Eclectic Technology

Vicki Davis shares her insights in working with students on informational text, specifically in history (but applicable to other subjects).

The infographic located in this posts looks at six challenges that students may face, and provides insights that you may use to meet them with your students.They six challenges are listed below, with additional detail found in the post.

1. Did the student read the text?

2. Did the student comprehend the text?

3. Where does the student struggle?

4. How can you give meaningful feedback to the students?

5. How can you get meaningful data to help your whole class?

6. How do I align this with standards?

Then Davis raises an important question: "So now, how do we meet these challenges and teach nonfiction text, put questions in the text, improve the questions, personalize learning AND align with standards?"

She provides the answer by introducing a website that is new to me, Actively Learn. Davis provides a great review of the site and shares what she sees and pros and cons. There is a freemium version and a paid version, so you may choose to try it out and see how it works.

Canva was kind enough to take a great pdf file that Richard Bryne created on 10 Google Search Tips All Students Can Use and create an infographic. Since we know visuals are important to many learners, take the time to check this out and to share it with your students. Also remember that many search techniques that work with Google also work with other search engines.

Blendspace is joined Wikispaces and TES and now offers their premium services for free to educators! Why use Blendspace?

* It is easy to organize and share materials.

* The format is visual (which appeals to many learners).

* You pick the topic and you pick the materials: videos, links, images, files, etc.

There are additional features and you may use Blendspace to assess and track student progress. You might consider using Blendspace as a component to introduce blended learning into your class.

This post from Richard Byrne also includes a video that teaches you the basics of Blendspace as well as Flipping and Blending the Classroom.

If you are considering flipping your classroom check out this resources from Edudemic. It provides links to many resources to make this journey easier. Resources include:
* An interview on how a flipped classroom works

* The ten best web tools for flipped classrooms

* Eight crucial resources for flipped classrooms

Many more resources are available in the post.

Google has just made it easier to find the 'usage rights' of images. Richard Byrne has assisted by providing us with a quick tutorial that show just what to do, in two steps!

This tool allows you to annotate videos with many browsers and save to your Google Drive. The post explains how to use it and provides a video that gives you a great overview. It also has a list of five ideas on how you might use this in a class, including:

* Creating a video guide for students (or having students create a video guide for upcoming classes)

* The ability to share through Google Drive so you might share notes with students, students might share notes with other students, or students might work collaboratively on projects.

There is also a discussion on how the tool worked in a variety of browsers.

How can we best improve student achievement? This infographic states that it has looked at "over 50,000 studies including over 240 million students!" The work was done by one small organization and aside from the infographic it is difficult to determine the studies used. However the findings are worth looking at. The seven areas that are most beneficial are shown in the infographic above (and listed below). Click through to see the infographic and learn more.

* Self reported grades/student expectations

* Teacher credibility

* Feedback

* Phonics instruction

* Classroom management

* Parental involvement

* Cooperative learning

Are you looking for some short (~ 3 minutes) videos that will help you understand concepts in technology. You may not need to look any further than Common Craft Library. To find 20 videos culled by Med Kharbach check out this post. Along with the videos shown in the image above you will find links to 14 additional videos. You might also go to the Common Craft website (http://www.commoncraft.com) but be aware that they have additional videos that require a membership. And...if you are interested in creating your own videos you may want to check out the book that Kharbach mentions in this post, "The Art of Explanation" which shares how to take a complex idea and create a simple video to explain it.

LEGOs. Math. Put the two together and you may have a winning combination. And to make it even easier check out this infographic that provides a range of ideas on how to use LEGOs in math. Make sure to scroll past the infographic. More detailed explanations are provides as well as a template to a LEGO stud dice (with additional ways to teach math with LEGOs).

This infographic/visualization provides six steps that show how to flip a classroom. It also makes it clear that after you work through the six steps you must also review what has taken place, revise as necessary and then repeat.

The six steps are:

1. Plan

2. Record

3. Share

4. Change

5. Group

6. Regroup

But to understand what they mean by each of these you should go to the post. Flipping the classroom takes time, but today there are many locations where you can find great videos that will work for you. There are numerous tools available that help you create videos on your own, or take an existing video and add comments, questions, etc., so that it will meet your needs. If you are considering using video as a way to flip your class in the upcoming school year this post also provides links to additional resources that you may find helpful.

Padlet has recently added a new layout option and Richard Byrne provides a step-by-step guide on how to use Padet as well as  "ideas and directions for using Socrative and TodaysMeet."

Padlet has been available for quite a few years (and was first known as Wallwisher) and works on a variety of platforms. It may be used collaboratively and Byrne suggests using it as an exit ticket.

Socrative is a student response system and TodaysMeet is a  backchannel chat room.

If your students have Google accounts you might consider having them use Google Slides to help them organize research. With the tools available for searching next to the slides it is an easy way for them to begin to organize their materials. Richard Byrne has created a video that walks you through what to do.

Richard Byrne discusses how to create audio slideshows in YouTube, providing excellent directions as well as screen shots.

Why choose YouTube? It is free. You can create slideshows up to fifteen minutes in length. You can choose how long your slides are displayed. You can annotate each slide. And if you are a Google Apps school students may use the same log-in.

Richard Byrne updates his information on creating quizzes by sharing the steps to inserting a video into Google Forms. He states that this will work for people using a personal gmail address but not a Google Apps for Ed account.
He shares a number of screen shots that walk you through the process and briefly discusses the other three new features.

Google forms provide a way for you to collect data on your students and use it as a form of assessment to help improve your teaching, one of the requirements of Common Core.

This post not only provides eight steps to help you create digital stories, it provides resources for every step along the way. 

After a brief look at why digital stories the post provides six ideas of what makes a great digital story. They "are personal, begin with a story/script, are concise, use readily available source materials, include universal story elements and involve collaboration at multiple levels."

It continues by providing a detailed look at each step which include ideas of ways to work with students in each step plus there links to many resources throughout the post.

Digital storytelling is a great tool to use with the Common Core standards, and this post will provide you with great ideas and resources!

Google continues to add features to Google forms. This post shows you how to add images to Google Forms. If you would like to see a video that walks you through the steps please visit the link below from Richard Byrne's blog FreeTech4Teachers at http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/05/video-how-to-insert-images-into-google.html.