Engaging Digital Discussions

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.

Teaching Digital Citizenship and Safety

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.

How to Go Paperless at School

According to an analysis done by The Paperless Project, 68 million trees are used to make paper and paper products in the United States every year.  This analysis also finds that the global consumption of paper has increased by 400% in the past 40 years.  Additionally, The Paperless Project states that the pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy.  It’s time that we embrace the many powerful and efficient digital tools to go paperless and save money, energy, time, and our environment.

Here are 10 great benefits of leaving paper and going digital:

1. Reduced paper costs
2. Reduced toner/ink and printer maintenance costs
3. Less electricity costs from running printers and copiers
4. Faster, more engaging, and more collaborative dissemination of information through digital media
5. Easier and quicker access to and searching of digital documents
6. Less physical space needed to store paper documents
7. More secure storage of digital documents
8. Less time lost to printing and copying documents
9. People learning and mastering digital tools of communication
10. More environmentally-friendly

 Also, you’ll have fewer paper cuts, and those are the worst!

Here are five free digital tools that schools can use to go paperless:

G Suite Apps & Google Classroom

If your school is a Google school, then these are a given.  Within G Suite, staff and students can create all sorts of digital documents and then share, collaborate, edit, assess, organize, and archive them.  Setting up shared folders and Team Drives is also a great way to spread information.  The Save to Google Drive Chrome Extension is a valuable tool to save almost anything you find on the Internet directly to your Google Drive in one click to make the curation of digital resources quick and easy.

Other than Google Drive and its associated apps, Google Classroom is almost a one-stop-shop in and of itself to have a paperless classroom.  Within Google Classroom, teachers can post announcements, reminders, polls, quizzes, assignments, as well as direct links to documents.  Teachers can also collect assignments submitted by students, provide feedback, and send it back to students.  Teachers can keep parents in the loop by inviting them to their Google Classroom as well.  To instantly share documents or a website to students in class on their Chromebooks, teachers can use the Share to Google Classroom Chrome Extension.

Teachers, students, and other school staff can use Blogger and/or Google Sites to share information with parents or anyone else in the school community.  Blogger and Google Sites are also good to use for displaying student work, activities, and events.

Here are excellent resources on getting the most out of the G Suite apps and Google Classroom:

Google Classroom Video Tutorial

Google Classroom Tips

How to Use the Google Classroom Extension

Google Drive Video Tutorials

Google Docs Video Tutorials

Google Slides Video Tutorials

Google Forms Video Tutorials

Google Forms Tips

Google Sheets Video Tutorials

10 Important Google Sheets Tips for Teachers

PDF Conversion

You can use a copier’s Scan to PDF feature or use a standalone scanner to convert all your paper documents into PDF files.  Using a copier to do this is the easiest and quickest way since you can load several pages into the feeder at once.  If you don’t have a copier or a scanner, you can use your smartphone.  I recommend the CamScanner app, which will let you take a photo of any document, edit it (if you want), and convert it into a PDF.

Print Friendly Chrome Extension

This useful Chrome extension lets you remove text, images, and whole pages from things you find on the Internet, which will help you save toner and paper if you really do need to print something.  Print Friendly also has features to convert a webpage or online article into a PDF and/or email it.  To learn more about how to make the most of Print Friendly, check out my article about it.  Download Print Friendly here.

Remind

Remind is an app to help improve communication between teachers, students, and parents.  With Remind, teachers can send text messages, voice clips, photos, PDFs, and more directly to students’ and parents’ smartphones.  Remind has earned the FERPA and COPPA privacy badges from iKeepSafe.

Here’s a video about Remind:

Padlet

Padlet is an online application to create, share, and collaborate on digital bulletin boards.  Users can access Padlet on a smartphone, tablet, or computer to post almost anything to a Padlet board, such as photos, documents, videos, music, Google files, and more.  Users can also comment on them to give feedback, suggest ideas, and ask questions.  Padlet is a great way to share and curate information and resources.

Here's a video about Padlet:

These tools will help schools save money, energy, and the environment all while improving productivity, communication, and collaboration.

Create and Book Appointments with Google Calendar

The work days of teachers and school administrators are nothing short of busy.  One of the more difficult things to coordinate amidst all the hustle and bustle is meetings.  Finding common free times, making appointments, canceling appointments, and just remembering it all is a huge task in and of itself.  Google Calendar has a hidden gem of a feature called “Appointment Slots” to make all of this simple, efficient, and easy.

Appointment Slots is exactly what you think it is.  It is a way to create a calendar with customizable time slots that people can reserve for meetings, conferences, or any other kind of appointment.  I’m thinking of using this feature to create calendars for teachers to reserve the use of iPad carts, so there are plenty of other uses for this feature besides personal appointments.  Here’s how to create your own Google appointment calendar:

1.  Sign in to your school Google account, and open Calendar.

2.  You can use your existing calendar, or you can create a new calendar just for appointments.  I recommend creating a new calendar to use only for this purpose.

3.  On the left side of the screen, click the + sign next to “Add a coworker’s calendar”.  Then, click “New calendar”.

4.  Name your calendar and add a description if you want.

5.  Once you’ve created the new calendar, click the calendar itself on the date for which you want to create appointment slots.  Then, click “Appointment slots”.  Now, you can adjust the title, date, time, and duration of slots.  You can also click “More Options” to change other things.  Click “Save” to finish creating them.

6.  To have people book appointments, click on the title of the appointments on your Calendar.  Then, click “This calendar’s appointment page”.  This will open a webpage to book the appointments.  Copy the URL of this webpage and send it to whomever you want to book appointments.  People must have a Google account to book appointments.  They can book appointments by clicking on an available slot, and then clicking “Save”.  They can return to this page to cancel or change their appointment.

This is what the appointments page looks like:

You and the people booking appointments will get notifications and reminders through Calendar.  Since teachers and school administrators do so much through Google as it is, this is an efficient way to make the scheduling and managing of meetings easier and simpler.

Booktrack Classroom Hits the Right Note

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:

21st Century Worksheets

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:

About Wizer

Wizer FAQ

Wizer Blog

Wizer Video Tutorials

Sharing is Caring with the Google Classroom Extension

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!

First Edcamp

Today, I had the pleasure of participating in my first Edcamp.  I had heard wonderful feedback about Edcamps, so I was excited to experience it firsthand.  It lived up to its reputation.

For those who are unfamiliar with Edcamp, here is a quick overview.  An Edcamp is a casual, collaborative, and free (That's right; it costs nothing to attend!) gathering of educators that bills itself as an "unconference".  We strive to make our classrooms student-centered and differentiated to meet the needs of our diverse learners.  Edcamp does this for educators.  At an Edcamp, the day's topics, agenda, and sessions are not pre-determined.  The participants brainstorm and decide the unique things they want to learn about, and the sessions are created out of those topics.  Here is a photo of the sessions we created today:

There were sessions about competencies, Google Classroom, Breakout EDU, digital citizenship, genius hour, RTI, and even comic books in the classroom.  Participants wrote questions or topics they wanted to learn about on sticky notes and posted them on the session board.  Other people became facilitators of sessions and posted topics they would teach to us.  Inside the sessions, participants asked questions, discussed ideas, shared successes, and provided helpful resources and methods we could put to good use right away.  At the end of the day, everyone came back together for the Smackdown, which had anyone offer up the most interesting thing they learned during the sessions.

Overall, the goal of an Edcamp is to create a dynamic, responsive, and engaging professional development opportunity to help anyone in the education field.  And this Edcamp absolutely accomplished this goal.  Kudos to the organizers of this Edcamp for all their hard work in making it a tremendous success.

It was a refreshing and inspiring day with teachers teaching teachers in a relaxed and open environment.  I can't wait to share some of the things I learned with my fellow staff.  If you have the opportunity to participate in an Edcamp, I highly recommend it.