Digital learning problems - A is for applications

Hello, colleagues! A year ago I posted a popular column titled "The A-Z problems of digital learning." One thing that I thought would be effective this year is to break down solutions for each of these issues. So to begin, I'm going to talk about "A": Applications.

As teachers, we have to wade through 2 million applications available in the Apple App Store and/or Google Play Store. That is A LOT of apps. I would encourage anyone who is overwhelmed with the number of applications to first figure out what you want your students to do. What do you want from the assignment? What is the purpose? Once you have that decision made, then you can start to wade through the various teacher lists of popular applications that are posted online.

But that can also be overwhelming. Where might a teacher start to look?

Here are some applications that I think are fantastic to start out with in your classrooms:

The 6 Best beginner Classroom Applications by Rachel Jeffrey

• Google Docs: This application is perfect for word processing (i.e., writing). What makes Google Docs better than Microsoft Word is that a) students can collaborate on the same document and b) you have access to the student files so you can see what your classroom learners are doing. If you happen to pair Google Docs with Google Classroom, you will see the effectiveness even further. In Google Classroom, you can share a Google Doc with your students, and it will make a copy for each student. Now all of their files are in one handy place. You don't have to worry about students sharing their document with you! 
• Spark Video: This is my favorite beginner video application. Students don't have to do filming through the app but instead can do a voiceover over images and icons that are built into the application. Spark Video also has built-in themes and music to make the videos more inviting and engaging. This application is perfect for kindergartners through high schoolers. 
• Quizizz: I just recently found this quizzing application. I like it better than Kahoot for three reasons: 1) You can choose to play a points quiz or not. Students don't have to answer quickly to get full points. 2) You can assign a homework game so students can play the game on their own time. It's perfect for a weekly review that kids can take whenever. 3) It has meme sets, so students get a funny meme if they get the answer right or wrong. It's silly, but it's another way to engage students. Also, after a quiz has been completed, you get a report, and you can see what students missed what questions and can also see which items were wrong the most. 
• Newsela: This current events application is great to get students reading non-fiction text. The app is partnered with reputable newspapers to get the latest news. You can level the reading to meet your students' needs. At the end of each article is a multiple-choice quiz. You can search by content or by type of news. You can also find pre-made text sets, or you can build your own. 
• Actively Learn: Actively Learn is very similar to Newsela yet quite different. There is less current, right now news, but there are more stories and novels posted through their site. Similar to Newsela, there are pre-made articles with questions built in or you can upload your own materials and design questions. One significant difference is as a student reads a story in Actively Learn, the reading will stop, and students will have to answer a question. Students cannot move on until the question has been answered. By doing this, students cannot get distracted by the rest of the reading, and they know the answer is in what they previously read. You can also ask students multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. You can assign a grade or use a rubric to grade each answer. Students can also see answers after and can provide hints or comments to each other. It's pretty slick.
• Edpuzzle: If you are a legitimate 21st-century teacher, you know that kids learn a lot from YouTube. It's great if you utilize YouTube videos in your classroom, but Edpuzzle harnesses that power further. You can link a YouTube video to Edpuzzle. Once the application recognizes the video, you can build in questions (multiple choice, open-ended, or a comment) for students to answer/review. The video will pause and will not resume until the student answers the question. You can also crop a video so only one part shows, you can do a voiceover over the entire project (with your own script), or you can provide audio notes. 

This is a good six applications to start with. They apply to every content and every grade level. I hope you find this a useful place to start!

Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website

Elevate.

Hello, colleagues!

I'm going to share an idea that I had this week that I'm pretty excited about. Every spring, eighth grade American history teachers partner with their Language Arts teammate to do a Civil War research paper. We've done this for the past eight years that I have taught here, and it's a unit that just doesn't excite me. I don't hate the project, but I am not a fan of the content or the fact that the students create a research paper. Civil War technology is not compelling; I cannot get excited about it in any capacity (and it includes photography, and I LOVE photography). I also don't want to grade 110 research essays after I've already had the students write three analytical essays throughout the year.

Every year I want to elevate the project. I'm not trying to make it better, but am more focused on creating something that works for my students and for myself. The lightbulb went off this week when I was thinking about my Google Innovator project. I decided that I wanted to do a "trial run" with this unit. If I do or do not become a Google Innovator, I believe in character education and want to continue to elevate my content.

So my plan is to have the students research a person from the American Civil War.

They will investigate the person and find a characteristic best demonstrated by this individual.

I then want the students to take this personality feature and try to emulate it in some sort of genius hour project. My thought is that it will lead to community building, whether in the classroom, in the school, or in the community of Colorado Springs. For example, say they choose Clara Barton who was a nurse. They pick the characteristic of selflessness. They emulate Clara Barton's selflessness by performing random acts of kindness for a stranger for a week. I'm still thinking this all through, but I want them to address my unit essential question: How can we emulate the best of the past? I'm also thinking about finding primary documents for them to access through Actively Learn, and they will continue with flipped learning.

This would only, however, take up my portion of the unit. So for my Language Arts counterpart, I was inspired by a colleague who sent me a Pinterest pin about a wax museum project. I asked my colleague if she would be interested in having the students research these people (together; we have a shared wall) then present their wax figure in her class. She just ate it up!

I tried to create an eclectic bunch of people to study because I'm hoping through this project that the students emulate the best of the past and also see themselves in history. I'm not sure if I could ask for anything more.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad

My Teacherspayteachers website

Hello, colleagues! Sorry that time has gotten away from me, and it has been a few weeks - I meant to blog last week, but was not feeling well. I'm back to normal, and I'm back on my game! This week was a good week in the middle school world. I did a four-day lesson over the Constitution with some activities that I am excited to share with you.

As someone to teaches middle school American history, it is only fair that I present lessons with a neutral political discourse. My students do not need to know my political leanings, so I present both sides of the story. We are currently studying the Constitution, and in today's political climate, it is incredibly important for students to know what their rights are. They know that they have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms... and that's about it. I know that going through the Constitution bit by bit is incredibly annoying. What I did, instead, was utilize three different programs: Actively Learn, Socrative space race, and Adobe Spark Page.

I wanted the students to study the first three Articles of the Constitution, so I uploaded the Articles to Actively Learn with highlighted portions and questions built in (if you have an Actively Learn account, e-mail me at rbails@d49.org if you want a copy). It was my first time using Actively Learn, and I am now a fan. I've been asking myself why I haven't been using this earlier, especially considering other teachers have been touting how amazing it is. Using Actively Learn isn't any different than having the students read and answer questions, but it's just different. My students were incredibly engaged with the text and were focused during class. The students could not move on to the next question until they answered the previous question, and the students knew that the answer to the question was right above the question. I felt like Actively Learn is a great tool when it comes to primary documents or readings that may be difficult to understand or digest.

I'm not a teacher that needs silence in my classroom, but during Actively Learn, you could hear a pin drop.

The next part of the lesson was to have the students do a "space race" on Socrative. I have done these in the past, and have found that they are better than Kahoot. I would not say the students are more or less excited or engaged, but Socrative forces the students to get the answers correct instead of racing to respond to the question the quickest. I gave the students describing statements about the twenty-seven Amendments of the Constitution, and they had to figure out which Amendment was being described. Again, not a new or super interesting lesson, but the students were figuring out what the Constitution says. The students were engaged with the text and filled out a handout in Notability as they quizzed through Socrative.

The last part of the lesson was to have the students design a Spark Page (my example) about what IS in the Constitution. They took their learning from the previous two lessons and developed a "website" that is visual and compelling. I feel like the students are walking away from this week knowing more about the Constitution than they ever knew previously.

To culminate the Constitution lesson, next week, the students will be accessing the DBQ Project's document-based question "How did the Constitution guard against tyranny?" I have done this DBQ the past three years, and it is one of the toughest DBQs for the students to comprehend. It will be interesting to see if the students better grasp the essential question because of greater prior knowledge.

I have struggled with the Constitution unit every year that I have taught at Skyview. It just never turns out quite like I want. I feel like what I created this year was strong, and I will keep most of the lessons for next year. I think the students comprehended the ideas that I wanted, and I know that they were engaged with the ideas. I'm not sure I could ask more of teenagers learning about an 18th-century primary document.

Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week :) 

- Rachel
@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website