FTT - Nearpod

Turn Any Presentation Into an Interactive Presentation with Nearpod

@Joe_EdTech/@LisaBerghoff

Originally posted for DHS in 2015 - Revised and updated for 2017!

When I was teaching full time, I would frequently use PowerPoint Slide Shows in class. The secret I never told my students is that the important things that happened in class, the real moments of cognitive engagement, had little or nothing to do with the PowerPoint Slides. Mostly I used the slides to keep myself on topic - and sometimes that worked.

In class, I really wanted the students to engage in the conversation with me. I didn't want them to just spew historical facts back at me, I wanted them to think about the situations that arose, try to understand why people acted the way they did, postulate what they might have done differently, and so on. But what I mostly saw when I used PowerPoint was a furious dash to write down every word that was printed on the slide as if it were Gospel. And why did they do that? Somewhere along the line they learned that what was important in class would be on the next exam, and everything that was on the next exam would be written on the board or included in the slide show (and yes, I'm sure that I was complicit in that at some point).

Nearpod is a Web 2.0 tool that offers us a chance to change the game a little. If you use Nearpod, and your students download the app to their Chromebooks, you can push presentations to them so that each slide appears on the screen of their device. If they are of the type that wants to write down every word, they can actually just take screenshots and go back to engaging in the discussion in class. Not only that, though, Nearpod gives you a chance to insert polls, quizzes, and other interactive slides into your presentations. With all of the power of a student response system, you can embed formative assessment into your classroom presentations and ensure some level of universal participation. You can even have students create drawings or graphs using their track pads, and share individual drawings to the entire class.

At the risk of being accused of burying the lead, though, Nearpod also serves one other purpose for your 1:1 classroom. While I am still of the mindset that the best way to make sure that your students aren't distracted by the technology is to be engaging with your teaching, teachers who are new to the 1:1 environment often cite classroom management/device management as one of their major concerns. If you use Nearpod for classroom presentations, you can easily see which students are actively engaged in your classroom activity. There is even an "attendance" button on the top left of the teacher screen that lets you see if any of your students have navigated away from your Nearpod presentation. So, while it doesn't lock your students into one screen, it gives you clear evidence of who is engaged in the lesson, and who is not.

Here is Nearpod's short explanation of how it all works:

On the upside, Nearpod continues to offer updates that make the product better and more efficient. With a free personal account, you can present PPT presentations or presentations saved to PDF. You can also share those presentations with other teachers. Additionally, the company recently rolled out a feature that allows students to see quiz and poll results whether they are seeing a teacher led classroom session or an asynchronous session. On the downside, they would really like for you to pay for a school or district license, which really means that storage is limited in the free version. But, this is a pretty decent tool to use in a 1:1 classroom no matter which device your students are using.

Click here to get a free Nearpod account.

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Have you used Nearpod with your class? Or do you have another classroom presentation / classroom management tool that you use? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

FTT - CloudHQ Extension for Gmail

One Tech Tool That Solves Two Problems:

cloudHQ Gmail Label and Email Sharing

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

I've always been a fan of serendipity. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Over the summer, a friend of mine said that she really needed to share a folder of emails (in Gmail, it is called a Label) with a colleague. She wanted to be able to do that without opening each email individually and forwarding it. I did a quick search and found cloudHQ, a Chrome extension with great reviews that purported to do just that. So, I installed it - then I found out it was even better than advertised.

Once installed and activated (it may ask you to sign in and authorize it multiple times) you'll see a new button at the top of your Gmail inbox.

It is pretty simple to use. Once you have authorized the extension and click the button, you'll get a pop-up box prompting you for the name of the label you want to share and the email addresses of the people with whom you want to share. 

If that were the end of the story, it would be good enough. But it gets better. When you install the extension and open an email message, you'll see an entirely new set of menu options:

In addition to the usual choices, you have the option to change the name of the email (the pencil icon), share a link to the email (the chain link icon), or SNOOZE the email (the alarm clock icon). I personally don't have any use for the first two, but I've been looking for a good option to snooze emails for a long time. If I get an email in my inbox that requires some action on my behalf, but the action isn't required for a significant amount of time I can click the snooze icon and hide the email until it is important. 

You can choose from a list of preselected Snooze times, or you can select an exact date and time. The email will be hidden until that time and will then appear at the top of your inbox. 

cloudHQ is a "freemium" service, but I only use the free stuff. If you run your own business or have run an organization outside of school, it might be useful to look into the paid services for syncing and backing up emails. I would love to tell you that I researched this tool and knew all of this in advance of sending it to my friend. But I didn't. It was just serendipity.

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If you've found a better way to share labels or snooze emails, tell us about it below.

FTT - Boomerang for Gmail

Schedule Email and Reminders with Boomerang for Gmail

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

One of the things I have always loved about using Gmail is that it is completely customizable to fit my expectations of email and, because it is used professionally by so many schools and businesses, there have been tons of third-party applications and extensions developed to give each individual the user experience and functionality they need to be successful.

My favorite extension for Gmail is called Boomerang and it allows me to:

• Schedule and email to be sent at a later date and/or time.
• Schedule a reminder for an event or a deadline.
• Hide an email for a time and schedule it to return when I need it.
• Get reminders to follow up on emails you've sent that haven't been answered.
• Find out who has opened an email you've sent or get "read receipts."

Start by installing Boomerang from the Chrome Web Store (you can find it here), then you'll notice that you have some additional controls in your inbox:

First you'll see the red "Send Later" button. Then you can schedule an email to be sent at a specific point in the future, whether you are logged into your computer or not. You might, for instance, compose an email on Friday afternoon and schedule it to be sent to your class as a reminder on Sunday night. Then it will automatically be sent whether you have time to get to your computer on the weekend or not.

If you click the box next to the Boomerang icon, you will be sent a reminder to follow up on an email that you've sent for which you've received no response. If I check the box as seen above, I will be reminded of this email if I've received no reply in 2 days.

Clicking the blue envelope icon allows you to receive receipts when people open your email, or you can manually check to see if an email has been opened.

Here's the official video on most of the basic features of Boomerang:

But there is a lot more. With the advanced features of Boomerang, you can track responses to your emails, set recurring messages, add notes to your Boomeranged messages, and schedule messages from your phone or tablet.

Boomerang's help page is fairly extensive, and includes video instructions to accompany most of the frequently asked questions:

Boomerang Help Page: http://www.boomeranggmail.com/faq.html
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If you have another extension or Gmail lab that you use frequently, tell us about it in the comment section below.

FTT - Google Calendar

Getting Started With Google Calendar

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Even before I started in District 113, I've had teachers and administrators ask me about the best way to take advantage of digital learning platforms. There are tons of great things to do, but my experience tells me that the biggest game changer is the ability to share live digital calendars with our students. As an adult, I have grown to rely on calendar reminders, emails, and text messages to remind me of important upcoming events. I know that a simple calendar with due dates and test dates would have made me a better student in high school. 

That's why I was always stunned by the fact that we had teachers and staff on one digital platform and our students on another. In order to share calendars with students, we were asking our teachers to live in two different digital worlds. Our switch to Gmail changes all of that and I'm really excited about the possibilities.

There is too much to know about Google Calendars to share everything in one post, but today I want to focus on what I believe are most important things to get started using Google Calendar well: settings, sharing, viewing and hiding calendars, editing events.

Settings:

Every Google App has its own settings so that you can customize it to work the way you'd like:

There are two ways to get to your calendar settings. The first is to click the pull down menu bar from "My calendars" on the left hand side of the screen:

Or, as with every Google App, you can click the settings gear in the upper right hand corner:

The first thing I changed in settings was "Default event duration." In Outlook, the default for a meeting was always 30 minutes. I like to events set at 60 minutes. But you have several different choices. However, the most important part about settings has to do with how you view your calendar. I like to look at it this way:

I want to see the whole week, including Saturday and Sunday, at one time. Notice at the top of Google Calendar, you can choose to look at your calendar by Day, Week, Month, 4 Days, or as an Agenda. However, one of those will be a default view. In other words, every time you open your calendar it will default to...something. I like the Week view. But in settings, you can choose any of them.

You can also set a Custom view for your calendar. If you only want to see a five day calendar, you can make that a Custom view and then set that as your default.

Sharing Your Calendar:

You can change share your calendar with colleagues, spouses, or students by clicking on the pull-down menu bar next to your individual calendar and selecting "Share this Calendar" from the list:

I don't expect everyone to be as open and public as I am, but my calendar is shared with anyone who wants to see it. People who add my calendar can only see when I'm free or busy, and they can't make any changes to my calendar, but anyone can see my calendar. By default, we should share our calendars within District 113 with free/busy times so that admin assistants and department chairs can see your calendars and propose meetings during common free times.

But, you can also choose to share your calendar with individuals. In the example I've included below, I've shared my calendar with several of my colleagues and my personal Gmail account with different permission levels. If someone sets appointments for me, I want them to be able to see all events and be able to edit events.

Viewing Calendars:

In the example calendar I posted above, I can actually see 3 calendars at one time. The first is my normal work calendar, which shows my scheduled school events. The second is my calendar for home, which shows when my daughter's concerts and school events are, when my wife or daughter has something important planned for us to do, and when I need to mentally prepare for family coming to visit (this shared home calendar has prevented many arguments and created some measure of family peace - I highly recommend a shared calendar at home). The third calendar doesn't have many events on it, but it is the most important. It shows when I have tickets to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. For easy differentiation, my work events are in grey. My home events are in red. And my Star Wars events are in Orange.

You can hide or view your different calendars by clicking on their titles on the left hand side of your Calendar screen. In the example below, I can see the Joseph Taylor, Birthdays, Brian Verisario, and DHS Library calendars. However, the Free Tech Tools Tuesday calendar is hidden (The color block is white and the text is greyed). 

If I click on the Birthdays, Brian Verisario, and DHS Library calendars, they will be hidden from my overall view. But all I have to do is click them again to make them reapper. If you decide that you want to get rid of a calendar, or if you want to change the default color for a calendar, take your mouse and hover over the particular calendar, then select the pull down menu for the calendar:

From here you can select "Hide this calendar from the list," which means it won't appear on your calendar or in your list of calendars any more. Or, you can simply choose a new color for easy differentiation.

Editing Events:

While you can do an event quick add by simply clicking on the calendar and typing in the name of an event, you can add a ton of information and invite other people to events by clicking the "Edit event" button.

 

At the top, you can add a title, change the date and/or time, or make the event an "All day" or "Repeating" event. You can also put the event on a different calendar. For instance, I could use the pull down bar next to Calendar to add this to my home calendar instead of my work calendar. You can add a description, add an attachment (especially useful if your are using this with students), color code individual events and add guests. My favorite part about Google Calendar, though, is the fact that you can decide what notifications to add - and how frequently. And I can choose to be notified by email, web browser, or SMS text notification.

By the way, I would love to be able to set the calendar so that all of my students can be notified of major events through SMS text messaging - but I can't. These are individual settings. However, in calendar settings, everyone can set up default notifications. So, you can walk your class through that process or send a short hand out home so that parents know that kids can set up text notifications.

These are just the basics for getting started. There is a lot more information to come, and both schools will be setting up hands on training sessions in the very near future.

FTT - New Google Sites

Google Put The "NEW" in Google Sites!

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

I recently had a chat with a good friend who is in sales. We were talking about the holiday shopping season and buying trends. My friend made a comment that I found particularly interesting. She said, "It's very easy to sell people what they already have and love".  This certainly seemed true when I went home and looked into my closet. I am only a little bit embarrassed to share with you that I own more than 3 pairs of black pants and several gray tops.  I try to mix it up, but find myself gravitating back to what feels comfortable and what works for me. 

Her comment made me think about our relationship with Google products. We love that we can collaborate, easily share, auto-save, and track our changes on Google docs, slides, sheets, forms, and drawings. The one product that has been a bit of an anomaly is Google Sites, Google's website creation tool. For the past few years, teachers and students have commented that Google Sites is not at all intuitive.  It doesn't have those wonderful features that make us go back to Google products over and over again. 

Over the summer, Google announced that a new version of sites was being tested with a small group of customers. Our district staff was chosen to be part of the Early Adopter Program so we could get our hands on the new version of Google Sites as soon as possible. About two weeks ago, our students were granted access to the new Google Sites via Google's rapid release program. 

Teachers who have used the new Google Sites are pleased that those familiar and favorite features of other Google products are now part of the website creator. We can now hang Google Sites in our closets right next to docs and all of those black pants! Yes, it means that I need to re-do all of my Google Sites training videos, but I am excited about the new features that we now have. 

Here Are The Main Features In The New Google Sites:

1. Drag and Drop Editing: 

The "classic sites" version has several drop down menus and settings to change. The new Google Sites allows you to add items to your webpages by dragging and dropping to add content and rearrange items, including images and other media. 

2. Real Time Collaboration and Save:

Yes, you can add editors to your classic sites. However, only one person can be editing on a page at a time. Everyone else is locked out while the page is being edited. The new Sites allows for real-time collaboration much like multiple editors on a Google doc. Multiple editors can work on a web page at the same time and see the changes happen live. Also, your edits will automatically save. When you are ready to go live, you can publish to your organization or to the web. Once you publish, you can continue to edit your site. 

3. Design For Multiple Devices:

Classic sites users know that webpages often only display well on standard computer monitors. This is not realistic as we know that our students, parents, and other teachers are often using devices like smartphones and tablets. The ability for the display to adjust and scale to other screens is called responsive design. The new Google Sites themes use responsive design so they look great no matter what size screen you are using. 

4. Very Easy Access To All Of Your Drive Content And Ability To Embed External Content:

Since Google basically started from scratch with the new Google Sites, it makes sense that there is more streamlined connectivity with all of your content stored in Drive. You can also grab an embed code to embed external content, such as an article or favorite blog post. That's a hint!

Do not panic if you are using classic sites and are not ready to make a switch!

Google has announced that "Classis Sites will continue to exist in parallel to new Sites as we add capabilities to new Sites that are similar to those found in classic Sites". Beginning in 2018, Google will send timelines and instructions for gradually migrating from classic to new sites. 

In other words, the new Sites is very pared down right now and as they are adding more features they will keep classic sites open. They will offer advice and instructions on how to make the switch eventually from classic to new. 

If you are curious and want to see what it looks like, just click the Sites icon in your apps doc, which is the collection of nine dots in the upper right corner of your screen. When you click the red "create" button, you can choose new sites and check it out. If you are just starting projects where your students are creating sites, I would go ahead and have them create using the new version of Sites.  

As always, I'm here to help you figure it all out, or just offer some moral support as you try these new tools with your students. 

Here is a 3 minute video created by GSuite. It shows you how to get started using the new Google Sites. 

And for those of you who are reading to the end, I want you to know that I am thankful for you!

Here is a little gift. It's a video from my favorite president: Kid President. He offers up 25 reasons to be thankful. I hope it makes you smile. He tends to have that effect on people.

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Are you using the new Google Sites? Feel free to share your comments below.

Do you have things to add to the list of reasons to be thankful? Please share!

FTT - uBlock Origin

Decommercializing the Web for the Classroom (and Maybe Home, Too)

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Today we are proud to start featuring Free Tech Tools proposed by some of our classroom teachers. This guest post is from DHS Social Studies Teacher, Dan Kim (@TheMrKim).

I had always considered myself to be a price-savvy, prudent consumer who wasn't susceptible to the same greasy advertisement schemes, ploys, and tactics that suckered the rest of society.

And then I began shopping for an engagement ring.

One of the best and worst parts of planning a proposal is the immense pressure of creating that perfect moment of astonishment and surprise.The mental gymnastics involved in somehow discretely acquiring a person's ring size, or moving the little ring box from its original hiding place in the bathroom closet, into a much safer, much smellier left tennis shoe in the middle of the night, speaks volumes of the necessity for discretion.

You could then imagine my horror when after a few nights of researching engagement rings online, my browsers were now full of engagement ring related ads and pop-ups basically screaming at my girlfriend that things were about to get real.

Now if you've done any amount of online shopping, you will either find it creepy or helpful that firms will often keep tabs on your search history to populate relevant ads on your websites. Led by internet giants like Google and Facebook, ads have become more and more sophisticated and pronounced.

IMBD Site WITH Ads

This is where a neat, light-weight Chrome Extension called uBlock Origin comes in. uBlock Origin will filter and block the majority of ads that you see and experience on the web. Without going too deep into the ethics of ad blocking, it is safe to say that ads are detrimental to the classroom environment.

IMBD Site WITHOUT Ads - uBlock Origin

Ever try to show a YouTube video in class that was preceded by an inappropriate, awkward, and unskippable commercial? Or see a popular website taken over by large, obnoxious advertisements? uBlock Origin can help.

Perks of uBlock Origin:

• Websites will load faster
• Mobile users won't have to waste data on bandwidth-hogging commercials or advertisements. 
• Filters advertisements that contain viruses, malware, and phishing messages.
• Block all ads on YouTube

Once installed, users will not have to do anything to enjoy the benefits of uBlock Origin. It's a simple plug-and-play extension that works so well that at times I forget it’s even installed!

Now there are a few things to consider once the extension is installed. Some websites have caught on to ad-blocking, and will not allow users access to their sites until the ad-block is disabled. Users can simply pause uBlock Origin by clicking on the giant power button on the menu on the top right corner of your browser.

Are ads disrupting your online educational experience? Feel free to post comments below!
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Gotta free tech tool you'd like to share? Contact Lisa or Joe to be a guest blogger!

FTT - Custom Search

Custom Search With Google

@LisaBerghoff/@joe_edtech

I grew up in a time when phones had cords, photos were taken with film that needed to be developed, and research was done with encyclopedias. I am amazed each and every day that my students have current, quality information at their fingertips and that communicating with experts on the other side of the world is possible with the click of a mouse. When students have questions, one of my favorite phrases to use in my class is "you have a very powerful computer in front of you, let's look it up!"  They will eagerly go to Google and type in a few words or a phrase to search. Inevitably, they will get somewhere in the order of 23,000,000 responses in .41 seconds. How amazing is that!? However, the excitement starts to wane as my students begin to sift through their results. Many educators believe that proper search skills are imperative for success in the future and I agree. Google has a whole curriculum for teachers about effective search skills. Click here to access Google Search Education. 

It can be tricky to teach search skills when the internet can be such an unwieldy place to learn. I was at a #GAFEtalk sponsored by TextHelp last week and learned about an incredible tool called Custom Search.  I don't know how I never came across this before but I'm happy to share it with you now. 

Custom Search was developed for users to add a search engine to their websites. When you are on a website, you may notice a search bar that says "search this site". It allows you to search for content that is located on just the website you are on. 

This has HUGE implications for the classroom.

Here is an example:

In my biology class, we are currently studying trophic levels in Yellowstone National Park. I want my students to search for information, but I don't really want them to search the entire internet and then spend their time sorting through potentially bad sites. I can create a custom search for them, it looks just like a Google search, but will allow them to search within certain sites, such as NationalGeographic.com or NationalParkService.gov. I might want some of my students to search a site like newsela.com, where they can adjust the reading level. I will create a custom search for them and that will be their platform for finding information.

• Begin by going to the Custom Search Homepage. 
• Click "create a custom search engine" or "new search engine". 
• In the sites to search box, type one or more sites you want to include in the search results. You can include any sites on the web. Don't worry, you can add more later.
• In the "name of the search engine" field, type in a name to identify this search engine. I will call mine Yellowstone Research.
• When you are done, click "create".
• Click on the box that says "public URL" and that is the link you will share with your students though your website, Hapara, Google Classroom, or however you share digital information in your class.
• You can make several adjustments to your custom search including turning off image search, enable speech input for the search box, format the layout of the results, and see some of the analytics for your custom search.

Click here to try the Yellowstone Research custom search engine I just created.

Here is what it looks like:

5 Ways/Reasons to Use Google Custom Search

1. Easy differentiation. The search looks just like Google search but some students will do better with different search results.

2. Really focus and hone in on specific websites. Tired of students trying to take the easy way out with wikipedia? Not anymore!
Save time and frustration when students are searching.

3. Enable students to search and choose, but just stay within the sites you want them to use.

4. It allows students to search without needing to leave the page or site that you are on.

5. Your students will be researching sites that you have already vetted as high quality.

Are you using Google Custom Search? 

What are some ways you would (or do) use this in the classroom?

Go ahead and post comments below. 

FTT - EDpuzzle and PlayPosit

http://nyphotographic.com/

Alternatives to Zaption: EDpuzzle and PlayPosit

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

For good and for ill, technology is always changing. The company that created and supported Zaption, one of our favorite "Free Tech Tools," was sold and the new company announced that the product would be taken offline.

The good news is that while we tend to highlight our favorite online tools, there are usually pretty decent alternatives in the EdTech world. EDpuzzle and PlayPosit (formerly eduCanon) are both great alternatives for teaching with online video. Like Zaption, both allow you to take ANY online video, embed questions, and assign it to students or groups of students. 

EDpuzzle 

Edpuzzle.com is a free Web2.0 tool that is designed to help teachers make any digital video interactive. With a few clicks of a button, teachers can add personalized introductions, comments, or questions to any portion of any digital video available through the products listed to the left. Furthermore, the videos can be assigned to groups or classes, and teachers can monitor student progress as they view the videos and answer questions, and the videos can be locked so students can't skip important parts just to answer the questions.

Videos and lessons created on Edpuzzle.com are public and searchable within the platform. The idea is that we are all creating products that could potentially help other students. So part of the power is that you can simply log into to Edpuzzle.com and find a video lesson that has already been created and assign that to your students. You don't always have to start from scratch. 

To get started, simply select your video source and use the embedded video editing guides to add voice-overs, comments, or questions. As an added bonus, EDpuzzle.com integrates nicely with Google Classroom, allowing you to easily import your roster and share "puzzles."

PlayPosit - formerly eduCanon

PlayPosit works pretty much the same way EDpuzzle.com does except that it has been designed to integrate nicely with any LMS, whether you use Google Classroom, Edmodo, or Schoology. Rather than "puzzles," you create and assign "bulbs" to your students.

The best way to see the way PlayPosit works is to try it out. Click here to open a public "bulb" created for a Ted Talk video. Notice, you'll have to answer the embedded questions before you can move on in the video.

Here's how my friend Mike uses PlayPosit in his classroom:

I use PlayPosit for a couple of purposes. One of them is to disseminate information via the flipped classroom model. Students can access the lesson that I've created in PlayPosit and watch the video presentation for class discussion the following day. The best part of PlayPosit is that during the presentation, kids have to answer a few questions during the video. This serves the purpose of not only checking for accuracy in their viewing, but also as a focus point. It also allows me as a teacher to design questions that are timed to emphasize the points that I wish for them to know. Finally, the questions are required. The video will not go on until the question is answered. It is a creative and interesting way to get started with the flipped classroom model.

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Have you used EDpuzzle or PlayPosit in your classroom? Tell us how. OR tell us if you use a different tool for embedding interactive videos in your classroom.

FTT- Recap

Video Reflection Made Easy with Recap!

@LisaBerghoff/@joe_edtech

More and more, we are asking our students to reflect on their learning. We want them to think about their thinking and we want to know what they are thinking! Having a conversation with each student to hear about their thought process and connections they are making is an unbelievably powerful tool for teachers. Regular conversations are often tricky to schedule, time-consuming and then there is the matter of what the rest of the class is busy doing while you are meeting with each individual student. Many teachers have been dabbling with the idea of video reflection as a means for more frequent formative assessment. Given that each of our students has a Chromebook with a webcam, this is a fantastic idea.

I am so excited to introduce you to my new favorite free tech tool, Recap, the free video response and reflection app! This app gives you a secure, and user friendly way to use video in the classroom. It is brought to us by a company called Swivl. They make that amazing Robot camera that moves as you move around the classroom. They completely understand the power of video images for learning.

Recap allows students to respond on video to questions created by their teacher and then it asks them to rate their response. Student responses are recorded privately, within the app, and teachers can then review answers all in one place. This easy to use format gives teachers insights into how individual students are thinking, while also collecting data on the whole class. Since Recap can be used on any device and is so easy to use, it can be utilized for frequent video formative assessments. There are many options for sharing responses so teachers can highlight or share responses with parents, case managers, other teachers, or an entire class.

How it works...

• Teachers assign a question or group of questions to a student, a group of students, or a whole class. The questions can be in text or video format. The teacher can decide how long the student responses can be, the shortest is 30 seconds and the longest is 2 minutes. Students do not have to use the whole time. 

• As students respond, teachers can watch their videos and leave written feedback for them. They can also share responses with other students for peer review, teachers, or parents. 

• Teachers can look at the whole class's data and see how they rated their responses.

Ready to give Recap a try?

Just go to Letsrecap.com and sign in as a teacher. From there, you can have your students create private student accounts or you can use your class pin and add student names. When your students enter your class, they will click on their name. 

When you sign up, you will be given a "demo class" with some student video responses already there for you to try. You can set up assignments and give feedback in your demo class just to try it out and see how it works.

Here is a 2 minute quick start video from Recap:

Recap Quick Start from Swivl on Vimeo.


Are you using video reflection in your classroom? Going to give Recap a try? Feel free to comment below!

FTT - Google Form Quizzes

Creating Quizzes Using Google Forms

by

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Google forms has always been a great tool for formative assessment. In the past, though, we've had to use an add-on called Flubaroo for grading. However, over the summer, Google released a major update to Forms allowing you to turn any form into a self-grading quiz with the flip of a switch. Follow the directions below to get started.

-Skip Joe's Long Winded Directions - Go Straight to the Video Demo-

Start by creating your quiz as you always would. By the way, even though you automatically collect your students' email addresses in the process, I think it is a good idea to create questions for their first and last names. I'd also create a question for the period of your class. These quick steps will make it easy for you to view and sort the responses in spreadsheets if you choose to do so.

I recommend using short text items for students to enter their
names and the class period.

You can then start asking questions. Google Forms will automatically multiple-choice, checkbox, dropdown, linear scale, and multiple-choice grid items. Type in the questions and answer choices like you always have. Then click the "gear," or settings icon, in the upper right-hand corner of the form screen. You'll get a pop-up window with three tabs.

On the "General" tab, you can restrict the quiz to district users, automatically collect their email addresses (which is very important if you want to automatically send their scores to them), and limit each user to only 1 response.

There's one other big change on this page. If you uncheck the box next to "Response receipts," your students will not have the option of having a copy of the quiz and their answers emailed to them.

On the "Quizzes" tab, you'll need to first click the slider next to "Make this a quiz." Then you can make some decisions on when students get results, and how much information they receive. (Each option has a little question mark after it. Simply hover over the question mark to learn more about the option.)

Once you click save you'll need to set up your answer key.

Underneath each quiz item, you'll see a link titled "ANSWER KEY."

Click that link and you'll have a slightly different view of your quiz items. Now you can select the right answer and decide how many points each item is worth.

When you are finished making the quiz, click the "SEND" button to share the form with your students. 

You can email the form directly to your students or you can copy the link and post it to your Google Classroom, website, or Google Plus Community.

After your students take the quiz, you can view the results in a spreadsheet, or you can view responses in the form itself. 

Here is a pretty detailed video on getting started with Google Quizzes from fellow Google Trainer Mark Repp:

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This is meant to get you started with the Google Form Quiz feature. Lisa and I will share some advanced user tips in future blog posts. 

FTT - Screencastify / CaptureCast

Photo Available on Pixabay CCO

When One Door Closes - Find a New Door

Two Great Alternatives to Snagit

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Earlier this month, TechSmith announced that it was ending support for most of its free educational programs, including SnagIt, which had been the easiest screencasting tool available for the Chromebook. It happens. TechSmith will make most of their programs available for the cost of a license (per student no doubt). So, let me be the first to declare it in no uncertain terms - SnagIt is DEAD TO ME. With resources tight and other options out there, I don't see any reason to pay TechSmith for this service - and I think this will hurt their overall educational market.

So, we move on. There are two other great options for screencasting on Chromebooks, and both of them have a few more features than that old program we used to use. CaptureCast and Screencastify are both free and available on the Chrome Web Store for your students to use. 

Screencastify is a free Chrome extension available on the Chrome Web Store. Once you've installed the extension, and given it access to your Google Drive Account, the Screencastify icon appears in your Chrome tool bar. Click it and you can record an active Chrome Tab, the entire internal display - great for recording a full screen presentation, or recording from your Chromebook's camera. If you are flipping your lessons, you might consider selecting the option to embed the webcam in the bottom-right corner of the screen. That way your students connect with you and not just your content.

One of the features I really like about Screencastify is that you can pause your screen recording and continue with the same recording later on, handy for transitions or breaks in the recording.

When you finish recording, you have the option of making the video a little more polished by trimming the beginning or ending. Also, assuming you checked this option when setting it up, your video will never be stored locally on your computer. It will automatically be saved to a Screencastify folder in "My Drive."

Here are two sets of directions on getting started with Screencastify. First, traditional written directions using Google Slides:

Secondly, video instructions posted on YouTube (I originally created this for a classroom of students, so you can share this with your classes if you want):

The one problem that I've encountered with ScreenCastify is that it doesn't work on older Chromebooks (like the original Samsungs) and it won't work if the students have saved a large number of files to their local storage on the Chromebook.

CaptureCast is new to me, but it works very much the same way. One of the differences between CaptureCast and Screencastify is that CaptureCast will allow you to link to either YouTube or Vimeo, if you prefer Vimeo. Here is the official getting started video for CaptureCast:

Both of these tools allow you to record your screen and use your webcam to record your face while you are presenting. That is a nice way to add a social presence to a flipped, blended, or personalized lesson.