4 New Tech Tools

I was absent from my classroom yesterday in order to attend a fabulous training by Discovery Education.  Being absent from the classroom is always challenging because my students sometimes do not receive the information that they need.  But this time, it was like I never left the classroom.  I did a screen cast of my lesson for my students usiing Screencast O Matic.  They loved it, the substitute loved it and I loved it.  They were able to learn the content like I was still actually in the classroom and to be honest it only took me about 10 minutes to create.  

Screencast O Matic is:

• user friendly
• allows you to go back a few seconds to fix mistakes
• easy to publish to your youtube channel

Now at the actual training I learned a ton!  The resources provided by Discovery Education are amazing!  I can't wait for my students to be able to build a board using content from Discovery Education.

During the training, I was introduced to Answer Garden.  Wow!  Answer Garden is a smash of Padlet and Wordle.  It asks for short responses to questions that it compiles into a Wordle.  Words that are repeated become bigger showing more emphasis.

The last tool that I learned about is Symbaloo.  This site serves as a sort of bookmarking system for websites, apps, etc.  I love how simple it is, how you can change the color of the images and how you can add titles.  Here is my Symbaloo for resources that I have used and love or want to learn more about:

http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/toolsoftheweb

Substitute -- Time Saver

Okay this will be a quick one!  Thanks to a fellow Digital Learning Coach,  I have discovered and now use Baker Bingo.

It is really simple.  You type in your "answers" in the bingo card.  You generate the card and copy the link provided on the right hand side and then paste it on your webpage, Haiku site, shared google doc or email it to the students.  They click on the link and every kid gets a different card and they can press it on their ipad and the squares turn colors.

One aspect of technology that I LOVE is how much it saves time.  I was able to do two bingo reviews in less than 10 minutes.  It is so quick, direct, and engaging.

Who's on First? Abbott and Costello

Something New...

So this week I did something new to introduce my next topic.  So the main standard I am teaching is RL 8.3 (analyze dialogue and how propels actions) and RL 8.6 (analyze how different points of view create humor).

I love both of these standards and was super excited to introduce this unit.  In order to introduce this unit, I used a classic:  "Who's on First".  This was a perfect and fun introduction because it clearly shows students how different POVs (Abbott, Costello, and the audience) create humor and how dialogue propels actions and causes characters to act.

The activity was so successful.  I began by focusing our time with focused questions (you know how I love questions):

• How do the different points of view create humor?
• How does dialogue propel the action?
• How does dialogue cause a character to act?

Then we listened to the skit, the students created a tree map that showed the different points of view and then I had them frame it up with the questions above using a Google Form.  I LOVE google forms!

This was a great activity and reminded me of my Grandpa.  This was his favorite skit!  He is the one who introduced it to me and I remember laughing with him and discussing it with him.  A very sweet memory and I love bringing that to my class.