Liven Up Your Staff Meeting With These Apps

Come on, you can tell me.  We’ve all been there.  Whether you’re in education or some other profession.  We’ve all been in those staff meeting where your attention is everywhere other than on the material at hand.  Your eyes wander.  You can hear your heartbeat.  You stare at the ceiling.  You resist the temptation to one of those people that stare at their phone all meeting.  Time crawls.  Minutes turn into hours.  The clock seems to be going backward.  You don’t want to be rude or seem inattentive, but you just can’t seem to pay attention.  The presenter drolls on, pretending that everyone is hanging on every word.  Come on, admit it, you’ve been in those meetings.

Don't let this happen at your meeting.

And now it’s payback.  The chickens have come home to roost.  It’s your turn to present in front of your colleagues.  You don’t want the staff to feel the way you do at some of these meetings.  What do you do?  Well, lucky you, it’s the age of technology in the classroom!  You’ve got a Chromebook, an iPad, or perhaps just a smartphone.  You are ready to make your presentation interactive and engaging.  But how do you do that?  Let me share you with you a few apps that you can use to keep everyone’s attention by engaging your audience.

When it comes down to it, school staff are much like the kids they teach.  In the same way, the students might get a bit fidgety when sitting in front of their teacher listening to the lecture for an hour, adults do the same thing when being asked to sit and listen to someone present information for a long period of time.  Just like in your class where you want to engage your students and keep their attention throughout your teaching, you want to have the same impact with the teachers you’re talking to.  And you know what, you don’t have to look far for the tools to help you because the apps used for your classroom can also be used in much the same way for a PD or presentation to your colleagues.

Socrative : Use the space feature to check for understanding or summarize the meeting. Create a Socrative quiz, then use it to summarize the meeting with a space race.  If you’ve got more than 20 in your meeting, simply have people pair up.  Give out a prize to the winner.

Kahoot: Use Kahoot to test the staff about the contents of the meeting.  Again, like the Socrative space race, give out small prizes for first, second, and third.

Padlet: As you’re giving your presentation, ask the participants to participate by putting very brief summaries of what you’re saying on a Padlet board.  Pause every so often to allow your fellow teachers to jot down a tiny summary of what you’re talking about.

PearDeck/Nearpod: I put these together because although they have differences, they’re kinda the same idea.  You present your information, then, embed small exercises in your presentation, such as a drawing exercise, a multiple choice quiz, or a short answer question.  The beauty of Nearpod and PearDeck is that you don’t have to leave your presentation to have your audience participate, it’s in the presentation.  Another fun aspect of the two is that you can share participant answers and drawings with the rest of the audience.  

Google Slides Q & A: If you’re using Google Slides to give your presentation, then using Google Slides Q & A is a must!  Ask the audience to not only ask questions or comments, but make it interactive by posing certain sceneries that concern your topic and ask teachers to respond in the Q & A portion.  For example, if you’re talking about classroom discipline, ask your audience how they would act in a certain situation.

Eliminate Classroom Distractions With This Tip

It's all about the "e" word.

Technology in the classroom can be a great tool for learning.  It opens up many possibilities for students to expand their learning opportunities. But having technology in the classroom can bring its own set of challenges.  Along with knowing how to use it as an effective teaching tool, tech in the classroom can present the challenge of student distraction.  Put a Chromebook or iPad in a students hand with little engagement, and, unless you follow certain protocols, the students might find other uses for the tech, such as playing games or visiting unauthorized websites. 

Sure, there are various ways to try and combat student distraction.  The teacher could let students listen to music while they work.  They could provide for phone breaks, where the teacher sets aside a designated amount of time during class where students are allowed to check their phones for notifications.  Another might be to have students sign a contract where they’ll adhere to class rules about tech use in class.  The contract is then displayed in class with all the signatures so the teacher can refer to it as needed.  And lastly, the teacher can have students keep a daily to-do list, helping students to stay focused on the tasks that need to be finished.

Some of these might work in your class, but there is one sure-fire way to keep your students engaged...make engaging lessons!  The answer is that simple.  If you make engaging lessons, classroom distractions will be nullified.  I know it’s easy to say “just make an engaging lesson.” But believe me, once the effort is put into a lesson with student engagement in mind, your distraction problem will melt away.  There’s a two-part formula to making your lesson engaging:
First, students need to know why they're doing what they're doing.  Tell them how this lesson is going to build on the next.  Make the lesson relevant and meaningful.  Use real-life examples of how what their learning applies to them and the real world.

Second, fight fire with fire!  Use the appropriate tech tool to keep students from being distracted Deliver an engaging lesson using engaging apps such as Pear Deck or Nearpod.  Nearpod and Pear Deck are built to provide interactive features that keep students involved in your presentation.  You know the old saying, “Idle hands...”.

You can also keep the students involved with Socrative or Kahoot.  I’ve written before about Kahoot’s question template and how students can contribute their own questions to a Kahoot.  Knowing they’ll have an authentic audience for their questions will keep students on task.  Using these interactive apps can also make the lesson fun as well.  Socrative not only has the ability to check for understanding with multiple choice and short answer questions, but the space race game is a fun way to review content.

Seesaw is another app that can keep your students involved in your class.  Use the blog feature in Seesaw to help create an authentic audience for your students.  Knowing that other students, staff, and parents will be looking at their work will make them less likely to allow themselves to be distracted and stay focused.

The reward comes when a student tells you that they look forward to coming to your class.  It means their mind is open to accept new information, ideas and are ready to learn.  Keep the lessons engaging and you won’t have to worry about classroom management during a lesson again.  

5 Ways To Measure Engagement Without Breaking Your Lesson Flow

The book "Bold School" (Keischnick, 2017, p. 95),  states that "Trying to measure engagement and comprehension without breaking the flow or falling behind schedule is a great challenge for direct instruction."

This is where technology can come to the aid of a teacher trying to infuse checking for understanding throughout the lesson without pauses or time-consuming transitions.  Chromebooks and iPads have created numerous opportunities for teachers to measure engagement during instruction.  The trick is how to measure engagement without breaking the flow you've created in your instruction.  How can technology help in keeping the lesson flowing, without interruption or dead spots?

The other consideration is to make sure every student has a voice.  If you simply ask students if they get it, some may genuinely understand, while others, not wanting to risk embarrassment or hold up the class, shake their head in the affirmative.

These apps can help you reach each student while incorporating checking for understanding in the lesson without breaking the flow of your lesson.

1. Nearpod: Use Nearpod for all phases of your lesson, from the introduction all the way to your formative assessment.  All the while checking for understanding in between.

2. Pear Deck: Pear Deck will not only help you present your lesson and incorporate checking for understanding with an anonymous thumbs up or thumbs down option, but you can also ask a question on the fly for students to answer in the lesson, without having to exit your Pear Deck lesson.

3. Google Slides Q & A: If you're presenting a Google Slides presentation, make it a Google Slides Q & A presentation.  Students can have their phones at the ready to ask a question without interrupting the class.  Q & A is great for those students who oftentimes are too shy to ask a question.

4. Kahoot: At the beginning of class, prior to the lesson, ask students to prepare for a Kahoot by having them go to Kahoot.it.  Then, you can insert Kahoots at various points of your lesson.  Prepare a few checking for understanding questions throughout your lesson.  Then, when the time is right, throw in a Kahoot.

5. Socrative: Use the Quick Question feature in Socrative to ask a multiple choice, T/F, or short answer question.  Like Kahoot, ask your students to prepare to use Socrative.  You can either have questions prepared (in which case, you can make a rocketship race out of it) or ask them on the fly.

5 Apps To See If Your Students “Get It”

I'm not talkin' about an app to use for formal assessments, although you can use some of the apps for a formal test.  I'm talkin' about those apps where you can quickly insert an assessment in order to see if your students "get it."  Or, perhaps you want to do a quick review of the previous days material.  These apps will most certainly help you out:

1. Socrative: A fantastic app that can be used with Chromebooks or iPads.  Socrative is great to use for an exit or entrance ticket.  Socrative also has a "quick question" option where you can ask a question of your class on the fly.

2. Nearpod: A great interactive presentation app, available both online and as an iOS app.  You can make a quiz as part of your lesson.  Or, if you prefer, insert quiz questions throughout the Nearpod lesson and monitor your students learning as the students work through the Nearpod.

3. Pear Deck: Another good interactive presentation app that works great with Google Classroom in that you can post your "Takeaways" to your Google Classroom and send to your students Google Drive.  Pear Deck allows the teacher to verbally ask a quick question, giving your students a space in the Pear Deck in which to answer.

4. Seesaw: A super app to use for student portfolios.  While students are working in the app, it's easy for the teacher to insert a quick question for the students to address to check for understanding.

5. Kahoot: A staple in most tech based classrooms.  Kahoot makes it easy to put together a couple of questions and take the temperature of your class.  Gamify your check for understanding with Kahoot!

Present with Maximum Student Participation with Pear Deck

I can't tout how great Pear Deck is enough.  If you want maximum student presentation during a presentation, you gotta use Pear Deck!

Pear Deck is probably the app that I use the most.  It works like any other presentation software.  You add slides using the Pear Deck editor or you can import your own from another presentation app, and add to it from there.  The thing that separates Pear Deck from PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides is that the students participate IN the slide show!

What do I mean by "IN the slideshow?"  Well, instead of the 20th Century way of passive participation, with the students taking notes as the teacher presents the information, with Pear Deck, the students are forced to answer short or long answer questions, draw, answer multiple choice questions, or choose from true or false.  Students simply login with their Google for Education accounts and away they go.

Another cool thing is that they can see their answers as well as their classmate's answers projected at the front of the classroom.  They get a kick out of seeing each other's drawings and answers to the various questions.  To top it off, the students can receive a copy of the Pear Deck along with their answers for use as a study guide when the Pear Deck presentation is complete.

Teachers are in control with Pear Deck.  They have a dashboard where they can see every student's answers, set a timer for particular questions, and set it so students can work at their own pace through the slides.  At any time, the teacher can show student answers on the front screen.  Students aren't afraid of answering for fear of what their classmates might say with Pear Deck because answers are shown anonymously.

Granted, in order for Pear Deck to be effective, students have to have their own device connected to the internet.  In today's education world, more and more schools are either equipping themselves with Chromebook carts, iPad carts or are one to one with their devices so devices are becoming less of an issue.

Pear Deck is also compatible with Google Classroom, which makes it easy to import rosters and share the "takeaway" after the presentation is over.

If you haven't checked out Pear Deck yet and have access to devices for your students, there's no better time than now to give it a look!  Go create your first Pear Deck!

Start Your School Year Off With This Tech

For some, it's way too early to talk about the beginning of the next school year. For others, the next school year is just around the corner.  I know that some teachers have the same routine year in and year out for the first couple days of school.  But, with technology slowly creeping more and more into the classroom, I thought I'd offer a few ways to change it up a bit and set the tone of the school year with some tech.

1. Peardeck:  I've touted Peardeck as a great way to engage your classroom.  Start the year off using Peardeck to have your students introduce themselves to you and their classmates.  Students can use Peardeck to either draw or write about themselves, all the while having it displayed on the projection screen.  You can also pose various questions to students about their likes and dislikes, showing the results on the big screen in front of the class.

2. There are a couple of ways you can use Google Slides.  First, have students create a Slides presentation about themselves, which they can share with the rest of the class.

3. The second way to infuse Google Slides into the first day of school is to use Google Slides Q & A.  Pose different questions about likes and dislikes, as well as finding what their interests are.  You can even prepare a pre-test to get an idea what the kids know or don't know about the subject.  Ask students to pose questions about the class itself as far as rules and procedures go.

4. Introduce the students to the world of blogging.  Use Kidblog to have the students blog about themselves.  They then share it with their classmates.  Have the readers pose questions to their classmates in the comments section.

5. In much the same way students use Peardeck, you can use Google Drawings.  Have students create illustrations about themselves.  They can search the internet to find pictures that represent who they are.

So there you go, just a few ways to introduce your students to the tech you may be using during the year.  Feel free to share how you use tech in the classroom on the first day of school.

Got the summer school blues? Use these online tools to brighten your day!

Summer high school teachers, we've all been there.  You have one class with the same students and the same subject for the entire day.  The day is dragging. Lecturing for hours is out of the question.  Having the students do book work for hours upon hours can be pretty boring and really make your day drag. But now there's The Internet and GAFE!  Make the day zip by while having your students learn the subject matter using online apps.

You say you don't have access to computers or a computer lab, well, there are ways around that, especially at the high school level.  Knowing that most of your students have cell phones will set you free of a day of classroom monotony. And, even if not all of the students have phones, they can still partner up with those that do.
Here's some ideas:

Socrative is a great way to spend a summer class session. Split the class up into teams using just a few cell phones and boom! You've got fun learning that can last as long as you need it or want it to.

Quizizz is another great way to keep the troops entertained while there is actual learning going on. Again, split the class into groups based on cell phone availability and review the days topic with your students. You can creamy a quiz beforehand or quickly use one that has already been created.

Pear Deck is a good activity to use when other reviewing content or going through it for the first time. Split the students into pairs and pose different questions to each group and have the students take notes on their classmates answers. Assign different parts of a text to different pairs and have them present the main points through Pear Deck on the big screen for all to see.

Google Slides Q & A could also work with pairs.  Have the students pair up and ask them to come up with questions or comments about the Google Slide presentation that you've given.  Students enjoy seeing their questions and comments on the big screen in front of the class.

Pear Deck: Interactive Goodness

Pear Deck is interactive goodness that every teacher with access to technology should have in their teaching arsenal.

I was introduced to Pear Deck recently at a Google Summit. Those of you not familiar with what a Google Summit is all about, it's essentially a geek fest for educators. It showcases various ways to expand your teaching through the use of Google for Education services or other online tools that help promote student learning. One of the sessions I attended was on an online service called Pear Deck.

I like to think of Pear Deck as PowerPoint on steroids. Pear Deck is online presentation software where you don't really need a projector or screen to share your Pear Deck with your students. You see, Pear Deck is interactive. Students don't simply sit there and stare at a presentation jotting down a few notes. No, quit the contrary, students are busy interacting with the deck, answering essay questions, choosing multiple choice answers, drawing, and labeling things in the presentation.

Gone are the days where a teacher tries to make the material interesting by spending hours creating flashy presentations, hoping to keep the students attention while relaying the course content. Instead, students are using devices such as Chromebooks, a PC, a tablet, or even a phone to participate in the presentation. Also, participation is no longer dominated by those few students that are constantly raising their hands while the timid few are afraid to answer a question. And when you do call on those that rarely raise their hands, the "I don't know" answer won't work.

Pear Deck demands participation by reviewing student answers anonymously. That's right! When reviewing student answers, it's done anonymously, erasing the fear that some students have by giving the wrong answer. Students want to participate if, for no other reason, they want to see their answer projected on the screen for all to see. Oftentimes, when I was using Pear Deck, I could hear students say "that's my drawing" or "that's my answer!"

If you so choose, you can project the deck on a screen, reviewing student answers with each question. Students particularly get a kick out of the questions that ask them to draw something. Showing their work on the screen along with their classmates will usually elicit a giggle not only from the students, but from the teacher as well.

Pear Deck also excels in that it works nicely with Google Drive, so all of your student decks are saved where you have easy access to them. At the end of the session, you can send each student a copy of their deck, called takeaways. A takeaway is not only a copy of the deck, but a copy of the answers the student provided. It serves as a great way to provide a study guide for an upcoming quiz. Speaking of quiz, you can take Pear Deck to the next level by coupling it with Flubaroo. Use Pear Deck as a quiz and then export student answers to a Google Sheet, and have Flubaroo correct it. Students will not only have taken a teacher led quiz, but have their results right away.

Pear Deck has many possibilities. It is indeed interactive goodness for the classroom.