Teaching with Technology

One of the goals of teaching today is expanding students experiences beyond the walls of the school building. Ideally, we would love for them to have these real-world learning experiences where we could connect students with other students or allowing them to engage virtually with experts. Here are a few ideas to make this a reality! 1. Find another class around the world to connect with via the Connected Classroom Community on Google+. You can filter responses by grade level and find a class to connect with. Some classes are even just sharing their learning via FlipGrid which is another tool where students can record themselves answering a question or sharing a story. 2. Explore Skype in the Classroom . With Skype, you can hold a Mystery Skype with another class, go on a virtual fieldtrip, and even bring in guest speakers from around the world. A Mystery Skype is a game played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classr...

When teachers use their HoverCam to show writing or manipulate objects I regularly see the document camera struggle to stay focused.     Luckily there is an easy fix!   Place paper or object under the document camera.  Push the AF (Autofocus) Button. - #1 Below  Push the AF-L (Autofocus Lock) Button. - #2 Below  Start writing or using the object.  The Autofocus lock button will keep the focus on the paper or object that you are using.  This will stop the document camera from trying to focus on your hands.   Your students and their eyes will be thankful if you remember to use the AF-L button.   

If you are anything like me, grading is sometimes so time-consuming. I love the idea of not hauling papers all around and giving feedback digitally, but at times found the comment tool cumbersome within Google Docs. So I end up printing papers home and handwriting comments which I'm pretty sure my students have a hard time deciphering my chicken scratches as I attempt to give feedback so quickly. I found a recent blog post about a teacher who set up shortcuts in their Google Docs preferences which made grading really slick. I love shortcuts so I tried it this past week and I'm a convert. I wanted to give feedback on a new skill for my students and obviously didn't want to print out all of their papers that were turned in via Google Classroom. I'm often giving feedback that tells a student to "be more specific", "go deeper", "support with evidence" or "circle back to show how your evidence proves your claim". If you are an EL...

Confession. I use the search bar in Google Drive to find most of my files. I knew I had an essay template for my World History class where they compare Christianity & Islam's impact on government and society. I didn't know the name of it, so I searched for it using the search bar on top. I was then alerted that I had a LOT of files with that title as I pushed out the assignment using Google Classroom. I was the owner of these files and they were all in my Drive. I soon realized it was because I wasn't returning work in Classroom. Google Classroom automatically changes the ownership of a document to the teacher when the student hands it in on Classroom. This gives the student no editing rights and allows the teacher to leave feedback and grade the assignment. I often grade work and leave feedback using the comment feature. My last tech tip discussed how to use the suggesting feature to leave targeted comments on the document. You can read more about that her...