Bell Ringers by Malan AuroraAfrikaans https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb Ideas from Ditch that Textbook en-us 2017-08-31 06:36:59 UTC 2026-02-03 14:52:07 UTC hello@padlet.com Create a “What do you know about …” Padlet. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873315  Padlet (padlet.com) is like a digital bulletin board. Use it to tack digital notes to it with push pins. Those notes, though, can have links, files, images and other multimedia attached to them — much cooler than a regular bulletin board. Kick off class for the day by creating a collaborative “What do you know about …” Padlet. Pose a question: “What do you know about dolphins?” and encourage students to add whatever they can — personal experiences, facts, images, videos, whatever. This is a great way to activate prior knowledge]]> 2017-08-31 06:40:50 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873315 Record a short explainer video. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873505 Sometimes, it’s just easier to show someone what you’re talking about than to write it. Students can fire up a screen recording video with Screencastify (screencastify.com) in moments using the tool’s extension for the Google Chrome browser. Students can quickly record their screen, record with their webcam and/or record audio with their microphone to kick off class. It’s easy for them to share those videos with others after uploading them to Google Drive — or to turn them in with Google Classroom or another learning management system.]]> 2017-08-31 06:42:32 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873505 Play a quick Quizizz game. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873620 Want to review some material? Go over content from a previous lesson? Even give students a fun way to look up new material? Play a quick Quizizz game to start class. (Ever played Kahoot!? Quizizz has many similarities.) When setting the game up, click the “homework” button instead of the “play live” button and set the completion time five or ten minutes into class. The game will display a join code and the Quizizz join site. Just display those to students and have them get started. They can start whenever they get in their seats ready to go, and it’s not synchronous (i.e. their progress doesn’t depend on the progress of other students).]]> 2017-08-31 06:43:34 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873620 Analyze books or articles with Flipgrid. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873772 Let students talk about and analyze what they’ve just read. Give them a chapter from a novel, a short story or an article, a math problem they’ve solved — even something a fellow classmate has written! Flipgrid lets students record short videos (up to 90 seconds) about a topic. In this case, the topic can be what they’ve just read or worked on. When they’re finished, they can view each other’s videos. (The more interesting the prompt, the more likely they’ll naturally want to look at each other’s videos!)]]> 2017-08-31 06:44:57 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873772 Write emoji poetry or an emoji response. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873966 Brevity is an important skill in writing. Instead of encouraging students to write to a minimum number of words, let’s try constraining them to fewer words — and turn them into emojis! Have students summarize what they’ve been learning using emojis (maybe a maximum of 10?). The Google Chrome web browser has several emoji extensions (a favorite of mine is Emoji for Google Chrome). Mobile devices often have them built in. This encourages reflection on what they’ve learned and creativity in expressing themselves.]]> 2017-08-31 06:46:17 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183873966 Add speech bubbles to a historic photo gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874420 Add a new twist to a lesson by letting students speak — or think — for the characters. My favorite way to do this is with Google Drawings (for creating individual images) or Google Slides (for having each student create a slide in a shared presentation). Do an image search for a historic photo and add that photo to the drawing or slide. Then add speech bubbles. (If using Drawings/Slides, it’s in the shapes under the “callouts” category.) This is higher-order thinking! Students must know their facts and understand the people involved very well to be able to think for them. Kick the Depth of Knowledge level up even higher by having students justify their thinking and explain why they wrote what they did.]]> 2017-08-31 06:50:25 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874420 Ask a character/historic figure a question. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874511 What if students could ask someone they’re studying a question? What would they ask, and how would that person likely respond? This is another that can be done quickly and easily in Google Slides or Drawings. Let students take a photo of themselves using Insert > Image > Take a snapshot. Then, use the image search to find a photo of the person to whom they’ll ask the question. Add speech bubbles to ask questions. Students could ask one question with one answer from the character/historic figure, or they could do a back-and-forth with several photos.]]> 2017-08-31 06:51:43 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874511 Create a flowchart. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874612 Sticking with the Google Slides/Drawings idea, have students express their understanding of a concept with a flowchart. This can easily be done with shapes and arrows (found under the line tool) in Slides and Drawings. A single line throughout a flowchart makes for more of a timeline and less of a flowchart, so any time it can branch off, the flowchart is made more interesting! (Pro tip: copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) the shapes and arrows to save time.)

Example: Go through the process of deciding what to have for lunch and all of the decisions made in that process.

]]> 2017-08-31 06:52:43 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874612 Make comic strips out of webcam photos. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874694 Those webcams don’t have to be just for selfie-style photos (especially those with peace fingers and duck lips …). Have students back away from the camera and pose to recreate scenes of what you’re studying. Or, have them sit side by side and have a discussion. This makes the students the stars of their own comic strips!

Example: Recreating a scene from a story or having a discussion about something they’re learning in class.

]]> 2017-08-31 06:53:44 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874694 Create a quick animation. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874778 Google Slides (or PowerPoint or any presentation slide tool) can be turned into a simple stop-motion animation tool. Create the first slide in your animation, then duplicate it, then move something slightly in the second slide. Duplicate the second slide and move something slightly in the third. Continue duplicating and moving until your animation is complete. Once your students have the hang of this, they can make animations pretty quickly.

Example: Recreating historic battles with moving maps (here’s a brief, incomplete example of the Battle of Little Big Horn) or showing how a math problem is completed.

]]> 2017-08-31 06:54:49 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874778 Share cell phone photos to a slide presentation with DriveSlides. gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874902 This one is a little more advanced, but once it’s set up, it’s pretty easy! Students can email you photos from their cell phones and, in less than a minute, you can pull them into a Google Slides presentation to share with the class! Here’s how you do it:

  • Log in to Google with the email account where you want students to send emails. (Don’t want these student photos clogging up your inbox? Use a different email OR create a new Gmail account just for this purpose — collecting student photos!)
  • Create a new Google Sheets spreadsheet and install the Save Emails and Attachments add-on to that sheet. (Add-ons > Get add-ons … > Search and install it)
  • In that spreadsheet, in the menu, go to: Add-ons > Save Emails and Attachments > Create New Rule …
  • It will display lots of ways that the add-on can decide which emails to search for photos. I usually just add something in the “Subject:” line … a unique word I want students to type in the subject line when they send me their photos (like “spanishphoto” … something no one will write except students sending me photos).
  • On #2 in this new rule, be sure to check “Save file attachments” and uncheck “Save email body.”
  • Choose a folder where you want it to save all of your photos. (You may need to create a new folder just for this in Drive before you click the “Select Drive Folder” button.)
  • Click Save. Your rule is set!
  • Have students email you their photos. Make sure they put the unique word in the subject line.
  • Once they photos are in, go back to your spreadsheet and go to Add-ons > Save Emails and Attachments > Manage Rules. Click the blue “Run” button. (Note: It may take a while to download all of those images to your Google Drive. Maybe have students submit photos the night before and then download them right before class or the morning before class.)
  • Install the DriveSlides extension from your Google Chrome browser.
  • After the add-on has downloaded all of the photos, go to your Google Drive (drive.google.com) and open the folder with all of the photos.
  • With that Google Drive folder open, click the DriveSlides button in the top right corner of your Google Chrome browser. (It looks like a little yellow Google Slides icon with the Google Drive icon inside it.)
  • BOOM. DriveSlides takes all of those photos from your folder and instantly sticks them into a new slide presentation for you.
If you’ve done this before and want to do the activity again, follow these steps:

  • Open your spreadsheet and go to Add-ons > Save Emails and Attachments > Manage Rules.
  • Click to edit the rule you already created.
  • Change the word in the subject line to something different (maybe “spanishphoto2” or “may14”).
  • Delete all of the photos from the folder in your Google Drive.
  • After students have sent photos with that subject line, click “Add-ons” > Save Emails and Attachments > Manage Rules and click “Run” to download photos.
  • Open the Google Drive folder and click the DriveSlides button to send photos to a new slide presentation.
Example: Students can take photos of the world around them with examples of what you’re studying in class. This pulls all of those student-created photos into a slide presentation you can share with the class.

]]> 2017-08-31 06:56:13 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183874902 Do a shared mind map brainstorm with AWWApp gerhard_aurora3 https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183875088 Students can interact in a shared whiteboard in AWWApp (awwapp.com). They can draw with their finger (or a mouse or a laptop/Chromebook touchpad). If you have a touchscreen available, this is a really easy, collaborative way for students to sketch out and share their ideas. Because the whiteboards are collaborative, they can share whiteboards with others — students in other classes or anyone around the world — so they can collaborate together.

Example: Jot down all of the words that best describe a character. Write out all of the questions they have about solving a certain kind of math problem.

]]> 2017-08-31 06:58:02 UTC https://padlet.com/gerhard_aurora3/ypfx9qqw2vqb/wish/183875088