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.

Teaching ELA with Tech

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.

Using Edpuzzle to Create Engaging Video Lessons

Blended learning and flipped classrooms have been implemented in school districts across the country to much success.  Part of the blended learning/flipped classroom concept is that teachers create online lessons that are tailored to their learning goals, and these lessons can be completed by students at home or during a study period.  Additionally, these online lessons contain questions, quizzes, or some type of formative assessment so that teachers can gather data and feedback to create more targeted and relevant in-class activities.

The use of blended learning or a flipped classroom empowers students to learn at their own pace since they can slow down, speed up, pause, or even "rewind" a lesson.  Teachers can assign online lessons that cover fundamental or introductory content to free up time to teach material in class that is more responsive and in-depth.  Videos are a popular medium for these kinds of lessons, which leads me to Edpuzzle - a free tool for teachers to create interactive instructional videos.

First, go to Edpuzzle and create your free teacher account.  Once you create your account, Edpuzzle will walk you through an interactive tutorial on how to edit, customize, and assign a video.  Whenever you log in, you will see this page:

From here, you can browse the many great channels on the left, or you can search for a particular video in the search bar.  Also, you can copy and paste the link to a video you want to use into the search bar to begin customizing it.  Let's take a look at the steps to create an Edpuzzle video.

First, find and select the video you want to use.  I got mine from TED-Ed on YouTube, and you can see the video I created at the bottom of this post.  Then, you will be given the option to crop the video.  You can choose when to begin and end the video to make it the perfect length for your lesson.  Just drag the red crop bars along the time track to trim the video to any length you wish.

Next, you'll have the option to record an audio track or audio note.  Audio tracks can be used to layer your own lecture or explanation over the existing video.  Audio notes are short clips of information you want to include at certain points.




Finally, you can add questions at any point during the video.  Click on the green question mark below the time track to open the question menu on the right.  You can choose from a short answer, multiple choice, or comment.  You can also add a link or picture to the question.

Now, you are ready to assign it to your students.  If you use Google Classroom, this part is really cool.  You can assign the video to any of your classes in Google Classroom directly from Edpuzzle.  Also, you can set a due date.  The neatest feature may be the option to prevent students from skipping questions or skipping ahead in the video.  Click send, and it'll be sent to your classes.

In Edpuzzle, you can also see how your students are doing on your videos.  You can see how many students completed the video, how many times they watched it, their scores, your gradebook, and more helpful information to guide your instruction.  Additionally, you can post comments, feedback, and questions directly to individual students on their specific answers to give praise, guidance, or a follow-up question.

Here is an Edpuzzle video I created and assigned to a test class in my Google Classroom:



As we continue to innovate our educational practices with technology, tools like Edpuzzle will help tremendously to engage, empower, and enlighten students while making learning more individualized and interesting.  To learn more about Edpuzzle, check out 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!