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.
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!
There is an online literacy tool that is simple, powerful, and truly magical. I'm talking about Scholastic Book Wizard. Finding something that fits perfectly is a wonderful thing. Just ask Goldilocks. The same goes for books. Instilling a love and appreciation of reading and books in children is vital. Finding the perfect book to match a child's interest, age, and reading level helps tremendously to accomplish that important goal. The magic of Scholastic Book Wizard makes that happen.
Scholastic Book Wizard is free for parents, children, and teachers to use to help children find the right books for them. It offers lesson plans, author studies, videos, discussion guides, booktalks, and many other great resources. It provides fully featured and dynamic search parameters to find good books for even the pickiest of readers. You can search by title, author, keyword, genre, subject, age, interest, and reading level. The ability to search by reading level is probably the most helpful out of all the search options as it helps children choose a book that will feel just right for them. As you can see below, you can search by Guided Reading Level (Fountas & Pinnell), DRA (Development Reading Assessment), Lexile Measure, and Grade Level Equivalent.
Scholastic Book Wizard provides much detailed and useful information about any book. You can see below the information and resources you can find when looking up a book.
There are also subpages to the left that offer pertinent information and resources depending upon who you are.
Finally, there is a free Scholastic Book Wizard mobile app available for Apple iOS and Android. What is really cool about this app is that you can use it to scan the bar code of any book and instantly get detailed information about that book, such as reading level, age level, genre, themes, page count, similar books, etc. Students can use this app while they are browsing in a store or library to help them find the perfect book for them to read and enjoy.
To learn more about Scholastic Book Wizard, click here. To learn more about its mobile app, click here.
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!
Isaac Newton wisely said, "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity." Quite right, Mr. Newton. With Internet access at our fingertips, we now have the collective knowledge of the history of the world on demand. Although we have access to all that information, it isn't always accessible - especially for students. Wikipedia isn't perfect; yet, it really is an excellent source of information. However, it's not always simple. Here's a quick and easy way to simplify any Wikipedia article, so it is more understandable and accessible. Let's say you want your students to read about volcanoes. Here is the Wikipedia article about volcanoes. As you can see, even the introduction is complex:
Yet, we can make a change to its URL address to simplify it. In that long, white box at the top of the browser where the website's address is (the URL), you will see "en." before "wikipedia". Take these steps to simplify this and any other Wikipedia article: 1. Highlight the "en" in the address. 2. Type "simple" in its place. The address will now be https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano. 3. Press enter or return. And that's it! It's been simplified! Here's what the simple version looks like:
To make this even simpler, just go to https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page to search for any topic. Everything you search for there will automatically be in simple form. Enjoy the simple things in life - including this Tech Tip!
