James Varlack says that “Engagement is developed.” So, in his interview, I asked him how he develops his engaging instruction. We discuss how James works toward each of the 3 types of student engagement–emotional, behavioral, and cognitive–in both analog and digital ways. We discuss Jamboard, Google Docs, Google Slides, Padlet, Whiteboard.chat, Whiteboard.fi, Microsoft Teams whiteboard, Google Arts & Culture
This is NOT a sponsored post. However, mote did provide me with access to an Unlimited account to try it out + is giving away FREE Unlimited licenses to 5 of my readers! (find out more below!) All opinions in the post, however, are my own.
🗣️ U!
🗣️ D!
🗣️ L!
UDL, or Universal Design for Learning, is the practice of making your students’ learning experiences–the content delivery, the demonstrations of learning, all of it–universally accessible.
And that means that we need to deliver content in as many modalities as possible. This is why I was super excited when Google unveiled the ability to add audio in Google Slides. However, my excitement was dampened by the lack of a straightforward process to adding said audio.
Record the audio here, save it there, upload it here, then add it to your Slides.
Can’t we just record the audio in Slides and have it appear in Slides? Please!?
Well, the team at mote has our back on this. Their awesome Chrome extension has been rocking feedback and other classroom processes with the superpower of adding audio comments in Google Classroom, Google Docs, and more. Then they let us use mote while we were surfing the web in Chrome. But now they’ve really outdone themselves . . .
👉 Use the extension to record while you’re in Google Slides and it pops it right onto your Slide. 🤯
Check it out in the #EduGIF below and then, at the bottom, enter to win one of 5 FREE Unlimited mote licenses!
Isn’t that awesome? So slick, so easy, and so good for tons of different learning scenarios.
While the super generous free version gives you these capabilities with audio recordings of up to 30 seconds in length, some of you Chatty Cathys and Talkative Tommys may need a few more ticks of the Apple Watch. That’s where the Essential and Unlimited plans and their 90 second-limit come in. You can learn more about the plans here, but I know what you’re really here at the bottom of this blog post for . . . 👉 click here to enter to win one of 5 Unlimited licenses! 👈 Thanks for sharing these with educators, mote!
Enter by 11:59 PM EST on 1.29.2021. Winners will be notified via email.
Claudio and I talk about hearing from our students with tools that empower them to create. Specifically, Adobe’s tools Spark Video, Premiere Rush, Premiere Pro, Spark Post, Spark Page, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fresco, and Audition. Also, audience questions about sites to use for surprise inclement weather folders for elementary schoolers and a Google Sheets conundrum. Continue reading #EduDuctTape – Claudio Zavala: Hearing from Your Learners with Adobe’s Creativity Tools
Recording this episode with Knikole Taylor put a huge 😃 smile 😃 on my face right when I needed it. We had so much fun talking and I think you’ll have a blast listening. You’ll barely even notice that, by the time you’re done, you will have learned about 7 different tools for #FormativeAssessment (Pear Deck, Nearpod, Jamboard, Padlet, Mentimeter, Formative, and Classkick)!
Listen on YouTube here
Today’s Sponsor:Texthelp – You can sign up for a free teacher account at text.help/equatio-fft
Bio: Knikole Taylor serves as the Instructional Technology Coordinator for Life School. Through personalized support, Mrs. Taylor works with teachers and teacher leaders to craft professional goals to extend their scope of instruction and meet the needs of all learners.
Soapbox Moment: The Shortest Soapbox in Show History
Today’s Guest: Mr. Casey Hall
Bio: Casey is a Fine Arts Education Program Specialist at the Georgia Department of Education where he supports Fine Arts Teachers across the state of Georgia. At the time of the recording, he was the Fine Arts Support Teacher (FAST) for Fulton County School (FCS) and the Music Specialist at Wolf Creek Elementary in Atlanta, Georgia. As a FAST (Fine Arts Support Teacher), he coached and supported other music teachers across the Fulton County Schools. Most recently, he was awarded the title of 2019-2020 South Learning Community Teacher of the Year for Fulton County Schools.
This is a sponsored post. All opinions, however, are my own.
For years, one of the most common questions that I heard as an educational technology trainer, speaker, and coach was “I’m a math teacher. How can I use edtech in my class?”
I had lots of answers that I was excited about. I advocated for Desmos activities, Flipgrid topics for sharing strategies, spreadsheets for investigating patterns, and more. One thing that was always tough, though, was actually entering mathematical representations into digital spaces. Some spaces were built for it, like Desmos, and some spaces had a pen tool, like Flipgrid, but others were not set up well for it, like Google Docs, Slides, and Forms.
Until EquatIO® came along. With its “Make math digital” tagline, Texthelp’s tool gave teachers and students the ability to easily enter equations and graphs into Docs, Slides, Forms, and more. At that time, there were quite a few math and science teachers who were very excited about the capabilities that EquatIO gave them. They enjoyed using them to create content, activities, and assignments for their students. And, for some of them, they even had their students use EquatIO to respond or create content of their own.
From my observations, some math teachers may have thought that EquatIO was a misspelling of equation. Until early 2020, that is. When math classes, along with all of the other classes in schools, moved online, educators needed a way to create, as EquatIO calls it, “Make math digital.”
And I think that EquatIO is one tool that they should consider to support their digital math instruction.
EquatIO–which is free for teachers–has 8 main features that I’d like to share with you. The first 5 relate to entering math and science expressions into digital spaces. Let’s look at those first.
Entering Math and Science Expressions with EquatIO
Check out these input options in the EduGIF below and then read on to learn more about each.
Note that while this EduGIF shows EquatIO being used in Google Forms, it also works in Slides, Docs, Sheets, and Drawings, as well as Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Office 365 applications.
This is a sponsored post. All opinions, however, are my own.
Did you know that Book Creator books could contain more than just text? Like, way more?
Back in the day, when I first saw Jon Smith present about Book Creator, I was so jealous that it wouldn’t work with my classroom-cart of Chromebooks. Nowadays, you can use Book Creator on just about any device, and better yet, they have added tons of different types of media options that weren’t there before!
Check out this #EduGIF to see the 16 types of media that you and your students can add to your creations! Then read on to learn a little about each! As you’ll discover, there are actually way more than 16 types that’ll work!
This is a sponsored post. All opinions, however, are my own.
Versatile. Practical. Powerful. Convenient. FREE.
If you use any of those words in the description of an educational technology tool, my ears immediately perk up. And, when Wakelet came out a few years ago, my ears were up and alert. But when they announced Wakelet Spaces in August 2020, the first word in that list–versatile–really came to the forefront for me. So, I’d like to share **19** ways that I think that you could use Wakelet Spaces in your school or class!
First, though, some background on what Wakelet Spaces are. At the time of the announcement, Wakelet was already a phenomenal tool for curation, organization, sharing, and more. It was even a great tool for collaboration, as you could collaborate with other Wakelet users within a Collection. The additional power of Spaces kicked that collaboration, curation, organization, and sharing up a notch: now you can organize multiple Collections into one Space. This is where that word from earlier–versatile–really comes into play though: Spaces can be created collaboratively and can be shared with anyone to view.
Before we get into my list of 19 ways to use Wakelet Spaces in your school or class, let me give you a quick peek into what creating a Space, collaborating in a Space, and sharing a Space looks like. Check out the #EduGIF below:
