I absolutely love the collaborative abilities of all the Google apps in the classroom. If I had my choice, my students would work on Google Slides, Docs, and Forms more frequently in my classroom. However, my school doesn't provide students in 5th grade with Google accounts, so I had to come up with a work around. Project: I wanted my students to work on a Slide presentation outlining Chapter 5 in their social studies book. Rather that have one student work on a PowerPoint (ugh) and all the others sit around a "research," I wanted each student to be actively engaged in the project and working on "their part" simultaneously. Problem: As I mentioned earlier, my students don't have school provided Google accounts, so I had to think of a way around this. Possible Solution: At first, I thought I could create usernames for each group and share the password with that group only. The problem is that that group would have access to GMail and I would have to send permission slips home. That seemed to cumbersome for this project. What I discovered...It was at this time that I made a great discovery, or hack if you will. I've been smashing iOS apps for a couple years now to get the results I wanted, so why not try it in on the web? I was going to smash Google Slides and Schoology to create a collaborative, safe environment for the students to work it. First, I created the template (or master) that the students would be customizing. I wanted to make it detailed and give them the instructions in the notes section. That way when they delete the questions, they could still view them in the notes section. After I completed my template, I had to make a copy for each group. This way, each group was getting their own unique link. To do this, I just went into file and make a copy. I changed the name to have their team name in parenthesis. Their team name was made from the ClassCraft groups that I use, but you can have them create team names before you start so that you can name it that way (for your own grading purposes).
This is where Schoology came in to play. I've been using it for about 1 month now after I switched from Edmodo. Students love it, and so do I! I decided I was going to message them their link through the messaging system. It took me roughly 15 minutes to send it out to 60 students, but come tomorrow, they will be able to log into their Schoology account, check their messages, and go to their presentation. Best part: Only their group and students attached in that e-mail can view the link. Also, we can use that e-mail thread as a discussion thread throughout the process to document questions and findings. What Google Hacks have you used in your classroom to do what you want?
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For the past couple months, I have been using ClassCraft, an online gamification website, to add game elements in my classroom. Because I don't really play video games or RPG's (Role Playing Games), I was a little nervous jumping in on this, but I felt like it was going to be beneficial for my students. ClassCraft is described as Class Dojo meets Minecraft, which makes the name make complete sense. I previously used Class Dojo, and while I still like the product, I wanted something more interactive and fresh. The layout of the website is very user-friendly, and uploading my students into the database was as easy as it possibly could be. I spent an afternoon reading the manual and trying to understand what exactly it was capable of doing. After I felt I had a good grasp of the game, I implemented into my afternoon class. Immediately, the students were excited. They logged in and customized their character to look like themselves and read about the super powers they could gain. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the game itself other than students earn Experience Points (XP) for good behavior, lose Health Points (HP) for bad behavior, and use Action Points (AP) to activate their super powers. After about a week of implementing this program into my everyday lesson, I saw improvements in not just behavior, but also academics. Students who normally didn't volunteer now did to earn XP throughout the lesson. I start most days off with a random event. This ranges from "They ate something poisonous, they all lose 10 HP" to "The Game Master [Teacher] will choose a song and you must give the Artist and Song Title to earn 250 XP." I think my students like these the most. On top of all of that, you can use it to choose random teams or players, give rewards (or punishments) for poor grades, and even embed questions/discussions in the software. It's highly customizable and a lot of fun for both the teacher and the educator. Even if you're not a "gamer," if you are looking for a great way to increase motivation, participation, and academic scores, ClassCraft is definitely something you should look into. Every beginning of the school year, my language arts class writes something called "The Shades of Summer" to kind of warm up for the year by telling me what they did that was exciting over the summer. In addition to the writing prompt, students usually draw themselves doing the activity in the lenses of the glasses. It is very fun for them and interesting for me. I was very fortunate to be nominated as a Keystone Technology Innovator this summer and attend a weeklong seminar at Kutztown University. It was the best educational experience of the my career. One of the things I wanted to implement immediately was green screening. This project was the perfect outlet! For those that are unfimiliar with an "App Smash," it is when you use multiple apps together to obtain one goal. Sometimes the app you need isn't made yet or it doesn't have every feature you need. That is when it becomes neccessary to smash apps together. For this particular Smash, I am using the iPad Mini Camera App, DoInk's Green Screen App, and Union Photo Blend App to achieve the ultimate green screen! After a quick search, I found two apps that could possibly do this: Photoshop Touch and Union. One was $9.99, the other was $1.99. So I ponied up the two bucks and purchased Union. From the moment I opened up the app, I was amazed at the functionality and ease of this app. Not only could I do exactly what I wanted, it was so much easier than if I did it via Photoshop on a computer! All I had to do was find images with one color backgrounds to input in the pictures and place them in there. Then, by simply using their magic wand, you can take out the solid background with one click! It's that easy!
To finalize the project, I used the Photos App on the iPad to find a filter to put over the photo. I'm not a huge fan of photo filters all the time, but I wanted something to tie the whole picture together and give it some uniformity. I think it did just that. Let me know what you think by tweeting me at @FlippingFifth. Thanks to @DoInkTweets for creating such a great app and helping me through this process! Make sure to give them a follow.
This year I will be "flipping" my math classroom to allow me to do more things inside the classroom. The major difference will be that students will receive instruction at home via videos I record or choose. One of the major concerns other educators have with this method is that how do you know when and if students are watching and what happens if the students do not have access to internet at home? I will address both of those concerns in this blog post. First off, if students are not watching, they are not only hurting themselves, but the entire process and class. The focus of flipping or blending your classroom is not what they do outside the classroom, but rather the projects and experiences inside the classroom. By not watching the videos, they will have to do so instead of activities during that period. This negates the real purpose of flipping the classroom which is: More time in the classroom to engaging self experience activities. They will get time to watch these videos inside of school, or outside of school. They can go at their own pace and even re-watch them multiple times before tests, quizzes, or other assignments. An added benefit is that they can log in using their Edmodo accounts! In the beginning of the year, I always tell my parents that e-mail is the best way to get a quick response from me. The problem is that I am not on my computer much throughout the day due to teaching and helping students. I sometimes do not even get to my computer at the end of the day. It's a real struggle. However, this year my problem has been solved. Last year, I piloted ClassDojo in my homeroom. The students absolutely loved it, and my parents appreciated the fact that they were getting instant feedback (both positive and negative). The students liked it because they were rewarded for doing good things. I enjoyed it so much that I will be using it with all of my classes this year! On top of using it for a behavioral management system, they have implemented a new feature call "ClassDojo Messenger. To see more about it, click the image below. This will allow me to privately or publicly text parents when something happens. This is all done without giving out my cell phone number or knowing the parents' number. I can use this for reminders, notifications, or even telling a parent how a student did on a particular test in the matter of seconds. So, I am asking you to sign up for it and download the free ClassDojo Messenger on iTunes/Android markets. For more information, please go to |
AuthorHere I will keep a journal of different things I have done in my class with some degree of success or failure. It is just important to document why something didn't work as opposed to why something did work. Archives
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