HyperDocs – Jake Miller

HyperPadlets & Padlet Timelines

On 1/29/20, in the #EduDuctTape Twitter Chat, 6th grade teacher Matt Meyer shared an idea that kind of blew my mind.

A3- Packaging content into new and exciting ways is a great instructional shift to increase engagement and retention of key information.

Trying my first #hyperpadlet with @Padlet 's new timeline feature in SS this week. #EduDuctTape https://t.co/Nrd3mb2F2i

— Matt Meyer (@54Mr_Meyer) January 30, 2020

This is something that I like to refer to as the adjacent possible – by exposing myself to something new (adjacent) it opened up 3 new ideas (possible) for me. Let’s explore them below.

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8+ Tools for Developing Learner Profiles

Mike Mohammad joined me in episode 28 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast to discuss 2 questions that an educator might have. One of the topics that we discussed was learner profiles. Mike posed the question, “How can students create a profile of themselves as a learner to share with an audience beyond the classroom?”

While Mike and I did not discuss the it during the show, I want to quickly compare and contrast the terms learner profile and digital portfolio. While there are similarities (both are typically curated by the student, both showcase the students work in school and both are often done digitally) there are also some differences (typically, digital portfolios are a showcase of academic work and growth while learner profiles also often focus on the students’ capabilities, characteristics and aptitudes as a learner).

Regardless of which end result you’re looking to cultivate in your school (learner profile, digital portfolio or a blend of both), there are plenty of tools that you can leverage.

A week after the episode in which Mike and I discusssed this aired, I hosted a Twitter chat about the questions from our talk.

Here are some of the participants’ responses to the question about learner profiles:

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Emoji Bullets

Want to add a little flair to your HyperDocs and some fun to your lesson plans? Ditch those boring bullets for some emoji bullets!

In many cases, this can obviously lead to a less-professional looking document or slideshow, but in the classroom . . . why not add a little fun? Our learners l-o-v-e emoji and it may just make schoolwork look a little more inviting. So, here’s how to use them as bullets in Google Docs & Slides. First up: a GIF animation, followed by the step-by-step.

Click the appropriate button to add bullets.
Add any of the default bullet styles.
Right-Click (or two-finger click) on the first bullet and select More bullets.
In the first dropdown menu, select Emoji.
Now select your emoji!
Right-click (or two-finger click) on the first emoji bullet if you’d like to change the size of the bullets.

Inserting Videos in Google Drawings

Most people wouldn’t see a need for videos in Google Drawings, but a teacher – especially one that uses HyperDocs – could probably think of thousands of reasons it’d be useful. That’s why I was excited when I heard Joli Boucher share about it during a recent episode of the Google Teacher Tribe podcast (You can hear it here as well, all cued up to her part). It’s a super slick, simple hack and when doing HyperDrawings it’s super useful too. I just had to capture this in a GIF . . . so, here it is:

Joli also shares about this in her post here and her video here. For proof that it works, here’s a link to the Drawing that I show in the GIF.