Flipgrid

This week I am highlighting one of the tools I will be presenting during my MLK day presentation.  Flipgrid was introduced to me through twitter a few months ago.  Teachers can create a grid of questions and students respond with a short video response (90 seconds).  The teacher can then moderate these videos or automatically post them to their grid where anyone with the grid password can view them.

The  Flipgrid admin page is designed to be very user friendly.  You can moderate and password protect each grid of questions you create.  There are no student accounts needed to use this site which allows them to focus on their response not their user info.  You can request a 21 day trial of  Flipgrid and then it offers a very reasonable yearly subscription fee.  

I can see teachers using this powerful site in many different ways:

• Responding to questions about a book

• Sharing data from a lab experiment

• Explaining how to solve a math problem

• Sharing different viewpoints on historical events

• Recording a phrase or discussion in World Language class

This tool would work best for grades 7-12, but could be used for other grades with parent permission.  Please leave a comment on how you are already using  Flipgrid or how you plan to use it.

SMART Board Search Engine, Live Updates from TIES 2013, and Top 5 Posts This Year

The TIES Conference 2013 starts on Monday.  I want to keep you all updated with the great information I am getting from the sessions.  I have created a shared Evernote notebook where I will take notes in during the conference.  I will also be tweeting from @ztwins7 during the conference.  Please follow along with me as I will try to keep you up to date on all the great ideas I learn about at TIES 2013.  I will also be writing a special blog post about these ideas next Wednesday.

This week’s tech tip is a Custom SMART Notebook Search Engine – This search engine will search 180 sites to find the best SMART Board Resources.  This will help focus your search, but give you some other sites besides SMART Exchange to find lessons you can utilize in your classroom.

I also wanted to highlight the top 5 blog posts so far this year:

1. Assessment Tools Part 1-Google Forms
2. Assessment Tools Part 2 - Socrative
3. Great Resource for Non-Fiction Articles
4. SMART Board as an Instructional Tool 
5. Classroom Blogs-Learning How to Write a Quality Comment

Chronozoom and Pixorial

I have shared different timeline tools in the past and Chronozoom is another example.  It has existing timelines to explore, but it now has the option for students and teachers to create their own timelines.  One feature that really stood out to me was the ability to overlay multiple points in history on the same timeline.  It is a great way to share many historical events which happened on the same day in history on one timeline.

My second tool this week is a free video creation website.  The site is called Pixorial and has the feel of iMovie.  It is free to use and has a teacher account option with 30 GB of free storage.  Students can upload pictures and raw video using the computer or Pixorial app.  You can also layout and edit your video in Pixorial with a very intuitive user interface.  The part I liked most was that it connected to Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive and more so you can easily access your pictures and videos.  This could be a great way to allow students to create movies and publish them online.

Classroom Blogs-Learning How to Write a Quality Comment

One of the most powerful features of a classroom blog is commenting.  Creating quality comments helps encourage a discussion and provides more encouragement for the author of the post.  Helping my students comment was a challenge in my own classroom and many other teachers have asked me about this as well.  I have created this post filled with resources and ideas to help you model what good commenting looks like.

The first resource is a post from Mrs. Yollis.  She has been blogging for the past few years with her students.  She has created 4 tips which I think will really help provide a structure for students to use while commenting on others posts.

 

Here are the 4 tips she shares: 

1. Compliment the writer in a specific way!
2. Add new information
3. Make a connection
4. End with a question

She has also written a great post sharing about quality comments.

Here is another great post on Edublogs about Writing Quality Comments

Thanksgiving Resources

Thanksgiving Resources

This week I am going to give you a few links to help you find Thanksgiving Resources.  Please leave a comment below if you found a specific link to be really helpful as you integrate these resources in your classroom.

1. Free Tech for Teachers List of Thanksgiving Resources-This site has a short list of activities and web resources applicable to all ages

2. Cybrary Man List of Thanksgiving Resources -  This site has SMART Board lessons, web activities, and tons of other resources

   
   

Evernote in Education

Here is a great link explaining some ways Evernote can be used in Education - Evernote in Education