"Five Minute Finds" and Nearpod Leverage Tools for More Than Projects

Integrating technology tools for "projects only" is not an effective way to help students become great consumers of content, critically thinkers of that content, collaborators, and creators.  Utilizing a "five minute find" in a lesson and incorporating activity cards (with Nearpod) can help utilize the power of technology tools during learning experiences.

Inserting an Apple Logo  Led Me to "STOP" Using the Word "Projects"

I was curious as to how to place an  Apple symbol into a blog or text message.  I found an article from April 2017 on how this works.  However, the January 2018 version is slightly different.

This leads me to the practice of allowing students to "consume content" while teaching.  A perfect example of this happened this week. A teacher had a famous person in history projected in front of the class.  The instructor asked students, "What do you know about this person?" The high school students didn't say a word.

Not. One. Word.

The instructor discouragingly proceeded on by giving the students everything the teacher knew about the famous person.  After observing this, I mentioned to the teacher that at the moment they asked what the students know, the teacher could have provided students with three to five to however long the "investigating" minutes takes for students to consume content that could be a website, a video, an image, a pdf, etc.  Allowing students to "critically think" about the content that they are "consuming" and then sharing that content is a great skill for our students to develop and master.

The teacher tried the strategy the next day and emailed me a tremendous "thank you" as the discussion was so much more valuable and productive.

STOP using digital devices and tools "just for projects".  Utilizing the tools for consuming content, critically thinking about that content, collaborating with others, and creating/sharing solutions can all be incorporated into a single learning experience.  Furthermore, STOP calling all of these "learning experiences" "projects".   Avoid saying, "We are going to do an iMovie project."  We don't say that this weekend I'm going to do a "hammer project".  We say, "I'm going to build a deck and these are the tools I'll need: hammer, saw, nails, etc."  These "projects" are simply opportunities that allow students to build skills through learning experiences that help them move closer to contributing to their college, career, or community while in school and after graduating.

This leads me back to this morning.  I wanted to learn how to insert an  Apple symbol into a blog or text message.  I was able to consume the content, but needed to critically think about that the information I found "shortcuts" from the article

was slightly different than what I was seeing as "text replacement".

Once I did that I was successfully able to insert an Apple symbol on my iPad.

Auto Backup Notability to Google Drive 2018

Raider Strong Network

U.S. History & Imperialism: Explaining With Creativity

Tools Used:
Mindly App
Explain Everything
Adobe Draw

I'm a huge fan of "Common Craft" type of videos.  Students will be creating "Common Craft" type videos completely on the iPad using their creativity and some tools.  Since 2012 our students have created "Common Craft" type videos, and we have progressed with our tools.  I look back on my first explanation video and we definitely can improve.  I feel we are!



Student Created 2018

Intro to Business: Creating a Radio Spot with GarageBand

Garage Band was the perfect tool for students to create a radio commercial with multiple tracks to make it real.  Creativity, critical thinking, and sharing were major skills practiced during this learning experience.  I appreciate Mr. Otto and Mr. Coenen allowing me to co-teach the lesson.

A Student Final Product

Student 2 Final Product

Student 3 Final Product

Student 4 Final Product

The presentation:

Stick Around App For High School Psychology Students Teaching Third Graders About The Brain

Students in Mr. Krause's Psychology class created literature paper books to teach third graders about the brain.  From those books, students created interactive puzzles using the Stick Around app that will be an interactive learning game following the reading of the book.

Students were collaborating with a partner to critically think about how the book could be made into an interactive puzzle.  Once those determinations were set, they created an inner and outer brain puzzle complete with images, text, and definitions. 
This is all based on our district's mission and vision.

The Stick Around app was the PERFECT app for this learning activity!

VIEW ALL THE IMAGES

AP Biology Books For Elementary Students Using Book Creator

In the past, students have created books to read to elementary students via a hard cover book.  While this was an option this year, we also gave the students an option to use the Book Creator App.



The students traveled to one of our local elementary schools to read them this morning!

RWT Timeline: Amazing Free iPad or Computer Tool

The Timeline App is a tremendously easy app (or website) to create timelines.  So many of the timeline apps are extremely expensive.  This app allows for three different options for organizing events:

• Date
• Time
• Event

A timeline that graphically represents related items or events in a sequential order and displayed along a line can be another method for students to "show what they know".

Exporting Options are as a JPG or as a PDF.  Collaboration is also possible as a "file" type .RWT can be emailed or Airdropped so that students can add their portions to the group timeline.
View the steps.

Final Product:

Book Creator App: End of Unit, End of Year, Projects, Endless Possibilities

A few students and teachers in our school have dabbled in creating with the tremendously popular Book Creator App.  Currently, our Civics students are experiencing our school's first full implemented Book Creator App learning opportunity.

The Civics instructors created templates to assist students with the gathering and publishing of information.  With the great features of "open in" and "combining books", both found on the iPad, the workflow was efficient.

Finally, students collaborated with their group to create a final product which was published to Canvas for easy evaluation.

The templates were placed on Canvas and students easily "opened" them in Book Creator to add their information!
SEE THE TEMPLATES

The presentation below was given to the students in a 10 minute time frame.  Each slide represents features of the Book Creator app that will help the students create a quality product.



Learn more about Book Creator features!

Google Expeditions: Leader and Followers

Google Expeditions (Get The Scoop) enable teachers to bring students on virtual trips to places like museums, underwater, and outer space.  Read Google's Expeditions Help Page



Learning Opportunities in School (suggestions):

• Metals: "Explore a Car Factory" - relating classroom experiences to world experience
• English: "Slavery in America"- book settings
• Geography: "The Art of Yangzhou" - culture, museum, poetry
• ELL: "Field Trip to Hispanic Historic Sites in the U.S." - relating to people in our school
• Spanish: " Field Trip to Spain" - See the places speaking the language
• Math: "Nasa's Modern Figures" - STEM in the world
• Social Studies: "World War I" - Visit recreated trench system
• Business: "Girls Power to Beat Poverty in Bangladesh" - beginning own business
• Chemistry: "Hydrogen Burning" - Inside a burning hydrogen reaction and explanation
• Autos: "Subaru of Indiana Automotive" - Inside a "zero waste plant"
• Speech: Students lead tours with other students in class to practice public speaking skills

Currently there are roughly 600 expeditions!  Plenty of opportunities for use!

Things that I was impressed with while leading a group through Expeditions:

• Teacher as the leader
• Direct students to the exact places you want them to go
• Read word for word information on each item in the expedition
• See exactly where every "follower" is on your tour

Things that I was impressed with while following a leader during an Expedition:

• Student as follower
• With an arrow, I was directed toward the site of the information being explained by the leader
• Amazing real images
• Felt like I was there

Since we do not have viewers for every student in the class, we have shown students how to use their iPad to experience the expedition.  For high school students, I think the iPad isn't as good as a viewer, but good enough to experience the images and information.

I really like the "List of Available Expeditions" that someone created.  Combined with the free lesson plan presentations, and these really are a special experience for students who may never get there in reality.

The video below was created by Pioneer RESA Tech and displays both screens well.

PechaKucha Presentations in Criminal Justice

So many students present multiple times in their school career.  We have established a "PechaKucha" presentation opportunity for groups of students in several content areas.  One of those areas is Criminal Justice.  Today I team taught with Mr. Pirman and explained the workflow for the students.

• Create slides that are 20 seconds long in Explain Everything.  Slides should contain image(s) with 20 seconds of narration describing the content.
• Since the students are in a Flex Mod schedule, they may not be with their partners from now until the due date.  After students create their portion in Explain Everything, they will export the EE as a video to their camera roll.  They can either share their finalized portion via Google Drive or AirDrop.
• Each portion will then be combined in iMovie
• Students will take the finalized iMovie and submit the creation on Canvas

Introduce To Students (Option)


To introduce the concept I shared with the students the PechaKucha of "The Secret Life of a Pencil".  

We also played a small portion of an example for students.



We also have a number of students actually delivering their "PechaKucha"

Creating A PDF on iPad and iPhone in Safari

Because of Jonahan Wylie's written instructions on how to quickly do this, I learned two things.

• The four lines in the omni bar in Safari remove all advertisements on a web page
• Creating a PDF is really easy

I created a video that should compliment Mr. Wylie's fantastic written workflow!

Flipgrid - Student and Teacher Video Response

Flipgrid NOW AVAILABLE ON iPAD

UPDATE: 4/18/2017
Flipgrid started charging for their service, however, they do allow one "grid" for free at a time.  This presents a new opportunity for teachers to utilize this tool for feedback from students or anyone.  No "code" or "password" is needed by the students or teachers who want to add to the grid.  Additionally, text and videos can be added to the question of the grid to help participants understand the question.  Finally, assessing the students is so easy with built in assessment tools provided by Flipgrid.

I created a grid which allowed teachers to quickly state what "drives them nuts".  Listen to what they say or add to the grid!

VIEW THE GRID

5/16/13
Flipgrid allows for questions to be written by the instructor.  Below is a question that I wrote.  I was able to create a video board of responses.  The board can be public or private which is password protected.

Students or teachers can respond in a simple video format.  First they must provide a snap shot of themselves.  After that, they allow the program to use their camera and record their response to the question.

The final piece is the moderation.  The instructor can watch the videos prior to them being available for others to view.  Once approved, members who have the password to the video response board can watch other members responses.  They may then "like" the video.  The responses can be sent out as a link, embedded, tweeted or sent to Facebook.

All of the videos can be placed separately or as a continuous slide show.