EduCreations - You + your whiteboard...in a video!

In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned that I was featured in my technology coach's blog, Little Bytes, about how I've used EduCreations with my students. In case you didn't get a chance to look through my colleague's blog, I'll do a little write-up about it here as well.

EduCreations is a free app for the iPad. It has some capabilities as a web tool without needing an iPad, but because it involves "drawing" on the screen as if it were a whiteboard, it works best with a touchscreen device rather than a mouse. When you open the app it looks like this:

EduCreations turns your screen into a whiteboard as you can see above, and records your voice as you interact with it (notice the "record" button in the upper right-hand corner). In this way, you can explain a concept or lesson by drawing on the board and explaining it while EduCreations records it. It then turns your lesson into a hyperlink, which you can post on your website for students to access or send it to them directly in an e-mail. It allows you switch ink colors, type, and import photos which is helpful for any visuals you plan to use besides what you "write" on the board. There is also a rectangle button in the lower left-hand corner which allows you to switch the background to graph paper, lined paper, or a coordinate grid.

Here is an example in which I actually explain how to use EduCreations using the EduCreations app :) My colleagues asked me to make one for them!

I've embedded an example below so you can see how I've used it for my own students:

Here is a link to my school website, where I have several other lessons posted for my students to use. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from students and parents talking about how helpful they have been! I've had students use them to review a concept one more time before a quiz, and I've also told students who missed an important lesson due to an absence that they could catch up on notes from the lesson explanation. Now if only I could take an entire Professional Development Day to create one for every single lesson....

I have experienced a few drawbacks so far, but I still find it to be a very useful tool. You cannot edit the audio in your explanation, since it's supposed to be your "real" explanation as if you're actually in class. If you mess up while speaking, you have to start over, including whatever you drew on the board. I try not to let this tempt me into starting over and over each time I stumble on my words or say the wrong thing, since I mess up speaking in class all the time - think of it that way :) I also seem to have trouble with the app itself saving my lessons. Sometimes I'll have to log in on the website itself to find them and get the link. Has anyone else tried this?

VoiceThread - the World Language teacher's answer to assessing speaking!

As a World Language teacher, speaking is usually the weakest of my students' skills. This is mainly because genuinely "thinking" in the target language is one of the last skills that is truly mastered when learning a language. Students find it difficult to string sentences together with careful planning on paper, let alone quickly & right off the top of their head! With this in mind, World Language teachers are often looking for new & convenient ways to get as much speaking practice in as possible. The problem with this is assessment. Personally, I've tried two different methods of grading students' speaking abilities. One is pairing them in partners and giving them a communication activity. While this is good practice and kids tend to enjoy it, I can only walk around the room and hear snippets of their conversations, which is fine for a quick 10-point grade but difficult to grade with a full rubric on pronunciation, fluency, etc. The other option is calling them up one by one or in pairs/small groups and grading them on a project such as interviewing one another, acting out a dialogue, etc. I do this occasionally as well, but it eats up so much class time!

Enter VoiceThread. As you may remember from our brief class discussion on it, VoiceThread is a free program that allows a teacher to post a picture, video, or audio file, and have students respond to it with comments.I recently tried this with my 8th graders learning the future tense. I posted a question in French, which asked "What are you going to do over April vacation?" and students had to respond with a sentence in the future tense, such as "I'm going to travel to Florida with my family" or "I'm going to go out with friends." Below is a screen shot of what this looked like when I tried it with my students. The picture in the upper left-hand corner is my question, and each block with a symbol is a student's response. The picture I used in the center was just to give them a clue about what the question was asking, but you can also make the photo (rather than your own comment) the central focus. For example, when my students start past tense, I plan to post a picture of a scene and ask them to describe what happened. Listen below to hear my question and the students' responses!

 

One of the coolest things about the program is that there are several options for how students can post a comment. The easiest one is to click "record" and use a microphone, but several of my students said they did not have one at home. Another option is a to click the video camera and record a video response using a webcam. A third (and the coolest) option is to click the telephone button on the left. Students can enter their phone number and have VoiceThread call them! When they pick up, an automated voice says "Hi there! This is VoiceThread. Leave your comment at the tone, and when you're done, hang up." (or something like that). I tried it and it worked perfectly. How cool is that?! Students can also type a response, but since I was using this program to assess speaking I did not allow them to use this option.

While I think the program in general is basically the best thing since sliced baguettes, the free version does have quite a bit of limitations. I was told upon signing up that I would be limited as to how many posts I could make, but had no limit on how many I could comment on. I plan on getting around this by using my many e-mail addresses to create posts ;)  The problem that upset me the most upon trying it out with students was that each free account (which is what my students each signed up for) was only allowed 3 minutes of comments via telephone. Because I didn't realize this right away and couldn't warn them ahead of time, some students recorded themselves, didn't like how they sounded or messed up their pronunciation, hung up and recorded it again. Several used up all 3 of their minutes on their first try :( My department chair is looking into purchasing the school license for next school year, which comes with 60 minutes to distribute amongst your students (still not a lot, right?? I actually e-mailed to complain). Despite its limitations, I still think this is worth trying. It can really be applied to all subject areas, and is great for kids who struggle with writing/handwriting, or are nervous speaking in front of the class. What do you think?

My Digital Story (finally!) - "La Cuisine Française"

Alleluia, praise the Lord - IT'S DONE! As much fun as I did have putting this together, I did not anticipate how time-consuming it would be to get the timing, narration, music, transitions, etc just right. It's also my own fault for being a bit of a perfectionist.

Let me warn you that my video is a bit long. I know we had a 3-minute limit, but mine is 4 minutes. I felt that since I actually intend to use this with my students, I needed to include all the necessary info pertinent to their unit on food, which makes it a bit longer than originally planned. However (if I do say so myself) I think it's pretty engaging and doesn't drag too much ;)

Here it is - enjoy! Hope you're not too hungry after watching!

Socrative - Better than Senteo!

Recently, my colleague and I have been using the website Socrative to do reviews and even real quizzes with our classes. As part of our BYOD initiative, most students have some sort of device with internet on it, whether it's a smart phone, laptop, tablet, or iPod. Teachers can create a quiz, then go to t.socrative.com to start it. Students go to m.socrative.com and log into your "room number," a random six-digit number assigned by the website. Once signed in, students can take the quiz on their own devices. Teachers can choose a "student-paced quiz," which allows students to answer questions at their own pace, or a "teacher-paced quiz" which allows the teacher to send questions one at a time. Here is an example of a Socrative quiz I did just today with my class.

Students were given this sheet - a conversation missing several vocab expressions:

Students then answered questions one a time on their own devices:

I chose a teacher-paced quiz, so I sent the questions one at a time and students answered. Socrative shows the live results, so for example, on one question I saw that 6 students chose an incorrect answer. I was able to address that with the class and we discussed why it was not the best choice. This was great for our quiz review today!

Give Socrative a try!

Text Messaging Students??

Ever had a class leave the room, then suddenly remembered you forgot to tell them something? Or that you assigned the wrong homework? How about when there's a snow day and you just KNOW kids are going to come in and say "Well we didn't know the quiz would still be today!" Because this happens to me frequently, I was excited when I heard about a number of programs that allow you to message students while keeping all numbers private. After talking with colleagues and doing some experimenting, I decided to give "Celly" a try with my classes. The program is very similar to Twitter, but it allows you to create groups called "cells," which is helpful when I only want to send a message to one class, or only to parents, etc. Celly allows me to send a message to any individuals who have joined my "cell." I have one cell set up for each of my 8th grade classes right now, but plan to expand to my other classes and perhaps parents in the future.

I told all students to bring in their cell phones and to make sure they had EITHER a cell phone that could use text messaging, or a device that could download apps (iPad, Kindle fire, etc). I did not have any students who had neither - shows how prevalent technology is now!! Students had to text a number with the name of the "cell" I had set up for their class (or they searched for the cell name within the app). Celly would prompt them to enter the password I had set up, and then they were in! We did a test run and all students were able to receive my message.

Celly allows you to set up your own preferences in terms of what you want "cell members" to be able to do within the group. You can have students "chat" with one another with or without teacher moderation, you can allow students to only message the teacher, or you can set it so that the teacher can message students but they cannot reply. Right now I have it set so that students can receive my messages and send messages to me if they have a problem, but not message each other. I made it VERY clear to students that only expected them to contact me if there was a question or problem. Below is a screen shot of what I see on my phone when I use the Celly app:

The bottom two are messages I sent to my students. The top block is a message from a student earlier that day. I was able to click her message and select "private message" to reply to her without replying to everyone. So far I LOVE this program!!

BYOD: Bring Your Own Device

Our new school initiative, BYOD (not as exciting as BYOB) has been in the works since September and has finally become "official." The program allows students to bring any electronic device that might have applications to help them with daily tasks in class. Kids with laptops, iPads or other tablets, e-readers such as Kindles, and even smartphones, have begun bringing them to class and are now using documents on their devices to take notes, write down homework, and do in-class research. I've mentioned this in several comments on other blogs, so I thought I'd put up a post about it, explaining what it looks like in my classroom.

I have one student who brings a laptop, but most bring tablets and phones. Students are sometimes your best resource in finding a new app to use for educational purposes. Many of them found their own app versions of digital agendas for keeping track of homework & upcoming tests, flashcard apps for studying, and for my class, an online French-English dictionary to help with writing. Here is an example from my own classroom. Students were doing an activity in their textbook working with partners. About half used pencil & paper while half wrote their answers into their device:

I have not had any problems with texting or any other inappropriate device use at the middle school level. I have at the high school level, but no more than usual! A colleague of mine put it in perspective for me when he compared it to a student doing his science homework in your French class. You don't confiscate the binder and create a new "no science binder" policy, you simply tell the student to put it away. I have had to tell a student "we are not using our devices right now, you should only be listening" but it hasn't needed to go further than that. So far BYOD is much more of an asset than a liability!

Here is a link to the Cheshire BYOD Resource Center

I "dig" Diigo!

I believe I have finally arrived at a place where I'm remembering to click the "Diigolet" button, rather than instinctively going for the "Bookmark" tab. I was reluctant to get on board, but I have to admit Diigo is way better! I like that I can easily organize everything so that if I am trying to remember that blog I saw on iPad apps for Education, I don't need to sift through all my bookmarks at once. I can click on the "iPad" label I've created and only look at the few pages I have saved that have to do with iPads. Bookmarking on Firefox does allow you to make folders, but I never remember to. This is much more user-friendly. I also love how it "suggests" labels - I assume it's based on the wording on the page? Half the time I don't need to create any more labels than what it's suggested for me! Here is a link to my Diigo page - it's a bit sparse right now but I plan on using it a lot more!