Google Meet Custom Backgrounds

How and why to change the background in Google Meets. We also stumble across the raise hand feature and explore it.

QT Plickers

Plickers Quick Assessment

December 2, 2019|Alwayslearning, Assessment, EdTech, ELAR, Elementary, Math, Review, Science, Secondary, Social Studies, SPED, Tools

Plickers is a great way to use technology to gather data and check for understanding.  Your students do not need to have a device.  They will get a card that they will hold up to answer multiple choice answers.  Every students card is different to they can’t be influenced or copy each others answers.  Check out the videos below to learn more about Plickers.  If you would like for me to stop by during your conference period one day and help you get Plickers up and running, I would be happy to do that.  I would also like to join your class on your first day of using Plickers to help that roll out go smoothly.  

This a quick introduction to what Plickers can do.  The second video is a more detailed tutorial about setting up Plickers.

Thanksgiving Activities

Vocaroo

https://vocaroo.com/

Vocaroo is a simple and quick to use web based recording tool that you can use to record audio clips with your microphone. Your recordings can be hosted online or downloaded to your computer.

Factile Jeopardy Style Game

https://www.playfactile.com/

Factile is an online Jeopardy style game website. You can make your own games or search and use the games already available. It looks plenty usable in the free version. The paid version has some pretty cool features as well.

Empresarios Activity: How Much Land?

How Much Land? Is one of my favorite activities! Kids get seriously engaged in this activity. In the activity students learn about the process to divide out land in an Anglo Empresario colony in Mexican and Spanish Tejas. This activity uses group work, kinesthetic dice rolling, math computation, and map skills.

I meet the students at the door and hand them a copy of a land deed as they are coming through the door. There are 4 different deeds so I just print as many copies of those four as I will need and keep them in a shuffled order. When the lesson starts(after going over directions and expectations) students find other members of their colony and group together. They then use the document to determine how much land they get based on the stipulations in the empresario grant, which are actual requirements from 1800’s Tejas. They then claim their plot of land on the map of their colony.

Trading Cards Project Summative or PBL

Let’s digitize and oldie but a goodie. Creating Trading cards was always one of my favorite unit review projects in class.

Below is a template I made in Google Slides to assign a trading card project to your students. This can be done in person by printing or digitally through Google Classroom. All you have to do is change the directions to meet your class and print or assign.

Trading cards can be made for all kinds of content areas including art, ELAR, science, and math. You can have students make cards about concepts, formulas, famous people, places, or things, in your content area. Make visual Vocabulary trading cards with the word and an image on the front and definition on the back.

How to Create an Aware Test in Eduphoria

Full Complete Video of How to create a test in Aware, Create the questions, How to set up the layout, Test Key, and Share the test under Administration. Below I will post sections of the video for quick reference.

Where did my Download Go!?

Have you ever started a file download in your Chrome browser, got distracted while waiting for it, only to comeback and it is nowhere to be found at the bottom of your Chrome browser window?
Well fret no more, simply press ctrl-J to open up a tab with your download history on it.

Play YouTube Videos in a Popup Window

Copy and paste the URL for the YouTube video that you want to play in a separate popup window.
Paste that URL into your embed or link code.
After the word “watch” and before the “?” insert “_popup” to the code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1PhYOAHgwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=A1PhYOAHgwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=A1PhYOAHgwk

EdTech Update Episode 05

www.EdTechMrBrown.com Podcast notes Episode 005 Friday 6 November 2020

Fast4Friday
https://edtechmrbrown.com/quick-tips/ https://edtechmrbrown.com/powtoon/ https://edtechmrbrown.com/pear-deck/

Padlet with Mrs. Bodie https://padlet.com/

And a new Tool/Game, Quizalize, that can be played live in class or assigned as homework and even be used as a test https://edtechmrbrown.com/quizalize/

ELAR 6th Wright Brothers ClassKick Activity 6R U3

Here is a cross curricular activity ClassKick to accompany your lesson on the Wright Brothers. This activity involves reading a selection on the history of the Wright brothers first flight. There is a Cause and Effect question to accompany the reading. There are also 2 calculation questions based on the data of the flights that day.

Civil War and Reconstruction Ultimate Digital Activity Packet

Here is a digital activity packet made in Google Slides that is designed to be assigned in Google Classroom.

This activity uses skills including:

Using text boxes, inserting shapes, inserting lines, changing colors of shapes and lines, changing order of shapes, completing EdPuzzles, drag and drop, justification, analysis, Geography, evaluating sources, reading, researching, personal relevance, written composition,

This activity covers topics including:

The U.S. Civil War, Union, North, Confederacy, Rebels, South, State’s Rights, Slavery, Fugitive Slave laws, Railroads, Abolitionists, Abolitionism, Abolitionist movement, Election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Douglass Debates, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, Underground Railroad, Sectionalism, Juneteenth, Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850, Concept of Compromise, Secession, Harpers Ferry, Emancipation Proclamation, Appomattox Courthouse, Bleeding Kansas, Kansas Nebraska Act, Plantation Farms, Slave labor, African Diaspora, Slave Trade, Triangular Trade, Middle Passage, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Angelina Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison, The liberator, The North Star, Advantages and disadvantages, Jefferson Davis, William t Sherman, George McClelland, Robert E Lee, Ulysses S Grant, John Wilkes Booth, John Brown, Lincoln’s Assassination, Texas, Sam Houston, John Bell Hood, Francis Lubbock, John Reagan, Thomas Green, John Magruder, Sul Ross, Battles of Gettysburg, Appomattox, Mansfield, Sabine Pass, Galveston, Palmito Ranch, Atlanta, Vicksburg, Fort Sumter, First Bull Run, Sherman’s March to the Sea, Gettysburg address, Reconstruction, Amendments 13, 14, and 15, sharecropping, Andrew Johnson, KKK, Voter Suppression, Violence, Intimidation

Quizalize

Create or find TEKS based quizzes for your students.
Get usable data based on their results.

It looks like on a free account you can only see data for the most recent 5 activities.

Syncs with Google Classroom and posts activities directly to it.

Oh… My… Differentiation….
Send follow up activities to students based on their results

You can use images in the questions and answer choices. You can upload images or link to them by URL.

Math Mode helps you create math quizzes with all those symbols and

You can import questions from a spreadsheet or a Quizlet set.

Quizalize can read your activity aloud with text-to-speech.

You can include audio recordings with your questions.

You can assign these quizzes as homework (Count it as a quiz or test) or play a live game in class.
You can also print the quiz and even answer documents if you have both in person and virtual students and a lack of technology.

And the results are in…..
You can see data on each question, what the student answered, and even how long it took them to answer.

Sketchpad.app

Sketchpad.app is a very powerful and easy to use little tool. It is a web based drawing app like Paint only far superior in terms of features. Let’s take sketchpad.app for a spin.

Get ready for Hour of Code

https://hourofcode.com/us

Hour of code is approaching! December 7-13 is Hour of Code Week. Time to start planning a way to fit coding programs into a lesson that second week of December. Here is information on how to plan your Hour of Code activities.

You don’t need to have computers to explore coding. I have a set of programmable coding robot mice that students can use to learn basics of coding. Contact me to reserve one of those for your Hour of Code activities. You can also find or create coding card games.

If you have held Hour of Code activities before but your colleagues have not, maybe invite them to join your students for the first time with their entire class or during their conference period.

Jump out of your comfort zone and into Hour of Code. I promise you won’t regret it. You and your students will have a great time.

There are online coding practice games for all levels of student and skill level. I recommend you dig into any of these coding games you plan to have your students work on so you can know what to expect.

Online Dyslexia Practice Games

How to Capture Screen Shots

Let’s take a quick look at how to capture screen shots and screen clips.

How to Export/Print Gradebook in Google Classroom

You NEED TO KNOW that assignments that are not returned will not show up on the gradebook report.

From the gradebook go into any assignment.
Click the settings wheel on the right.
Then click download all grades.
A CSV file will be generated in your Downloads folder.