FTT - Blooket (Blue-Kit)

 

Blooket ("Blue-Kit")

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Kahoot, Gimkit, PearDeck Flashcard Factory, and Quizizz are a few of the more popular trivia-style classroom review games that have been wildly popular with educators and students alike in the last few years. Just like how basketball can trick people into having fun while running, these review games add some excitement and competition to the learning and reviewing process. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and unique little twists that are unique to their platforms. While understanding the risk of being too derivative, here is yet another exciting addition to the review game market: Blooket (pronounced: "Blue-Kit.")

Blooket goes in the same direction as Gimkit in the ways that the latter gamified the review process. Instead of "just" having trivia-style questions, Gimkit had different game modes that students would participate in with upgrades and strategies. Blooket offers a variety of customizable game modes that, according to their website, allow us to "ditch the old, redundant classroom review game(s)..." Having played a game mode titled, "Fishing Frenzy" with my homeroom, I can certainly attest to the "Fun Factor" in catching megalodons while answering questions.  

So much is still the same. Staff can create an account and create what is known as a "Question Set." Mostly multiple-choice style questions that you can manually add, import from Quizlet, or import as CSV files or Comma Separated Values. Matching its competitors, Blooket also provides a trove of popular question sets provided by blooket or created by other users. 

Once you choose the question set you want your students to engage with, you and your students get to choose from a variety of game modes like:

• Gold Quest
• Crypto Hack
• Tower Defense 2
• Racing
• Classic
• Fishing Frenzy
• Battle Royale

and on and on. 

Clicking on each game mode gives you and your students a simple, brief explanation. Students can play by themselves asynchronously, or live modes can have up to 60-300 individuals (depending on your subscription). Luckily, students don't have to sign-up for this with their emails which won't mess with COPA rules. After you choose a game mode you can decide how long you want to play, and customize parts of the game mode like Map selection or dinosaur types (I know, it's getting exciting).

Students go to play.blooket.com and enter the unique Game ID provided. You can randomize player names and you can also delete names you deem less than appropriate. And the rest is pretty straight-forward. I figured since my homeroom unanimously voted to play Blooket that it must be fun, and like I said, I can verify the "fun factor." Give it a try! There are a number of different game modes to choose from. Let us know your favorite game mode below!

FTT - Google Slides and Canva

Google Slides AND Canva

Two Great Tools That Go Great Together 

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

There used to be these commercials for Reese's peanut butter cups where someone would be walking down the street eating a chocolate bar and someone else would be walking towards them holding a jar of peanut butter. Inevitably, they would crash into each other, get upset, then they would realize that the chocolate/peanut butter combo is actually delicious and then the Reeses logo would appear. I don't know why but whenever I see two things that work well together it makes me think of that commercial. Also, Halloween candy is prominent in the stores right now so that probably has something to do with it.

Anyway, here are two other things that go great together! Google Slides and Canva seem to be competing but actually, if you know what you're doing you can reap the benefits of both. Here is what you need to know.

Why not just use Canva? Why not continue to just use Google slides?

These are valid questions. Canva's presentations are great and you can certainly present right in Canva. This is a valid option for sure. However, Google slides presentations have some features that Canva does not, and vice versa. I'm here to help you decide what tool is the right one for your particular needs and also to show you how they can work together. 

New-ish features in Google slides.

You may have noticed that when you are presenting with slides you have some options. One in particular was just rolled out. The new feature is that there is now a pen tool that you can use so you can underline, circle, or draw directly onto your slides while you are presenting. There is also a laser pointer as well as the ability to auto-generate closed captions while you are speaking. These tools can be really helpful when you are working with students who struggle to pay attention, have limited hearing, or could use some extra visuals. I really appreciate that you can adjust where the captions appear and also the size of the font. Remember that in Google slides you also have the Q&A feature that allows students to ask questions without interrupting the presentation, as well as the ability to present using a remote or another device like your phone. 

Here is what the menu of options looks like:

Features You Might Not Know About In Canva:

When you are presenting with Canva, there are some Magic Shortcuts that are super
fun and can help students attend, but they are not accessibility tools. Want to blur the screen before a big reveal? Shoot confetti to celebrate a great accomplishment? How about a mic drop? These are all available in Canva's Magic Shortcuts. Canva presentations also has a built-in timer and you can select the music that it makes while it counts down and then comes to an end. You can also present using another device by scanning the qr code when you click "share remote control".

Here are the menus in Canva:

How Do I Put These Together?

You can create in Canva, save to your Google Drive, and then open in Google Slides. You can also start in Google Slides and bring your presentation into Canva. I have short videos showing both ways. Feel free to share these with your students. I find myself most often creating in Canva and then presenting in Google Slides.

Starting in Canva:

1. Create your presentation.

2. Click the share button and choose Google Drive then choose a folder. I have one that I call Canva Presentations.

3. Make sure the file type is PPTX and make sure all pages have been selected.

4. Click save.

It is now saved in your Google Drive! Now all you need to do is go to your drive and right-click and choose "open with" Google Slides.

Starting in Google Slides:

1. Create your Google Slides presentation and make sure to name it.

2. Go to Canva and click "Projects" then click "Add New".

3. Choose "Import From App" and choose Google Drive.

4. Locate your slides presentation file. It will say it's a document, that's ok.

5. Click "Upload" and you will see it listed under "Designs".

I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing more about how you and your students are using both Canva and Google Slides together! Want to know more? Feel free to reach out with your questions, ideas, and thoughts.

FTT - Schedule your Schoology Updates

 

Schedule Your Schoology Updates

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Can you believe it's been about 6 years since District 113 adopted Schoology as our primary learning management system?! 6 years of grade setups, cross-linking, and course tabs. 6 years of "add materials," folders, and updates. Besides the new gradebook syncing system, not much has changed in the Schoology ecosystem and last week I couldn't decide if I had a problem with that. On one hand, it represented stability, and continuity, and control. On the other, I thought about stagnation and plateaus. Don't fix it if it ain't broke? 

Either way, today we get to introduce you to a "new" feature regarding Schoology's updates: You now get to create and schedule your updates in advance! WOW. Ground-breaking news for you, I am sure. For those of you who have tirelessly created countless updates for your students for the last half decade, I hope this simple change provides some measure of efficiency to your planning.

Step 1: Installation

• Simply go to www.updatescheduler.com and click "Sign in to schedule updates." 
• Scroll down the page and type in our district's custom domain, lms.dist113.org in the box and click continue.
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
• You should see your account name and district. Prove your humanity, and click "Approve."

Step 2: Implementation

• Now you can bookmark this page. If you haven't caught on yet, this is a 3rd party page that allows you to organize and schedule your updates to all of your various Schoology course pages.
• Choose a course from the left-hand column, and write and schedule your update. It's as easy as that. If you'd like, you can test this out by writing a test update that triggers in a minute. Go to your Schoology course page to confirm.

Again, nothing too groundbreaking here, but a welcome addition to our tried and true platform: Schoology. Good luck and let us know how we can help!

FTT - What Our Students Need To Know About Artificial Intelligence

 What Our Students Need To Know About Artificial Intelligence

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

If you have seen the movie War Games with a young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, you will recall that the computer comes to the conclusion that "the only winning move is not to play." If you have not seen it, sorry for the spoiler but that movie is 40 years old so I felt safe dropping the ending here. It's still definitely worth watching, and I'm pretty sure you can stream it from Amazon video. Anyway, we are now at at inflection point with AI in education. We can work to ban, discourage, and attach negativity to AI use or we can learn and teach about it, and explain to students how to be responsible with it because it is most definitely not going anywhere. To simply not play is not an option here. 

What is AI? As you have seen in previous posts, artificial intelligence is a catchall term for technology that mimics human intelligence to perform tasks and iteratively improve. Subfields include machine learning and deep learning. AI is only as good as its data set and there are plenty of examples of why we should be critical of results and especially aware of bias that exists in all data.

I found this video to be extremely interesting.

But while we are learning and growing our capacity to understand AI and its impact on the world, we need to simultaneously teach and model responsible AI use for our students. Furthermore, just as you need to know how to effectively enter search terms into a search engine, or recognize when a spellcheck or grammar check should be ignored, in order for our students to use AI effectively, there are certain skills they need to learn.  We want our students to be able to use AI to solve real problems and build useful solutions. 

Here are the top skills needed to help our students be purposeful and responsible with effective AI use:

1. Good Output Starts With Good Input- Know How To Effectively Ask

In order to get the output you want, you need to know how to make a precise input request. Just like with our Google Drive, Gmail, or spreadsheets, if you are not good at searching you will be frustrated that you can't find what you are looking for or get the results you want. 

2. Critically Assess Outputs

Outputs cannot be blindly trusted and our students need to be able to evaluate the responses they receive. I can imagine the educational shift and outrage when students were allowed to bring calculators to school. The math teachers must have thought they would soon be out of a job. Of course, we now understand that when you use a calculator you need to evaluate the answer that you see and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?" Is this the type of response I am expecting? How does this response fit in with my knowledge of the question? Thinking critically is key to utilizing AI as a problem-solving tool. 

3. Know What's Underneath The Hood: Basic Data Literacy

The AI tool is only as good as the data set that it is using. Students must have a working knowledge of data analysis, data collection, and visualization. AI relies on very large data sets and in order to make proper use of AI our students need to know about the data being used.

4. Know What An Algorithm Is

Basically understood as a set of rules or patterns for problem-solving, our brains use algorithms constantly and AI tools rely on them. Our students need to have a familiarity with the fundamentals of how algorithms work and their potential applications.

5. Understand Problem-Solving

AI is all about solving complex problems. Developing problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and the ability to decompose problems into manageable parts is crucial. Our students need to know how to zoom in as well as zoom out of a big problem, when they understand the pieces that make up the whole, they will be better equipped to use AI well.

6. Ethics 

Understanding the ethical implications of AI and data use is essential. Students should be aware of privacy concerns and responsible AI development.  We can teach ethics while not having all the answers. Let's work together with our students to discuss and figure out how to manage the ethical implications of AI use both in and out of the classroom. 

Want more information about AI in education? Feel free to reach out!