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"What can we do to motivate our students who need it the most?" my principal recently asked.

As a teacher, I, of course, had many thoughts. But those thoughts are just that: mine. So I asked my principal a simple question: Why don't we ask the students?

So we did.

We sat down with a group of sophomores-a majority of whom are in the bottom three percent of the class academically. We told the students to be completely open and honest. Nothing they shared would have a negative influence on our treatment or evaluation of them. They were given a few days to think about factors that affect their motivation in school.

What we had intended to be a quick conversation sparked a deep discussion consuming the whole 70-minute period. Many themes arose-themes worth sharing with you because change begins with understanding. The most common motivation killers according to our students are:

1. Bombing a Big Test

We all know that there are students who show understanding of content and work hard on assignments, only to bomb tests because of cognitive challenges, stress, or any other host of "test-taking factors." More than a few students said things like, "I hate how I can be doing well on all my assignments and projects, then fail a test, and all of a sudden I'm failing the class."

For a struggling student, falling into a pit with a low grade-without systems to recover-is a recipe for learned helplessness. Many students remarked how frustrating it was to struggle in a class and reach a point where their efforts wouldn't matter.

2. No Opportunities to Revise

Surprisingly, students weren't griping for those final-week extra-credit chances to inflate grades. They wanted chances to revise tests, essays, and assignments throughout a class. They wanted the chance to turn things in late-even with penalties. In short, they simply wanted a chance.

My realization here was how much grading practices can contribute to learned helplessness. It makes sense: If I don't feel like my effort will be enough to help me pull myself out of a failure pit, then what's the point? As a teacher, then, I must consider what opportunities I can provide that shift students back into an internal locus of control.

3. Too Much Lecturing

Students frequently mentioned how often their teachers talk-sometimes the whole class period. They stressed how hard it is to stay motivated when they just sit and listen.

One of the most common suggestions students gave for boosting motivation was hands-on opportunities. They acknowledged that not every lesson can involve a lab or project. But they said they'd at least like to be able to talk about and share their ideas or practice on their own more often.

4. Poor Understanding

Students lose motivation when they don't understand. Seems like a no-brainer. But the learning here is that teachers aren't intentionally trying to destroy student understanding. Just the opposite was true: Teachers were trying to help students "get" it, but the understanding was lost in translation. Among the most common comments were:
"I hate when I ask teachers to explain something again, and they say, 'Weren't you paying attention!?' They assumed I was being lazy, but I really was trying. It just didn't make sense." "I can't stand when I say something doesn't make sense, and the teacher explains it exactly the same way they did the first time. After they keep doing that, I don't even bother asking."
The lesson here? Get more feedback from students and be conscious of knowledge gaps. I ask for feedback regularly on my ability to explain concepts and ask students what they do understand before trying to reteach-next time in a different way.

5. Boring Content

Relevance, relevance, relevance. A major factor in student motivation was feeling like the content was either not useful or too challenging. This is nothing new to teachers: We all have students who ask, "What's the point of this?" Yet the answer we give is important. Students commented that saying they'll need to learn something for college or the next class is more annoying than helpful. They want relevance now as well as in the future. They want it to be relevant to their lives, not relevant to our lives.

In addition to the relevance concern is the scaffolding concern. As an ELA teacher, I asked my class what percentage of the content we read is interesting to them. The average? Ten percent. I then followed up by asking what percentage of the content we read was too difficult to understand independently. The average? Eighty-five percent. Imagine the effect on motivation when the content is both dreadfully boring and dreadfully challenging.

The lesson? I needed to ask some tough questions about my content. Yes, there are things beyond my control that I must teach, but I must look at what I can control and work from there. For example, it's easy to get frustrated and angry when kids don't come in the next day having completed their reading homework. But do I really expect them to trudge through something that is boring and beyond their ability at home? Can I do a better job of coaching their reading in class and finding resources that are more relevant? Yes. We cannot fear change.

6. Lack of Respect for Kids

This was the most discussed topic because it really hurts student motivation. Over and over, students described how much a respectful environment affected their willingness to work hard and learn. The frustration could be summed up in one student's statement:
"They expect us to act like adults but treat us like children."
Now, I take pride in working with amazing teachers. So my biggest shock came from a survey my principal gave the class. He asked two questions:

Of the teachers you've had in this school, what percentage do you think likes their job?

Of the teachers you've had in this school, what percentage do you think likes kids?

To any teacher, these answers would be frustrating. We could point to any number of justifications for why students might feel this way, such as, "Kids today think they deserve respect rather than having to earn it first." As I've heard before, though, blaming and justifying are like rocking chairs: They give us something to do, but they don't get us anywhere.

So what do we do? I again return to the value of surveying student perceptions often and getting consistent, honest feedback. Just as no quality teacher is intentionally trying to teach content poorly, no quality teacher is trying to disrespect students. There is simply a miscommunication.

At the end of our discussion, I had more questions than answers. There were still so many things I wanted to know about each student's motivation. But to get there, the process of understanding has to start with me.
We'd love to hear-what do you see as students' biggest motivation killers? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, what every teacher needs to understand about childhood trauma. Chase Mielke is a learning junkie who happens to have a love affair with teaching. A book addict by night and a teacher and instructional coach by day, he fantasizes about old libraries and fresh Expo Markers. His obsessions with psychology, well-being and cognition often live on his blog, affectiveliving.wordpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chasemielke.

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"What can we do to motivate our students who need it the most?" my principal recently asked. As a teacher, I, of course, had many thoughts. But those thoughts are just that: mine. So I asked my principal a simple question: Why don't we ask the students? So we did.

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Station Rotation: Differentiating Instruction to Reach All Students

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Procedures and Strategies to Establish Prior to Implementation​

1. Begin with a purpose and set goals. The purpose of implementing a Blended Learning Program should be established during the strategic planning process when stakeholders identify needs, goals, and objectives for the district. Districts should establish a clear academic intent prior to the implementation of Blended Learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004).

2. Establish a clear district direction. The Blended Learning program will need proper funding earmarked for successful implementation along with a timeline that outlines when specific goals and objectives during implementation are expected to be completed. In addition, Graham, Woodfield, and Harrison (2013) suggest a made up of administrators, coaches, teachers, and students be formed for the purpose of overcoming any barriers that may arise and prevents the achievement of reaching the district's academic goals. And last, the course subjects and teachers that are best suited for a Blended Learning approach should be identified.

3. Determine technology instructional materials and infrastructure. The resources needed to successfully implement a Blended Learning approach include both human and technical resources. Teachers along with course designers and curriculum directors will need to work closely when creating online instructional materials. During the implementation stage, the course designer will spend many hours developing online materials; however, upon completion, the teacher will have less course prep time because they will only need to update online instructional materials as adjustments to the curriculum and instruction are needed. Once the online materials are fully developed, the future cost of offering the course may decrease as the materials can be utilized over and over once created (Poon, 2013). In addition, districts can not forget the importance of building a robust technology infrastructure. The main reason Blended Learning is unsuccessful is because campuses lack the technological infrastructure such as stable Internet access, student mobile devices, and a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver quality online instruction. Districts that lack the technology infrastructure may qualify for funds which provides discounts for Internet access, telecommunications, and wireless internal connectivity based on the district's percentage of economically disadvantaged student population.

4. Ensure support structures are in place throughout the first year of full implementation. Districts should consider assigning a staff member to coordinate the Blended Learning program. Support will be needed during and after the initial implementation. As the program moves from adoption to implementation to full implementation, teacher and student support needs will change. As the program moves to the mature implementation and growth level, focus should be shifted to assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of the program and implementing any adjustments that may be needed. Overall support of the program impacts the perception stakeholders have on the culture of the program. A positive support culture can determine the stakeholder's perspective on how successful the program has impacted students (Bailey, Martin, Schneider, Vander Ark, Duty, Ellis, & Terman, 2013).

5. Re-evaluate learning spaces to accommodate multiple pedagogical strategies and instructional design. Blended Learning classrooms need innovative learning spaces with bright colors that stimulate thinking and support various teaching and learning styles such as whole group, small group, cooperative work, and individual practice. Flexible furniture options can be utilized to design learning spaces that encourage engagement and support student collaboration. In addition, large and small breakout spaces for project-based learning group activities should be considered.

6. Evaluate the effectiveness of the Blended Learning program with data collected throughout the implementation. Once Blended Learning is implemented, monitoring checkpoints and instruments should be established, so districts can received feedback regarding the effectiveness of the program. The University of Central Florida has developed a Blended Learning Toolkit​ with sample student and faculty surveys districts may customize as they begin to think about how to collect feedback on student and teacher satisfaction with the Blended Learning Program.

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Procedures and Strategies to Establish Prior to Implementation​ Begin with a purpose and set goals. The purpose of implementing a Blended Learning Program should be established during the strategic planning process when stakeholders identify needs, goals, and objectives for the district. Districts should establish a clear academic intent prior to the implementation of Blended Learning (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004).

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There is no denying it, Google Slides has become a must-have tool for any classroom today. With the demands of distance learning, teachers need ways to keep their students engaged without burning themselves out. We've curated a list of 10 Google Chrome extensions for Google Slides that can help.

But Wait, Why Should I Use Google Slides?

Great question! If you're already using PowerPoint, why would you need to use another program/app? The answer? You don't have to, but it does make it a lot easier.

Google Slides is simple to use and saves automatically. You can create, edit, access, and share your slides from any device. Your presentation stays consistent, no matter what computer (or tablet/mobile device) you or your students use. Plus, your presentation can be a lot more interactive for your students.

Already have your presentation created in PowerPoint? No worries, you can open it in Google Slides and save it as a Google Slides presentation.

So, What's With the Extensions?

Google Slides extensions unlock new levels of interactive engagement and ease your workload. You want your students to remain engaged without overloading your already busy schedule. Extensions can help with both. There are great interactive tools to wow your students. There are also great time-saving tools that make your job a little easier.

Follow these steps to download the extensions you want:

1. Open a saved or new Google Slide.

2. On the menu bar, click "Add-Ons" and then click "Get Add-Ons."

3. Click on the add-on/extension you want to see a full description. If you don't see the extension you want, type the name in the search, and hit Enter.

4. Install the add-on/extension of your choice by clicking "Install."

5. A pop-up message will appear.

6. If you're OK with it, click "Continue."

Follow these steps to use the extensions you want:

1. Open a saved or new Google Slide.

2. On the menu bar, click "Add-Ons."

3. Click on the extension you want to use.

The Ten Free Google Slides Extensions You'll Want for Your Classroom

Without further ado, here are 10 free Google Slides extensions for Google Slides that will make your distance-teaching more powerful:

Kami is PDF and Document Annotation extension. Some PDFs may not be available in a digital format and Kami is the perfect tool to use for these PDFs. Students can mark up the PDF using tools in Kami and return it to you with all of the annotations

PearDeck is a great interactive tool to keep your students engaged. It allows you to add questions to your slide deck that students will be able to answer in real-time.

When you share your presentation, you'll share from PearDeck and direct your students to the website with your session number. They'll be able to answer the questions as they pop up during your presentation, and you'll receive their answers in real-time!

Slides Toolbox is a time-saving dream. It cuts down on the time you spend creating slides by saving a lot of repetitive actions into a single-click option..

Mote allows you to easily add voice comments and feedback to shared documents. It works in Google Slides, Docs, and Classroom. This will allow you to leave audio messages right in the students' documents.

LucidChart is a great way to add interactive/collaborative charts, diagrams, or any visuals to your slide. Students can create their mind-maps, Venn-Diagrams, or other creations and collaborate. The possibilities are endless.

This is a key extension for teachers who use Google Classroom. This extension allows you to push web pages to any classroom class so that they open instantly on students' computers.

A fun way to add a personal touch to your classroom. You can liven up your slides with your personal avatar. With the extension can quickly add BitMoji's to student work as well!

Do you use your Google Slides for flashcards? This is the perfect way to change things up for your students.

Nearpod is an award-winning tool that teachers can use to engage their students in a multitude of interactive lessons. Everything from virtual reality, to 3D objects, and much, much more.

This Google extension allows students to dictate any text area on any website. Students can also use it to "type" into their documents. It's great for any student who struggles with technology.

Are You Ready to Take Remote Classroom to the Next Level?

These 10 free Google Slides extensions are only the beginning. Take a glance through the Google Chrome Market, and you'll find endless possibilities. Any of these extensions can make your next class a big hit with your students.

Have you found great Google Slides add-ons/extensions not listed here? We'd love to hear about them. Also, if you have any other tips to make distance-teaching better, we'd love to hear about them, too.

Need some more ideas for distance learning?

Here are a few other blog post about remote learning.

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10 Google Slide Extensions for Remote Learning

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There is no denying it, Google Slides has become a must-have tool for any classroom today. With the demands of distance learning, teachers need ways to keep their students engaged without burning themselves out.

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A major challenge of remote teaching is losing the inherent value of the classroom as a place of learning. Teachers spend countless hours shaping their classrooms into ideal spaces, with different stations and areas for specific purposes. Something many teachers have begun doing to recapture this feeling is create classrooms on Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint using Bitmoji. An example of what this looks like can be found here. Teachers have each slide be a themed "room" in the class. In each room there are several linked objects that go to relevant online resources. For example, a room that is a book nook may have several pictures of books that each link to pdf versions of those novels. This post will explore what is needed to create a Bitmoji classroom, as well as some different ways of configuring it.

Create a Bitmoji classroom

To create a Bitmoji classroom, you need to use Google Slides or Powerpoint. I would recommend Slides due to being better able to use it with Google Images and the Bitmoji Chrome Extension. If you are not familiar with Bitmoji, it is an online tool that allows users to create custom avatars that they can use for messaging purposes. Usually the messages are meant to be humorous. In this case it is a great way for a teacher to insert themself into a classroom space in a way that is fun and not from personal photos. To access the Bitmoji extension, look it up on Google and add it to Google Chrome. From there create your Bitmoji. After that, it is just a matter of finding one that is appropriate for each classroom space! Once a presentation and Bitmoji has been created, you can begin searching for backgrounds and objects.

Incorporating images

When using Google Images, it is important to set a positive example for students and make sure that everything is labeled for reuse. To check this users can select Tools once on Google Images and select "Labeled for Reuse" under the Usage Rights.While using Tools, users can also search for pictures that are specific color. These options can be seen below:

From here it is just a matter of finding pictures that are relevant to each slide. Pictures may not come into a slide in a way that makes sense with your layout. To play around with this, you can right click on an image and go to "Order." This allows you to change whether objects will be layered on top or below each other. By double clicking on an image, you can also crop it to reduce the amount of space an image takes up. Once everything is organized, simply find relevant links and attach them to images in each room. After getting students started, you can leave them to explore links on their own.

Ready for some examples?

The attached presentation shows a few examples of what kind of rooms can be built in a bitmoji classroom. Some great rooms to consider can be dedicated to art, reading, math, nature, or games. Below is an example of a meditation room I created. The links go to different websites that explore the value of medication and mindfulness in education:

A classroom is a space where students can explore learning in a variety of ways. While a Bitmoji classroom does not fully recreate that, it does capture the spirit of learning through exploration that is so hard to capture in remote learning. To learn more about how to use Google Slides for unique art projects, I strongly recommend viewing our video on creating vision boards on our OTIS platform.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic impacting our schools and learning, Teq is making all of our PD courses on OTIS for educators FREE to help schools and districts implement distance learning and online professional development.

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Build a Remote Community with Bitmoji Classrooms

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A major challenge of remote teaching is losing the inherent value of the classroom as a place of learning. Teachers spend countless hours shaping their classrooms into ideal spaces, with different stations and areas for specific purposes. Something many teachers have begun doing to recapture this feeling is create classrooms on Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint using Bitmoji.

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Choice Boards enhance student motivation and engagement in the classroom while using differentiated instruction to promote learning.
Why use Choice Boards in the Classroom?
It is best to give students plenty of opportunities to practice and master the concepts taught in class. However, structuring such activities is no easy task, as teachers need to take into consideration the need for differentiated instruction and varied learning styles; all while ensuring that it is both interesting and challenging for the students. Use of Choice Boards is a strategy that can help simplify lesson planning and address learning requirements. It is easy and simple to design and implement in the classroom and can help promote learning, as well as stimulate student motivation and engagement.

Here we will learn more about Choice Boards and how they can be used to differentiate instruction.
What are Choice Boards?
Choice boards are graphic organizers that comprise of different amounts of squares. Each square is an activity. The activities help students learn or practice a primary concept, while allowing them a choice. Students can be instructed to choose one or more of these activities to complete. They can progress from one activity to another either in an organized or random order.
Benefits of using Choice Boards
Choice Boards provide students with the power to choose "how" to learn a particular subject or concept. This freedom encourages them to be more responsible, accountable and independent in their learning. It also allows them to work on the activities at their own pace. The boards are useful for teachers as it enables them to identify and use student interests and preferences to stimulate active learning and student engagement.
Designing Choice Boards
The board should revolve around a particular concept or learning goal and each activity is structured to stimulate learning, practice or mastery of that subject. The first step in designing a Choice Board is to identify the core concept or academic goal that the students need to complete. Second, plan the activities so that it provides students with a variety of mediums or methods for learning the concept. To do this, first identify the students' interests, preferences and even levels of readiness. The activities can be different levels of complexity and can be arranged on the board in an increasing order of difficulty. Additional instructions for each task can be included and students are instructed to perform the tasks either as individual activities or in groups. One square can also be a "FREE CHOICE" allowing students to create and perform an activity of their own choice.
Differentiating Instruction through Choice Boards
The following are tips to using Choice Boards for differentiated learning:

1. When creating the boards be sure to have activities that cater to every learning style such as visual, auditory, read-write and kinesthetic.

2. Boards can be created for weekly tasks, homework, projects and even assessments. Detailed instructions and requirements can be given for each task. An extra credit slot can be included to encourage students to better their learning.

3. Tic-Tac-Toe: Encourage students to perform a set of three activities so that it forms a Tic-Tac-Toe. Students can choose these activities horizontally, vertically or diagonally. In this method the "FREE CHOICE" square can be in the middle.

Use of Choice Boards help to improve student motivation, engagement and learning by empowering them to learn to the best of their ability.
Like this article for teachers?
Browse the Professional Learning Board COURSE CATALOG to find related online courses for teachers in your state. Professional Learning Board is a leading provider of online professional development classes that teachers use to renew a teaching license or renew a teaching certificate.

About Network

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How to Use Choice Boards in the Classroom?

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Teachers need to take into consideration the need for differentiated instruction and varied learning styles; all while ensuring that it is both interesting and challenging for the students. Use of Choice Boards is a strategy that can help simplify lesson planning and address learning requirements.

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ThingLink Education Spotlight: Choice Boards Help Students and Parents Organize Home Learning

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Lorrie Salome, Teacher from Austin Independent School District needed to devise solutions (and fast) to help connect with her class who,  like most, are learning at home. Using ThingLink Lorrie and colleagues created ‘Choice Boards’ for home learning, primarily to weave together a wealth of resources and simplify the visual presentation of these for students and their parents and carers. 

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In every classroom, there are students who always have their hand raised to participate, and those who are hesitant to engage. Whether they're introverted, tend to think awhile before they contribute, or are just having a bad day, it can be hard to bring kids into discussions who are reluctant to add their voices.

The challenges of getting students to participate have intensified during remote learning, we've heard from many teachers. Digital platforms can create added communication barriers by making it hard to know when to talk, for example, or how to read subtle but important elements of discourse like a person's body language and facial expressions. Additionally, online discussions are often hindered by variability in students' access to technology and by privacy concerns, and consequently many teachers have had to rely on students' submitting work over isolated channels like email, which can leave back-and-forth between peers (and between students and the teacher) by the wayside.

Getting kids to contribute in virtual classrooms takes some work, it turns out. "We keep calling this generation digital natives as if they are simply whizzes at everything computerized. They aren't," wrote Tim O'Brien on Facebook. "They need personal support, scaffolding, and reassurance that technology does not provide. It is simply a tool, not a teacher."

To find out how to improve student discussions and participation in online learning, we culled through hundreds of comments on social media and followed up with more than 20 educators to see how they tackled the challenge last spring. Teachers offered a range of smart strategies, both synchronous and asynchronous, to integrate the values and the voices of all kids-even the quietest or those with disrupted schedules-into their classes this fall.

Synchronous Strategies

For synchronous learning, some teachers said they translated traditional discussion strategies from the classroom to live video chats, while others found that digital tools helped boost classroom participation.

1. Spider web discussion: During remote learning this spring, students in Shai Klima's high school class led their own discussions over Google Meet. Before the live class, students answered questions independently, and then shared their responses at the start of the meeting as a jumping-off point for a broader class discussion.

While students conversed on video, Klima listened and drew lines on a sheet of paper tracking the flow of the conversation, resulting in a spider web. At the end of the discussion, Klima shared the drawing over video, and then asked students to reflect on the experience and what they learned about who talked, who listened, and who built on the ideas of others.

"It has been successful as a means to get kids to credit their peers with helping them come up with new ideas, which helps build rapport," said Klima, who let students struggling with bandwidth call in to the meetings.

2. Using chat to check for understanding: After giving lessons last spring, Paul France had his third-grade students use the Google Chat feature to ask and answer questions or type in emojis, like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to show whether they understood a concept. To create structure around the responses, he guided his students in creating norms around using the chat feature-they decided as a group to use only one emoji at a time, for example. France said the practice helped him check for student understanding and pushed students to engage more with the content.

Kindergarten teacher Ruth Calkins, meanwhile, used Zoom chat when holding live lessons with her kindergarten students. She said they enjoyed typing "T" or "F" for true and false questions while answering math problems in the chat box, and some even attempted to write sentences in response to her questions. Typing responses also provided a lot of keyboard practice for her young students.

3. Flip your classroom to stimulate deeper discussion: Forrest Hinton, a high school math teacher, says he found that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction worked well to stimulate student discussion during remote learning.

First, he taught new content asynchronously through recorded videos and online activities. At the start of his live class, students briefly summarized the concepts they had learned together and then divided into breakout rooms to solve related problems in small groups. Flipping his classroom allowed Hinton to spend less class time in direct instruction-and listening to students at the start of class and in small groups helped him identify, and then address, where his students were struggling. "This has allowed me to clarify concepts in a more targeted way and better assist students," said Hinton.

4. Adapting think-pair-share to Zoom: Ryan Tahmaseb, director of library services, says he found that giving more project-based learning activities to his elementary and middle school students-and allowing them more autonomy over assignments-naturally encouraged richer discussions in virtual learning. "If we give students as much freedom as possible to experiment, research, and pursue interests within our content area, then they inevitably have a lot more to say," said Tahmaseb.

When it came to class discussions, Tahmaseb adapted think-pair-share to Zoom. Students were given a prompt, broken into groups, and then placed into breakout rooms to discuss and record their answers on a shared Google doc, which allowed students to share their thinking in writing or read aloud. Since Tahmaseb wasn't in each breakout room to listen to the conversations, the Google doc kept students accountable. Once they returned to the whole class, volunteers from each group shared their answers with everyone.

5. A new twist on show-and-tell: To get students comfortable with online participation, Brittany Collins, the teaching and learning coordinator at Write the World, a global online writing community for middle and high school students, converted the familiar show-and-tell activity into "think, write, share."

In one activity, Collins asked middle and high school students to find a photo, painting, or drawing that represented intergenerational connection and independently respond by writing to the following questions from the Making Thinking Visible Framework before discussing them over video as a class: What are we looking at? What makes you say that? What do you notice (see, feel, know)? What more can we uncover? What do you wonder? "It helps to break the ice in a virtual learning setting where unplanned participation can prove challenging for some students," said Collins.

Asynchronous Strategies

Although some teachers-and students-said that synchronous discussions were more engaging because they resembled a traditional classroom, many educators found that asynchronous discussions were more equitable because they opened up participation to students with low bandwidth, who had schedule limitations, or who were uncomfortable engaging with the full class.

6. Online forums create back-and-forth dialogue: Angelina Murphy, a high school English teacher, said she used Google Classroom's question feature to get her class to respond to readings and discussion prompts during remote learning this past spring. When each student commented, Murphy replied with clarifying questions to create a back-and-forth dialogue and also asked every student to respond to at least two of their peers' comments to create a broader base of discussion.

Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Linares said she used Nearpod Collaborate (Apple, Android), a virtual collaboration board, to get students to share images or write a response to show what they had learned about an article they read. To inspire connection and reflection among classmates, Linares also used Flipgrid (Apple, Android), so that students could hear their peers' voices even though they were remote.

7. Seeing and critiquing peer work through virtual gallery walks: Virtual "gallery walks" give students an opportunity to view their classmates' projects while learning from each other, according to Joe Marangell, a high school social studies teacher. After his students presented their own projects through five-minute screencasts, they were then required to give feedback to at least two other students on theirs.

Using Google Sheets, students provided feedback to their peers by answering the following prompts: What's something new I learned about this topic?; What's something that surprised me about this topic?; What's something I liked about this presentation? The online format gave every student the opportunity to see their peers' work and their assessment on theirs for deeper reflection, Marangell said.

8. Moving station brainstorming online: When carousel or station brainstorming activities are conducted in traditional classroom environments, small groups of students rotate around the room to different stations to answer prompts-and view and add to each groups' responses.

To translate this online, Marangell divided his students into groups online and created shared Google docs-or a series of Google slides-for the prompts/questions. Each group left their thoughts under the questions by the assigned date and then followed up by commenting on the other groups' responses the next day. "The strategy still allows them to maintain a sense of classroom community [in a virtual setting]," said Marangell.

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8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

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Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

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As an educational technology coach, I desperately wanted to help them find solutions. I thought about what engages my middle school daughter: social opportunities, games, mysteries, and travel. I combined these ideas with Google Slides to create learning adventures that students can complete asynchronously. You can do this too by adding elements of gamification and immersive experiences to your slides.

Creating Your Own Google Slides Learning Adventures

Gamification: Waterford.org defines gamification as "the use of activities and external rewards to encourage motivation in non-game contexts." Gamification strengthens motivation to learn by encouraging active learning, increasing attention span, and reducing student stress. Most students I know are into gaming. Why are games so appealing, and how can educators create the same engagement in the classroom? Many games have a social aspect, include a quest, and offer choices.

During quarantine, my daughter has enjoyed playing games through Roblox, a platform that allows users to create and explore "immersive 3D experiences" with friends. While playing, she keeps tabs on the leaderboard, how close she is to achieving her goal, and how many points she has collected while chatting with friends who are playing at the same time. We can add these gaming elements to increase engagement in learning activities, whether they are face-to-face or remote. To include gamification in your lessons, think through these guiding questions:

Where can I add a social aspect to my lesson?

How can I add some competition or track progress?

How can I add choices?

How can I add a sense of adventure or mystery to my lesson?

Immerse students in Google Street View Treks: Google Street View Treks are a series of virtual travel adventures that allow the user to explore the location in a 360-degree environment. When viewing, you can use your finger to swipe the screen to wander around the Great Pyramids of Giza or hike to Base Camp at Mount Everest. Google hires trekkers to travel the world in Google cars, motorcycles, and boats, or on foot, to snap photos from exotic locations and then stitch the photos together to create immersive 360 experiences.

When creating a learning adventure for students, choose one of these treks to use as a mentor "text" for novels, articles, or textbook readings to build knowledge and add a global perspective. Students will love being able to travel around the world from the comfort of their home or classroom.

Google Slides: Once you've chosen your standards, learning targets, and Google Street View Trek, it's time to build a quest. The quest requires students to synthesize information while reaching a goal, such as solving a mystery, climbing a mountain, or unearthing an archaeological discovery. Use the Google Street View Treks as your jumping-off point. For example, a middle school English language arts class could practice literacy strategies such as using Thinking Maps to visualize their thinking, answering text-dependent questions, and writing using evidence. As students complete each learning task, they progress up to the summit of Mount Everest.

To begin, create two Google Slides presentations. Label one "original" and the other "student." Use Insert > Image > Search the Web to find Creative Commons images to use as your background to save to your "original" slides. Add anything else to the slide that you do not want students to move. Next, save the original slides as PNG images. Upload each PNG image as a background image to the "student" slide presentation. These images are locked and cannot be moved.

Use images and link slides to create a progression chart so that students can track their progress along the way. Promote student agency by giving students choice in what they read and how they learn by creating choice boards with leveled articles and short videos. Finally, include the immersive Street View Trek, and add a social aspect like a video discussion topic in Flipgrid, a collaborative Padlet, or a discussion in Google Classroom Stream.

Creating a learning quest: In the Discovering the Ancient Pyramids Learning Adventure, students embark on a quest to discover what lies inside the Great Pyramid. They mummify a body, learn about a day in the life of King Tut, and immerse themselves in 360-degree images of the Pyramids of Giza. To add interest, I included Creative Commons music from YouTube's audio library and used BadgeBuilder to create a badge that students could display in their learning management system.

With a little creativity, you too can increase student engagement by creating your own Google Slides learning adventure.

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Using Gamification to Increase Engagement During Hybrid Learning

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As an educational technology coach, I desperately wanted to help them find solutions. I thought about what engages my middle school daughter: social opportunities, games, mysteries, and travel. I combined these ideas with Google Slides to create learning adventures that students can complete asynchronously.

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These (mostly) free tools make it easier for teachers to connect with remote students and provide plenty of ways to engage them.

Courtesy of Stephanie Rothstein

As so many of us try to juggle teaching virtually or in a hybrid format this year, I've decided to focus my energy on technology that will help me no matter the setting. These three tech tools have had a huge impact on me, my staff, and my students.

1. Pear Deck + Google Slides

Pear Deck and Google Slides make the best partnership. I always build my presentations in Google Slides. Then I open Pear Deck and sprinkle in the goodness. Pear Deck allows me to add interactive elements, connect with students, and understand how to better support them. Pear Deck can be used in so many ways-synchronously or asynchronously.

Check-ins: During daily check-ins, my class has the best conversations. Students share stories or experiences brought up in these opening slides and feel heard. They also develop strong connections. I am able to listen and know who is present for taking attendance later, all while building classroom culture.

Favorites: This or That (pick a side), Scribble Scrabble (drawing), Stress Check (draggable)

For a video of how to use these slides and to make your own, click here. To see my daily check-in slides and copy them, click here.

Breaking up reading into small chunks woven with visuals, audio, and questions: During class, I can read or students can read. After I've modeled reading and analysis questions, students are able to continue this process of independent or group work. Embedded audio on the slides of the text being read makes a huge difference. Students can use this to help them pace and model pronunciation.

Data collection: After the session is complete, I can export a spreadsheet of all the student responses. It shows me their answers and time spent on slides. It saves time and gives me a good idea about which students may need to review the material.

Integration of other tools: Another very useful feature is the ability to integrate a variety of other tools. If you use Flipgrid or Edpuzzle or any other website, you can add that directly into the Pear Deck, and students don't have to go to different locations for the lesson.

Slide templates and lesson design: Don't reinvent the wheel. Keep slides fresh and interesting to increase engagement. SlidesMania provides free slide templates. Combining a unique template with Pear Deck questions allows the presentation to be interesting, connected, and current.

Using Pear Deck has provided a structure that my students know and recognize while providing freedom for moving from teacher led to student paced and large group to small. It also makes embedding other links, resources, and content a snap. Predesigned slides and questions support designing a lesson. There are all types of questions and activities already loaded into Pear Deck, and you can alter them as needed. The free version of Pear Deck is amazing and will do just about anything you'd need, with the exception of data exportation and drawing.

2. Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a wonderful, free tool for all grade levels. Students do not need an account, only the teachers. The benefit of Flipgrid is that it provides the ability for voice, interaction, reflection, creativity, and connection. It's much more than a video recording tool.

Interviews: Whether in person or virtually, Flipgrid allows for students to build authentic projects. Students began my Odyssey Mythology unit by interviewing someone who had experience as a traveler. They recorded in Flipgrid, learned the specific needs of their user, and designed their project uniquely as a travel experience for them.

Book reviews: Flipgrid is a great place for a weekly vlog. It allows students to reflect on their independent reading. Some great guiding topics: summary, review, prediction, and connection.

Reflections: Personal reflections, goal setting, and feedback are wonderful in Flipgrid. Teachers can moderate the posts and keep them private or open them up to allow other students to read and comment on the entries.

Screencasting: If students need to share work on their screen, use a white board. Flipgrid also allows users to add stickers and text. It's a powerful tool in a simple-to-use platform, making it great for any age.

3. Canva

One tool that has changed all of my presentations, newsletters, promotional material, student shout-outs, web design, and more is Canva. It takes all the best features of a design program and adds in the ability to drag and drop elements into templates. This tool is free for educators and offers a robust design option.
Courtesy of Stephanie Rothstein
Unique assignments: Canva allows you to have students create collaborative presentations, infographics, posters, and web design. It also allows you to create video, GIFs, picture files, and more. The possibilities are endless, and the end product is extremely professional.

Teacher, student, and family friendly: Families have different devices, and it has been a game changer to work with choices that are internet based and do not require a particular device. In Canva, designs are draggable. Icons, video, and fonts are already enabled. Another unique feature is the ability to resize a design after you have created it. You can easily download all formats from one design and present directly from within Canva. You do not need another presentation tool.

Connection cards: This year has been the biggest challenge for many of us. Canva has given me the ability to connect with my students' families and staff. I create thank-you cards, certificates recognizing hard work, or GIFs and make postcards that tell students, "I am so happy you are in my class!" You can leave your work digital or print it directly from Canva.

My hope for tech is that it supports instruction and is used with a purpose. Tech for tech's sake is not a reason for implementation. Pear Deck with Google Slides, Flipgrid, and Canva have made me a better teacher, and I know that no matter how I am teaching my students, these tools will remain in my tool kit for life.

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3 Tech Tools for Distance Learning and Beyond

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These (mostly) free tools make it easier for teachers to connect with remote students and provide plenty of ways to engage them. Courtesy of Stephanie Rothstein As so many of us try to juggle teaching virtually or in a hybrid format this year, I've decided to focus my energy on technology that will help me no matter the setting.

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Getting a true sense of students' learning and discouraging cheating is tough when some students are in the room and some are at home, but it can be done.

Rachel Wisniewski / Alamy

Since August, I've taught in a hybrid model where I synchronously teach students in person and remotely, including some students who are remote every day. This arrangement has created significant challenges in terms of assessment.

When students are at home, I can't walk around and spot-check their work to ensure that they're on the right track and understand my directions. Some students feel uncomfortable asking questions in front of their classmates no matter the environment, and when they're remote, it's not easy to find private opportunities when they can ask questions during an assessment.

Remote learning also increases the potential for students to make dishonest choices. Those who would never have considered cheating before might now be home, getting texts or calls from friends asking for help; they also have access to their phone and other devices.

Through trial and error, I've landed on strategies for assessment that work in this radically different and complex teaching environment.

Formative Assessment

I've designed discussions that get to the heart of what we are learning and invite every student to engage so that I can check their understanding and progress. For example, I provide students with questions the day before the discussion to review so they can write their responses in advance. Then, throughout the live discussion, I alternate between engaging with students in person and students who are remote so that they're all equally involved.

I keep a running list to ensure that I'm consistently addressing all students. I solicit additional participation from students on their remote days because I am not able to visually check in on their progress and because it's easier for them to disengage. Remote students have opportunities to answer verbally, in the chat feature or using another digital platform. If the question requires only a few words to answer, I may ask all the remote students to type their response in the chat. To involve both the remote and in-person students, I use Google Jamboard to gather their quick written responses.

I also formatively assess progress on long-term writing assignments by having students share their work via Google Docs; I would normally walk around and read student assignments with them and provide individual feedback, but with Google Docs, I can do that for students in both settings.

To formatively check students' progress and allow them to check their own understanding, I use Google Jamboard and Padlet, which provide opportunities for students to share open-ended responses, links, and photos while collaborating with each other; these tools also provide me with information about their progress and understanding. With Gimkit, Quizlet Live, and Socrative, students can complete multiple choice and true/false questions and quickly see where they stand; these tools also provide immediate feedback that's helpful for them and for me.

Finally, in terms of formative assessment, one-on-one check-ins when students are in the physical classroom help me to stay up-to-date on their progress, and if they are exclusively learning remotely, I send emails at least every other week and check in with Google Classroom or Google Meet.

Student Self-Assessment Activities

Self-assessment helps students to develop independence and ownership of their learning, which builds confidence and a sense of their strengths and areas for growth. That self-awareness is even more important in a hybrid model, where students don't have as many opportunities to informally check in with their teacher and get quick feedback.

Students complete one or more activities about a specific concept to assess their own learning. Here are some of the prompts I use:

Explain the concept to someone else.

Make a list of the most important aspects of _____.

Explain how _____ connects to _____.

Draw a picture/map/graph/diagram that explains _____.

Explain information to yourself in the mirror.

Summative Assessment

In the hybrid model, I have designed all summative assessments so that students apply and analyze content; students use the text as a reference when completing the assignment. I avoid asking questions that I know have answers that are on the internet or could be easily shared with a friend. For example, if I'm asking about a novel they're reading, I don't ask about the plot but rather prompt them to make connections, explain themes, or make comparisons to another book. This approach reduces the opportunity for dishonesty and gives students a chance to demonstrate what they have learned.

All major assessments are given over two days so that students can ask questions in person and work within the structure of a school environment; students who are remote-only can ask questions in advance via Google Meet, in chat, or via email.

With two days, students have ample time to give the assessment their best effort, as our class periods are shorter this year and tasks take longer when students access materials and turn in assessments online. (Anecdotally, I have noticed that on average, students are turning in more detailed and higher quality assignments than ever before.)

Students can showcase their knowledge in different ways if the format of assessments changes throughout the year and if they have agency through choice and voice. When I mix things up, I can also assess which formats are optimal for hybrid instruction.

Extended response: I provide six open-ended questions, and students choose three to answer with a thoughtful response using details and evidence from the text to support their ideas.

Hexagonal thinking: I provide students with 15-25 words about a specific topic. They write those words on hexagons and organize them so that all the sides connect in meaningful ways. Then students choose one central hexagon and explain all six connections to that one hexagon.

Video: Students create a video response to answer their chosen question(s) and present evidence to support their ideas. This format increases engagement and provides an opportunity for students with strong verbal but weak writing skills to shine. It also allows me to hear them talk through their thinking, which I don't have as many opportunities to do in the hybrid model.

Student Feedback and Reflection

I provide all students with specific and targeted feedback on their performance via Google Classroom comments, personal conversations, or email. After summative assessments, I designate time within my class for them to review digital feedback so that it does not get lost in their email and so that they can ask me questions. Post-assessment student reflection questions include the following:

Did you feel prepared for the assessment?

What strategies did you use to prepare for the assessment?

What would you do the same and what would you improve?

Do you think the assessment gave you an opportunity to showcase your knowledge of the topic?

Assessment in the hybrid model is challenging; however, it has pushed me to try new approaches that have increased engagement, encouraged critical thinking, and provided students an opportunity to showcase their strengths.

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Formative and Summative Assessment in a Hybrid Classroom

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Getting a true sense of students' learning and discouraging cheating is tough when some students are in the room and some are at home, but it can be done. Rachel Wisniewski / Alamy Since August, I've taught in a hybrid model where I synchronously teach students in person and remotely, including some students who are remote every day.

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contributed by Anne Davis

It's unfortunate that teachers often take the brunt of the backlash when students and school systems don't succeed.

Though it is the role of a teacher to educate, this role cannot be completed efficiently if not provided the right tools. Educators must be provided with the appropriate environment, time, finances, and educational resources to teach students in this ever-changing society.

Generally, what teachers need to be effective in the classroom is thought of in terms of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, classroom management skills, and related soft skills like time management and organization. This post offers a brief overview of some of the 'other' things beyond pedagogy and content knowledge that teachers need to be effective.
Beyond Pedagogy: 8 Other Things A Teacher Needs To Be Effective In The Classroom 1. Manageable expectations
While we could discuss the 'expectations' of education at large, for now, let's simply focus on class size and available space and technology.

Students cannot learn efficiently if they don't have enough space. Overcrowding is not only uncomfortable but can be a distraction and present problems. As class sizes increase each year, it is imperative that teachers are provided with classrooms that can accommodate all of their students comfortably.
2. Support from 'home'
Regardless of what the student's home circumstance is, teachers can always benefit from support at home in the form of literacy and skill improvement, as well as organization and mindset/moral support.
3. Time
Beyond reasonable expectations, teachers having enough time to do their jobs is one of the most crucial factors for their success. (Here are some ways teachers can save time in the classroom). Part of that time is enough time with students. Learning new concepts isn't something that tends to happen overnight.

If students are to truly grasp the curriculum taught to them, educators must be given an appropriate amount of time to work the lessons. Oftentimes, however, teachers are on such a tight schedule to meet deadlines and get students to pass standardized tests that they don't have the adequate time to work on student comprehension and academic retention.
4. Adequate funding for curriculum, training, and other teaching and learning resources.
Whether public or private, education isn't cheap. After using allotted funds for salaries and operational costs, however, teachers often don't have much to work with.

Students, therefore, suffer because they are not provided with enough funds to obtain the resources needed to enhance their learning experience. It is important for teachers to work with the school administrators and/or parents and the community to find solutions to raise funds for their students.
5. Technology that helps students learn.
Gone are the days where paper and hard copy textbooks are used in the classrooms.

Today's digitally-inclined world has transformed the way students learn. To keep up with modern times, it is necessary for teachers to have the right educational resources. From computers and tablets to software and online tools like animation drawing videos, these sources are vital to being an effective teacher. Though many of these tools and applications can be accessed for free, teachers must look to school administrators to supply them with the basics (i.e. computer, internet connection, etc)
6. For things to work.
Teachers cannot effectively do their jobs if they work in a facility where the technology and related equipment is unreliable.

Trying to make copies on a printer that keeps jamming or breaking down, or even trying to do online research or submit grades on an outdated computer isn't going to cut it. That's why it is important for schools to allocate funds in the budget to provide their staff with reliable and up to date equipment. Whether that means investing in a refurbished Versant 80 for sale or upgrading the computer and phone systems it needs to be done to provide students with the best learning experience.
7. A positive work environment
If teachers are dissatisfied with the conditions they're forced to work in, this translates to their ability to educate students. School administrators need to ensure that teachers are given more than just fair salaries. Teachers want to work in an educational system that provides the best work-life balance.

This can include things like health benefits, paid time off, personal development, training, advancement opportunities, and creature comforts like a teacher's lounge. Yet, when educators feel supported by their employer, they tend to be a lot more effective in the classroom.
8. Community and cultural championing and support
Again, teachers catch a lot of flack for the success or failure of a student's education, but the weight is not all on their shoulders.

It is also the responsibility of other staff within the facility as well as parents. When parents, other teachers, school administration, and the community all work together, children reap the benefits in a positive way. Teachers should participate in PTO and PTA programs, get involved in school events, and most importantly, speak up to administration, parents, and others when they need assistance.

There's more scrutiny about teachers and the educational system now than there has ever been before. Teachers are often evaluated on their performance in the classroom and are quickly blamed when students don't perform as they should. Yet, the truth is that if educators aren't provided with the tools, resources, and creature comforts such as those described above, they cannot be expected to be as effective in the classrooms.
*previously published at TeachThought.com

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Beyond Pedagogy: 8 Other Things A Teacher Needs To Be Effective In The Classroom | TeachThought PD

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contributed by Anne Davis It's unfortunate that teachers often take the brunt of the backlash when students and school systems don't succeed. Though it is the role of a teacher to educate, this role cannot be completed efficiently if not provided the right tools.

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Student-centered teaching is teaching designed for the student. Done well, it can disarm some of the more intimidating parts of academia.

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by TeachThought Staff

The best lessons, books, and materials in the world won't get students excited about learning and willing to work hard if they're not motivated.

Motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic, is a key factor in the success of students at all stages of their education, and teachers can play a pivotal role in providing and encouraging that motivation in their students. Of course, that's easier said than done, as all students are motivated differently and it takes time and a lot of effort to learn to get a classroom full of kids enthusiastic about learning, working hard, and pushing themselves to excel.

Even the most well-intentioned and educated teachers sometimes can find it difficult to keep kids on track, so whether you're a new teacher or an experienced one, try using these methods to improve student motivation and to encourage them to live up to their true potential.

1. Give students a sense of control

While guidance from a teacher is important to keeping kids on task and motivated, allowing students to have some choice and control over what happens in the classroom is actually one of the best ways to keep them engaged. For example, allowing students to choose the type of assignment they do or which problems to work on can give them a sense of control that may just motivate them to do more.

2. Be clear about learning objectives

It can be very frustrating for students to complete an assignment or even to behave in class if there aren't clearly defined objectives. Students want and need to know what is expected of them in order to stay motivated to work. At the beginning of the year, lay out clear objectives, rules, and expectations of students so that there is no confusion and students have goals to work towards.

3. Create a threat-free environment

While students do need to understand that there are consequences to their actions, far more motivating for students than threats are positive reinforcements. When teachers create a safe, supportive environment for students, affirming their belief in a student's abilities rather than laying out the consequences of not doing things, students are much more likely to get and stay motivated to do their work.

At the end of the day, students will fulfill the expectations that the adults around them communicate, so focus on can, not can't.

See also 60 Non-Threatening Formative Assessment Techniques

4. Change your scenery

A classroom is a great place for learning, but sitting at a desk day in and day out can make school start to seem a bit dull for some students. To renew interest in the subject matter or just in learning in general, give your students a chance to get out of the classroom. Take field trips, bring in speakers, or even just head to the library for some research. The brain loves novelty and a new setting can be just what some students need to stay motivated to learn.

5. Offer varied experiences.

Not all students will respond to lessons in the same way. For some, hands-on experiences may be the best. Others may love to read books quietly or to work in groups. In order to keep all students motivated, mix up your lessons so that students with different preferences will each get time focused on the things they like best. Doing so will help students stay engaged and pay attention.

6. Use positive competition

Competition in the classroom isn't always a bad thing, and in some cases can motivate students to try harder and work to excel. Work to foster a friendly spirit of competition in your classroom, perhaps through group games related to the material or other opportunities for students to 'show off' their knowledge or skills.

7. Offer rewards

Everyone likes getting rewards, and offering your students the chance to earn them is an excellent source of motivation. Things like pizza parties, watching movies, or even something as simple as a sticker on a paper can make students work harder and really aim to achieve. Consider the personalities and needs of your students to determine appropriate rewards for your class.

8. Give students responsibility

Assigning students classroom jobs is a great way to build a community and to give students a sense of motivation. Most students will see classroom jobs as a privilege rather than a burden and will work hard to ensure that they, and other students, are meeting expectations. It can also be useful to allow students to take turns leading activities or helping out so that each feels important and valued.

9. Allow students to work together

While not all students will jump at the chance to work in groups, many will find it fun to try to solve problems, do experiments, and work on projects with other students. Social interaction can get them excited about things in the classroom and students can motivate one another to reach a goal. Teachers need to ensure that groups are balanced and fair, however, so that some students aren't doing more work than others.

10. Give praise when earned

There may be no other form of motivation that works quite as well as encouragement. Even as adults we crave recognition and praise, and students at any age are no exception. Teachers can give students a bounty of motivation by rewarding success publicly, giving praise for a job well done, and sharing exemplary work.

11. Encourage self-reflection

Most kids want to succeed, they just need help figuring out what they need to do in order to get there. One way to motivate your students is to get them to take a hard look at themselves and determine their own strengths and weaknesses. Students are often more motivated by creating these kinds of critiques of themselves than by having a teacher do it for them, as it makes them feel in charge of creating their own objectives and goals. See Metacognitive Prompts For Students To Reflect On Their Learning.

12. Model enthusiasm for learning!

One of the best ways to get your students motivated is to share your enthusiasm. When you're excited about teaching, they'll be much more excited about learning. It's that simple.

13. Know your students

Getting to know your students is about more than just memorizing their names. Students need to know that their teacher has a genuine interest in them and cares about them and their success. When students feel appreciated it creates a safe learning environment and motivates them to work harder, as they want to get praise and good feedback from someone they feel knows and respects them as individuals.

14. Harness student interests

Knowing your students also has some other benefits, namely that it allows you to relate classroom material to things that students are interested in or have experienced. Teachers can use these interests to make things more interesting and relatable to students, keeping students motivated for longer.

15. Help students find intrinsic motivation

It can be great to help students get motivated, but at the end of the day, they need to be able to generate their own motivation. Helping students find their own personal reasons for doing classwork and working hard, whether because they find material interesting, want to go to college, or just love to learn, is one of the most powerful gifts you can give them to improve student motivation.

16. Manage student anxiety

Some students find the prospect of not doing well so anxiety-inducing that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For these students, teachers may find that they are most motivated by learning that struggling with a subject isn't the end of the world. Offer support no matter what the end result is and ensure that students don't feel so overwhelmed by expectations that they just give up.

17. Make goals high but attainable

If you're not pushing your students to do more than the bare minimum, most won't seek to push themselves on their own. Students like to be challenged and will work to achieve high expectations so long as they believe those goals to be within their reach, so don't be afraid to push students to get more out of them.

18. Give learning feedback and offer chances to improve

Students who struggle with classwork can sometimes feel frustrated and get down on themselves, draining motivation. In these situations, it's critical that teachers provide effective learning feedback to help students to learn exactly where they went wrong and how they can improve next time. Figuring out a method to get where students want to be can also help them to stay motivated to work hard.

19. Track progress

It can be hard for students to see just how far they've come, especially with subjects that are difficult for them. Tracking can come in handy in the classroom, not only for teachers but also for students. Teachers can use this as a way to improve student motivation, allowing them to see visually just how much they are learning and improving as the year goes on.

20. Make things fun

Not all classwork needs to be a game or a good time, but students who see school as a place where they can have fun will be more motivated to pay attention and do the work that's required of them than those who regard it as a chore. Adding fun activities into your school day can help students who struggle to stay engaged and make the classroom a much more friendly place for all students.

21. Provide opportunities for success

Students, even the best ones, can become frustrated and demotivated when they feel like they're struggling or not getting the recognition that other students are. Make sure that all students get a chance to play to their strengths and feel included and valued. It can make a world of difference and improve student motivation.

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21 Simple Ideas To Improve Student Motivation

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While guidance from a teacher is important, allowing students to have choice and control is a useful strategy to improve student motivation.

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by TeachThought Staff

We've talked about the definition of intrinsic motivation in the past. We've also talked about some basic ways to improve student motivation.

This time, it's Mia MacMeekin 's turn to speak to you about the same, but through gridded, blocked, and easy to read infographics. The graphic starts with a definition for both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, then offers 27 verbs that can help promote that magic stuff that is characterized by curiosity, effort, engagement, and academic success.

Some were a little iffy-'praise' and 'milestones' seemed a little closer to extrinsic motivation. But the vast majority are useful to consider as you design units, lessons, and activities this school year.

Our favorites?
5. Create a grade free lesson 7. Challenge students to come up with new solutions to old problems 8. Encourage creative ways to accomplish the same task 22. Create a trusting atmosphere 23. Create a class vision 24. Engage in community service 27 Ways To Promote Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom

27 Ways To Promote Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom; 27 Ways To Promote Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom

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27 Ways To Promote Intrinsic Motivation In The Classroom

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by TeachThought Staff We've talked about the definition of intrinsic motivation in the past. We've also talked about some basic ways to improve student motivation. This time, it's Mia MacMeekin 's turn to speak to you about the same, but through gridded, blocked, and easy to read infographics.

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Our goal with Whereby is to create a browser-based video meeting tool with an emphasis on ease of use. Currently there are three different tiers of Whereby depending on your needs: Free, Pro, and Business. All versions of the Whereby allow for fast and easy video collaboration from anywhere in the world. Each plan has different features and limits, which you can learn about here.

Today, it takes an average of 7 minutes to get set up in a video meeting - and to us, that's about 6 minutes and 45 seconds too long. Our goal is to keep you productive by striking a balance between simplicity, security, and quality in your video meetings.

To create a Whereby account, all you need is an email. After registering, you can create your own Room Link that you can manage as you'd like. Simply share the link with anyone you'd like to invite and start your meeting! After registering and signing in to your account, you'll be able to go to Whereby to see your account home page. With an Whereby Pro account, this is where you'll manage your rooms (up to 3).

If a colleague or client sent you a Whereby link over chat or email, you can either click on it to open a new tab, or copy and paste the link into your browser. Depending on the settings of the room, you may be prompted to "knock", and they will allow you to enter the meeting. If it's an open room, you will be brought straight into the meeting. If you're charmed by how easy it is and want to set up your own meeting space to use in the future, you can register for a Free Whereby account.

In so many ways! We talk to our customers a lot, and are always uncovering interesting ways people use Whereby. Here's just some of the ways we use our own product at Whereby...

Remote work: At Whereby, we want to get the best team members no matter their location, but this poses time and distance barriers for effective collaboration. To stay connected, our colleagues are a simple click away from one another over video. This also allows employees to be flexible around family and other life obligations, by being able to join the meeting from anywhere - even with our iOS app.

Stand-ups: Another way we stay connected is by having weekly or even daily stand-ups. These can be by department, project, or the entire company. With custom Whereby room links, you can have a designated room that you know is there and available every time you need it.

Externally: Internal video meetings are inherently easier than external - everyone is familiar or even standardized on the technology. When you go outside your workflow to meet with partners, customers, or prospective employees, that's when confusion happens. Sometimes one needs to download an app, or runs into company permission issues, and you end up spending half your meeting trying to get into the meeting. This is where Whereby really shines; with no downloads and one-click-to-join in your browser, you can spend less time frustrated and more time meeting. Some recruiting agencies even conduct all their external interviews over Whereby!

We don't require any downloads or logins to join, which is what makes Whereby unique from other video conferencing applications. Another way that we're different from most is that Whereby meeting rooms are permanent links that you can go to at any time. Instead of creating a one time link, you can schedule a video meeting like you would schedule a normal in-person meeting. You can invite people into your room by sharing your room link, and they can join your room by pasting the link into any supported browser!

There's language around video meetings that can be confusing at first, so here's a brief word bank to get you started.

Room: A room has its own name, and a designated URL that creates a "space" or "room" for you to meet in. There are two different types of roles one can have when they join a room: Owner and Participant.

Owner: The owner of a room is the person (and associated email) that has full control over that room. They can lock or unlock the room, kick users, and edit the background and logo (Whereby Pro only).

Participant: A participant is someone who can join a room or attend a meeting. They don't have administrative permissions, but they can still use features like Screen Sharing!

Capacity: Capacity is just like the capacity of a real room - only a certain amount of people are able to fit in the room. In our Free plan there is a capacity of 4 people. In our Pro plan there is a capacity of 12.

Lock/Unlock rooms: This feature is to make sure that only the right people are attending your meeting room. Before users are able to join, they need to request access to the room by Knocking (see more on this below). Only a Room Owner can Lock or Unlock their room.

Knocking: If a room is locked, people will need to "knock" to enter. Then the room owner will receive a notification that someone is knocking, and they will see a picture of the person trying to enter the room. Then the Room Owner can let the user in, or put them on hold if they aren't quite ready.

Screen share: Any participant in a video meeting can share their screen. When you share your screen, all the participants in the meeting can see what you see on your device. Depending on the browser you're using, you'll see different options for screen sharing such as Sharing your Entire Screen, or a specific application window. For full details on screen sharing, check out our Support Center article here.

WebRTC: WebRTC stands for "Web real-time communication", which is video from your web browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

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Everything you need to know to get started with Whereby

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Our goal with Whereby is to create a browser-based video meeting tool with an emphasis on ease of use. Currently there are three different tiers of Whereby depending on your needs: Free, Pro, and Business. All versions of the Whereby allow for fast and easy video collaboration from anywhere in the world.

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Video Conferencing, Online Meetings, Screen Share | Cisco Webex

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Cisco Webex is the leading enterprise solution for video conferencing, online meetings, screen share, and webinars. Web conferencing, cloud calling and equipment.

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While stress caused by common core concerns has dominated the recent education landscape, dealing with 'Difficult' Students remains the number one source of constant tension for most teachers.

Continual exposure to students who won't behave or produce can quickly erode both confidence and well-being.

As a new school year approaches, the guidance offered by six "pillars" can help you stay at the top of your game by dramatically influencing even your most challenging students to want to behave and achieve. Each pillar is explained followed by a few hands-on suggestions. Add or substitute other methods within each pillar to reflect your style and preference.

6 Strategies For Growing Closer To Your Most Challenging Students

1: Somehow, Some way, form a Relationship.

The vast majority of teachers care deeply for and about their students. Yet by middle school less than half of all students believe they would be missed by their teacher(s) if they didn't come to school. Perhaps we need to be more demonstrative in showing the caring that is in our hearts.

Make it a top goal to be a cheerleader for your students, particularly those students whose actions make others want to turn away from them. Recognize them when objectionable behaviors are not happening.

Thank them for their cooperation and make time to ask how they managed to look after themselves. Create a classroom climate where students help and even "cheer" for each other. One simple thing you can do to get started is to have students finish these sentences:

One thing I do well at school and if asked I could help somebody else with is______.

One thing I do well at home and if asked I could help somebody else with is_____.

A strength most people don't know about me is_____________________.

When I need help I_____________________________.

Their answers can become the foundation upon which students look out for each other.

2: Make Learning Complelimg; Emphasize Utility Over Compliance.

A frequent complaint by students when we are teaching subject matter content is "When are we going to ever use this?" Many students fail to see the relevance between our content and their lives. When they don't, they may become bored and uninterested. Students who have learned to value school because they see the connection between a good education and success in life can tolerate boring classrooms. Otherwise, they don't. Motivation and discipline problems are often the result.

Make it a goal to begin each class with something that grabs their attention and then try to connect it to the lesson you are teaching: a great story; an existential question; a joke; an experiment; an interesting photo. If you cannot find a way to make the lesson relevant, at least connect with your students for a few seconds every day around something you know they find interesting (Hint: Music, Sports, Video Games, and Money are virtually always of interest to kids).

Show your knowledge and/or ignorance (i.e. Mara, I caught a little bit of Lil Wayne the other day who I know you listen to, and to be honest, I couldn't understand his message. Help an old guy like me understand what I'm missing?)

Rarely will a student refuse to engage when you capture their attention and interest.

3: Cultivate Responsibility on a Student-by-Student Basis.

Kids are not born responsible. It is a skill they need to learn. The best ways to promote responsibility are with involvement, ownership, and choices with limits (i.e. You can answer any five that best shows you understand the main causes of the civil war; or you can create a song with clean lyrics that includes the main causes).

Get your students involved in making decisions about as many things as you can. Try to avoid immediately giving them your solutions or consequences and instead ask questions leading them to think on their own. Find ways to give your students choices they can handle, celebrate with them when their choices work out and hold them accountable when they make mistakes.

For example, "Jose, it looks like you thought you could get by without doing any work. The results of your test show that the strategy didn't work out. So let's look at what you can do to get the practice we both know you need to be more successful. I have a few ideas (don't share them right away) but I bet you do as well (encourage students to first come up with their own solutions and then try to help them anticipate what the consequences of their choice might be).

What do you think?"

4. Build Momentum.

Nobody starts school expecting to fail.

Yet failure is probably the number one in-school factor that causes students to become disaffected, uninterested, unmotivated and disruptive. Challenge your students to get better every day in your subject than they were yesterday. For example, "You got the first three correct and that is good. I am proud of you. But let's see if you can do it two days in a row. Good luck."

Create and modify assignments, quizzes, tests and behavioral expectations based upon this premise.

Build an "APPP" for success. These are the keys: A ppear, P repare, P lan and P ractice. Get your kids to understand that "getting better than you were yesterday" is the daily standard of success. Great teachers make it between hard and impossible for their students to fail. They convey an attitude of success: "Don't ever expect me to give up on you and never give up on yourself."

Praise them when they do well, with your focus being on the effort and the strategy they used. For example, "Carter, you did well because you kept at it and tried three different ways to solve the problem."

Stay away from praise for factors over which they really have no control (i.e. "See, you did well because you are so smart!").

Do the same for yourself! (i.e. "I got through to Laurie because I took the time to focus on her interests.")

5. Make Sure they Feel Intellectually, Creatively, Emotionally, and Physically 'Safe.'

Be very clear about the details you expect your students to follow for a safe and smooth functioning classroom.

Among other things that may be specific to your subject, these should include how to enter the classroom, where to find the assignment, what to do if a pencil breaks, how to get permission for a drink or the bathroom, how to walk through the halls, line up and take turns.

It is important that these procedures be both explained and practiced. When you notice a procedure being followed well, point this out. Reinforcement always helps.

Perhaps the most important procedure that relates specifically to 'difficult' students behavior is to let all your students know that it will be rare for you to stop class to handle somebody's misbehavior for two reasons:

1. You have no interest in either embarrassing the student or yourself.

2. You will not sacrifice instructional time to handle misbehavior.

Let your students know that virtually always you will see the student after class or during a more private moment and it will be then that you will either give a consequence or otherwise figure out a solution with the student. Tell your students,

"If and when somebody breaks a rule, it may look as if I am ignoring what they did. I don't ignore bad behavior but I am not always going to stop class to deal with it because that would waste too much time and possibly be embarrassing. So understand that if you break a rule, there are consequences, but most of the time those will be given after class or when it won't take away from everybody's learning."

When something happens that demands a response but you want to postpone taking action say something like,

"I know you all just heard (saw) what Ethan did and most of you are probably wondering what I am going to do about it. Later on, Ethan and I will figure this out but right now we are on page 15." Then get back to instruction.

6: Teach Them New Ways to Have Fun.

The more you enjoy doing what you do, the more students will want to be around you. Enthusiasm is contagious, so be animated when you teach and have fun with your students and the curriculum. Laugh with them!

Watching 'difficult' students pursue knowledge that interests them is an exciting, dynamic experience. The idea of learning being 'fun' may be a new concept for them. Help them grow their 'learning is fun' muscle while also helping them understanding there are different *kinds* of fun as well.

Of course, not every lesson is 'fun,' but you can even add an element of fun to a boring lesson by announcing in advance how boring the unit is likely to be!

Don't hide from them (I have yet to find a really interesting way to teach______so the next fifteen minutes are likely to be really boring but also important for you to pay attention. By the way, if you can think of a more interesting way to teach_____after class let me know because I'd love to find a better way).

Challenge them to be last to 'moan and groan during the lesson' (if you think it is necessary although the challenge is usually enough, offer some kind of reward like winner gets five extra points, a special smiley sticker, or an extra bathroom pass) but at the end, allow for some brief "moan and groan" time. Permit yourself to be one of the loudest! They'll love it when you show that you can out-groan them.

There are lots of ways to make your class welcoming, relevant, successful, involving, safe and pleasurable and it all starts with you! Connect these six pillars to your daily curriculum and interactions. Your kids will benefit and so will you.
The strategies in this post are adapted from Mendler's book, When Teaching Gets Tough: Smart Ways to Reclaim Your Game 6 Strategies For Growing Closer To Your Most 'Difficult' Students Students; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad .
Bio: Allen Mendler is an educator, school psychologist, and author who resides in Rochester, N.Y. Dr. Mendler has worked extensively with children of all ages in regular education and special education settings; and youth in juvenile detention. Mendler's books include When Teaching Gets Tough: Smart Ways to Reclaim Your Game (ASCD, 2012) and The Resilient Teacher: How do I stay positive and effective when dealing with difficult people and policies? (ASCD, 2014). Connect with him on Twitter at @allenmendler

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6 Great Strategies For Dealing With 'Difficult' Students - TeachThought

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While stress caused by common core concerns has dominated the recent education landscape, dealing with 'Difficult' Students remains the number one source of constant tension for most teachers. Continual exposure to students who won't behave or produce can quickly erode both confidence and well-being.

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5 Out-Of-The Box Assessment Strategies Every Teacher Should Know
by Judy Willis M.D., M.Ed., radteach.com & Terry Heick

Most teachers and current textbooks offer varied approaches to the material to be learned so the teaching can be brain-compatible with the varied student learning styles.

It is only logical that respect for these individual learning styles be incorporated into assessment forms.

For example, teachers responsive to interpersonal learning styles find cooperative group work a way to pull in those learners as well to give students with artistic, computer, dramatic, or organizational skills the opportunities to enter the learning experience through their strengths and interests. It follows that assessments should also provide opportunities for each student's unique learning style to access his or her highest performance success level.

A variety of assessment forms and some student choice can bring students to the assessment with less anxiety and increase the positive learning experience as well as providing the opportunity for them to demonstrate what they know (as opposed to what they don't know).

Examples include:
Option 1: Open-Book & Take-Home Tests
This one is fairly straight-forward-allowing students to use resources to create responses to assessment questions. For obvious reasons, many teachers shy away from open-book tests: The answers are all "right there" in the book, and it teaches students to use books instead of their brains.

However, open-book tests can function as a powerful scaffold for more challenging assessment forms, providing a starting point for assessment of standard mastery (i.e., what they can do with the "answers" at their fingertips).

More importantly, it can allow for higher-level assessment. Books and other digital resources at home give them access to lower-level information (stuff they can Google or ask a friend), but not the higher-level thinking that requires them to synthesize disparate facts and perspectives to construct new knowledge.

This is where the shift of assessment of learning to assessment for learning can begin.
Option 2: Student-Made Tests
These are assessments that they prepare and the teacher can alter so the answers are not just memorized. For example, in history after studying the different agricultural products in the northern and southern colonies, the self-test questions a student writes might be:

What were the crops from the colonies in the north and from the south?

How are the climates, land and water supply different in one northern city and one southern city?

When the teacher rewrites the question it could prompt more analysis and executive function connections if it is rephrased: "Give an example of how the climate, water supply, and soil influenced the agricultural products in one northern and one southern city during the Colonial Era." In this example the teacher knows that the student has reviewed the facts necessary to make the higher-level connection and analysis and therefore has the tools for successful higher-level thinking.

How My Students Create And Study For Their Own Exams
This is the process I use for student-created math final exams in my classroom. Your process may differ depending on grade level, content area, or other local concerns.

1. I give the structure for the tests students are required to create such as, "Include 15 calculations and 5 word problems with 2 from each of the 10 subsections of the chapter"

2. I make a copy of each test and change the numbers, but not the structure of the equations. They knew I would do this and that the numbers will be different than the ones they used

3. Students are assigned homework to make practice tests on their own, using the template of the test they created and changing the numbers themselves

4. In class, for further review, students exchange their practice tests with partners for study and to the confirm accuracy of their answers (as I don't have an answer key to all of their self-created tests)

Option 3: Project-Based Learning!
Projects (pre-approved by the teacher) that demonstrate comprehension or mastery of the material covered in the unit can be ideal assessments.

They can become the packaging that connects the newly learned patterns of knowledge to related, previously stored knowledge. To see if the project assessment achieves this end, consider the questions:

Does this assessment examine understanding and not just rote memory?

Is the student called upon to think during the creation of the project?

These projects can include skits, posters, oral presentations, debates, papers, or demonstrations that assess understanding apart from rote knowledge. For some units the projects can be done in pairs or groups, as long as there is a means of assessing each individual student's participation in the final product. This could be through verbal interviews with students individually after the completion or presentation of the project.

A project example for a unit of study of modern Europe would have students select a country and simulate travel to that country including finding out how to get passports and visas, what the passport oath is, what clothing to bring, what hotels are near the important historic or cultural places they plan to visit, the money exchange rate, a budget, location of cities to visit along their travel route through their country, useful phrases to know in that language, cultural behaviors appropriate to that country, items they might expect to find on menus.

They might also create a menu, a travelogue, cook a meal, or prepare a "scrapbook" with pictures from the Internet and descriptions of their responses to "visits" they made to these places.

If standardized testing is of critical importance, each unit can include a test using the form they will experience during state testing.

However, letting them know that their grade will be calculated weighting equal or even greater percentage on the more authentic assessment will reduce test anxiety and show them that higher level thinking and reasoning is valued more than rote memory in the big picture, but that they must be prepared to be successful on all types of assessments.
Option 4: Written Response-Or Rather, The Pre-Writing
I almost didn't include this one because it's one teachers have used for eons-the short answer, the open-response, the essay, etc. These forms can also be guilty of assessing the students literacy skills and use of the writing process as much as they do mastery of standards.

But the writing process imposes a cognitive load on students few other assessment forms are able. It requires students to grasp a purpose and an audience, pre-write their ideas, craft a compelling argument that demonstrates a position, and then revise their writing for power and clarity.

That's a lot of steps for growing thinkers who can often get lost in the steps between the prompt and handing it in.

So for struggling writers-or even the "distinguished" ones-grade the pre-writing. Accept concept-maps, diagrams, charts, and other forms of pre-writing as at least preliminary evidence of understanding. This part can even be done on an exit slip on the way out of class, and returned the new day with a green light ( go for it), yellow light ( with this change, you can proceed), or red light ( we need to talk) feedback systems.
Option 5: Student-formed Questions As Assessment
The kinds of questions students ask about a topic, standard, or idea can be more illuminating than a dozen traditional multiple-choice questions (and that's the point of assessment-to provide data to revise planned instruction, yes?)

So, take a topic-government for example. Which questions imply understanding, and which do not?

What is government? (Nope.)

What kind of government do we have? (Buzz. Try again.)

Why do we need government? (better, but need more here.)

What are the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of government? (Now we're talking.)

Historically, what government forms are the most enduring, and why? (A good one too.)

Given current cultural trends, what kind of governments might be expect to see 200 hundred years from now. (Eureka! Understanding!)
5 Out-Of-The Box Assessment Strategies Every Teacher Should Know; image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool
Assessment Experienced Teacher

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5 Assessment Strategies Every Teacher Should Know

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5 Out-Of-The Box Assessment Strategies Every Teacher Should Know by Judy Willis M.D., M.Ed., radteach.com & Terry Heick Most teachers and current textbooks offer varied approaches to the material to be learned so the teaching can be brain-compatible with the varied student learning styles.

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contributed by Laura Reynolds

While assessment gets all the press, we often misunderstand effective feedback for learning.

When feedback is predominately negative, studies have shown that it can discourage student effort and achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, Dinham). In my experience, the only thing I knew is that I hated public speaking and I would do anything possible to get out of it. As a teacher, most of the time it is easy to give encouraging, positive feedback.

However, it is in the other times that we have to dig deep to find an appropriate feedback response that will not discourage a student's learning. This is where the good teachers, the ones students remember forever in a positive light, separate themselves from the others.

A teacher has the distinct responsibility to nurture a student's learning and to provide feedback in such a manner that the student does not leave the classroom feeling defeated. Here you will find 20 ideas and techniques on how to give effective learning feedback that will leave your students with the feeling they can conquer the world.

20 Ways to Provide Effective Feedback

1. Feedback should be educative in nature.

Providing feedback means giving students an explanation of what they are doing correctly and incorrectly. However, the focus of the feedback should be based essentially on what the students is doing right. It is most productive to a student's learning when they are provided with an explanation and example as to what is accurate and inaccurate about their work.

Consider using the concept of a 'feedback sandwich' to guide your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.

2. Feedback should be given in a timely manner.

When feedback is given immediately after showing proof of learning, the student responds positively and remembers the experience about what is being learned in a confident manner. If we wait too long to give feedback, the moment is lost and the student might not connect the feedback with the action.

3. Be sensitive to the individual needs of the student.

It is vital that we take into consideration each student individually when giving feedback. Our classrooms are full of diverse learners. Some students need to be nudged to achieve at a higher level and others need to be handled very gently so as not to discourage learning and damage self-esteem. A balance between not wanting to hurt a student's feelings and providing proper encouragement is essential.

4. Ask the 4 questions.

Studies of effective teaching and learning (Dinham, 2002, 2007a; 2007b) have shown that learners want to know where they stand in regards to their work. Providing answers to the following four questions on a regular basis will help provide quality feedback. These four questions are also helpful when providing feedback to parents:

What can the student do?

What can't the student do?

How does the student's work compare with that of others?

How can the student do better?

5. Feedback should reference a skill or specific knowledge.

This is when rubrics become a useful tool (single-point rubrics, for example). A rubric is an instrument to communicate expectations for an assignment and a useful way to provide effective feedback for learning. Effective rubrics provide students with very specific information about their performance, compared to an established range of standards. For younger students, try highlighting rubric items that the student is meeting or try using a sticker chart.

6. Give feedback to keep students 'on target' for achievement.

Regular 'check-ins' with students let them know where they stand in the classroom and with you. Utilize the '4 questions' to guide your feedback.

7. Host a one-on-one conference.

Providing a one-on-one meeting with a student is one of the most effective means of providing feedback. The student will look forward to having the attention and allows the opportunity to ask necessary questions. A one-on-one conference should be generally optimistic, as this will encourage the student to look forward to the next meeting.

As with all aspects of teaching, this strategy requires good time management. Try meeting with a student while the other students are working independently. Time the meetings so that they last no longer than 10 minutes.

8. Feedback can be given verbally, non-verbally, or in written form.

Be sure to keep your frowns in check. It is imperative that we examine our non-verbal cues. Facial expressions and gestures are also means of delivering feedback. This means that when you hand back that English paper, it is best not to scowl.

9. Concentrate on one ability or skill.

It makes a far greater impact on the student when only one skill is critiqued versus the entire paper being the focus of everything that is wrong.

For example, when I taught Writer's Workshop at the elementary level, I would let students know that for that day I was going to be checking on the indentation of paragraphs within their writing. When I conferenced with a student, that was my focus instead of all the other aspects of their writing. The next day would feature a new focus.

Utilize this strategy when grading papers or tests to provide effective feedback for learning. This strategy allows you the necessary time to provide quality, written feedback. This can also include using a rotation chart for students to conference with at a deeper more meaningful level. Students will also know when it is their turn to meet with you and are more likely to bring questions of their own to the conference.

11. Educate students on how to give feedback to each other.

Model for students what appropriate feedback looks like and sounds like. As an elementary teacher, we call this 'peer conferencing.' Train students to give each other constructive feedback in a way that is positive and helpful. Encourage students to use post-it notes to record the given feedback.

12. Ask another adult to give feedback.

The principal at the school I taught at would often volunteer to grade history tests or read student's writing pieces. You can imagine how the student's quality of work increased tenfold! If the principal is too busy (and most are), invite a 'guest' teacher or student teacher to critique work.

13. Have the student take notes.

During a conference over a test, paper, or a general 'check-in,' have the student do the writing while you do the talking. The student can use a notebook to jot down notes as you provide verbal feedback.

14. Use a notebook to keep track of student progress.

Keep a section of a notebook for each student. Write daily or weekly, dated comments about each student as necessary. Keep track of good questions the student asks, behavior issues, areas for improvement, test scores, etc. Of course, this requires a lot of essential time management but when it is time to conference with a student or parent, you are ready to go.

Returning papers and tests at the beginning of class, rather than at the end, allows students to ask necessary questions and to hold a relevant discussion.

16. Use Post-It notes.

Sometimes seeing a comment written out is more effective than just hearing it aloud. During independent work time, try writing feedback comments on a post-it note. Place the note on the student's desk the feedback is meant for. One of my former students had a difficult time staying on task but he would get frustrated and embarrassed when I called him out on his inattentive behaviors in front of the class.

He would then shut down and refused to do any work because he was mad that I humiliated him. I resorted to using post-it notes to point out when he was on task or not. Although it was not the most effective use of my time, it really worked for him as a way to provide effective feedback for learning.

17. Give genuine praise.

Students are quick to figure out which teachers use meaningless praise to win approval. If you are constantly telling your students 'Good Job' or 'Nice Work' then, over time, these words become meaningless. Make a big deal out of a student's A+ on that vocabulary test. If you are thrilled with a student's recent on-task behaviors, go above and beyond with the encouragement and praise.

Make a phone call home to let mom or dad know how thrilled you are with the student's behavior. Comments and suggestions within genuine feedback should also be 'focused, practical, and based on an assessment of what the student can do and is capable of achieving' (Dinham).

18. "I noticed...."

Make an effort to notice a student's behavior or effort at a task. For example; "I noticed when you regrouped correctly in the hundreds column, you got the problem right." "I noticed you arrived on time to class this entire week." Acknowledging a student and the efforts they are making goes a long way to positively influence academic performance.

19. Provide a model or example.

Communicate with your students the purpose of an assessment and/or feedback. Demonstrate to students what you are looking for by giving them an example of what an A+ paper looks like. Provide a contrast of what a C- paper looks like. This is especially important at the upper learning levels.

20. Invite students to give you feedback.

Remember when you finished a class in college and you were given the chance to 'grade' the professor? How nice was it to finally tell the professor that the reading material was so incredibly boring without worrying about it affecting your grade? Why not let students give you feedback on how you are doing as a teacher?

Make it so that they can do it anonymously. What did they like about your class? What didn't they like? If they were teaching the class, what would they do differently? What did they learn the most from you as a teacher? If we are open to it, we will quickly learn a few things about ourselves as educators.

Remember that feedback goes both ways and as teachers, it is wise to never stop improving and honing our skills as teachers.
20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning; A version of this post first appeared on opencolleges.edu.au;

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20 Ways To Provide Effective Feedback For Learning

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One way to provide effective feedback for learning is a 'feedback sandwich' to structure your feedback: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.

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We, the teachers, are diligently striving to make our teaching sound more appealing. We all know that students learn better when lessons and activities are fun and enjoying. Teachers have to consider different and creative ways to maintain students' engagement and motivation.

In this post, I came up with different ways to use dice in classrooms. In actuality, there exist many creative, funny, and different ways in which you can use dice in your classrooms. The use of dice can increase your students' in-class motivation and also spice up the boring lessons. Here are five different amazing ways you might opt for when using dice.

THE FIRST WAY is using dice in conjunction with classroom exercises.

When finishing a certain lesson or a unit. You can ask students to have their textbook or you can display a worksheet. Students can focus on the exercises. You can give them two dice. The use of dice may turn the exercise more fun and motivating. Students can roll the dice and the number they get is exactly the number of the questions they have to ask. The activity might be undertaken in peer or group work so that the number of dice available can fit the entire classroom and also to make the activity more funny, appealing and challenging.

THE SECOND WAY is using dice to learn grammar.

There are twelve tenses in English. You can associate each number with a particular tense. Then, you can ask students to choose a particular verb and to use a die. Students have to conjugate the verb in the exact tense, which is indicated by the number on the die. For example, simple present corresponds to number one, simple past corresponds to number two, present perfect corresponds to three...etc. If you are teaching advanced learners, and you want to practice all tenses, you can use two dice.

THE THIRD WAY is using dice to decide who goes first in presentations.

Apparently, many students don't like to be the first to present in class. You also don't like to decide who should present first as this puts them in an embarassing situation. You can have two to three dice. This is basically dependent on the number of students in the class. Students with the lowest numbers go first. Dividing presentations in this way is great because it is funny and enjoying to students than the traditional way, and it also helps you, as teachers, be fair and just.

THE FOURTH WAY is using dice to determine the level of difficulty in exercises and activities.

This is really amazing and makes many learners engaged. If you have a unit review or a set of exercises with varying levels of difficulty, have learners roll a die and answer either the easiest or the difficult question based on their try. For instance: if students get 1, they should finish simple present. If students get 6, they should finish present perfect. The game goes like this, until they finish the review or the set of exercises.

THE FIFTH WAY is using dice to have your learners form different sentences.

Dice with different sizes work well with this activity. Have one of your students roll the die in front of the whole class and the others have to compete to make sentences with the number of words that corresponds to the number on the dice.

Remember that not all these options can work for you. It all depends on your teaching context. Yet, you can modify and use them to make your classes more exciting.

Please, Like our Facebook page and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. I would really appreciate your comments with respect to the use of dice in language classrooms.

Have a great day Edutopians 😀.

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Five Creative Ways to Use Dice In the Classroom - Edutopians

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We, the teachers, are diligently striving to make our teaching sound more appealing. We all know that students learn better when lessons and activities are fun and enjoying. Teachers have to consider different and creative ways to maintain students' engagement and motivation. In this post, I came up with different ways to use dice in ...

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6 Ways To Reduce Student Stress In The Classroom

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6 Simple Ways To Reduce Student Stress In The Classroom by TeachThought Staff How do you make your students feel? Research is starting to show pretty conclusively that the answer to this question can have a profound effect on the learning that occurs within your class or school.

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CALL IS Webinar: Ways of Promoting Creativity in the Classroom.

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8 Common Sources Of Formative Assessment Data
contributed by Daniel R. Venables, Founder of Center for Authentic PLCs

Teachers look at data for one reason: to teach better.

We don't look at data to compare teachers or students (though this sometimes happens) or to point fingers. Data are tools teachers can use to improve-not weapons to be wielded against them. With this notion in mind, I offer some thoughts about where to find some of the less obvious and often more useful data.

In order to teach better, we must learn where our kids are struggling and where our instruction has been ineffective. Data-at least good data-can help.

It's tempting and commonplace to think of formative assessment strategies and data only in terms of numbers, tables of numbers, bar graphs, and such. These data tend to be the big data-or what I call macrodata-and very often reflect student performance on end-of-course tests or other high-stakes assessments. While these data are useful in analyzing achievement trends across a class, a grade level of students, or even various student subgroups, they paint the portrait of student achievement in very broad strokes.

Macrodata are great places for teacher teams and PLCs to start reviewing data, but to get a clearer sense of what is happening as our students learn, we need to look closely at the microdata. Herein lies the real clues to identify gaps and fix them before the gaps get too wide. The usefulness of student data is generally proportional to the frequency with which it's collected.

The following eight sources of daily classroom formative assessment data can be invaluable in informing instruction and guiding teachers in making modifications of that instruction.
1. Warm-Ups (Bell Ringers)
Unfortunately, class warm-ups can sometimes be downtime for students while the classroom teacher takes attendance and performs other housekeeping tasks. In these cases, the warm-up activity provides a vague start to class and an opportunity for students to shut down (particularly if the warm-up questions are too difficult), which sets the stage for unproductivity.

In many other cases, however, I have witnessed teachers who used the warm-up questions to provide valuable information about the extent to which students understood yesterday's work or work from days ago. Teachers in this setting can respond to their students' successes on the warm-up activity to adjust that day's instruction.
2. Checks-for-Understanding
Every time teachers ask the class a question during instruction, they receive formative assessment data about where their students are in their learning. But sometimes, the same three or four students answer all of the questions (and are usually right). This can produce skewed data that does not represent the class's mastery as a whole.

To lessen this effect, many teachers have students respond to global questions using individual student whiteboards, allowing teachers to quickly assess the progress of all students during instruction.

Other teachers have students place Post-ItsTM or magnets on large charts or graphs indicating their understanding or allow them to ask anonymous questions about the content. Using electronic devices, such as clickers, iPads, Kahoot, and even smartphone polls to measure student understanding is particularly effective (and engaging for students).
3. Homework
Homework is a time for students to practice and grapple with ideas and skills learned during class time. Meaningful homework assignments can provide teachers with valuable formative assessment data about where students are in their understanding.

There are lots of ways for teachers to assess the results of any given night's homework, but even if just a sampling is reviewed, they can get a good sense for how students are proceeding in their mastery of the material. Homework that is not meaningful fails to provide the kind of information that can be helpful to teachers instructionally.
4. Classwork
Like homework, work undertaken in class provides lots of information about student mastery. As teachers circulate among students completing classwork, this is a perfect time for teachers to not only assess student understanding but also to determine how effective they found the lesson.

It's much easier to backpedal during classwork to correct misunderstandings than it is to reteach an entire unit because the teacher found out too late.
5. Student Self-Assessments
Occasionally during instruction, teachers can poll students to see where they think they are in their understanding, particularly during more complex content instruction. To do this, I prefer heads-down voting so students feel safe to respond honestly and unpressured to vote as their classmates are voting. Heads-down voting involves a show of fingers using the following scale (which I leave on a poster in the classroom):

1 = Totally confused.

2 = Shaky on this.

3 = I think I get this.

4 = Got it. Let's move on.
6. Mini-Presentations
Another great source of information for teachers can come from mini-presentations, which provide some class time for students to share what it is they're working on or what they have learned.

These presentations serve three purposes: (1) Students demonstrate their understanding of the content, (2) they see and hear content discussed by their peers often in ways that struggling students understand better (peer paraphrasing), and (3) by providing a public exhibition of mastery, they tend to take the learning task more seriously and do better work.

Keep in mind that these presentations don't need to reflect lots of material to be effective. In fact, starting small is the best way to go.
7. Peer Evaluation/Scoring
Having students use a rubric to peer-evaluate or score a classmate's work (particularly a work in progress) serves several objectives: (1) It forces students to become familiar with the language and expectations of rigor embedded into the rubric, (2) it engages students in a conversation about the quality of each other's work and how to improve it, and (3) it provides teachers with formative data about how students are progressing in their work and in their mastery of the standard before the assignment is due.
8. Tickets-Out-The-Door (Exit Slips)
Many teachers commonly close their lesson with an exit slip for students to answer. These are typically short questions that reflect the content of that day's lesson. Sometimes the question prompt has to do with how students feel about the material.

In either case, a thoughtfully crafted question for a ticket-out-the-door provides teachers with a brief check for understanding. The teacher can review these quickly, and useful information can be gleaned about what students really got out of that class. It's a great way to stack the deck in your favor for tomorrow's lesson.

Most classroom teachers are familiar with these and other great sources of formative assessment data that may not involve numbers but are invaluable in providing them with useful information about student mastery. These sources of microdata often allow teachers to be proactive in guiding their instruction rather than reactive, as is more typically the case when teachers respond only to macrodata.
Daniel R. Venables is founder and executive director of the Center for Authentic PLCs, an independent consulting firm committed to assisting schools in implementing, developing, and sustaining authentic PLCs. He is the author of How Teachers Can Turn Data Into Action (ASCD, 2014), which presents the Data Action Model, a teacher-friendly, systematic process for reviewing and responding to data in cycles of two to nine weeks. He is also the author of The Practice of Authentic PLCs: A Guide to Effective Teacher Teams (Corwin Press, 2011)

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8 Most Common Sources Of Formative Assessment Data - TeachThought

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8 Common Sources Of Formative Assessment Data contributed by Daniel R. Venables, Founder of Center for Authentic PLCs Teachers look at data for one reason: to teach better. We don't look at data to compare teachers or students (though this sometimes happens) or to point fingers.

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Formative assessment tools are a great way to measure a student's performance before, during, and throughout the instruction process. It can serve as practice for our students, much like a meaningful homework assignment does.

We work with students and seek to use the data derived from formative assessments to help the student master the curriculum and help the student identify his/her strengths and weaknesses.

But these assessments don't need to bore you and students out! If you want to get your students engaged in the lessons and turn the fun mode on in class or even at home, these web tools are for you! These are the latest quiz, survey and poll builders that I constantly use in my classroom to liven up my warm ups, quizzes and reviews! They raise the energy level of my classes to the highest level - every time!

ClassMarker is a professional, easy-to-use online testing system that allows you to create your own web-based tests in minutes. Whether you're testing 5 or 5000 users, ClassMarker will save you those long, painful hours of creating, distributing and grading tests.

You'll never need to re-enter questions or tests, and results are calculated instantly and accurately. In three easy steps, you will have that professional exam you always wanted to give:

Step 1: Create your tests
Step 2: Assign your tests using public or private options
Step 3: Analyze results

With ClassMarker you can create as many questions and tests as you like. You can view test results in many ways with ClassMarker, from viewing an individual's progress in real time, to aggregated statistics for tests, questions, categories and more.

You can register for free with ClassMarker. FREE accounts come with full testing functionality available. Simply follow these steps and you can start testing immediately.

Highlight: Some that really stick out was being able to embed images and YouTube videos as a part of questions and answers.

Disadvantage: Upgrades cost money but heck, what app doesn't?

Quizalize is a free and fun way to engage students while reviewing materials for your course. You can either create your own quizzes or use quizzes from other teachers. Quizalize does a great job of providing formative assessments as either a game or an assignment .

Creating an account is fast and easy. Once you log on you can view the marketplace to see what other teachers have created or you can begin to create your own. Once you create a quiz, students type zzi.sh in the URL and then enter your classroom code. From there, they answer questions, get instant feedback, and they can look at data to see how well they are doing.

Once your class is set up you can easily look to see who has taken the quizzes, how many times they have taken them and, more importantly, how well they are doing.

Highlight: The interface is simple. Students get how to play it quickly and easily, and teachers can jump right in, too. The team game lets students work together and see their results in real time on the projector screen.

Disadvantage: Progress tracking is a paid option and there is no option for open-ended response.

If you are considering using Quizalize and would like a guide to get you through, you may check this link out!
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: FUN CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES USING TECHNOLOGY
Quizizz is a fun way for you to conduct review and practice sessions with your class. It's super simple to learn and completely FREE to use! It can be used in the classroom settings or even assigned as a homework.

To play a game on Quizizz, you can either choose from their library of countless public quizzes or you can decide to create your own quiz! You can always customize a public quiz by duplicating it! Once you have picked a quiz, you can conduct it in the classroom with the live mode or assign it as a homework game for students to practice at their own time.

Students can use any device with a browser to join the game and you get all the data both for individual students or the class as a whole! Quizizz auto grades all your quizzes and you can download and print these reports in different formats.

Highlight: Students are less likely to lose connection during the game. The classroom environment tends to be quieter because students are continuously engaged until they finish.

Disadvantage: Limited to multiple-choice questions and only four possible answers.

The paperless classroom is possible with this tool! Formative is an assessment tool where students can type, draw, or submit images to demonstrate their understanding. Send homework, do in class assignments, and grade everything all within the same program. When students answer questions, teacher can see them in real time and comment/grade in real time.

What makes this tool different is that you can upload existing assignments from PDFs, Word, and Google Docs, and add interactive pieces to them which means that much of your existing best lessons and resources can find new life in a digital format!

I like the fact that I can embed FlipGrid, a video discussion app, in Formative.

Disadvantage: Assignments are tailored to individual use without collaboration options.

Check out this post for 20 ways to use Formative for awesome assessment!

Gnowledge, which stands for General Knowledge, is pronounced just like the word knowledge. It is a test publishing platform and is meant to provide a global repository of user-generated test, assignment and exercises questions for educators, students and parents. Test papers stored on the site can be reused and reassigned to as many students as frequently as desired.

Teachers can utilize the Gnowledge website to store frequently used exercises and test papers, which can then be assigned to individual students or entire classrooms. Assigned exercises can be handed in electronically with the results automatically corrected and completed, thus saving precious time on manual individual exercise correction.

Students worldwide have free ready-access to exercises and test papers pertaining to their studies with results delivered to them instantly upon completion of each individual exercise.

Highlight: Parents can use the site to keep tabs on the academic aptitude and progress of their school-going children in a similar way that teachers use the Gnowledge website for. Detailed results of exercises completed by their children on the Gnowledge website can be forwarded to and subsequently viewed and evaluated by parents.

Disadvantage: Lacks gamifying features.

Testmoz is a very quick and simple way to generate an online quiz for your students. The program has many options so you can customize the quiz and the responses your students will receive. Testmoz is free, and does not require you (or your students) to register.

For the quiz you can:

create 4 different types of questions: true/false, multiple choice, fill in the blank and select all that apply,

decide how many options you have for each question,

choose how much each question is worth (whole numbers only),

set multiple correct answers for a fill in the blank question, and

randomize the order of the questions and/or the choices .

Disadvantage: This online tool has additional limitations, such as the inability to include images or videos.

Similar to SurveyMonkey, KwikSurveys is a free to use online survey and quiz builder, which has been specifically designed so that it is quick and easy to use for people of all experience levels. Surveys and quizzes can be instantly shared through social media, or posted to teacher websites or blogs.

Highlight: Free account comes with unlimited questions and unlimited responses. These survey responses get added to a central database as they are entered. This can be accessed with Microsoft Excel as soon as they have been 'submitted'. You can also download your survey results.

Disadvantage: No cross tabulation of survey results. Also, make sure you download your results because there had been reports of KwikSurveys losing user's data and account.
SOMETHING INTERESTING: ESL WARM UP ACTIVITIES WITH POWERPOINT
Mentimeter is a cloud-based solution that allows you to engage and interact with your target audience in real-time. It is a polling tool wherein you can set the questions and your target audience can give their input using a mobile phone or any other device connected to the Internet.

Mentimeter allows you to engage the audience better. Your audience would feel more involved in your presentation when given the chance to decide an outcome. It can boost efficiency and effectiveness through collaboration, aside from making it faster for you to generate content or data.

My favorite set-up is to do the "single choice" series with a segmentation of the results at the end. There is often a very appealing aha-effect from seeing the results displayed like this in real-time. It is at it's most valuable when it spurs a discussion around the results which incredible sometimes because the audience has created the results together.

Highlight: There are so many good things to say about Mentimeter, but one thing that I like most about this app is the Word Cloud function. Basically, you can ask a question and your students can send up to three answers. On your screen you will see the responses formed into a dynamic Word Cloud. If your students had given similar answers, it will be reflected in the size of that word in the Word Cloud.

Disadvantage: As a free user, you can create infinite number of presentations. However, you can only create up to 2 questions per presentation. To create more questions, you will need to upgrade your account.

Socrative allows teachers to create simple quizzes that students can take quickly on laptops - or, more often, via classroom tablet computers or their own smartphones. On Socrative, teachers have the choice of creating a quiz, quick question, space race, or exit ticket.

In the background, they track student performance and provide real-time data to help teachers, parents, schools and districts personalize and improve learning.

This is an excellent tool to get a pulse check on what students think about a topic or to test their prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson. You can truly see who understands a concept and who does not in a way that is non obtrusive to students identities or stressful for students.

Highlight: It allows teachers to capitalize on limited devices by giving multiple students the opportunity to interact with Socrative on a shared device.

Disadvantage: It would be great to if teachers could add images to questions and options for beginners or visual learners.

Quizlet offers free online study tools that lets educators create study sets in a form of flashcards which are aimed at helping students learn material. Kids are able to compete against their friends, discuss sets, and entire classes can share teacher-created sets.

This tool is great encourage students to use Quizlet on their own time as homework or as a study aid for review especially for a test with long list of vocabulary words and terms. Along with flashcards, it also offers games and testing to appeal to various learning styles such as matching, spelling and quiz to gauge students' knowledge.

Highlight: One feature that I love most is Quizlet Live, which is an in-class, team-based learning game. Live function makes it possible for students to participate in a competitive vocabulary review game against their classmates from any device. Each team works together to correctly match a Quizlet set's terms and definitions. The first team to match 12 in a row wins! My kids love the competitive element of Quizlet Live. They loved racing against other teams, trying to be the first to answer every question and to get bragging rights over their peers.

Disadvantage: Structured around sets of terms and definitions, Quizlet is a platform for rote learning.

Kahoot is a student-response gamifying tool that let teachers create multiple-choice quizzes. It provides quick, real-time results and give students instant feedback on their devices without anyone being called out individually. They can be great for formative assessment as can be a great way to reinforce a lesson before a test.

I use this platform mainly to review concepts and vocabulary. My students always ask to play Kahoot again and again so I decided to establish a Kahoot day for quick revision and informal assessments. You can also challenge your students to create their own Kahoot quiz to allow higher order learning.

Highlight: Kahoot can quickly become a go-to for teachers looking for an engaging way to run checks for understanding or exit tickets.

Disadvantage: It would be great if there were a few different songs that can be attached to a Kahoot in order to change the background music while playing. Current music is monotonous almost robotic and can easily bore students and teachers who play Kahoot frequently.
ALSO READ: 6 POWERPOINT ALTERNATIVES FOR PRESENTATIONS

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11 Useful Formative Assessment Tools for Teachers

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Formative assessment tools are a great way to measure a student's performance before, during, and throughout the instruction process. It can serve as practice for our students, much like a meaningful homework assignment does. We work with students and seek to use the data derived from formative assessments to help the student master the curriculum and help the student identify his/her strengths and weaknesses.

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Ste Sharpe has been mentoring newly-qualified teachers of English for seven years. This is his advice for building rapport with adult and teenage learners, for teachers who are new to the classroom, or experienced teachers.
When newly qualified teachers start their first teaching job, there is a lot to take in: understanding new administrative procedures and lesson material, lesson planning, working in front of a group of learners who have high expectations, and possibly living in a new place.

Rapport is 'the relationship that the learners have with the teachers and vice versa...a class where there is a positive, enjoyable and respectful relationship between teacher and learners and between learners themselves', according to Jeremy Harmer in The Practice of English Language Teaching (2007) Pearson Longman.

In my experience, building rapport with learners can be a challenge. Teachers sometimes feel like an actor on stage who has forgotten their lines.

Here are my favourite ways to build rapport with learners more quickly and effectively.
Learn the names of everyone in the class
At the beginning of the course, I always have the paper register at hand to help me, or I have learners write their names on a piece of paper or card and leave it in front of them on the table.

You can ask learners to introduce themselves by saying an adjective that begins with the first letter of their first name, plus their name. Then the next learner repeats the previous learner's name.

For example:

Learner 1: I'm brilliant Brahim.

Learner 2: He's brilliant Brahim and I'm dashing Don.

Learner 3: He's brilliant Brahim. He's dashing Don and I'm nice Natalie.

Encourage learners to use positive adjectives, so they can continue to use them throughout the course.

Learners can also use the letters in their first names, and you can display them on the wall. For example, a student named Dora might be:
Daring Organised Reliable Amazing.
Show an interest in learners' lives outside of the classroom
I frequently ask learners questions like:
How was your day today? What did you do at the weekend?
These are 'guided questions', or questions about specific topics. For example:
Have you seen the latest Marvel film? What did you think of it?
Planning five minutes at the beginning of each lesson to have a conversation using guided questions can help to make learners feel comfortable, and gives them the chance to learn more about each other and you.
Make eye contact with learners
If you're a tall person like me, crouching down to the seated learners' level to talk to them means you're less overpowering and not looking down on them. This is especially true when teaching young learners, who are sometimes at knee-height for me!
At the start of a course, include a 'get to know you' activity
These activities are a great way for learners to practise their speaking skills and get to know each other, while allowing you to assess their spoken English.

Here are two examples:

Learners ask each other questions to find someone who matches a description. For example, someone who went to bed late last night, or someone who can speak three languages. You can create a list before the class begins. At the beginning of the activity, write the list on the board, dictate it or distribute it on paper.

To make the game more challenging, give learners part of the question:
Can/speak three languages
and ask them to formulate the full question:
Can you speak three languages?
Learners walk around the room and ask each other questions, then write down the name of the learner when they say yes. At the end of the activity, learners can talk about their findings in groups to find out more about each other. For example:
Rim can speak three languages. Kat has visited more than 20 countries.
First, prepare a list of topics for learners to talk about, or ask your learners to prepare a list.

Next, ask learners to work in pairs. They can decide who is A and B. Say one of the topics aloud for everyone to hear (e.g. hobbies). Learner A has to talk for one minute without stopping about their hobbies, while Learner B listens.

At the end of that minute, Learner B then has one minute to ask follow-up questions.

When this minute is over, the teacher says another topic and learners repeat the same process, with Learner B talking for one minute first.
Allow learners to ask you questions about your life and teaching experience
Have learners work in pairs or small groups to write three questions to ask you. When they have all finished, each pair/group asks you a question. You only answer if the question is grammatically correct. Learners need to listen carefully, as they cannot repeat a question that has already been asked.

Some teachers prefer learners not to know about their private life, and some work in countries where revealing aspects of their private life might be unsafe. If this is a concern, you can write a list of topics which you will answer (e.g. hobbies, food and drink, films, books, travel, past work experience).

You can also show pictures which represent parts of your life. For example:

images that represent countries you've worked/lived in

pictures of your favourite food or food that you can cook

numbers which represent number of countries visited, number of siblings or how many pairs of shoes you own.

Learners then work in groups to guess how these are related to you. They can ask you questions to find out if their guesses are correct.

In my experience, showing a bit of your life outside of the classroom goes a long way to building rapport.
Respect your learners
Carl Rogers, an American psychologist, says that 'respect (a positive, non-judgmental regard for other people), empathy (being able to see things from the other person's perspective) and authenticity (being oneself without hiding behind job titles, roles or masks)' are important when building rapport in the classroom.

If you respect learners, they will usually respect you back. If you see that a learner has difficulty with a task through what they're saying or the way they behave, speak to them in a calm manner and give them your full attention.

Try to be yourself in class. We're human and make mistakes from time to time.
Vary activities to increase energy and motivation in the classroom
Adult learners may feel tired and anxious after a long day at work and in traffic. A simple, fun activity - such as a competitive vocabulary game - at the beginning of a lesson can make a lot of difference.

This is a great way to revise vocabulary and add a competitive element to an activity.

First, put learners in groups with a piece of paper and pen and ask them to think of a team name.

Next, draw four columns on the board and write four categories for each column. For example: country; adjective; food/drink; verb. You can add more columns if you like and even ask the learners to decide on the categories.

Then, write one letter of the alphabet on the board. Learners work in their teams to think of and write one word that starts with that letter for each category. For example, B would be Brazil, beautiful, broccoli, bring.

The first team to hold up their paper with the correct information wins a point. Continue this with other letters of the alphabet.

This is another fun way to revise vocabulary. It's fast-paced and boosts energy levels in the class.

First, find a ball or make one with scrap pieces of paper scrunched together.

Next, ask learners to stand in a circle. Think of a topic (e.g. food). Then, throw the ball to a learner, who has to catch it and say a word related to the topic. They have five seconds to say a word and then throw the ball to another learner. If they don't say a word within the time limit, or repeat a word already said, they have to sit down.

The last learner standing is the winner.

To make it more challenging, before a learner throws the ball, they have to say what the new topic is.

This is a classic game that provides listening practice.

First, provide learners with a 3x3 or 4x4 grid (they can also create these by themselves).

Then, write words on the board related to a topic, like clothes or food. Make sure you write more words than the number of squares on the grids.

Next, learners choose any words from the board and write them in the squares on their grids.

When everyone is ready, you read a word from the board aloud at random, repeating the word twice. Make sure you write the words you say on a piece of paper to check later.

If learners hear a word that is on their grid, they cross it out.

When learners have crossed out all their words, they shout out 'Bingo!'. Ask them to read the words back to you to check they are correct.

Some variations on Bingo:

use words which have a particular sound to help with recognising them. For example, words with /ɪə/ (here) and /aɪ/ (my) sounds

say the words in sentences to make it more challenging to hear the words

use numbers (the traditional way to play the game!)

Praise learners as much as possible
Positive reinforcement and showing a little excitement boost motivation levels. Jill Hadfield said in Classroom Dynamics (1993) Oxford University Press that 'a positive group atmosphere can have a beneficial effect on the morale, motivation and self-image of its members, and thus significantly affect their learning.'
Teachers, visit our TeachingEnglish website for more lesson plans and activities, and find out how you can become a TeachingEnglish blogger.

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Build rapport in the English language classroom - eight tips for new

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Ste Sharpe has been mentoring newly-qualified teachers of English for seven years. This is his advice for building rapport with adult and teenage learners, for teachers who are new to the classroom, or experienced teachers.

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Social Emotional Learning and Project Based Learning are two of the hottest trends in education right now.

Their popularity is due to the pendulum swinging back from the previous obsession with standardization and assessment dictated by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top to more holistic education. Yet neither SEL nor PBL should be seen as fads, but as necessary and permanent shifts in pedagogy.

SEL is constantly happening in every classroom but is often part of the hidden curriculum. Teachers need to make SEL visible and intentional. Many schools are implementing specific plans for SEL as a stand-alone curriculum. But as Frey, Fisher, and Smith advocate in All Learning is Social and Emotional:

"What's needed, and what's far less common, is for schools to amplify the principles SEL programs introduce to make them the fabric of the school itself. In order for SEL to have a lasting and sustained effect, it needs to be integrated into the academic mainstream rather than remain on the periphery."

SEL should not be another thing added onto teachers' plates, but rather is most effective when integrated into classroom culture and routines.

PBL experts have long advocated that students should be learning skills in the classroom simultaneously with content knowledge. There are many labels for these skills:

Soft Skills (which makes them sound weak)

College and Career Readiness (but many are about quality of life, not making money)

21st Century Competencies (even though they aren't new; cavemen used them)

Success Skills (PBLWorks' term)

School Wide Learning Outcomes (New Tech Network's term)

Character Framework (Expeditionary Learning's term)

SEL is a useful terminology and framework for the set of skills that PBL experts agree should be integrated into projects.

The following table shows how CASEL's SEL Competencies can be naturally embedded into High Quality PBL.

Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness is accurately perceiving who you are as a person and developing confidence based on your individual strengths. Many students lack a belief in their abilities or have skills that are not emphasized in traditional classrooms. Project Based Learning gives all students the opportunity to gain confidence by creating meaningful work.

PBL honors each student's unique characteristics. Through voice and choice, students recognize and use their strengths in what products they create and how they demonstrate their learning. Students build confidence by choosing group roles based on their strengths. PBL is built upon a growth mindset. Students use design thinking protocols to plan solutions, creating a culture of failing forward through iterative stages. They learn that mistakes are not permanent, but part of the routines of working toward success.

Reflection throughout the project process helps students see their progress and personal growth. Public presentation of their work encourages students and creates a positive self-perception. Students learn to advocate for themselves in PBL by requesting workshops from the teacher when needed. Most importantly the PBL framework teaches students how to learn, so they develop the skills to pursue any topic that they are passionate about on their own.

Social Awareness

Social Awareness is considering others' perspectives and having empathy for people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. Today's world has become polarized with people talking over each other, rather than listening and working towards compromise. High quality PBL forces students to consider multiple perspectives before working toward solutions.

Every teacher begins the year by establishing classroom norms. In PBL these norms are focused on respecting each other, even when we disagree and on how to function well in a group. Since students spend a majority of their day working together, they will consistently have different opinions. These are opportunities for them to learn how to navigate conflict peacefully. Each student's voice should be heard and respected throughout the project.

Projects start with a driving question to engage students and frame the anticipated learning. Students should be investigating multiple viewpoints before coming to any conclusions. Community members from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences should be embedded into the process. Students should see that complex problems in society do not have simplistic, one-sided answers.

A project on stewardship of the environment, for example, would consider not only the negative effects of industrial pollution and land development, but the positive effects of jobs and economic benefits created by businesses. Students would be challenged to hear all sides and balance the needs of everyone in their final solutions.

Responsible Decision Making

Responsible Decision Making is making positive choices based on ethics, safety, and norms. The SEL framework emphasizes student behavior in the classroom, whereas PBL applies it more globally to issues outside of themselves. But the skills are the same in each case, with PBL using Social Awareness to drive this decision making.

The driving question launches a project with a focus on an authentic problem. Students then generate a list of "Need to Know's" (N2K's) of information and skills necessary to generate a solution. From the N2K's, students with the guidance of the teacher plan next steps of how they will conduct research into the problem. This whole process requires identifying and analyzing problems at a deep level.

Since PBL is student-driven, continuous inquiry is embedded as students evaluate both resources and the driving question at every stage. Students engage in feedback and revision protocols such as gallery walks and the tuning protocol as they evaluate each other's work. This peer feedback leads to exemplary products in their final solutions to the driving question.

In PBL, students reflect on both the skills that they are learning and their behaviors in their groups. There are "teachable moments" to talk about ethical responsibility on a daily basis. Taking ethics to the next level, service projects give students the chance to make a positive impact in the community. PBL creates a strong connection for students between personal and civic responsibility in their neighborhoods and beyond.

Self Management

Self Management is regulating oneself to manage and achieve goals. Project management is a key skillset in PBL within which self management is practiced and attained. The teacher creates a climate for students to manage themselves with the norms and routines mentioned under Social Awareness. Students become self-motivated when they exercise their voice to direct their learning as they explore their passions in the N2K's and Next Steps protocols.

The classroom should be a safe space for students to develop project management skills. In PBL, students organize their groups through contracts that define appropriate behavior and define work roles. They can use tools such as scrum boards and team calendars. Students should set goals as a team and learn to hold each other accountable for completion. Older students can use online tools such as Trello to organize and younger students can use posters or bulletin boards for the same purpose.

Students also learn self-management by choosing the appropriate scaffolding and tools that they need to complete their work. Teachers can give menus of options and students can choose what works for them. Finally, a key element of PBL is self assessment through reflection. Students can compare their work to rubric descriptions and exemplars. They should be reflecting on their content learning and the SEL skills that they are developing throughout the PBL process.

Relationship Skills

Relationship Skills are the ability to maintain healthy relationships with diverse people through communication and cooperation. Since PBL involves significant time spent working in groups, it is the perfect structure to develop Relationship Skills.

Communication is one of the most fundamental skills developed in PBL. In traditional classrooms, students often sit passively listening most of the time. In PBL, not only are students constantly communicating in their groups, but they give professional presentations to their class and the community. Community experts are brought in and students collaborate with them to develop solutions to the driving question.

As mentioned previously, group contracts and student roles help students learn how to interact with each other in productive ways and invoke teamwork for successful completion of their goals. Feedback and revision protocols teach students to both give and accept peer feedback on their products. Reflection throughout the project on their group dynamics gives students opportunities to identify and solve relationship challenges.

Like PBL, SEL should not be another add-on program in schools.

PBL is an instructional framework that can include many of today's progressive teaching strategies and goals for students, and it's perfect for teaching SEL competencies seamlessly. The student-centered PBL approach allows students to develop these competencies in a safe environment under the reflective guidance of their teacher.

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A Natural Fit: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning and PBL

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Their popularity is due to the pendulum swinging back from the previous obsession with standardization and assessment dictated by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top to more holistic education. Yet neither SEL nor PBL should be seen as fads, but as necessary and permanent shifts in pedagogy.

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Where does creativity come from? How can you nurture your own? Watch TED Talks from creative people like Steve Jobs, architect Frank Gehry, designer Philippe Starck, writer Elizabeth Gilbert and more.

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10 Team-Building Games That Promote Critical Thinking
by TeachThought Staff

One of education's primary goals is to groom the next generation of little humans to succeed in the 'real world.'

Yes, there are mounds of curricula they must master in a wide breadth of subjects, but education does not begin and end with a textbook or test.

Other skills must be honed, too, not the least of which is how to get along with their peers and work well with others. This is not something that can be cultivated through rote memorization or with strategically placed posters.

Students must be engaged and cooperation must be practiced, and often. The following team-building games can promote cooperation and communication, help establish a positive classroom environment and - most importantly - provide a fun, much-needed reprieve from routine.
10 Team-Building Games That Promote Collaborative Critical Thinking
You can purchase a classroom-ready version of team-building games that promote critical thinking here.
1. If You Build it...
This team-building game is flexible. Simply divide students into teams and give them equal amounts of a certain material, like pipe cleaners, blocks, or even dried spaghetti and marshmallows.

Then, give them something to construct. The challenge can be variable (think: Which team can build the tallest, structurally-sound castle? Which team can build a castle the fastest?). You can recycle this activity throughout the year by adapting the challenge or materials to specific content areas.
Skills: Communication; problem-solving
This activity can get messy and may be suitable for older children who can follow safety guidelines when working with raw eggs. Teams must work together to find a way to 'save' the egg (Humpty Dumpty for elementary school students?) - in this case an egg dropped from a specific height. That could involve finding the perfect soft landing, or creating a device that guides the egg safely to the ground.

Let their creativity work here.
Skills: Problem-solving, creative collaboration 3. Zoom
Zoom is a classic classroom cooperative game that never seems to go out of style. Simply form students into a circle and give each a unique picture of an object, animal or whatever else suits your fancy. You begin a story that incorporates whatever happens to be on your assigned photo. The next student continues the story, incorporating their photo, and so on.
Skills: Communication; creative collaboration 4. Minefield
Another classic team-building game. Arrange some sort of obstacle course and divide students into teams. Students take turns navigating the "mine field" while blindfolded, with only their teammates to guide them. You can also require students to only use certain words or clues to make it challenging or content-area specific.
Skills: Communication; trust
See also 10 Team-Building Games For A Friendlier Classroom
5. The Worst-Case Scenario
Fabricate a scenario in which students would need to work together and solve problems to succeed, like being stranded on a deserted island or getting lost at sea. Ask them to work together to concoct a solution that ensures everyone arrives safely. You might ask them to come up with a list of 10 must-have items that would help them most, or a creative passage to safety. Encourage them to vote - everyone must agree to the final solution.
Skills: Communication, problem-solving 6. A Shrinking Vessel
This game requires a good deal of strategy in addition to team work. Its rules are deceptively simple: The entire group must find a way to occupy a space that shrinks over time, until they are packed creatively like sardines. You can form the boundary with a rope, a tarp or blanket being folded over or small traffic cones. (Skills: Problem-solving; teamwork)
7. Go for Gold
This game is similar to the 'If you build it' game: Teams have a common objective, but instead of each one having the same materials, they have access to a whole cache of materials. For instance, the goal might be to create a contraption with pipes, rubber tubing and pieces of cardboard that can carry a marble from point A to point B in a certain number of steps, using only gravity.
Creative collaboration; communication; problem-solving 8. It's a Mystery
Many children (and grown-ups) enjoy a good mystery, so why not design one that must be solved cooperatively? Give each student a numbered clue. In order to solve the mystery - say, the case of the missing mascot - children must work together to solve the clues in order. The "case" might require them to move from one area of the room to the next, uncovering more clues.
Skills: Problem-solving, communication
That playground classic is still a hit - not to mention inexpensive and simple to execute. For a unique variation, set up a multi-directional game by tying ropes in such a way that three or four teams tug at once. Some teams might choose to work together to eliminate the other groups before going head-to-head.
Skills: Team work; sportsmanship 10. Keep it Real
This open-ended concept is simple and serves as an excellent segue into problem-based learning. Challenge students to identify and cooperatively solve a real problem in their schools or communities. You may set the parameters, including a time limit, materials and physical boundaries.
Skills: Problem-solving; communication
While education technology is a basic and crucial component of the 21st-century classroom, educators must still ensure that students are engaging with each other in meaningful ways. Team-building exercises are a great way to do this, and because of this, they will never go out of style.
Aimee Hosler is a writer and mother of two living in Virginia. She specializes in a number of topics, but is particularly passionate about education and workplace news and trends. She hold a B.S. in Journalism from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and is a contributor to several websites including OnlineSchools.com; 10 Team-Building Games For Kids, Teenagers, or Adults

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10 Team-Building Games That Promote Collaborative Critical Thinking

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10 Team-Building Games That Promote Critical Thinking by TeachThought Staff One of education's primary goals is to groom the next generation of little humans to succeed in the 'real world.' Yes, there are mounds of curricula they must master in a wide breadth of subjects, but education does not begin and end with a textbook or test.

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The Elements Of A Digital Classroom
by TeachThought Staff

What makes up a classroom?

Is it the space? A room, for example?

Is it the purpose? Can a regular meeting space in a garden be a 'horticulture classroom'?

Is it the people? Can a video conference with eight people gathered to study chemistry be considered a 'classroom'?

Or maybe it's the tools. A woodworking classroom would have wood and saws and sanders and other widgets to shape the wood. It could be in a vocational center or garage or retail environment.

A cooking classroom would most likely have pots and pans and a stove of some kind. It could be in a school or a restaurant or a home.

What about your average K-12 classroom? What are its parts? A teacher, students, books, paper, pencils, chairs, desks, and signage for the walls? Maybe shelves and scissors and, well, you get the idea.

The driving question here has something to do with purpose and tools and spaces. Compared to the the woodworking classroom above, what exactly comprises a 'digital classroom' is flexible because a digital classroom is a flexible idea.

Below we start the discussion by identifying eight critical elements of the digital classroom. Note, this mainly refers to the most common modern example of this: a physical classroom that extends into digital spaces. That said, most would apply to purely digital classrooms as well with only a few exceptions.

See also 20 Classroom Setups That Promote Thinking
8 Critical Elements Of The Digital Classroom 1. The Spaces
Summary: The spaces in a digital classroom can be personalized or anonymous, static or fixed, open or closed, responsive or mute. The main theme is potential, though that potential can be unrealized if there is a lack of alignment between learning objectives and the technology used to achieve them.

Examples: An online course with a group for reflective discussion, a reddit or Quora forum to ask questions and solicit new perspective on a problem-based learning lesson, a 1:1 classroom where students move back and forth between 'digital' and physical workspaces.

How it's different than traditional classrooms: In a digital classroom, the spaces are both physical and digital if for no other reason than no matter how 'digital' the tools, students are always 'physical,' usually coming from a physical home to sit in a physical space with other physical students in a physical school.

Strengths: As described above, a digital classroom has the potential to be entirely personalized for each student to connect with the right content, peer, or audience at the right time-and 'scale' insofar as that potential can be replicated for every student every day without the direct and persistent 'programming' of a teacher.

Weaknesses: Spaces in a digital classroom can be difficult to align with specific learning standards. They also can be full of distractions, notifications, temptations to 'play' (and not the 'good' kind of learning through play).

Also, though digital work can be social and open and collaborative, in many ways it can be even more de-personal and isolated than a student completing a worksheet sitting alone at a desk. In the former, the student may be the only person that ever sees any of the work or progress, while the worksheet example would at worst see the student turn in the worksheet to a teacher who would provide feedback and often a grade, which would then be communicated to parent/guardians/family, etc.
2. The Tone
Summary: This one's a little abstract, but the idea is that the tone of a digital classroom is one of its most striking characteristics. From the aesthetic of the assignments to the workflow for teachers to the pace of the assignments to the frustration of buggy software, digital classrooms have a kind of mood and tone that make it striking in contrast to traditional classrooms, where assignments often begin here and end there and all student activites are contained, finite, and often teacher or classroom-centered.

Example: The sequence of tasks in a digital classroom is recursive and often nonsensical, sometimes requiring students to sign up for an account before completing an assignment (e.g., creating a ReadWorks account before being taking a quiz) other times requiring a student to complete an assignment so that they may open a new account (e.g., to public a project-based learning artifact), while other times signing up for a VPN because of a district internet filter that blocks a resource it has no business blocking.

Why this difference matters: Without embracing the often chaotic and de-centralized patterns and tone of a digital classroom, teachers can become worried that no 'real learning' is happening, or that they've somehow failed to plan sufficiently.

Strengths: It's easier to put students, student progress, and student work on display in a digital classroom

Weaknesses: Classroom management in a digital classroom is different-more challenging for some students/teachers, less for others. The tone here can bring out the best or 'worst' in students and student interactions.
3. The Feedback Loops
Summary: In a digital classroom, the feedback loops have the chance to be much faster than a traditional classroom-sometimes instantaneous.

Examples: In a traditional classroom, the feedback loops include teacher's correcting assignments (often days later), teachers provide oral feedback in the moment (which is limited because teachers can't 'scale' and interface with every student every moment. In a digital classroom, a video game in a game-based learning assignment provides immediate feedback that responds exactly to each student input the moment it's made. Learning platforms can let a student know right away that an answer was incorrect by showing a giant red X animation, or offering a pop-up dialogue box that offers a hint.

How it's different than traditional classrooms: The feedback loops are much faster in a digital classroom, can be customized-per student, per lesson, per operating system, individual or group work, etc.

Strengths: See above-it's instant. It 'scales.' It equally applies to all students in the same ways, allowing for norm-referenced evaluation when that's useful.

Weaknesses: While it can be more personalized in some ways (correcting a specific student error), a digital classroom alone can't reproduce a teacher's knowledge of the history, temperament, affections, gifts, etc., of each child the way the best teachers can.
4. The Technology
Summary: The fourth element of a digital classroom is the most iconic: the technology. Whether hardware or software, WiFi or LANs, operating systems or social media channels, the technology of a digital classroom is the most visible part for many, and thus can seem the most crucial.

(This, of course, couldn't be further from the truth. The most critical part of any learning experience for a child is the child-what they learn, and what they do with what they learn.)

Examples: Apps, social media platforms like facebook, instagram, etc; YouTube, live video streaming platforms (from YouTube or twitch for video games to streaming public events; Google Chromebooks, MacBooks, Windows laptops; iPads and Android tablets; Apple Watch and other smart watches and wearable technology; virtual reality hardware, applications, and games; QR codes and scanners; Google search and related web browsers with plug-ins and extensions; adaptive learning algorithms and artificial intelligence; Kindles and other eReaders; projectors; USB and portable memory; cloud storage and file-sharing; smart boards; document scanners; personal computer desktops and Mac Minis (as a portable desktop); operating systems like Mac OS, iOS, Android, Microsoft Windows), video games, message forums; MOOCs; podcasting tools; crowdsourcing platforms

How it's different than traditional classrooms: It never stops changing

Strengths: It never stops changing

Weaknesses: It never stops changing
5. The Workflow
Summary: In a digital classroom, the workflow shifts from teacher <-> student to the the student --> everything else --> student --> everything else.

Examples: See below

How it's different than traditional classrooms: In a traditional classroom, the workflow is fairly predictable: the teacher gives an assignment, the students complete the assignment and return to the work to the teacher. Sometimes, collaboration between students occurs. Teachers may also send the work back to the student with learning feedback, then require the student to resubmit. At best, it's a lot like hitting a tennis ball back and forth.

In a digital classroom, the workflow can be similarly binary-from student to learning platform when a student completes a lesson on Khan Academy, or a student submits an essay assignment via Google Drive to a teacher.

But it also can be between a group of 12 students on a daily basis for a week, to a mentor for feedback, back to smaller groups of 3 for more granular feedback, then to the teacher for evaluation, then published to a public audience via a social platform or local/physical venue.

Strengths: The workflow in a digital classroom provides more opportunities for creative feedback, critical evaluation, authentic 'real-world' contexts, psychological support, etc.

Weaknesses: It can be difficult to both predict and 'contain' the workflow in a digital classroom
6. The Data
Summary: The data in a digital classroom is crucial to providing precise feedback and personalizing learning for students. It can be elegantly visualized and easily shared, though learning models and curriculum must be flexible enough to abort and respond to a constant influx of new data on learning progress.

This may not sound very 'progressive,' but in today's public education environment few things matter more than data. In a more Utopian view, I'd probably call this category/element 'personalization' (because that's what data should be used for) and analyze it through that kind of lens.

Examples: student interests and background knowledge (yes, this is data); current reading level; reading level changes; criterion-based assessment performance over time; assessment performance norm-referenced against national peers; letter grades compared to standardized testing results; data objectively evaluating student behavior (versus perceived behaviors);

How it's different than traditional classrooms: While data isn't exclusive to digital classrooms, in this context it can be easier to extract and visualize, more recent and personalized, and depending on the kind of data, more numerous and accurate as well.

Strengths: There's so much of it, and it's easier to visualize and share with other teachers, students, parents, community members, universities, etc.

Weaknesses: There's so much of it. Also, if a school is focused on a specific metrics to demonstrate progress, even the most potentially useful and relevant data suddenly becomes unuseful and irrelevant. (When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when you're looking for improvement in 'fluency' and have compelling metrics for that, it's easy to lose sight of the reader as a whole.)
7. The Purpose & Audience
Summary: In a digital classroom, purpose and audience are the most powerful shifts as experienced by the students. With the limitations of a traditional classroom removed, what the student is create and who they're able to create it for increases to infinity.

Saving the best for (almost) last, in a digital classroom the purpose of the classroom itself can be different-and this can be as concrete or abstract as you'd like.

Examples: Is the purpose of the classroom to promote academic performance or improve the arc of the student's life and the opportunities (and no, these two aren't as closely linked as they should be)? That's abstract.

Is the purpose of the classroom primarily to index students by last nance while managing their navigation through a one-size-fits-all digital curriculum, or is it to provide a gathering place for self-directed learners guiding themselves through project-based learning units and activities? That's a little more concrete.

Is the purpose to deliver a curriculum and report progress or empower students to discover their best selves and grow as much as they can in the time they are with you in that classroom? That's abstract again. The point is, because the digital classroom can be as open or closed as the teacher designs it to be, it's flexible.

And closely related to purpose is audience: Purpose: What should this classroom 'do'? How will we know it's working?

Audience: Who is this classroom 'for'? Who wants and needs to know about each a student and their progress? And more acutely, who can we connect students with to serve them? Who can help them grow? Who can provide authenticity and credibility for the work? Who can provide meaningful learning feedback, support, and mentoring?

Who cares and who doesn't?

How it's different than traditional classrooms: A traditional classroom can be designed almost exactly like the description above, but it's far more time-consuming, the options are more limited, the feedback loops are less responsive, and the teacher can easily become the bottleneck because of the sheer amount of work necessary to 'herd' students in this kind of approach to learning.

Strengths: The purpose and audience of a digital classroom can become almost anything with great transparency and collaboration.

Weaknesses: Beyond the teacher, few people have the expertise (and often legal access) to evaluate student work based on specific learning objectives that themselves are standards-based. Real-world feedback can indeed support standards-based growth, but there are far better ways to promote mastery of academic standards than turning students loose in the 'real world.'
8. The Products & Opportunities
Summary: The products and opportunities in a digital classroom are closely tied to Purpose & Audience. The idea is that because students are learning in digital spaces, they are able to create new 'things'-organizations, media, collaborations, brands, platforms, etc., which then yields countless new opportunities for them in and out of the classroom.

Examples: Developing a project that plants trees in urban areas, working with a mentor, finding a new hobby, discovering new art/music/literature, making a playlist of art/music/literature, sharing a music playlist, curating their best work, comparing university majors/programs

How it's different than traditional classrooms: The biggest differences are the immediacy of connections, abundance of information, and potential 'scale' of any efforts (i.e., a well-designed project done in a digital classroom could literally reach millions of people in a short time)

Strengths: Quantity, availability, adjustability-if there isn't already a digital 'space' well-suited to every student, one can be made.

Weaknesses: Because of the sheer abundance of everything digital, there is constant need to reflect on one's own purpose, goals, 'metrics' (how 'success' is measure), etc., in addition to the always-on need to evaluate the credibility and embedded bias in information and media discovered online
8 Critical Elements Of The Digital Classroom

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The Elements Of A Digital Classroom | TeachThought

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The Elements Of A Digital Classroom by TeachThought Staff What makes up a classroom? Is it the space? A room, for example? Is it the purpose? Can a regular meeting space in a garden be a 'horticulture classroom'? Is it the people? Can a video conference with eight people gathered to study chemistry be considered a 'classroom'?

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contributed by Miriam Clifford

There is an age old adage that says, "two heads are better than one."

Consider collaboration in recent history: Watson and Crick or Page and Brin (Founders of Google). But did you know it was a collaborative Computer Club about basic programming at a middle school that brought together two minds that would change the future of computing?

Yes, those two were, of course, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft.

Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually. Why is this so?

Groups tend to learn through "discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other's ideas." Perhaps information that is discussed is retained in long-term memory. Research by Webb suggests that students who worked collaboratively on math computational problems earned significantly higher scores than those who worked alone. Plus, students who demonstrated lower levels of achievement improved when working in diverse groups.

Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually.

Many consider Vygotsky the father of 'social learning.' Vygotsky was an education rebel in many ways. He controversially argued for educators to assess students' ability to solve problems rather than merely acquire knowledge. The idea of collaborative learning has a lot to do with Vygotsky's idea of the "zone of proximal development." It considers what a student can do if aided by peers and adults. By considering this model for learning, we might consider collaboration to increase students' awareness of other concepts.

What are some ways to include best practices for collaborative learning in our classroom?
20 Collaborative Learning Tips And Strategies For Teachers 1. Establish clear group goals
Effective collaborative learning involves the establishment of group goals, as well as individual accountability. This keeps the group on task and establishes an unambiguous purpose. Before beginning an assignment, it is best to define goals and objectives to save time.
2. Keep groups midsized
Small groups of 3 or less lack enough diversity and may not allow divergent thinking to occur. Groups that are too large create 'freeloading' where not all members participate. A moderate size group of 4-5 is ideal.
3. Establish flexible group norms
Research suggests that collaborative learning is influenced by the quality of interactions. Interactivity and negotiation are important in group learning. In the 1960's studies by Jacobs and Campbell suggested that norms are pervasive, even deviant norms were handed down and not questioned.

If you notice a deviant norm, you can do two things: rotate group members or assist in using outside information to develop a new norm. You may want to establish rules for group interactions for younger students. Older students might create their own norms. But remember, given their durable nature, it is best to have flexible norms. Norms should change with situations so that groups do not become rigid and intolerant or develop sub-groups.
4. Build trust and promote open communication
Successful interpersonal communication must exist in teams. Building trust is essential. Deal with emotional issues that arise immediately and any interpersonal problems before moving on. Assignments should encourage team members to explain concepts thoroughly to each other.Studies found that students who provide and receive intricate explanations gain most from collaborative learning. Open communication is key.
5. For larger tasks, create group roles
Decomposing a difficult task into parts to saves time. You can then assign different roles. A great example in my own classroom was in science lab, fifth grade student assumed different roles of group leader, recorder, reporter, and fact checker. The students might have turns to choose their own role and alternate roles by sections of the assignment or classes.
6. Create a pre-test and post-test
A good way to ensure the group learns together would be to engage in a pre and post-test. In fact, many researchers use this method to see if groups are learning. An assessment gives the team a goal to work towards and ensures learning is a priority. It also allows instructors to gauge the effectiveness of the group. Changes can be made if differences are seen in the assessments over time. Plus, you can use Bloom's taxonomy to further hone in on specific skills.

Individuals should also complete surveys evaluating how well the group functioned. 'Debriefing' is an important component of the learning process and allows individuals to reflect on the process of group learning.
7. Consider the learning process itself as part of assessment
Many studies such as those by Robert Slavin at Johns Hopkins have considered how cooperative learning helps children develop social and interpersonal skills. Experts have argued that the social and psychological effect on self-esteem and personal development are just as important as the learning itself.

In terms of assessment, it may be beneficial to grade students on the quality of discussion, student engagement, and adherence to group norms. Praise younger groups for following (for digital collaborative learning, for example) standards. This type of learning is a process and needs explicit instruction in beginning stages. Assessing the process itself provides motivation for students to learn how to behave in groups. It shows students that you value meaningful group interactions and adhering to norms.
8. Consider using different strategies, like the Jigsaw technique.
The jigsaw strategy is said to improve social interactions in learning and support diversity. The workplace is often like a jigsaw. It involves separating an assignment into subtasks, where individuals research their assigned area. Students with the same topic from different groups might meet together to discuss ideas between groups.

This type of collaboration allows students to become 'experts' in their assigned topic. Students then return to their primary group to educate others. Strategies here include using clusters, buzz groups, round robin, leaning cells, or fish bowl discussions.
9. Allow groups to reduce anxiety
When tackling difficult concepts, group learning may provide a source of support. Groups often use humor and create a more relaxed learning atmosphere that allow for positive learning experiences. Allow groups to use some stress-reducing strategies as long as they stay on task.
10. Establish group interactions
The quality of discussions is a predictor of the achievement of the group. Instructors should provide a model of how a successful group functions. Shared leadership is best. Students should work together on the task and maintenance functions of a group. Roles are important in group development. Task functions include:

Initiating Discussions

Clarifying points

Summarizing

Challenging assumptions/devil's advocate

Providing or researching information

Reaching a consensus

Maintenance involves the harmony and emotional well-being of a group. Maintenance includes roles such as sensing group feelings, harmonizing, compromising and encouraging, time-keeping, relieving tension, bringing people into the discussion, and more.
11. Use real-world problems
Experts suggest that project-based learning using open-ended questions can be very engaging. Rather than spending a lot of time designing an artificial scenario, use inspiration from everyday problems. Real world problems can be used to facilitate project-based learning and often have the right scope for collaborative learning.
12. Focus on enhancing problem-solving and critical thinking skills
Design assignments that allow room for varied interpretations. Different types of problems might focus on categorizing, planning, taking multiple perspectives, or forming solutions. Try to use a step-by step procedure for problem-solving. Mark Alexander explains one generally accepted problem-solving procedure:

1. Identify the objective

2. Set criteria or goals

3. Gather data

4. Generate options or courses of action

5. Evaluate the options using data and objectives

6. Reach a decision

7. Implement the decision

13. Keep in mind the diversity of groups
Mixed groups that include a range of talents, backgrounds, learning styles, ideas, and experiences are best. Studies have found that mixed aptitude groups tend to learn more from each other and increase achievement of low performers. Rotate groups so students have a chance to learn from others.
14. Consider demographics
Equally, balanced gender groups were found to be most effective.

Some research suggests that boys were more likely to receive and give elaborate explanations and their stances were more easily accepted by the group. In majority male groups girls were ignored. In majority girl groups, girls tended to direct questions to the boy who often ignored them. You may also want to specifically discuss or establish gender equality as a norm. This may seem obvious, but it is often missed. It may be an issue you may want to discuss with older students.

15. Use scaffolding or diminished responsibility as students begin to understand concepts.

At the beginning of a project, you may want to give more direction than the end. Serve as a facilitator, such as by gauging group interactions or at first, providing a list of questions to consider. Allow groups to grow in responsibility as times goes on. In your classroom, this may mean allowing teams to develop their own topics or products as time goes on.

After all, increased responsibility over learning is a goal in collaborative learning.
16. Include different types of learning scenarios
Studies suggests that collaborative learning that focuses on rich contexts and challenging questions produces higher-order reasoning. Assignments can include laboratory work, study teams, debates, writing projects, problem-solving, and collaborative writing.
17. Technology makes collaborative learning easier
Collaboration had the same results via technology as in person, increased learning opportunities. Try incorporating free savvy tools for online collaboration such as Stixy, an online shared whiteboard space, Google groups, or Mikogo for online meetings. Be aware that some research suggests that more exchanges related to planning rather than challenging viewpoints occurred more frequently through online interactions.

This may be because the research used students that did not know one another. If this is your scenario, you may want to start by having students get to know each other's backgrounds and ideas beforehand on a blog or chat-board.
18. Avoid 'bad group work'
As with any learning strategy, it's important to have a balanced approach. Cynics usually have a valid point. A New York time article, cites some criticism of collaboration for not allowing enough time for individual, creative thinking. You may allow some individual time to write notes before the groups begin. This may be a great way to assess an individual grade.

19. Be wary of 'group think '

While collaborative learning is a great tool, it is always important to consider a balanced approach. At times, group harmony can override the necessity for more critical perspectives. Some new research suggests that groups favored the more confident members. Changing up groups can help counter this problem.
20. Value diversity
Collaborative learning relies on some buy-in. Students need to respect and appreciate each other's viewpoints for it to work. For instance, class discussions can emphasize the need for different perspectives. Create a classroom environment that encourages independent thinking. Teach students the value of multiplicity in thought. You may want to give historical or social examples where people working together were able to reach complex solutions.

By definition, learning is social in nature. Using different mediums, whether it be books, discussions, technology or projects we study and develop new ideas. We impart ideas and share perspectives with others. Collaboration is a learned process. If managed correctly, it is a powerful tool that can allow educators to tap into new ideas and information.
This is a cross-post from opencolleges.edu.au; previously published at TeachThought.com

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20 Collaborative Learning Tips And Strategies For Teachers | TeachThought PD

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contributed by Miriam Clifford There is an age old adage that says, "two heads are better than one." Consider collaboration in recent history: Watson and Crick or Page and Brin (Founders of Google). But did you know it was a collaborative Computer Club about basic programming at a middle school that brought together two minds that would change the future of computing?

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Every teacher has his or her favorite tools and websites, but there is one great tool that has been long overlooked by teachers across the world: Classtools.net.

Yes, I know the website's design leaves a lot to desire but if you can look past its design flaws, you will find a website that can be a great addition to your teaching resources.

Here are some useful resources found in Classtools.net!

With Arcade Game Generator, you can make your test more interesting by turning it into a game. Simply type in all the questions and the corresponding answers into the text box and the tool will turn them into five interesting quizzes!

For example, you can turn a test into a Pac-Man styled quiz on Classtools.net! Guaranteed to make any boring test more appealing to the kids!

As you might have deduced from the name, it allows you to create a fake Facebook profile.

Wait... what benefit does that have for a teacher? Let me tell you!

As an example, let us take social studies. Instead of asking the student to write a conventional biography report, you can ask them to create a Facebook profile about the famous individual, whether it is a president, founding father, war hero or inventor. It does not have to stop there; you can ask your students to use Fakebook to create a timeline of any moment in history, detail a movie plot and more.

ALSO READ: 13 FUN CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES USING TECHNOLOGY

Say goodbye to the struggle of picking a student for a task! With Random Name Picker, all you have to do is enter the names and it will add them to a spinning wheel that chooses a student at random.

Test your students' general knowledge with this simple game. Image Reveal partially obscures an image on the screen and makes your students guess who is behind the image!

The name is self-explanatory. This handy little tool allows you to set timers for the classroom. The tool shows the time winding down and shows students how much time they have for the task. With huge numbers and a bright design, it is hard to miss!

You can make a 3D cube that comes complete with media and text. Each cube can cover a different theme which can help challenge your students to keep a topic within six areas.

Recreate an SMS conversation between 2 war heroes or between fictional characters using SMS Generator. Quite simple to use, the final work can be embedded in your blog or simply saved for further tinkering in the future.

Ever watched the BBC Only Connect quiz? This is pretty much the same concept. Create a wall of sixteen cubes. The students can then try to spot the connections between four keywords and connect four!

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO USING CLASSDOJO

With this great Classtools.net resource, you can copy an entire essay and paste it into the text box on the site. It will then give a list of the top keywords used in that particular article, what words have not been used, and tops it off with an overall rating in the form of a percentage. These keywords can be organized under headings if you need better organization.

To use it as efficiently as possible, sit down and discuss with your students as to what key themes will be covered under the essay (this affords plenty of breath), and which keywords, quotes, stats and phrases the students must strive to include in their piece.

The students can then take the list with them and use it alongside the Keyword Checker to structure their essay well and follow the agreed format before submitting it to you. Safe to say, it is pretty handy!

Smartphones are often accused of distracting students but with QR Treasure Hunt Generator, you can use the same devices to spark a treasure hunt! Type down your questions, convert them to QR codes and stick the codes around the school. Send the students off to find the questions and answer them!

Have you ever stressed about getting the exam timing wrong? Not anymore thanks to Invigilation Calculator. It helps you accurately decide when an exam finishes and accounts for students who are permitted additional time.

Create some realistic certificates that you can award your pupils when they perform well!

Drag and Drop" quizzes are great at making lessons more interesting but are a pain to make. This generator is here to simplify that task. Just write down your questions and click enter!

All students love a badge; it gives them a sense of belonging and importance. Classtools.net helps you design a custom badge that you can use to celebrate a person or an event.

Turbo Timeline helps you create animated 3D timelines of events in the form of an arcade racing game.

Just enter the main points you wish to discuss with your students and this interesting tool will turn them into a 'race against the clock' newsfeed. This will help your pupils learn to take notes as quickly as possible!

The man himself! The Classtools.net's owner has put together a great list of freely available resources that teachers can use to enhance their teaching skills and get their message across better. Highly recommended that you check it out.

Want to teach students how to identify links and patterns? The Hexagon Generator is a great tool for that. Enter the items and the tool will turn them into hexagons for categorization.

Everybody is familiar with the breaking news template used by news companies across the world. With Breaking News Generator on Classtools.net, you can create a breaking news screengrab for any moment!

If you are a history teacher, this interactive quiz is a great way to teach your students which events happened in which sequence. You will have three events in different orders and your students will have to guess which the correct order is!

EyeSay! takes the concept of Keyword Checker a step forward. It helps students who have issues with an article's style and structure. As with the aforementioned tool, a student has to simply copy and paste the article into the text box. But instead of an analysis of the keywords, the tool gives you a very in-depth analysis on quotes, stats, variety of vocabulary, the connection between paragraphs, and the length of the sentences in the article.

PowerSearch quickly searches through hundreds of classroom tools to help you find the right one instantly.

Most citation generators require you to do most of the work. Not this little guy on Classtools.net. All it needs is the web address or a few keywords to get going.

Are you on Pinterest? Save this post!

What do you think of Classtools.net? Let us know in the comments!

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Classtools.net: A Powerful Teacher Toolbox!

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Every teacher has his or her favorite tools and websites, but there is one great tool that has been long overlooked by teachers across the world: Classtools.net. Yes, I know the website's design leaves a lot to desire but if you can look past its design flaws, you will find a website that can be a great addition to your teaching resources.

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The Role Of The Teacher In The Classroom Of The Near Future
by Terry Heick

Schools, along with libraries and museums, are curators of culture.

That is, they survey various (metaphorical) landscapes and separate the stuff the stuff worth saving from the rest. This means that teachers are among the earliest curators of knowledge, taking a content area, deciding what's worthy of further study, and distributing it for examination.

This is not a minor responsibility, being asked to weave a simultaneous affection and lasting intellectual lust for what is by definition academic 'stuff'-factors of immigration, the Pythagorean Theorem, Homer's Odyssey, etc.
What Is Teaching?
Historically, teaching could be reduced to two simple questions: What's worth understanding and how can I package that so that students may understand?

Increasingly, technology is being used to accomplish this. See the (Elements of a Digital Classroom). Whether it's a learning management system used to gather and organize learning materials, a digital index of academic standards, a tool to visualize data, or an adaptive learning platform used to practice and assess concepts and skills, if public education wants to operate and perform at the scale it seems intent on operating and performing at, technology is going to have to play a critical role.

That said, if public education wants all students to master all content and succeed in every way every day no matter what the cost, teachers alone aren't enough. Of course, from a philosophical standpoint, there's a lot to consider. By deciding what stays and what goes-what's worth understanding and what's not-teachers have quite a bit of power, and like all power, it can be applied in various ways.

1. The 'teaching' can be a kind of social assimilation and cogntive conditioning where the teacher passes on both knowledge and bias.

2. It can be knowledge distribution-clinical and matter-of-fact, modeling skills and issuing facts.

3. Or, it can be based in an artful critique, where they 'point where to look but don't tell them what to see.'

Historically, as teachers have taken the world and shaped a curriculum out of it, they have done more numbers 1 and 2 than 3.

They're knowledge curators, so they curated. Of course, in the modern era of outcomes and standards-based education systems where all content is indexed, catalogued, parsed, sequenced, aligned, assessed, and remediated, the learning process has taken on an industrial tone with work that mimics that of machines. The content is no longer up for debate, written in standards that, while more open-ended than they seem, aren't up to the teacher to describe.

The original question of pedagogy- What's worth understanding, and how can I package it so that they (whoever they are) may understand?-can now be reduced to How can I package these standards so that they may understand? That is a major difference, reducing the 'curation' to mere distribution.

But there's a problem with this. As teaching and learning becomes more universal, it becomes less authentic. As it becomes more global, it becomes less local. As it becomes more everyone, it becomes more no one at all.
Place Matters
Place matters, because that's where students come from, and where the result of learning is 'applied.'

A teacher in New York needs to understand what makes New York different than Mumbai. The habits of the people and the shape of the place shape the content-what's most important to know and how it is most ideally approached and understood isn't the same everywhere.

As curriculum becomes an indexed lists of standards to be covered, and as literature becomes a suggested reading list that isn't a 'suggestion' at all, the potential for the teacher to artfully relate students and content is reduced. Without an elegant and agitating and fantastic connection between learner and content, the whole thing becomes about measurement and procedure-an industrial and dehumanizing process that amounts to an intellectual force-feeding.

The net effect here is important. Every 'place'-every community, neighborhood, and family has its own history; every student has their own affections and needs. Every student is wonderfully asymmetrical. This requires care.

Teachers, as humans, are a kind of mix between Google, pinterest, and YouTube-searching the world, saving what fits, and distributing it in compelling ways. Great teachers are master curators, uniquely able to see the content, each learner, and their 'place' in a way that literally no one else on earth can.

Even an adaptive computer algorithm.
3 Roles For The Role Of The Teacher In The Near-Future Classroom 1. Know the student
The teacher will always be best at the 'big picture' of each student's strengths, history. interests, background, family, hopes. dreams, failures, triumphs, etc. Working together with technology like artificial intelligence, teachers can reconcile data with the 'human' view of the student in front of them.
2. Know the content
The teacher will always be the best resource to understand how the content can and should be 'applied' locally. The teacher will ideally know how the content relates to students individually and know the 'content' well enough to see all priorities, traps, tricks, and shortcuts that make sense for that student in that place.
3. Know the place
All 'content' is applied in a 'place' and no one can know this better than people-and until an AI-driven robot can do this better than a human being, this will be best done by a teacher who themselves have a history and connection with that place.
The Role Of The Teacher In The Classroom Of The Near Future

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The Role Of The Teacher In The Near-Future Classroom

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The Role Of The Teacher In The Classroom Of The Near Future by Terry Heick Schools, along with libraries and museums, are curators of culture. That is, they survey various (metaphorical) landscapes and separate the stuff the stuff worth saving from the rest.

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SIR KEN ROBINSON - ΤΟ ΣΧΟΛΕΙΟ ΠΟΥ ΣΚΟΤΩΝΕΙ ΤΗ ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ

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In PBL, the public product holds great significance and is genuinely an opportunity for you and your kids to show others outside the four walls of your classroom the great work being done. And although the public product does not always have to be students making a formal presentation, presenting and speaking about their work to others is a vital skill to have long after they leave K-12 schooling.

However, when kids do not have experience explaining what they have learned to others, they typically become anxious and nervous about doing so. When this happens to my students, I always tell them that "practice may not always make perfect - but it sure makes better."

So, if your students feel apprehensive or stuck on how to present or even what to say next, the trick is to create ample opportunities for them to start practicing during your PBL units. Here are four steps to take for helping them improve over time gradually while building their capacity for performing in low- to high-stakes settings.

Step 1: Use Protocols that Require Students to Explain

Singling out students to speak in front of others, even to classmates, can backfire if they don't feel comfortable. I find that when I use protocols, something magical happens; my classroom culture gets enhanced, and everyone shares in the workload within a structure.
I recommend using protocols regularly. With repetition, everyone will know what to do, and the focus can stay on the productive struggle of learning to dialogue effectively, but in very small groups. I find that this practice prepares them for much bigger audiences - later. Here are two protocols I've found useful:

The Say Something protocol is great for getting students used to explaining their thoughts about a shared reading. I use sentence stems that help my learners respond better to the readings, for example:
* The character mentioned that...
* Overall, what the author is trying to say is...
* I agree with the position she/he took because...
* I'm confused when the author wrote ..., Can you help clarify?

Jigsaw activities can be leveraged to create very informal opportunities that allow students to explain targeted topics to classmates. Have one group of students become "experts" in an aspect of a topic, then share what they know in jigsawed groups with others who learned about different aspects of the topic. I structure this by asking them to offer their own definitions and provide evidence from the reading(s), while explaining it all casually.

Step 2: Help Students Develop Presentation Scripts

Through consistency and dedication to the principles in Step 1, my kids became much more comfortable with talking academically. However, many of them needed scaffolds for better organizing what they wanted to say.

For this purpose, I recommend two documents: the PBLWorks presentation plan and a self-generated presentation script. The presentation plan is perfect for helping students organize their presentations while keeping their audience in mind. Moreover, the document assists them with thinking about what they will say in the beginning, middle, and end of their presentations, along with what they will show or do for capturing the attention of the audience.

The script I created was a complement to the presentation plan because most of my students hadn't had prior experience with the computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS) terms, concepts and practices we covered in our project and needed help with structuring their speeches. I never thought to help my students develop scripts for their public products until I saw Sara Lev's 'Taking care of our environment" video. And although my kids are older than Sara's kindergarteners, the practice has really enhanced both the confidence and self-efficacy of my middle schoolers for speaking presentations.

Once their scripts were to their liking, we dedicated time to allow them to rehearse, both in class and at home.

Step 3: Take Pressure Off Students While Presenting

My teaching experience has taught me that learners gain real confidence after experiencing successive successful moments (but do not forget that occasional failure is also par for the course). Because many of them hadn't previously presented to the public before, I had to find a way to help combat their anxiety levels come presentation day.

For this I drew inspiration from the Carousel activity protocol and created a simple format for taking some of the pressure off my students. To do this well, we create stations where students present their work. However, we also organize all of our visitors (the public) into an equal number of groups and have them move from station to station. Each of the teams is permitted six minutes to present their work and two minutes for Q/A.

For easing anxieties further, I recommend the first adults that students present to are either their parents, family members or guests that they personally invited. I have found that by doing this their confidence increases round by round.

Here's a video of my students presenting in the Computational Thinkers Project.

Step 4: Lead by Going First

As teachers, we are the instructional leaders in our classrooms, and being the leader means to go first. To show kids that we are in this together, I think it is important for teachers to be the first presenter/moderator of discussions both prior and after the students present their public products. Doing this has enabled me to gain the confidence, trust, commitment and respect of my students and stakeholders.

The teacher presentation doesn't have to be very long or require much airtime-five minutes is enough. All we have to do is welcome parents and stakeholders, provide some context for why we're doing our work, and explain the format of how the presentations will be conducted.

After the kids perform, I also recommend leading a final discussion/reflection with both the kids and adults who participated. This part doesn't have to be very long either, but it allows you a chance to revisit the learned topics, make critical connections, guide the celebration of learning and to further promote PBL!
My sincerest gratitude to Dr. Holle Freeman, Carrie Persing, Kathryn Hansen of the MathScience Innovation Center and Dupont for this collaboration.

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How to Prepare Students for Explaining Their Work in Public

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In PBL, the public product holds great significance and is genuinely an opportunity for you and your kids to show others outside the four walls of your classroom the great work being done.

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Questions are the hallmark of quality learning. In the age of information overload, the key to a successful learning experience lies in asking the right questions. Quillionz does exactly that. Powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Quillionz is a platform that lets you build a host of quality quizzes and assessments-within seconds and completely free.

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Creative Problem Solving, or CPS, refers to the use of imagination and innovation to find solutions to problems when formulaic or conventional processes have failed.

Despite its rather dry definition - creative problem-solving in its application can be a lot of fun for learners and teachers alike.

Why Are Creative Problem-Solving Skills Important?

By definition, creative problem-solving challenges students to think beyond the conventional and to avoid well-trodden, sterile paths of thinking.

Not only does this motivate student learning, encourage engagement, and inspire deeper learning, but the practical applications of this higher-level thinking skill are virtually inexhaustible.

For example, given the rapidly changing world of work, it is hard to conceive of a skill that will be more valuable than the ability to generate innovative solutions to the unique problems that will arise and that are impossible to predict ahead of time.

Outside the world of work, in our busy daily lives, the endless problems arising from day-to-day living can also be overcome by a creative problem-solving approach.

When students have developed their creative problem-solving abilities effectively, they will have added a powerful tool to attack problems that they will encounter, whether in school, work, or in their personal lives.

Due to its at times nebulous nature, teaching creative problem-solving in the classroom poses its own challenges. However, developing a culture of approaching problem-solving in a creative manner is possible.

In this article, we will take a look at a variety of strategies, tools, and activities that can help students improve their creative problem-solving skills.

The Underlying Principles of CPS

Before we take a look at a process for implementing creative problem solving, it is helpful to examine a few of the underlying principles of CPS. These core principles should be encouraged in the classroom. They are:

● Assume Nothing

Assumptions are the enemy of creativity and original thinking. If students assume they already have the answer, they will not be creative in their approach to solving a problem.

● Problems Are Opportunities

Rather than seeing problems as difficulties to endure, a shift in perspective can instead view problems as challenges that offer new opportunities. Encourage your students to shift their perspectives to see opportunities where they once saw problems.

● Suspend Judgment

Making immediate judgments closes down the creative response and the formation of new ideas. There is a time to make judgments, but making a judgment too early in the process can be very detrimental to finding a creative solution.
Cognitive Approaches: Convergent vs Divergent Thinking

"It is easier to tame a wild idea than it is to push a closer-in idea further out."

- Alex Osborn

The terms divergent and convergent thinking, coined by psychologist J.P. Guilford in 1956, refer to two contrasting cognitive approaches to problem-solving.

Convergent Thinking can be thought of as linear and systematic in its approach. It attempts to find a solution to a problem by narrowing down multiple ideas into a single solution. If convergent thinking can be thought of as asking a single question, that question would be '?'

Divergent Thinking focuses more on the generation of multiple ideas and on the connections between those ideas. It sees problems as design opportunities and encourages the use of resources and materials in original ways. Divergent thinking encourages the taking of creative risks and is flexible rather than analytical in its approach. If it was a single question, it'd be '?'

While it may appear that these two modes of thinking about a problem have an essentially competitive relationship, in CPS they can work together in a complementary manner.

When students have a problem to solve and they're looking for innovative solutions, they can employ divergent thinking initially to generate multiple ideas, then convergent thinking to analyze and narrow down those ideas.

Students can repeat this process to continue to filter and refine their ideas and perspectives until they arrive at an innovative and satisfactory solution to the initial problem.

Let's now take a closer look at the creative problem-solving process.

The Creative Problem-Solving Process

CPS helps students arrive at innovative and novel solutions to the problems that arise in life. Having a process to follow helps to keep students focused and to reach a point where action can be taken to implement creative ideas.

Originally developed by Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes, the CPS process has gone through a number of revisions over the last 50 or so years and, as a result, there are a number of variations of this model in existence.

The version described below is one of the more recent models and is well-suited to the classroom environment.

However, things can sometimes get a little complex for some of the younger students. So, in this case, it may be beneficial to teach the individual parts of the process in isolation first.

Before beginning to seek creative solutions to a problem, it is important to clarify the exact nature of that problem. To do this, students should do the following three things:
i. Identify the Problem
The first step in bringing creativity to problem-solving is to identify the problem, challenge, opportunity, or goal and clearly define it.
ii. Gather Data
Gather data and research information and background to ensure a clear understanding.
iii. Formulate Questions
Enhance awareness of the nature of the problem by creating questions that invite solutions.

Explore new ideas to answer the questions raised. It's time to get creative here. The more ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a novel and useful idea. At this stage in particular, students should be engaged in divergent thinking as described above.

The focus here shifts from ideas to solutions. Once multiple ideas have been generated, convergent thinking can be used to narrow these down to the most suitable solution. The best idea should be closely analyzed in all its aspects and further ideas generated to make subsequent improvements. This is the stage to refine the initial idea and make it into a really workable solution.

Create a plan to implement the chosen solution. Students need to identify the required resources for the successful implementation of the solution. They need to plan for the actions that need to be taken, when they need to be taken, and who needs to take them.

Summary of Creative Problem Solving Process

In each stage of the CPS Process, students should be encouraged to employ divergent and convergent thinking in turn. Divergent thinking should be used to generate multiple ideas with convergent thinking then used to narrow these ideas down to the most feasible options. We will discuss how students go about this, but let's first take a quick look at the role of a group facilitator.

The Importance of Group Facilitator
CPS is best undertaken in groups and, for larger and more complex projects, it's even more effective when a facilitator can be appointed for the group.

The facilitator performs a number of useful purposes and helps the group to:

A good facilitator does not generate ideas themselves but instead keeps the group focused on each step of the process.

Facilitators should be objective and possess a good understanding of the process outlined above, as well as the other tools and strategies which we will look at below.

The Creative Problem-Solving Process: Tools and Strategies

There are a number of activities available to help students move through each stage. These will help students to stay on track, remove barriers and blocks, be creative, and reach a consensus as they progress through the CPS process.

The following tools and strategies can help provide groups with some structure and can be applied at various stages of the problem-solving process. For convenience, they have been categorized according to whether they make demands on divergent or convergent thinking as discussed earlier.
Divergent Thinking Tools:
Defined by Alex Osborn as "a group's attempt to find a solution for a specific problem by amassing ideas ", this is perhaps the best-known tool in the arsenal of the creative problem solver.

To promote a creative collaboration in a group setting, simply share the challenge with everyone and challenge them to come up with as many ideas as possible. Ideas should be concise and specific. For this reason, it may be worth setting a word limit for recording each idea e.g. express in headline form in no more than 5 words. Post-it notes are perfect for this.

You may also set a quota on the number of ideas to generate or introduce a time limit to further encourage focus. When completed, members of the group can share and compare all the ideas in search of the most suitable.

The 5 W's and an H are Who, What, Where, Why, and How. This strategy is useful to effectively gather data. Students brainstorm questions to ask that begin with each of the question words above in turn. They then seek to gather the necessary information to answer these questions through research and discussion.

This activity is a great way to explore new ideas. Have the students begin by generating a list of up to 10 basic assumptions about the idea or concept. For each of these, students then explore the reverse of the assumption listing new insights and perspectives in the process.

The students can then use these insights and perspectives to generate fresh ideas. For example, an assumption about the concept of a restaurant might be that the food is cooked for you. The reverse of that assumption could be a restaurant where you cook the food yourself. So, how about a restaurant where patrons select their own recipes and cook their own food aided by a trained chef?

Convergent Thinking Tools

This is the perfect activity to use when figuring out the steps required to implement a solution.

Students write the solution on the left-hand side of a page turned landscape. Working together, they identify the individual steps required to achieve this solution and write these to the right of the solution.

When they have written these steps, they go through each step one-by-one identifying in detail each stage of achieving that step. These are written branching to the right of each step.

Students repeat this process until they have exhausted the process and ended up with a comprehensive branch diagram detailing each step necessary for the implementation of the solution.

Making an evaluation matrix creates a systematic way of analyzing and comparing multiple solutions. It allows for a group to evaluate options against various criteria to help build consensus.

An evaluation matrix begins with the listing of criteria to evaluate potential solutions against. These can then be turned into the form of a positive question that allows for a Yes or No answer. For example, if the budget is the criteria, the evaluation question could be ' Is it within budget? '

Make a matrix grid with a separate column for each of the key criteria. Write the positive question form of these criteria as headings for these columns. The different options can then be detailed and listed down the left-most column.

Students then work through each of the criteria for each option and record whether it fulfills, or doesn't fulfill, each criteria. For more complex solutions, students could record their responses to each of the criteria on a scale from 0 to 5.

For example:

Using the example matrix above, it becomes very clear that Option 1 is the superior solution given that it completely fulfills all the criteria, whereas Option 2 and Option 3 fulfill only 2 out of the 3 criteria each.

This activity is suitable to help develop promising ideas. After making a list of possible solutions or questions to pursue, each individual student writes down their top 3 ideas.

Once each student has their list of their 3 best ideas, organize students into pairs. In their pairs, students discuss their combined 6 ideas to decide on the top 3 out of the 6. Once they have agreed on these, they write the new top 3 ideas on a piece of paper.

Now, direct the pairs of students to join up with another pair to make groups of 4. In these groups of 4, students discuss their collective 6 ideas to come up with a new list of the top 3 ideas.

Repeat this process until the whole class comes together as one big group to agree on the top 3 ideas overall.

Establish a Culture of Creative Problem Solving in the Classroom
Approaching problems creatively is about establishing a classroom culture that welcomes innovation and the trial and error that innovation demands. Too often our students are so focused on finding the 'right' answer that they miss opportunities to explore new ideas.

It is up to us as teachers to help create a classroom culture that encourages experimentation and creative playfulness.

To do this we need to ensure our students understand the benefits of a creative approach to problem-solving.

We must ensure too that they are aware of the personal, social, and organizational benefits of CPS.

CPS should become an integral part of their approach to solving problems whether at school, work, or in their personal lives.

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Creative Problem Solving in the Classroom: A Guide for Teachers - Edgalaxy - Teaching ideas and Resources

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Creative Problem Solving, or CPS, refers to the use of imagination and innovation to find solutions to problems when formulaic or conventional processes have failed. Despite its rather dry definition - creative problem-solving in its application can be a lot of fun for learners and teachers alike.

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A lesson plan is a well-detailed pedagogical document that clearly describes the course of instruction or "trajectory" for a class lessons. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide and monitor students' learning. The amount of details in the lesson plan will vary depending on the experience of the teacher, the component being covered, and the needs of the students.

Teachers need to have a precise concept of educational goals / objectives / standards / competencies. Depending on the lesson, teachers will have to identify which objectives, standards and competencies students will be required to achieve.

Also known as teaching and learning materials. They are a set of objects, human, non-human resources that teachers rely on to teach their students a certain language element. Instructional materials are so important because they make learning exciting, meaningful, joyful and interactive.

Input (content) is chosen according tothe needs of students. The content must be:

Instructional procedure

Teachers need to have a plan to provide direction toward the attainment of the selected objectives and goals. Teachers must decide how to sequence the teaching items according to the approach they are adopting. Sequencing may be from easy to difficult, from known to unknown, from familiar to unfamiliar ...etc.

Teacher will have to carefully plan time. Effective teachers are time managers. They know how to systematically and carefully plan the time they have.

At the end of each lesson, there should be some kind of evaluation to detemine who achieved the lesson objectives and who didn't. Note that continuous assessment is already taking place.

Remember that lesson plans are so important for teachers. Yet, you will not stick to them every single time. Sometimes, you will have to improvise or change something depending on the situation. Just as precise preparation is important, flexible delivery is equally important

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Have a great day, edutopians

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Important Lesson Planning Notes For EFL Teachers + Templates - Edutopians

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What is a lesson plan? A lesson plan is a well-detailed pedagogical document that clearly describes the course of instruction or "trajectory" for a class lessons. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide and monitor students' learning. The amount of details in the lesson plan will vary depending on the experience of ...

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Portfolios are a good way for high school students to see and share their learning growth over time, and digital tools make it easy to set them up.

Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo

In assessing student work, one of the challenges that teachers face comes when students have created a product for a project. Ideally they've had a chance to share their work with each other because that has numerous benefits: It allows them to see how their peers interpreted the project content or questions differently, and to reflect on their own learning and their learning process, which can help them improve future projects and processes.

Sharing students' work more widely, with their families or with outside experts, for example, has benefits as well.

So how do we get student work in front of as many eyes as possible to increase the impact of their ideas? One of the best ways is to have students create digital portfolios, which can help students track their personal growth and share their work with classmates, the community, and the world.

Considering Student Privacy

Before creating digital portfolios with our students, we should consider student privacy and be aware of our district and school policies around sharing student work with third parties.

Sharing student work is powerful, but it's also vital that students and their families consent to that sharing, which includes posting student work to third-party platforms-platforms that students must log into outside of the school's internal systems. Before using such platforms, review the Student Privacy Pledge. Signatories of the pledge-which include all of the tools listed below-have taken the time to consider student privacy and data on their platforms.

You can also check with your school and district to see if the app or website you want to use is approved by your district.

Digital Portfolio Tools

Portfolios can serve different purposes, which dictate what goes in them and how they're shared. For more public-facing portfolios, students generally create fine-tuned products. These are portfolios that students may use to showcase their work for awards, internships, jobs, and college applications. Work shared here may connect students with experts and add their voice to larger conversations around issues they care deeply about, while also validating their agency as members of a global community. These portfolios may also be a place for them to celebrate their work with their family, friends, classmates, and school or district. No matter how they're used, these portfolios can help build confidence and excitement around student learning.

Sometimes, however, portfolios are shared less widely, with just the teacher and the student's family. In these portfolios, rough copies of student work may be included to show growth. If students are able to create a portfolio that spans multiple years, they can see growth over a longer time. These portfolios are a great window into what students are learning, showing what they understand and what they're struggling with so the teacher can plan accordingly. Families can see their child's progress in real time and celebrate successes or provide support at home for areas of struggle. Portfolios also help students reflect on their progress and make connections to their own learning process. There may be pieces that move from this internal portfolio to be shared more widely in a public-facing portfolio.

Once you're ready to provide students with an opportunity to reflect on and share their work with an authentic audience, there are several tools you can use.

For sharing inside the classroom: Students can use Google Slides to create a digital portfolio that showcases their progress on a project, posting their work as well as their reflections on the work. You can have them start from scratch or create a template for them to use. You can have students share this portfolio with you alone or embed it in a blog post or post it to a Google Drive folder shared with the class.

You could instead use Google Classroom to create the portfolios: A student can add documents to their portfolio that can be viewed by both you and the student over the course of the year.

For sharing with the outside world: Students can post their Google Slides to a public-facing class blog or use a tool like Flipgrid to post video journal entries about their learning. These videos can be summative, or they can act like checkpoints as students work through the project. Flipgrid is free, and the company provides a sample consent letter to send home. Videos can be shared publicly, with only the class, or with only the teacher.

Another tool, Book Creator, allows students to create digital portfolios that can include text, images, audio recordings, and videos. The books are contained in a class library, and students can browse each other's books. Students can review their books to reflect on their growth in critical skills, and their books and the class library can be shared publicly. BookCreator can be used for free, but if you want to create more than 40 books you'll need to pay for access.

The tool Seesaw allows teachers to create activities that students can work on and share to a class portfolio. These activities can be designed by the teacher, or they can be imported from an activity library curated by Seesaw. An activity might ask students to explain their reasoning while solving a math problem, reading and reflecting on an article, or reflecting on their progress on a recent project. Seesaw allows teachers to provide family access to student portfolios so parents have a window into what students are learning.

Benefits of Digital Portfolios

Digital portfolios-as repositories of evidence of learning and growth-can be used in multiple ways. They're helpful to the teacher for planning instruction and gauging student understanding, and for communicating student progress with families and sparking conversations at home.

They can also be helpful in creating a culture of learning in the classroom, where students look to each other for knowledge and understanding. And they're a useful tool for students to reflect on their own personal growth over the course of the year.

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Tools for Creating Digital Student Portfolios

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Portfolios are a good way for high school students to see and share their learning growth over time, and digital tools make it easy to set them up. Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo In assessing student work, one of the challenges that teachers face comes when students have created a product for a project.

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Making a timeline is a "classic" history class assignment. When I started my teaching career my students made timelines on big sheets of paper. Later I had them use some online programs that let them include some pictures and links. Eventually, we got to a place where true multimedia timeline creation tools were readily available. Today, there are plenty of ways to create multimedia timelines. In the following chart I highlight the features of my favorite tools for making multimedia timelines. A copy of the chart can be acquired in Google Docs format here.

I'll be covering some of these tools in greater depth during my upcoming course, Teaching History With Technology.

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A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools - Updated

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Making a timeline is a "classic" history class assignment. When I started my teaching career my students made timelines on big sheets of paper. Later I had them use some online programs that let them include some pictures and links. Eventually, we got to a place where true multimedia timeline creation tools were readily available.

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Thanks to LiveBoard, I can engage in real-time math sessions with high school students, seamlessly sharing and collaborating. Their exceptional customer care and personalized tool adaptation are commendable. Saving work ahead of time and in real-time is invaluable. I recommend LiveBoard to educators and students for an enhanced tutoring experience. Thank you, LiveBoard!

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Discover the ultimate online tutoring management platform designed to meet the needs of your growing tutoring business. From scheduling and payroll to the best remote teaching toolset, LiveBoard empowers your organization to thrive. Join thousands of successful tutoring businesses today!

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Cool Text is a FREE graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work

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Export the playback video

in full resolution

in ipod/iphone format

Your video is now ready. The download of your video will start in a few seconds.

This would upload the video to youtube.

colorillo is a simple, but collaborative drawing app.

Unfortunately, your browser either has Javascript disabled or it does not support the <canvas> HTML5 element, which is absolutely necessary for colorillo to work. Try a recent version of Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome. Internet Explorer will probably still take years to catch up with current web technology.

Get more colors here

Click here to draw in private. (You can share the URL with your friends)

Here you can find more info about the drawing

Here you can see who is currently drawing with you

Check the FAQ if you have more questions

You can open up these help bubbles here

Click the play button to see how the drawing was created

Choose a color and the pen size here

Look at the gallery for pictures that have been drawn by others

Welcome to Colorillo
Colorillo is a collaborative drawing tool: you can draw together with your friends at the same time.

On the homepage, everyone can draw.
If you want to draw on your own or just with your friends in private, use the button on the left.

Close all help bubbles

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colorillo is a collaborative drawing app. It uses HTML5 Canvas and Javascript, allows to download the pictures as SVG, PNG or MP4 playback video and much more.

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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piZap - free online photo editor - fun photo effects editor

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piZap Photo Editor is fun and easy to learn online photo editor & collage maker. Tons of effects, fonts, stickers, collage layouts, borders, frames, and editing tools.

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Primary - Teaching & Learning : DLPlanning.ie

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Pupils use digital technologies in highly effective ways to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding in accordance with the content objectives, learning outcomes, skills and concepts of the Primary School Curriculum.

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We hear lots of things about globalization, especially as it relates to a rapidly changing economy. When we talk about global disruptions (technology, education, artificial intelligence, climate), we are trying to, among other things, see what skills will our future workforce need. When analyzing this, researchers and futurists alike often come up with a set of global competencies. Things like adaptation, cultural competency, interdisciplinary abilities, creativity, collaboration, growth mindset, grit, and new literacy skills are consistently referenced.

We have for years worked to integrate technology into schools. Indeed, now we have more students with devices in classrooms than ever before. This has, and should, change everything. But in addition to having students edit documents in Google, design collaborative presentations, do research and use various applications, why not teach them that their technology skills and digital footprint is their window to the global society and economy?

Let's not teach technology, or just teach our standard curriculum with technology, but rather really have students become global citizens through technology. They can use technology to not only transform themselves but the world as well. Here are some things to consider, or possibly reconsider, when we use technology in school:

70% of our technology use is the consumption of video content. So with that staggering statistic in mind, what are we doing with video and our students? Are we only showing them how to consume video content? What if we also made sure they had skills in creating video content? This should not just be reserved for students in a digital media course. Rather, all students need to learn how to tell stories, especially their stories through video. They all watch YouTube, but what if they all created content for YouTube based on their learning at school? Think of it as just another version of the resume or portfolio. And it doesn't have to be YouTube. It can be Vimeo and so on. That's not the point. And yes we have all sorts of great applications for students of all ages to create video content (i.e. Flipgrid, Adobe Spark and others). And I'm not saying 3rd graders need a YouTube channel. But what I am saying is that we need to teach, through years of modeling, practice and public work, that telling our story in the video is a powerful technology tool and application that can positively affect our collective digital footprints and give each student a global profile that will benefit them professionally and academically.

Social Media

First and foremost, we need to educate all students about the pitfalls and dangers of negative social media use - how it can impact their future options in college and employment. But we have had campaigns for years warning students about everything from smoking to bullying to drug use to sex. And one could argue that they are often not effective enough.

We need to go further than just teaching, or preaching, about the negatives. Our job, as educators, is not only to show students what not to do but also to teach them what to do. And this is no different with social media. This is another form of literacy necessary to truly be successful in the 21st-century workplace.

Recent studies are demonstrating that college students that use and understand social media are experiencing an edge or more success than their counterparts who don't. Students need to learn how to share their talents, skills, passions, and accomplishments with the world. In other words, their various social media profiles are their new daily resume. For those students that share their positive and professional writing, photographs, videos, music, art, business ideas, volunteer and service work and more on social media, they will have an advantage over those who don't.

Finally, what if all high school graduates had a professional LinkedIn account, purchased a customized URL of their name and had a complete digital portfolio?

Service Learning

Participating in service projects has been a staple activity of high school students for many years, especially those applying for competitive colleges. But in a more global society, participating might not be enough. Well, thanks to technology and more, students can now not only participate in many service opportunities but also create, lead and facilitate them. Being a part of an opportunity is one thing, but creating that opportunity for others is the game-changer.

There are now many digital resources available that allow students and others to plug into global services projects on a diverse list of issues. Think about global challenges of food insecurity, climate change, water access and safety, violence, homelessness, education, poverty and health care. Not only can students access organizations locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to learn more about these issues, but there are resources designed specifically to plug them into existing projects - or better yet - even create their own. Service Learning sites such as , Do Something, Generation On, Sign Up Genius and Community Tool Box are just a few of the free resources that educators and students can use to connect with projects, needs, partners, resources and inspiration on how to serve others on a global scale.

Another related phenomenon, now part of a global skill set, is the concept of crowdsourcing (sourcing information, skills or even products from a group of groups of people) and crowdfunding (sourcing money or funds from a group or groups of people). This is what the big boys and girls do every day when eliciting support for their global philanthropic efforts. So now, we have students, even in elementary schools, starting their own , Kickstarter or campaigns to garner funds or other support internationally for their service projects. They can also use civic action partners to jumpstart or enhance their reach. Organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and are just a few of the non-profits with a global reach and emphasis that our students can partner with to address a variety of global challenges.

Online Classes

Taking classes online has been more of a higher education. In K-12, they have been used in some independent study or homeschool programs. And taking an online course should not be confused with high school students doing online credit recovery. I'm talking about a complete course with an online instructor, peers, and community. Some high schools are starting to require their students to not only take a college class prior to graduating but also an online class.

Online classes, or even hybrid classes that still have some face-to-face contact, are just another way to access education. They introduce students to a whole new paradigm in terms of communication, collaboration and what it means to be truly part of a digital family or community.

Online education is not only redefining higher education but education in general. As an example, both employers, as well as jobseekers, are using various online courses and platforms (such as and LinkedIn Learning) to upskill and remain relevant in this ever-transforming economy. K-12 institutions are looking at how to give their students this experience as well.

Imagine if K-12 students not only took online college courses, but were given access to the thousands of open-source courses available free, many from famous higher education institutions such as , and even UC Berkeley.

Indeed, all of this is disrupting the way education is being delivered and received. California community college students can now attend all online. Or consider new entities such as University of the People that touts itself as the "first non-profit, American-accredited, tuition-free online university dedicated to opening access to higher education globally."

Early college experience is highly recognized now as one of the key factors in predicting college completion and success. We all need to look at expanding our students' global education experience through online and open-source learning opportunities.

Surveys and Online Feedback

By now, many of our students are used to completing Google Forms, other online feedback applications (Survey Monkey, Poll Everywhere and so many others). But are we having our students create these forms or surveys? Are we teaching them how to design appropriate questions and potential responses for an audience or group? There is no doubt that feedback, in all digital forms, is going to dominate our global economy. We see it in every purchase or decision we make. And yes, we all have survey fatigue. That being said, there are valuable skills being learned when designing these survey tools and using them to collect and analyze data.

There may not be many constants that we can depend on the future. I imagine that change, and the impact of technology on that change, might be the only two constants we can guarantee. But instead of looking at this as a global glass half empty, we may want to create the opportunities necessary with technology to have our students be globally competent, collaborative, creative and committed.

For more, see:
Stay in-the-know with innovations in learning by signing up for the weekly.

Michael Niehoff is a Getting Smart Columnist. He is a teacher, leader, blogger, and student advocate. Connect with him on Twitter: @mwniehoff

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Teaching Technology, Digital Literacy as Global Competencies | Getting Smart

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We hear lots of things about globalization, especially as it relates to a rapidly changing economy. When we talk about global disruptions (technology, education, artificial intelligence, climate), we are trying to, among other things, see what skills will our future workforce need. When analyzing this, researchers and futurists alike often come up with a set of global competencies.

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Digital teaching scenarios for cultural and heritage education

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The Aurasma application offers several options, which can also be used in education. By using Aurasma, as a teacher or educator you are able to overlay reality with an augmented one. So you can hide an instructional and/or inspiring video behind a photograph in a pupils manual, which will be opened after tagging it on your mobile device.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

Exit slips can take lots of forms beyond the old-school pencil and scrap paper. Whether you're assessing at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy or the top, you can use tools like Padlet or Poll Everywhere, or measure progress toward attainment or retention of essential content or standards with tools like Google Classroom's Question tool, Google Forms with Flubaroo, and Edulastic, all of which make seeing what students know a snap.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

7. Self-assessment: Don't forget to consult the experts-the kids. Often you can give your rubric to your students and have them spot their strengths and weaknesses.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts?

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Search Results for Common Sense Education

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Common Sense is the nation’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century.

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Augmented Reality (AR) is readily becoming mainstream. It is being used to broadcast 3D emails, create overlays during sports broadcasts, sending out intuitive messages and what not. It is finding its application almost everywhere, so why not classrooms. While primarily focused on the gaming industry, current statistics show that the demands for consumer based AR products are 33 percent higher than non-augmented reality products and that the students are naturally engaged by how AR can change the world around them.

Augmented Reality in Education is receiving a lot of attention, nowadays. Multiple AR systems for learning are being produced and tested from empirical studies, often made possible under lab settings.

With that being said, let's dig into what's the use of Augmented Reality in the classroom and how it is becoming an integral part of the classroom setting.
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1. Premade Resources

One of the easier implementations of Augmented Reality in classrooms could be premade resources. This kind of content comes as a major help to the educators as it takes away the stress of being involved much in the technological aspect of lesson planning, while still providing students a way to engage with the content. Premade content is a great place to start for educators. For students as well it is a highly intuitive process as they just need a smartphone to bring the pages of the textbook to life. In fact, numerous companies are coming up with textbooks encoded with AR possibilities. For instance, Carlton Books does AR based books that are so intuitive. Just have a look right here.

2. Custom made Markers

Markers images serve the purpose of displaying Augmented Reality content on or over the surface. There are a number of education applications that make extensive use of AR markers and ensure that Augmented Reality is directly linked to the content of the lesson. The students can point their device camera to the AR textbook pages that the AR app locates and send the query back to their servers. The camera remains pointed at the page where the fiducial serves as a registration device for the movement and orientation of the image which in turn allows the object to move or rotate from any angle. This technology is widely being inculcated in a lot of education apps today. Two popular applications that use this are Aurasma and Layar and are quite easy to set up. Using the Aurasma app students or teachers link the AR trigger "Aura" to an online content which may be a static image, video or a website content. When the viewers scan over the auras they are presented with the online content in a floating window which seems highly engaging for the students.

3. AR-Enabled Worksheets

AR-enabled worksheets allow students to engage with Augmented Reality at the comfort of their homes. This can actually make the tedious process of homework pretty easy for students and they can explore AR as well as the content at their home. AR-enabled worksheets come as an important aspect if the students are to build a positive relationship with education and technology.

4. Faculty Photo Walls

An innovative way to integrate Augmented Reality in the classroom spaces is creating a faculty photo wall, wherein the pictures of the faculties are placed on the display board. And with the help of Augmented Reality students or the visitors can scan through the images to see the images come to life. This is an out of the box way to know more about the teachers and get nearly all possible information related to them.

Word Walls: Apart from Faculty photo walls, students can view meanings and illustrations of a particular key vocab with the use of AR-based word walls in an interactive environment. And the platform that makes it easy for students is AugThat!. It offers the students the capability to work on their vocabulary. Also, usages of the word and sentence building around it are all given at the power of student's mobile device.

For the parent's involvement. Augmented Reality is beneficial in bilateral terms. If it claims to bring tremendous incentives at the student's end, the parental side is also taken care of. Parents can easily keep a track of regular activities that being held in the school. Also, parents can attach augmented trigger images at their wards desk and boost them with a few words of motivation. As futuristic as it sounds, whats even better is that the parents can have a monthly calendar of events updated by just scanning the school logo of their child's t-shirt.

5. Rich interaction

If we talk of streamlined education that is communicative in its own way, Augmented Reality finds a different level of reach. One fun Augmented Reality app that is quite popular in schools is Quiver Education App (Formerly known as CoIAR Mix) that uses printed-out colored in pages to present interactive experience to the students through the app. The Quiver education app comprises of colored pages specifically designed for educational purposes.

6. Laboratory Safety

Another method Augmented Reality can bring changes in the Education sector is by enabling Augmented triggers around the Science Laboratory so when students scan through them, they can learn different safety procedures and protocols of the laboratory equipment.

To sum it up we can say that Augmented Reality has limitless possibilities and can be an extensive part of profound learning. Augmented Reality not only changes the environment around the children, it even allows them to construct their own exciting learning worlds around them. The end goal is certainly to develop an engaging and amazing experience that will expand child's thought ability as well as create a learning adventure.
Got a project on Augmented Reality? Then reach out to us for a consultation.

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6 Amazing Ways to use Augmented Reality in the Classroom

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Current statistics show that the demands for consumer based AR products are 33 percent higher than non-augmented reality products and that the students are engaged by how AR can change the world around them. With that, let's dig into what's the use of Augmented Reality in the classroom.

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Bitmoji in the Classroom * Cassi Noack Bitmoji in the Classroom

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16 ways you can use Bitmoji in your classroom! Make your class a fun place for your students by personalizing your decor and more!

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Bitmojis are fun, entertaining, and completely educational. At least they are for these teachers, and especially during distance learning. Teachers have gotten super creative with their Bitmoji classrooms and Bitmoji lockers, but they also are using them for classroom management, virtual field trips, and more!

1. Host a virtual open house

We love how Rachel J. shows her classroom off virtually this year with Bitmojis! Get her template here.

2. Set expectations

Some teachers are using their Bitmojis to set up expectations posters for virtual meetings during distance learning. Thanks to Erika R. for this template.

3. Turn your Bitmojis into a poster or anchor chart

We love the creativity of Mrs. Lopinto. You'll have fun, scrolling through your Bitmoji options to decide which ones to use.

Source: @mrslopintoslife

4. Create a Bitmoji virtual field trip!

This aquarium field trip is downright adorable! Thanks to teacher De K. for the template.

5. Create a Bitmoji escape room.

Escape rooms are all the rage right now. Make yours virtual and interactive. Perfect for assessments! Thanks Destinie B. for this template!

6. Make a library!

These adorable libraries are clickable. Thanks Casey V. for the inspiration!

7. Make your Bitmoji 3D

So many teachers, like Cindy W., are turning their Bitmoji characters 3D and animating them!

8. Print stickers to reward students for a job well done

Lots of teachers are turning their Bitmojis into stickers to give to their students, and this teacher, Little Miss Fiesta, makes it really easy. You only need the Bitmoji app, Avery 22805 labels, and the free template. If you want a quick and easy tutorial on this, check out her YouTube video. These make a great, inexpensive gift idea to send home to students during distance learning.

Source: @littlemissfiesta

9. Use yourself as a welcoming face

Your students and visitors won't have any doubt which door is yours when you put a giant Bitmoji on it. Thanks to But First, First Grade for this idea.

Source: @butinfirstgrade

10. Reinforce classroom rules with Bitmojis

With so many Bitmojis you can choose, you'll surely find a Bitmoji for all of your classroom rules. Thanks for the idea, The Texas Teacher.

Source: @thetexasteacher14

11. Use Bitmojis to give instructions

This is a fun way to give your students instructions or tasks. If you want to be a little extra by dressing up to match your Bitmoji, then go for it. (Kudos to Valerie, this fourth grade teacher who matched hers perfectly!)

Source: @apizza5thgrade
We'd love to hear-how are you using bitmojis in the classroom? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE groupon Facebook. Plus, check out our favorite teacher stickers.

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11 Super Creative Bitmoji Classroom Ideas for Teachers

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Bitmojis are fun, entertaining, and completely educational. At least they are for these teachers, and especially during distance learning. Teachers have gotten super creative with their Bitmoji classrooms and Bitmoji lockers, but they also are using them for classroom management, virtual field trips, and more! We love how Rachel J.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9laF99qI53o

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Bitmoji is your own personal emoji. Create an expressive cartoon avatar, choose from a growing library of moods and stickers - featuring YOU! Put them into any text message, chat or status update.

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Watch this webinar to discover how schools can design spaces to enhance teaching and learning processes in the classroom and beyond, even with limited resources.
14 November 2019 | Duration: 50 min
Speakers: Massimo Belardinelli, School Principal at the 1st School district "San Filippo" in Città di Castello, Italy; Cidália Marques, Deputy Headmaster at Agrupamento de Escolas Fernando Casimiro Pereira da Silva, in Rio Maior, Portugal.

This webinar focuses on how schools can innovate the learning spaces to accelerate teaching innovation processes with practical examples. Participants are encouraged to go beyond the classrooms and think about the school building as a whole to feel good and learn better. During the webinar practical examples and solutions are presented so that effective classroom designs can be achieved even with limited resources.

Watch the recording:

Presentations

Speakers

Massimo Belardinelli is an experienced technology and ICT teacher with a specific training in management of school systems. Since 2007, he is School Principal at the 1st School district "San Filippo" in Città di Castello (Umbria, Italy), which is a case study for learning environments and technology innovation. Massimo has joined regional and national expert groups in education and research, and he is collaborating with INDIRE in three research areas: Learning Spaces, Vanguard of Education (Avanguardie Educative), and Small Schools. He currently coordinates a European Erasmus+ project on Learning spaces for school inclusion involving six European countries (AYDS Project).

Cidália Marques is senior coordination in ICT in teaching and deputy headmaster at Agrupamento de Escolas Fernando Casimiro Pereira da Silva, in Rio Maior, Portugal. A coding and robotics teacher since 2010, Cidália currently acts as coordinator for ActiveLab, a project based on Future Classroom Labs.

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Watch this webinar to discover how schools can design spaces to enhance teaching and learning processes in the classroom and beyond, even with limited resources. 14 November 2019 | Duration: 50 min Speakers: Massimo Belardinelli, School Principal at the 1st School district "San Filippo" in Città di Castello, Italy; Cidália Marques, Deputy Headmaster at Agrupamento de Escolas Fernando Casimiro Pereira da Silva, in Rio Maior, Portugal.

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To what extent is creativity applied in the classroom as a collaborative problem-solving process? Watch this webinar and get inspired by practical examples of creativity in a school context - its enablers and its barriers.
05 November 2019 | Duration: 75 min

Speakers:Andy Penaluna - Emeritus Professor of Creative Entrepreneurship, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Wales

Facilitator: Elin McCallum, Bantani Education

Entrepreneurial education might be interesting because you want your students to become creative and entrepreneurial citizens. You may want to build their entrepreneurial confidence. You might want them to experience the highs and lows of an entrepreneurial project as part of their course. Maybe you see entrepreneurial education as one of the ways to engage your students by making learning more relevant and integral to their own interests.

Whatever reason you are interested in or already involved in entrepreneurial education, it is always important to the creativity of students flowing from the very start. How are people including creative thinking into the process of learning? What are the different enablers and barriers to including creativity in the curriculum? What are some practical examples of how to do this.

This webinar will offer practical routes to introducing creativity into your teaching, and help you understand the reasons and theory behind these. Join us to learn how you can help your learners build their creative potential!

What will you get out of this online seminar?

Understanding of how creativity is developed and the benefits of placing a stronger focus on creativity in the classroom

Practical examples of developing creativity through entrepreneurial education

Watch the recording:

Presentations:

Speakers

Andy Penaluna is Emeritus Professor of Creative Entrepreneurship at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. He chairs the UK's Quality Assurance Agency's Graduate Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Group. Educating the educators for enterprise has been a key goal of Andy's and he has been contributing to the development of international innovative practices in entrepreneurship education, including what is believed to be the UK's first fully university-accredited M-level module in Initial Teacher Training for enterprise educators, and a new doctorate level study that helps learners to evaluate their progress using EntreComp. He is currently helping the Welsh Government develop new national school curriculum that includes developing creative enterprising contributors to society.

Andy believes that before and when enterprises are born they need innovation, and before innovation can happen, creative thought is essential.

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To what extent is creativity applied in the classroom as a collaborative problem-solving process? Watch this webinar and get inspired by practical examples of creativity in a school context - its enablers and its barriers.

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Full version EN

Acknowledging the key role school education plays in preparing young people for a tech-driven world, this report sheds light on two different but complementary perspectives of digital education: the development of digital competences relevant to learners and teachers on the one hand, and the pedagogical use of technologies to support, improve and transform learning and teaching on the other.

The report provides indicators on the development of students' digital competence through school curricula and teacher-specific digital competences, the assessment of students' digital competences and the use of technology for assessment in general, and finally, on the strategic approaches to digital education and specifically policies supporting schools in this matter.

While the four main chapters provide policy-makers, researchers and the education community with comparative information on the current school digital education policies across Europe, the annexes add specific information by country, on school curricula, teacher competence frameworks, top-level strategies and agencies supporting digital education at school.

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Digital Education at School in Europe - Eurydice - European Commission

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Full version EN Acknowledging the key role school education plays in preparing young people for a tech-driven world, this report sheds light on two different but complementary perspectives of digital education: the development of digital competences relevant to learners and teachers on the one hand, and the pedagogical use of technologies to support, improve and transform learning and teaching on the other.

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Discover the digital potential of your school

Is your school making the most of digital technologies for teaching and learning? SELFIE is a free, easy-to-use, customisable tool to help schools assess where they stand with learning in the digital age. Watch the short video introducing you to the benefits of the SELFIE tool.
Ready to start using SELFIE? Register or sign in

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Is your school making the most of digital technologies for teaching and learning? SELFIE is a free, easy-to-use, customisable tool to help schools assess where they stand with learning in the digital age. Watch the short video introducing you to the benefits of the SELFIE tool. Ready to start using SELFIE?

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Creativity,
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With over two thousand templates to choose from, you can unleash your creativity in no time. Ranging from education to business to personal use, Buncee Templates gives you a jump start on any creation, but with the freedom to add your personal touch. Choose from our in-house templates, or select a custom template uploaded by your admin on Buncee for Schools and Districts.

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Buncee | Create, Present and Share Engaging Multimedia Lessons

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Buncee is an easy-to-use tool for your school's creation needs. Empower student voice, create engaging class materials, enhance school communications, and more!

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Educreations is a community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't. Our software turns any iPad or web browser into a recordable, interactive whiteboard, making it easy for teachers and experts to create engaging video lessons and share them on the web.

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Make animated videos in minutes. With the help of simpleshow's AI-powered animation maker you can create explainer videos quickly and easily.

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PlayPosit | Interactive Video Learning Objects

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With over 5 million learners and counting, PlayPosit offers a variety of options for interaction customization, premade templates, playback control, LMS LTI integration, and more. Instructors and instructional designers can build lessons as they envision them while expanding the traditional and onli

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Educational technology news, research and articles from around the web

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A Haiku is a short Japanese poem used to evoke images. Our Haiku generator lets you choose a few words then it automatically counts the syllables and brings in synonyms where necessary, to help fit the 5-7-5 poetic style.

Please keep your input family friendly.

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A Haiku is a short Japanese poem used to evoke images. Our Haiku generator lets you choose a few words then it automatically counts the syllables and brings in synonyms where necessary, to help fit the 5-7-5 poetic style. Please keep your input family friendly.

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A collection of web and mobile based tools to help teachers and learners exploit digital resources

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Madmagz enables you to create a digital or a print magazine. Try it, it’s free!

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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Capture, organize, and tackle your to-dos from anywhere | Trello

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Make the impossible, possible with Trello. The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos—stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere, even on mobile.

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TED-Ed lessons on all subjects. TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

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Leading the industry

Since 2005, QuestionPro has been hard at work solving the most demanding challenges of modernizing market research, surveys, and insights to empower our customers and reach their business goals better than ever before.

Today, QuestionPro is an industry leader in insights, experiences, and software recognized by Forrester, Gartner, Quadrant Spark Matrix, G2 Crowd, and more.

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Free Online Survey Software and Tools | QuestionPro®

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Free survey software: QuestionPro online survey software to create surveys and questionnaires in minutes! Use our free survey platform with 80+ question-types, ready made templates, multiple survey distribution & data collection option and robust survey analytics dashboards.

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Your text is saved on the web, and more than one person can edit the same document at the same time. Everybody’s changes are instantly reflected on all screens.

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Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned. The interactive Cube Creator offers four options:

Bio Cube: This option allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read; it can also be used before students write their own autobiography. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.

Mystery Cube: Use this option to help your students sort out the clues in their favorite mysteries or develop outlines for their own stories. Among its multiple applications, the Mystery Cube helps students identify mystery elements, practice using vocabulary from this popular genre, and sort and summarize information. Specific prompts ask students to describe the setting, clues, crime or mystery, victim, detective, and solution.

Story Cube: In this cube option, students can summarize the key elements in a story, including character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme. Students can even identify their favorite part of the story. This can be used as an alternative to the Story Map interactive.

Create-Your-Own Cube: Working on a science unit? Doing some research on volcanoes? The Create-Your-Own Cube is your answer. This version allows teachers and students to generate their own questions or topics. Teachers can type in the questions, lock them from editing using the padlock icon, and save the file using the Save tab at the top of the screen. The saved file can then be shared with students to enter in their responses. Students can also customize cubes on topics of their choosing.

Students can save their draft cubes to revise later. See the five-minute video tutorial Saving Work With the Student Interactives for more information on have to save, e-mail, and open a file in any of the ReadWriteThink Student Interactives. The finished cube can also be saved, printed, and folded into a fun cube shape that can be used for future reference.

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Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned. The interactive Cube Creator offers four options: Bio Cube: This option allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read; it can also be used before students write their own autobiography.

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Xmind is the most professional and popular mind mapping tool. Millions of people use Xmind to clarify thinking, manage complex information, brainstorming, get work organized, remote and work from home WFH.

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PosterMyWall simplifies graphic design for marketers and businesses. Choose a template and create stunning promotional flyers, social media graphics, videos or send email campaigns in minutes. Anyone can do it, no design skills needed!

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StoryJumper: #1 rated site for creating story books

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Easiest way to create, narrate, and publish your own hardcover and paperback books. Read and listen to books from our worldwide community.

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The knowledge above provides a good starting point, but it doesn't mean that every objective you write for Level 1 students must begin with the word 'remember'.

Conveniently, Bloom's Taxonomy provides lots of related verbs that provide a helpful way for educators to plan lessons. Verb tables have been created to align with each of these levels.

Now, let's take a look at these levels and some corresponding verbs.
Bloom's Taxonomy Levels and Corresponding Verb Lists
At this level, students are challenged to recall and remember the basic facts and information of the story or text.
Verb List: Cite, Define, Describe, Draw, Identify, Label, List, Match, Memorize, Name, Record, Repeat, State, Write Verb List: Add, Clarify, Compare, Contrast, Explain, Give, Infer, Observe, Predict, Summarize, Translate Verb List: Adapt, Assign, Calculate, Construct, Employ, Express, Illustrate, Modify, Show, Solve, Use Verb List: Break down, Characterize, Classify, Contrast, Distinguish, Explore, Identify, Investigate, Order, Prioritize Verb List: Appraise, Assess, Critique, Defend, Determine, Estimate, Explain, Grade, Justify, Rank, Rate Verb List: Abstract, Assemble, Combine, Compose, Construct, Correspond, Design, Develop, Generate, Integrate, Portray, Produce
Level 2 gives the student a chance to show a fundamental understanding of the story or text.

Here, students gain an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to use the information in a new way.

At this level, students can deconstruct the story into its component parts to better understand it.

This level gives students an opportunity to develop an opinion and back it up with reasoning and evidence.

This level affords an opportunity for students to take what they have learned and make something new from it.

Clearly, the verbs listed above do not represent a comprehensive list of all the possibilities of verbs and verbal phrases available at each level, but they certainly provide a good starting point.

You may also note that some verbs and phrases will work at more than one level, just be sure to refer to the stated aim of each level to assess what the purpose is in that particular context.

A useful way to employ verb lists such as those above is to incorporate them into your learning objectives for lessons, or for longer range planning such as term plans or writing a curriculum or scheme of work.

You can easily differentiate the learning objectives you set by moving up and down levels and by using simpler verb synonyms in those objectives. Using a thesaurus is a great way to achieve this quickly.

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A Teacher's Guide to Bloom's Taxonomy - Edgalaxy - Teaching ideas and Resources

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If you have been teaching for any length of time, you are extremely likely to have come across Bloom's taxonomy at one point or another. Maybe you are very familiar with it already and use it daily to inform your teaching and assessment.

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Peer Assessment: Reflections from Students and Teachers

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Self-Assessment: Reflections from Students and Teachers

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How to Design Project-Based Learning Activities

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08 Task Based Learning Creating a Utopian Society

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The role of story or case in Case-based Learning (CBL)

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A Student-Driven Approach to Experiential Learning