupt reading flow and provides comprehensive information about a word instantaneously. Meet the Google Dictionary Chrome Extension. Once it is installed, if you double-click on any word while browsing in Chrome, a bubble appears above the word with its definition and an audio file with its proper pronunciation. If you click the "More" link in that bubble, a new tab in Chrome opens with more information about the word, including part of speech, other forms, alternate definitions, and more. Finally, you can store words to your own personal dictionary to study later by clicking the Google Dictionary extension icon (a red book) in the upper right of Chrome. Click "Options", and then check the box next to "Store words I look up, including definitions." You can return to this "Options" screen to download a history of your stored words. This is an effective tool to help both children and adults learn and understand any word they come across in Chrome as it makes almost anything they read accessible. Here's how to install it in Chrome: 1. Open Chrome and click this link. 2. Click the blue "Add to Chrome" button in the upper right. 3. The extension will install, and you'll be good to go! Now, you'll be able to understand this sentence: In a few days, I can't wait to be absolutely farctate! Thank goodness for Thanksgiving!
