Reflection on Edtech

During this pandemic time, I feel very fortunate being in the Educational
Technology Applications class.  At the beginning of the class we learned
tools that could enhance our teaching of the content material.  As the
weeks went on I found myself NEEDING to use the materials I just learned. 
COVID 19 has changed the way we teach.  During online Google Hangout
meetings, I was able to share my new learning knowledge with my work
colleagues.  By looking deeper into the tools and platforms each week, I
am now able to create activities for students at their level.  I locked on
to making Hyper Docs for the students I service.  I have multiple
references from the Ditch that Textbook to the ladies that created
Hyper Docs, #HyperDocs.  I like the fact that I could change the Doc to
suit the accommodations for a specific student. It provides greater flexibility
and differentiation in instruction. I find myself connecting to the Designer in the
ISTE standard.   

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/

For the Educator(me)

Designer:
Educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that
recognize and accommodate learner variability. 

I have learned strategies to accommodate my students with special needs.
There is not a single technological solution that would suit the needs of all
students with special needs but the use of custom-made solutions can be
designed according to the accommodations and modifications for the student.

  Working with students with disabilities, I began to see ownership of their work.  

Using technology in the classroom helped the students become more engaged 
and they enjoyed completing the Hyper Docs.  They were becoming empowered 
learners.  

  

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education

The Students
Empowered Learner:

Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving and
demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.

The technology was increasing their independence by decreasing the direct-teacher
contact/learning.  They were able to learn at a speed that is convenient for him/her
which lead to more personalized learning.  With the Hyper Docs, the students could
search up the material to cater to their opinion, making it “theirs.”  I saw an increase
of participation once I started to use more technology in the classroom. Since they
understand how to use the Hyper Docs in the classroom, they are able to continue
to use them at home during the school closure.

Hyper Docing with Wide Open School

Hyper Docing with Wide Open School

This week I continued with using a HyperDoc for the students during the school closure.  I incorporated a lot of hyper links from Wide Open School.  I first saw this sight when it was announce on the Today Show in March.

I chose the educator option and then the Grades Prek-5.  The other options are 6-12 grades and a parent (We are a family)side.  

Once you open, there is a choice board of subjects. Everything is organized in a colorful grid, with picture images so it can be easily used by children on their own. I chose a task from Social Studies, Science and Get Moving.  



When looking through the choices, I had to make sure it was an activity that was free and the family had access to the materials or device.  WideOpenSchool offers a guide to getting started with a collection of virtual field trips, a collection with resources for art and music and one with resources for emotional well-being — the latter especially critical at a time when anxiety levels are high among parents and kids alike.  Many notable websites that are linked to WideOpenSchool are Khan Academy, Scholastic, National Geographic, Noggin, and PBS. The options change because the links update so it might not be there if you go to it the next day. 

This site is like a Hyper Doc in the sense that everything is right there in one bundle.  This website is very valuable;  a lot of parents don't have time to look up websites and having options at their finger tips is a big help. I shared the site with my high schooler and he loves all the reading material.  He is able to find a lot of free literature to complete his English assignments.

Surviving Homeschooling Resources Part 4

Hyper Docs

I revisited Hyper Docs this week because I am taking over a self-contained classroom for the next 4 weeks due to the teacher going on maternity leave.

The family opted out of using Google Classroom.  They like the Hyper Doc platform and I explained how it works in the video.  The family likes how everything is on one page and she prints everything out ahead of time. 

Using the Screencastify worked for this activity.  If it was longer than 5 minutes, it would have been in sections. It was real easy to add the extention.  I watched the video and followed the instructions.  It took me 4 tries to get some worth watching due to laughing, dogs barking and phone ringing.  Screecastify gave me the option to share the video with Google and I did that. It saved in my drive. 

I think having the video showing them what to do will help the younger students.  The older students can work their way around ZOOM, Google Meets or Hangouts and in between screens.  I go on YouTube all the time to see how things work.  The video can show you how to work in real time or you can stop it and watch it again if you missed something.   

The Hyper Doc is not very flashy due to extra stimuli for the students.  There can not be a lot on the page or they will rip it up or not do it.  I constructed the Hyper Doc to show one weeks worth and the family receives it every Friday from me for the following week.  I included links from You Tube for stories, letter and number recognition,  education.com for printed pages to work on handwriting and coloring, Starfall for extra interactive material, and google docs for letter and number hunts. The activities are engaging and videos do not last longer than 5:30 mins.  I have also included independent activities that the students can go on after the parents log them in.

Week of 15-17  -has video

Work for April 20-24, 2020  

Surviving Homeschooling Resources part 3

1.  http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/index.htm

Study Jams is part of Scholastic.com. They offer support to the teacher by supplying a lesson plan with pre, during, and post instructions along with key vocabulary.  I used this site when I was teaching middle school math, a lot!  It is great for introducing Math and Science content in a whole group setting.  Study Jams is geared toward 3-8th grades.  The videos last for 3-5 mins and are cartoons to keep the attentions.  On the bottom of the page, they put related videos you can view.

At the end of the video, you can take the quiz, most have 7-10 questions and some have songs that go along to remember a concept.  

Math example:
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/math/data-analysis/mean-average.htm

Science example:
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/science/plants/photosynthesis.htm

2. Prodigy- math

This is a FREE program that the student can do independently on a tablet, phone or PC. It focuses on math skills for grades 1-8. Parents/teachers can set up a account for access to a dashboard. Use the dashboard to customize skills covered in the game, create assignments, and view a child's activity, progress, and standards coverage.When you sign in, you can use google sign in. It will save your progress in the game. The student will select their grade level.

When you enter the game, you pick your wizard character and characteristics. You then can pick a world to play in, they are all the same but you can pick a world that your friend is in. A character named Noot helps you through the Academy (wizard school) as well as a guided hand. The students will battle monsters by solving math problems at their level that casts spells on the them. As you move through the land, you collect coins to purchase items and level up.

***A paid subscription offers more gaming features, such as mini-game power-ups and access to the infamous Dark Tower. 

Learn From Home Challenge Part 2

This is Brainzy by Education.com.  It is free and you can sign in by using your Google account or email with a password.  I found this through Education.com because I am a paid subscriber.  I use a lot of their material so I just invested in it.  Education.com will allow so many free materials. 

Brainzy is a nice collection of activities that address very typical early learning themes to higher elementary. It is a good review/practice for students to do on their own. Kids need to have good mouse skills, which may be hard for those who are beginning mouse users. Kids also get a nice package of different ways to interact with the learning material, which makes the site easy to use.  While the free version does not offer extra material, kids can still get simple, but fun, practice with common early learning topics.

It would be nice if the teachers could suggest particular topics for kids to explore -- this could be especially useful in a classroom setting.

Going Online for Learning

       Going online learning is nothing new to me but for a lot of people this is a new venture.  Especially if you are on the teaching side.  My colleague put it this way, "It is like putting on the wings of a plane while in flight."  I believe a lot of teachers have only been on the receiving end of an online class and have not set one up.  Once everyone is on board with online learning, snows will not be the same; school could still function.  A couple of problems have come up that makes this method of learning unachievable.  Some families do not have devices or the internet.  A lot of schools have foot the bill for devices and hotspots for them.  Many families do not have a device for each child.  The internet at my house has been lagging and very slow.  And some students do not use electronics to learn or they have support to do so.  

Students with many devices.

       The school system I work in uses Google Classroom as a way to communicate and teach their students.  The function I like most about Google Classroom is you can tier your activities.  Teachers often need the flexibility to differentiate assignments for students based on ability, learning styles, reading level, etc. In this case, the teacher chooses the assignment for each student/group of students. YAY!
       If you use google and know where to retrieve google apps, you have accomplished half your battle.  It is following the prompts from there.  I played with it for a while.  I added people to the the classroom and will add this blog to the assignment.  I have read that you can add activities (listed below) to classroom with no problem.

• Kahoot
• Quizizz
• Quizlet
• Quizlet Diagrams
• Formative
• Edulastic
• and many more!

 

Assessment Tools Rules part 2

I chose Powtoon to create 2 review assessments on planets.  I have the students pick a/all planet(s), research and write 3 important facts along with a hand drawn picture of the planet.

Powtoon is a platform that changes your slides to videos.  It seems like it is very engaging for the students.  I am on the free trial and it is a hefty bill if you choose to purchase the pro version.  It was easy navigate.  I chose a template already made for assignments.  I was able to swap out characters, fonts, objects, backgrounds and added some slides as well as added a picture of me.  It looks like you can record your voice too for the pro version.  It reminded me of the Adobe Sparks platform.  It is easy for the students to choose a template for reports, assignments, class goals, presentations, class syllabuses, and timelines. 

Common Sense gave it 4 stars and Teachers gave it 5 stars. 
I would give it 4 stars- not free

To embed the video, I had to make a Vimeo account.  If you had the paid version, you could have it uploaded to a MP4.  With the free version your choices are PDF or Powerpoint. I tried the Powerpoint version and it stopped the music after each slide= Not a video.

One of my favorite online teaching and assessment resource

Brain Pop

I gave it 4 stars because it is not free.

I use BrainPop as a resource to assess my students in the beginning of a lesson. I gave it 4 stars because it is not free. It is geared towards grades k-12 and covers information in Science, Math, English, Health, Arts, Music, Trends, Social Studies, and Engineering and Technology.  The program provides an animated movies to engage students in content aligned to state education standards.  The students love the main characters Tim and Moby (robot).  They always mimic Moby by saying, “MEEP MEEP.” BrainPop has follow up quizzes, worksheets, games, lesson plan, vocabulary and a lot of other related materials/readings.  

What I like about the assessment quizzes are you can use the graded or review option.  Using the graded, the student will not see the right answer until the end and can either email or print the results. You can even make your own quiz. Using the review option,  you can pick until you get the right answer. I use the review option when I work with a group of students.  

It is a paid subscription but it does provide free access to the movie of the day and a couple of movies and quizzes from each subject.  BrainPop can be viewed on smartphones, tablets and computers.

The company also offers BrainPop Jr. for younger children (grades K-3), BrainPop Español, BrainPop Français, BrainPop ELL(English language learners) for non-native speakers learning English, BrainPop Educators.

Example of BrainPop on Coronavirus. This movie is free.

Working with Google Forms

Google forms are not just for questionnaires or surveys, they are a great way to see where students stand using it as a paperless quick check.  Students watched a video on the Oregon Trail and had a class discussion before taking the quiz.  I love that it grades the quiz for you and it can even tally the results to see if the content needs reteaching.  

I used a template Google provided and branched from there.  My form has a variety of questions for my students to answer: multiple choice, true/false, multiple options, and short answer. I choose to use pictures and the state's name for the first question because I know geography is a deficit the students are still working on.  

I plan to use this form again by duplicating it and expanding with another section.  It will be part of the student's Virginia Alternative Assessment Program (VAAP) for 8th grade history. 

The only issues I faced were dead Chromebooks and I had to make sure the students had their accommodations.

Playing with Adobe Sparks

It's the Rusty Show...

       
         This is my slide show of Rusty, my 2 year old Shetland Sheep Dog, Sheltie for short.  I showed it to one of the classrooms I visit and they loved it.  It was short and sweet.  The students now know who I'm talking about when I say Rusty. 

         I think using Adobe Spark slide show is easier to use than Goggle slides when presenting photos.  There are multiple presentation templates you can chose from, Instagram to posters.   I wanted a slide show and I choose the show and tell version.  The version just gives you words in each slide to help guide your thinking process.  It has all the basic components to share the presentation. I love the fact you can record your voice and you don't have to hunt for the feature.  The music in the background spruces it up and it looks and sounds like a movie.  I did notice that I could not change the color of the fonts once I chose my theme.  I tried to move the wording over darker background colors so you could see it.

         The one difficult part I encountered, but made it through, was converting my cell phone video to upload into a slide.  I downloaded Adobe Creative (Adobe suggestion) cloud and it converted it for me.  Overall, I would suggest using Adobe Spark for a quick slide presentation.

Just One More Slide

I enjoyed making this slide show.  This is my first time using Pear Deck.  I have a 30 day trial to play with the settings and options.  My options were limited with this version.  I would have liked to use multiple choice when asking questions but that is in the premium package.  I felt the options were mostly open ended questions.

My slide show on the Solar System was created for my Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP) students.  In the pre-lesson,  I have them do a think-pair-share.  It gets them thinking about what they already know about the solar system.  The students then have to talk to their side partners and then to the whole table.  It gets them communicating with each other and it lets me hear what background knowledge they have on the subject.  At the end of the lesson, I have them put the planets in order (which is the Aligned Standards of Learning (ASOL) and then have them tell me two things they have learned from the slides.  

I like this method of teaching because it gets rid of all the worksheets and it can be interactive if you do it on the Smartboard with the class.  The slide show is time consuming but you can save it or share it for the next years to come.  

More than just a Presentation

Above is my Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game for Fifth grade Science, using Google Slides.  I had fun putting this game together.  I used a template from Ditch that Textbook.  

I had to play with the format for a bit; I kept on multiplying slides and moved the boxes around. (Thank goodness for the Undo button).  I found a short cut in the process of making the slides: I was able to copy the question and answer from the first slide and paste to the next slide so it looked constant and the answers stayed the same. When looking up questions for the game, I based them off of the Fifth grade SOLs from the vdoe website.   

I will be using the Ditch that Textbook website more now.  I love it when my students have fun learning.

Using Google Slides:




My Slide show about my intro to CLM


Putting together a slide show is difficult for me.  I want to put a lot of information on a slide but it doesn't fit.  I have to just put keywords on the slides and I am always afraid I will forget what to say or someone reads the slides and doesn't know what I'm talking about.  
Another problem I had was making the slides pop.  I did not have a lot of choices for backgrounds like a normally do in PowerPoint.  I did like the fact I could work on the same doc and home and at work without emailing it back and forth to myself like with a PowerPoint presentation.

So, I did a little comparison on Google slides and PowerPoint with the help of Presentation Guru

Google Slides	PowerPoint
Free with a google account	cost money with Microsoft 360
Hard to access offline	Can be accessed online and offline with not problem
Lacks in templates	Infinite templates, 3rd party templates available
novice, intermediate, Lacks complexity for advanced users	Great for novice, intermediate and advanced users
Only supports Youtube videos	Can support many video platforms (add-ins)
Online collaboration and sharing on one doc	Emailing back and forth with different versions
Able to convert into files	Able to convert into files
Not very compatible with other platforms, only uses Android, iOS and gives offline accessibility via Chrome OS and the Chrome browser	Compatible with Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, as well as online accessibility options via browser using Office 365 and Office Online web apps

In the long run, PowerPoint has more bells and whistles but it comes at a cost: Microsoft 360 is very expensive.

Hyperdocs

Montgomery Hyperdoc

Above is a link to my HyperDoc on the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.  I had a hard time thinking of what to teach using a HyperDoc.  Using the template was helpful but finding items that they suggested did not work.  
I had ideas of what I 
wanted to use like 

https://hyperdocs.co/

Nearpod but the user
 would need a subscription 
to the link.

My lesson 
plans were like this but I had the assess to the activity and would share it with the class on the smartboard, not have them assess it.  I will practice using HyperDocs and teach other colleagues. 

MontgomeryEDU585

January 20, 2020:

What is Edtech?

Edtech is technology that supports the learning in an educational environment.              

 What are Edtech Applications?

Edtech applications are tools/formats uses to support learning. 

http://www.blended.blog/building-edtech-products-with-strong-pedagogy-instructional-design/

Why do you need to know any of this?

We need to know this because in this day and age, technology is the future.  Computers have taken over the world.  Everything is switching over to digital formats.    There are so many devices and applications out there that makes life easier. So why not jump on the band wagon and convert?