#EduGIF Guy. Speaker. Tech Integration Specialist. Google Apps for Edu Trainer. Nerd. #EduDuctTape Podcast Host.
Dr. Natasha Rachell joins me in this episode for lots of laughs, but also to share some of her strategies for making instruction engaging. Natasha shares about student choice, choice boards, the Flipgrid Discovery Library, Microsoft Sway, Wakelet, Mentimeter, Buncee, and the awesome Minecraft Good Trouble project!
Joe Marquez delivers powerful tips for designing instructional experiences that are accessible for all learners and are pedagogically effective. He also brings it with ideas for how students can process and represent their learning in UDL-friendly ways. Tune in to hear Joe’s wisdom and our discussion that touches on Edji, Pear Deck, Nearpod, Flipgrid, the Record to Slides extension, and more!
Continue reading #EduDuctTape – Joe Marquez – Strategies for UDL-Friendly Learning Experiences
This is a sponsored post. All opinions, however, are my own.
One of my favorite things about hosting the Educational Duct Tape podcast is how often my guests surprise me with tech tools that I’ve never heard of. One of my favorite surprises came 2 years ago (almost to the day!) when my friend Angela Wojtecki told me about Boomwriter. As with every EduDuctTape episode, I asked Angela a “teacher question” that could be answered with educational technology. The question that I asked Angela, a school librarian, was “How can we have our students create ebooks?”
She gave me 4 options, but the one that delighted me with its fresh take on the process was Boomwriter. While the tool has multiple ways that it can be used to enhance students’ experiences with writing, the one that stands out to me is their collaborative book writing activity. Imagine each of your students writing drafts for every chapter of a collaborative book, getting teacher feedback, revising reading their classmates’ chapters anonymously, and then voting to select the ones that become a part of the final text! The writing skills involved in this process are innumerable!
A few months ago, when my 4th-grade daughter told me that they were using it in her class, I could barely contain my excitement. (She marveled at me already knowing what it was 😊)
But that excitement was nothing compared to when I told her and her brothers about The Boomwriter Writing Bee. She was giddy about the competition and her big brother was impressed by the two authors who are involved (more on that below). Little bro was disappointed to be too young to participate this year, but he’ll have his chance soon enough!
If you’re anything like me, you need more when you’re teaching, especially if it’s remote, hybrid, or concurrent teaching. More coffee. More time. More money in your paycheck. More aspirin. More screen space.
Well, I can’t help with the first 4, but I can help you with the last one.
Did you know that you can present Google Slides without using your entire screen?
This is super helpful in a handful of scenarios.
One of those scenarios is when you want to share Slides in Zoom, Google Meet, or any other videoconferencing solution, but don’t want to “lose” an entire screen just to your presentation. If you share just that presentation window and not your entire screen, you’ll be able to use your screen for 2 purposes! This is especially helpful if you only have one screen. In that situation, if you run your slides fullscreen, then you can’t see your students or the chat! Use this tip to let you do both on the same screen!
What if you want to present two things and one is a presentation? If your presentation is fullscreen, you’ll have to toggle back and forth. Use this tip to present them side-by-side!
Check out this EduGIF to see how it works. Underneath the EduGIF, you can find a link to a “pausable” version and the step-by-step instructions.
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
Continue reading #EduDuctTape – James Varlack – Developing Engaging Instruction
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
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.
Check out these input options in the EduGIF below and then read on to learn more about each.
Continue reading Using EquatIO® to Support Digital Math Instruction
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!
Continue reading 16 types of Media you can add in Book Creator!
