The folks in Florida may have no idea when Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom will open again but in the mean time we can take a virtual field trip there. I have created an exciting activity for your students to explore and as an example to inspire you to create a virtual field trip of your own. I created this in Google Drawings and Sites.
This is an educational field trip not just fun. This virtual field trip includes essential knowledge and skills from Reading, Math, Science, History, Geography, and more.
Check out my introduction video of how it works. Then explore the activity at the link below.
Here are the activities in Google Forms if you want to save a copy to assign to your students to get their responses.
Did you know you can change the banner image at the top of your Google Classroom? There are quite a few stock images to select from built in to Google Classroom. You can also upload your own image. Here is a quick guide on how to create your own correctly sized (16.67″x4.17″) banner image and how to add it to your Google Classroom. Check out the video below for the walk through.
Did you know you can schedule an email to go out at a later date and time? This can be a great feature for creating a regular routine or expectation with your students. It can also help you not send out emails at strange hours of the night. Here is a quick video walk through on how to set up a schedule send email.
Here is a link to some FAQ’s and tips for using Google Classroom from Mrs. Kasey Bell. Kasey Bell’s Shake Up Learning is a great resource to follow. One cool tip I learned from this page was that you can post assignments to all of your classes at the same time if you are not scheduling them ahead of time. This link will show you how.
I was in a Region 10 Webinar today about Remote Learning for the ESL classroom, which I will post about later, and I noticed a great strategy they were using to keep the meeting going smoothly. The presenter had a second person that was monitoring the chat tab and would relay the questions to the presenter. I thought this would be a great job for you to assign to a student helper. The student helper could keep their microphone open and be responsible for interrupting the teacher and reading the questions from chat so that the teacher can address them while they are relevant.
Let’s take a quick look at Classkick’s super short introduction video then we will dive in deeper.
You can create new interactive assignments in Classkick that include manipulatives, multiple choice, and fill in the blank activities. You could also use the multiple choice and fill in the blank question features to add on to an existing worksheet.
This looks like a great new tool to try. It also has some pretty decent features with the free basic account.
Here is my video walk through of Classkick. It includes signing up, the features, creating an assignment, and assigning it to your students. It’s a little longer but very detailed and helpful.
This is a cool game based on the Bill of Rights. Students run a law office and interact with clients to determine if they have a case in their complaint. Watch the video below of me checking out the game and seeing how it works.
To assign the game to your students in Google Classroom you have to find it through the green teach tab at the top of the home page. Then you will find the button to assign it in Google Classroom. You could easily just share the link as well without involving Google Classroom. It looks like there is an Apple and Android app as well.
Coding Designed for Kids We’re excited to provide your educators and students with an exclusive full-access preview of our all-new Coding app, now available with Discovery Education Experience through June 30, 2020.
Discovery Education Coding provides completely self-guided and engaging lessons for students to learn block coding, HTML, and Python. Designed for educators and students with varying levels of skill, Coding is easy to use and loaded with Help videos and lessons. And, best of all, students can demonstrate their creativity by creating their own apps and sharing them with their classmates!
Want to maximize your students’ experience with Discovery Education Coding? Be sure to maximize your free student accounts today!*”In today’s Digital Age, coding and coding literacy are important skills every child should have the opportunity to develop. A basic understanding of coding fosters student creativity as it sharpens the problem-solving and numeracy skills critical to future success. I am looking forward to integrating this new digital resource into my lessons.”
Please note that we have updated our terms and conditions to extend any obligations that relate to Discovery Education Experience to Discovery Education Coding as well. See our updated terms and conditions here for U.S., Canada, and International.
Let’s take a look at Powtoon. Powtoon is a video creation tool that lets you make animated engaging videos to share with your students. There are a few usable free features available to you that make it worth checking out. There are two videos here. The first video walks through how Powtoon works. The second video is an example I created.
Here is a fun little game for students to practice vocabulary knowledge and reading skills. Students navigate their player through the platform game with the arrow keys. When they fall into a trap they are quizzed and if successful they are able to continue their adventure.
CAST_COVID is a coupon code for Screencastify. I tested it and it gives you a free one year subscription to the $29 Teacher plan. Note the Total Due after I put in the coupon code.
Google Meet Grid View is a Google Chrome extension that will tile the camera view of all the participants in your Google meet session so that you can see all their faces. Thanks to Ms. Hall for sharing this one.
"No data is stored by the extension, it's a purely cosmetic script. No extra permissions are required except access to meet.google.com."
Classlink is the best way to get your students connected to Google Classroom and many other online activities. After students login to Classlink they only need to launch Google Classroom and they will be connected.
ClassLink also contains many other activities and resources for your students to work on.
Check out this link here to find ClassLink Resources for your students.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom will be the easiest way for you to push out assignments for your students to access at home.
If you do not already have a Google Classroom for your students you can refer to this training here for information on setting that up.
Email your students the Class Code for the class section you want them to join.
Videos
You can record a video to post to your Google classroom of a lecture, explanation of directions, etc.
You can accomplish that as easily as making a video on your phone and uploading it through the Google Classroom App.
Use the webcam on a Chromebook to record a video that will save in your Google Drive.
You can get fancier with a program like Screencast-o-matic that will record a screen capture video. You could use a tool like that to click through a slideshow and narrate as you would in class. You can record screencasts up to 15 minutes long for free. A deluxe account that removes the time limit and gives you access to their decent editing software is less than $20 a year.
Flipgrid
FlipGrid is another amazing tool that you could use to pose questions to your students and allow them to respond with a short video. You could ask them to reflect on a reading or other assignments.
You can learn more about FlipGrid and ways to us it here. Flip Grid works with Google Classroom. You can connect it to your Google Classroom and post assignments through FlipGrid.
EdPuzzle
EdPuzzle is another tool that you can use to create assignments that your students could easily complete from home on their own devices. You can learn more about EdPuzzle here. EdPuzzle also integrates with Google Classroom. You can post EdPuzzle assignments into Google Classroom from EdPuzzle.
