In the 3rd mini episode, I sit down to talk to . . . ugh . . . disaster. A minor technology disaster strikes the Educational Duct Tape podcast studios and I take to the microphone to vent about it and reflect on it.
In the 3rd mini episode, I sit down to talk to . . . ugh . . . disaster. A minor technology disaster strikes the Educational Duct Tape podcast studios and I take to the microphone to vent about it and reflect on it.
In the 10th episode of Season 2, I talk with Dr. Sheldon Eakins of the Leading Equity Center & Leading Equity Podcast. Together, Sheldon and I discuss techquity, bringing culture, community and disruptive discourse into the classroom. Tech tools covered include Skype-a-Scientist, Flipgrid, Synth, Voicethread, BackChannelChat.com, Yo! Teach, Google Classroom, Padlet, Schoology, and Parlay.
In Sal Khan’s phenomenal TED Talk Let’s Teach for Mastery – Not Test Scores, he illustrates the lack of focus on mastery in most classrooms with this metaphor:
To appreciate how absurd [teaching based on a pacing guide, not mastery] is, imagine if we did other things in our life that way. Say, home-building.
So we bring in the contractor and say, “We were told we have two weeks to build a foundation. Do what you can.”
So they do what they can. Maybe it rains. Maybe some of the supplies don’t show up. And two weeks later, the inspector comes, looks around, says, “OK, the concrete is still wet right over there, that part’s not quite up to code … I’ll give it an 80 percent.”
You say, “Great! That’s a C. Let’s build the first floor.”
He continues with this great metaphor, but I’ll stop there because the point is clear: it’s silly to have students move to the next topic or skill before they’ve mastered the one they’re on. With technology, we have tons of ways to ensure this mastery.
In Schoology, you can require students exceed a minimum assessment score prior to moving on to the upcoming content. And, if they don’t do well enough? Have them learn from their mistakes, get better, re-take the assessment and then move on.
Here’s how to do it, first in GIF form and then in step-by-step form.
Pages are a nice Materials option in Schoology. They give a teacher the ability to include more flexible learning content and are awesome in blended courses.
Sometimes you may want to add an already created Google Doc (or slides, sheet, etc.) along with some text content in a page. Below is how you can do that (note that if you want just the doc without other content before or after it, you’d follow a different process). First is an animated GIF, followed by the step-by-step instructions.
Schoology offers a quality platform for classroom assessments, but no platform for collecting information that isn’t intended to be an assessment. In that situation, Google Forms is a great option. However, using a link and forcing students to go “out” of Schoology can be inconvenient and lead to some internet-wandering. So, let’s embed the Google From right into Schoology! Forms can be embedded in pages as well as assignments.
This is beneficial in a number of other situations:
This option requires the least steps, but has one major drawback – you can’t include any other text or images on the Schoology “page” – just the content from the form. (If you need to include other stuff, check out Option 2, below).
Check out the GIF below, followed by step-by-step instructions, to see how to do this:
This option is preferable if you’d like to add some text or other content on the same “screen” as the form.
Check out the GIF below, followed by step-by-step instructions, to see how to do this:
Many educators spend time over the summer working on content for their courses. If you use Schoology, you can create actual Schoology content for your courses before they actually start. Check out this GIF (and the list of steps below it) to see how: