Success Is Messy: Nearpod Works To Perfection

Yesterday, I was reminded of how successful things happen.  Mr. Anderson attended a PLC day at Adlai Stevenson High School and noticed that the presenter engaged the audience with PearDeck.  Unfortunately, PearDeck comes with a price we are unable to pay.

When Mr. Anderson approached me about the concept, I initially thought that the presentation tool of questions in Google Slides would be an adequate solution.  We found this could be a tool, but being a single teacher in a classroom proved a little challenging to monitor those questions.  A teacher needs to toggle back and forth between the presentation and the question/answer window.

As we were talking, Nearpod came to my mind.  It quickly became clear that this was the perfect tool that would serve his Anatomy students in their learning experience.

• Upload a presentation from Powerpoint or Google Slides
• Upload images or PDFs
• Once a presentation is uploaded, add "activity cards", "polls", or "questions"
• No sign up required by the students.  Simply display the code that they enter into the Nearpod app. Quick, Simple!
• Teacher begins to present.  Immediately the presentation shows up on a student's device.
• When it's time for an activity or question, students interact on their iPad by writing, drawing, typing, highlighting
• Students share their creation back to the teacher
• Teacher discusses some responses by the students

Lectures are not always necessary, however when they are the correct delivery for the content, Nearpod became a great tool for our this teacher.

In a 30 minute discussion, Mr. Anderson and I did exactly what the right arrow above states.  We went around in circles, backwards at times, but eventually found the tool that serves him best for his content area at this time.

After his experience during the day, Mr. Anderson introduced the tool to his Biology team.  Teachers learning and then teaching teachers!  It was a great learning experience.

View The Images From Class

Snapchat & PicCollage In Anatomy

It's awesome that Mr. Anderson is allowing students to use a technology tool that they have mastered to accomplish a task that Skitch was used for.  More awesome is that the student decided Snapchat and PicCollage could be used for educational purposes.

I asked the student to demonstrate how the she accomplished the required task.



In the business world, more efficient, creative ways to accomplish tasks correctly is always rewarded!

As with everything, the bad of using Snapchat can always occur.

George Couros pointed out in his TIES 2015 Keynote on Tuesday a time when he gave a hashtag out to high school students while he was presenting.  I wish I could find the exact Tweets, but I can't at this moment.  I can share the summary of the story.  Three students immediately used the hashtag to display their displeasure with George's words while they were sitting and listening.  Of course, their language was graphic.  However, one Tweet by as student was noticed by George during the speech that was EXTREMELY positive!  George spoke up to the crowed asking where/who the student was that posted the positive comment.  George THANKED the student and told him how much he appreciated the positive comment.  The student was a "larger than life" football player.  Once George acknowledged the positive tweet many, many other students jumped on board the positive Tweeting bandwagon.

Sure, something could have gone wrong with the student using Snapchat, but it didn't.  If it did, it would be addressed.  Now, the student feels empowered and invested in this process which allows her to "show what she knows."

Let's hope that our schools and the educators involved can be more comfortable allowing creation and productivity to have a personal touch!  Eventually, the innovation and creation will be rewarded.

Explain Everything PDF to iBooks to Teacher Google Drive Folder

In the past, anatomy students used multiple Skitch images for annotating the flow of blood through the heart. This required students to transfer all of the individual images to one per Google Slide.

This year, we decided to use Explain Everything and only the image annotation.  No audio involved.  Exporting the creation using the PDF to iBooks and Google Drive allows for the teacher to receive a "slide show" as is shown at the end of the the video presentation below.

Stick Around App in High School Anatomy Class

Mr. Anderson integrated the Stick Around app into the "learning about the skull" activity for students.  The Stick Around app was a perfect tool for students to create interactive learning opportunities for students based on student textbook resources.

View The Students Working and The Workflow


Note: We were able to publish the Hour 2 projects as puzzles and export those puzzles to the Google Drive folders.

Students now have 18 interactive puzzles to master the bones of the skulls.

Creativity & Critical Thinking:  Students needed to establish the exact placement of the stickers and the answers so that no answer areas were conflicting.

Collaboration: The puzzles were created in groups of two or three.  Students were held accountable for their creations as all of the puzzles were shared with the teacher and placed in a Google Drive folder.  This allows all students to view the creations of students.

Explaining Blood Flow In Heart Using Google Slides

Mr. Anderson, our high school anatomy teacher, used Chromebooks and Google Slides for students to teach and understand the flow of blood through the heart.  The simplistic, but elegant presentation tools allowed for students to use drawing tools, shapes, and text boxes found in Google Slides to annotate images of the heart.  As Mr. Anderson states, "The tool (Google Slides) made it more visual to see the steps that occurred."

View Product


View Product


Impact On Students:
Creativity: Understanding the scope and sequence of the flow of blood through the heart doesn't need to be boring.  Students were given freedom to show this sequence with whatever images or annotations they desired.
Critical Thinking: Students needed to have enough words, but not too many on each slide to establish the needed information.  Students were also required to think through the entire process so that the flow of blood through the heart could be understood by people outside of the classroom.

Basic Anatomy Students Helping Patients

Last year, Mr. Anderson embarked on a problem-based learning opportunity for his Anatomy students.

Read.

This year, Mr. Anderson invited my to his classroom for the final days of the learning environment.  Students were introduced to a patient.  That patient was shown an informational iMovie describing the body part that was being affected.  The iPad provided a great conversation starter between the patient and the students. Within that movie, students provided factual information along with specific footage of the students describing the body parts functions. (Special thanks to Mr. Gosse for being a patient)

Video Link


Impact On Students:
Collaboration: Students worked in partners to develop an information iMovie that would provide patients with some of the knowledge they needed to understand what was ailing them.
Creativity: Students need to use a multi-media approach complete with audio, video, and still images to convey information in a clear and concise manner.
Critical Thinking: Students experienced a wealthy of information and placing the correct information into the video was vital.  In addition, students needed to transfer the knowledge they had of the body parts to the patient while having a conversation.  It wasn't all about the technology.  Students needed to critically think about the most important information and provide that to the patient.

Essential Skeleton 2 iPad App For Anatomy

The Essential Skeleton 2 iPad app provides every student with a model skeleton that can be used to learn and master the bones and all their features.  Mr. Anderson believes this app is a great app especially in large classes.

Some benefits include of the app:

• Seeing individual bones
• Rotate bones 360 degrees
• 3-Dimensional
• Full model for each student (great for larger classes)
• Mobile
• Highlight individual bones
• Identify and isolate an individual bone away from the full model
• Annotation tools
• Zoom In & Out 
• Screen shot for Pic Collage and SMORE
• Correct audio pronunciation
• Multiple search options
• Exporting options of annotated objects
• Quick Reference to all skeleton parts
• Quiz Set Up-multiple choice & free response

Video Link

ITLS: Standard 3
The impact on the students...

• Collaboration--N/A
• Creativity--Combined with SMORE or Pic Collage provides for creative finished product of concepts learned
• Critical Thinking--Quiz format for analyzing aspects
• Citizenship--if documents are shares, students will understand that their creations are visible by the world.

Google Groups For Informational Text Discussion

Mr. Anderson, Anatomy Teacher at PHS, wanted a means for online discussions of informational text.  The Google Groups has a number of great features that allows it to not distract learning, but only to enhance it.

• Usable on the iPad in Google Chrome
• Chromebook & Laptop User Friendly
• No need for additional username & password as we are a Google Apps For Education school
• Threaded conversation allows for quick replies to students or teacher
• Able to upload documents (informational text) for analyzing

View Mr. Anderson speaking of the process and see students using Google Groups...

Setting Up Google Groups - Video Tutorial


Video Link

ITLS Standard: 2 and Skill 2B

Anatomy PBL Video

An example of a student using Skitch and iMovie to help a patient diagnosis their medical condition.

Of course, this was only a PBL situation, and the patient did not really have any medical condition.

Project Based Learning In Anatomy Using iMovie

View the details of the project and how the students are working.  After the videos are complete, the students will be using the videos they created to assess a real person's injuries!