3 Tech Tools to Encourage Writing

Sustaining a regular writing practice can be tricky, so why not let technology help? These three tools help redefine writing so that students can easily create multimedia masterpieces. All three of these tools can be used for a particular project or teacher-directed lesson, or they have great possibilities for more independent writing activities.

1. Younger Grades: MyStory App by Bright Bot, Inc. (free for basic with upgrade option)

MyStory is a great tool for younger students (K-2) to create stories using visuals, text, and audio. Students can create books by freehand drawing, adding icons from the icon bank, and record their voice or sound effects on each page. An adult can choose from multiple sharing options, and if you upgrade, you can export the book to a printable PDF.

2. All Grades: Book Creator iPad App ($4.99)

Book Creator is now a "tried and true" app that has been around for quite some time. Part of its appeal is that its simple interface allows for a wide range of complexity and variation. Students can add a wide variety of content to the pages of their books, including text, photos from their Camera Roll (if using the iPad app), and audio recordings. Students can export their books in ePub files, PDFs, or videos to share online.

3. Upper Elementary & Older: Storybird (free online platform)

Storybird is a website that helps students get visual inspiration for their writing and publish to an online (students in a class can see each other's stories). For free, teachers can quickly create a class management dashboard (no email addresses needed!), assign students writing "Challenges," and see what students are writing. Students can also browse from a bank of thought-provoking illustrations and create poems, picture books, or long-form writing inspired by their chosen artwork. Within the platform, students can earn badges and crowns for their writing achievements.


Have you used any of these tools in your classroom? Have an app or tech tool that helps your students with writing? Feel free to share in the comments section below!

Universal Design for Learning: A Brief Introduction

I stumbled upon Universal Design for Learning when I was researching scholarly articles for my Master's thesis several years ago. Since then, I have seen it become a more widely used term and practice in my school. I have also seen it appear more in the EdTech podcasts I listen to, blogs that I read, and sessions that I attend at education conferences. This fills me with joy! The UDL guidelines, which I admit were a little overwhelming to wrap my head around when I first learned about them, were a useful framework to guide my thinking about how to make my curricula accessible to all of my students.

What is Universal Design for Learning and how did it come about?

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way for teachers to think about how they can optimize teaching and learning. It is based on the concept of Universal Design, a design approach that emphasizes the composition of an environment so that it can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people (National Disability Authority). Researchers and clinicians at CAST (The Center for Applied Special Technology) refined the UDL guidelines to what they are today.

UDL is organized in 3 main guidelines: provide multiple means of engagement, provide multiple means of representation, and provide multiple means of action and expression. These guidelines are further broken down into 3 checkpoints that guide teachers in providing options for accessing, building, and internalizing information (see graphic organizer below or click here for a larger version).

 

How can I learn more about UDL?

If you're curious about UDL, there are many resources out there to help you learn more about the guidelines.

• Into podcasts? Check out the Assist Learning podcast from Jennifer Cronk - a teacher and LD learner. In particular, I enjoyed her interview with Dr. Katie Novak, the author of UDL Now!


• Read Dr. Katie Novak's book UDL Now!. You could even start a book study group with some other interested teachers like a few of my colleagues did last spring.


• CAST's website has A TON of free materials, including their UDL Guidelines site, a FAQ page, and a free and accessible version of Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice by Anne Meyer, David Rose, and David Gordon.

How can I start to apply UDL in practical ways in my classroom?

Education theory and research aren't very useful or practical for teachers if they're not applicable on a day-to-day basis. Here are a few resources to help you start applying the guidelines in small, meaningful ways.

• Check out CAST's Free Learning Tools Page. In particular, look at the UDL Exchange, a place where teachers can browse and build lesson plans and resources.


• ISTE's blog post "30+ tools for diverse learners" helps teachers sift through the sea of edtech tools to find the "tried and true" ones.


• This post on Understood.org suggests 5 simple ways for teachers to jump in and start applying UDL in their classes

Are you using UDL or are starting to use UDL to think about your students' learning? Feel free to share your thoughts and comment below!

Happy Halloween! 4 Resources to Help You Make it Through the Week

For teachers, Halloween is often filled with excitement and fun, but also anxiety about what to do with a whole room full of students who are definitely thinking way more about trick-or-treating than they are about anything you're teaching. Here are 4 resources that can help pass the time until the big day! They are ordered from "most academic" (in my opinion) to "least academic."

1. Halloween Articles and Texts Sets from Newsela

Newsela is a website that provides high-interest news articles to students. Teachers love Newsela because they can level articles according to students' reading needs.

2. Halloween Lessons on Nearpod 

Nearpod is a very popular multimedia presentation tool. With a paid subscription (either individual or through a school license), you can access these pre-made lessons having to do with math, history, and ELA.

3. Halloween Kahoot Trivia

Kahoot has an extensive list of Halloween-themed trivia games.

4. Halloween Mountain Games from Dimension's Edge

Halloween Hangman is an all-time classic, and now they have even more fun games to offer! This site does use Adobe Flash, so if you are using an iPad, you will need a browser like Puffin to play them.



Whatever you decide to do in those tricky days leading up to Halloween - good luck to you!

5 Tech Tools that Are Just So Random

Nothing generates creativity like randomness! Mouse pad! Tire swing! Broccoli! Delaware!

Here are five websites dealing in randomness that help teachers (and students) think creatively and organize efficiently:

1. Random Emoji Generator

This simple site is filled with potential for creative applications in a variety of subjects. Think about a writing exercise in which students had to incorporate the list of emojis successively into their stories! Perhaps students could complete an art assignment in which they needed to depict of scene involving random emojis. Maybe in an improv, acting, or movement class, students physically embodied those emojis. The great thing about this too is that it was created by a teacher who had the good sense to filter out the questionable emojis, like the happy poop one. Sorry, kids.

2. Random Name Generator

Do your students need a character name for an upcoming story, movie, or script that they're creating? Look no further than this random name generator. Older students can certainly utilize the "generate life story" option, in which other facts about a character are created, like their birthday, age, location, blood type, and cause of death (these are not graphic, but try it out just to see if it will work for your students...).

3. Random Group Maker

A few years ago I would play an online game with my students that happened to randomly group them into teams. I couldn't change this feature, and initially I was nervous that I would need to give up the control I desperately clung to while I tried to pre-make teams that were balanced and conflict-free. Of course, there were inevitably conflicts and "stacked" teams, and the students often protested my motives in making the teams I did. When the computer randomly sorted the teams, I saw that many conflicts disappeared. There was no one responsible for grouping the team together, and no one felt left out. A random grouper works well for games or activities that are fairly short in nature and those that have the potential for many different groups, so if a team doesn't work out so well, it's not a big deal.

4. Random Name Picker

Like the Random Group Maker, the Random Name Picker neutralizes the often onerous teacher task of picking students to do something. There are endless ways to apply this tool, and chances are that if you're a teacher and you're reading this, you've thought of at least a few already. This name picker has a suspenseful carnival-spinner-type interface that makes it especially exciting.

5. More Random Lists

This site is dedicated to all things random. Here you can find random generators of all kinds, such as the random animal generator, the random word generator, and the random NBA team generator. This site has great potential for creative writing endeavors. It could also be used to get your students thinking about how to connect seemingly different things and building arguments. Be aware that this is a fairly ad-laden site, and you will need to sift through some of them that seem like part of the site to get to the actual content.

Have any more ideas about random generators that would be of use in an educational setting? Leave a comment below.

How Can Your Students Become Digital Citizen Superheros? Start this Week!

October 15-19, 2018 is Digital Citizenship Week!

This week is a good time for teachers to reflect upon their teaching of digital citizenship and how the topic affect them and their students. 

Check out this page and video from Common Sense Media, as well as the week's official webpage from the California Department of Education. Their Digital Citizenship Week Plan contains some useful resources and ideas.

Have some time to listen to a podcast during your morning or afternoon commute? Check out Vicki Davis's 10-Minute Teacher podcast. In this episode, she discusses 5 ways to teach Digital Citizenship, as well as her "9 Key P's":



Along with Common Sense Media's curriculum, both BrainPOP and Teaching Tolerance also have great lesson resources on the subject.

But why should we devote so much time and effort into teaching students about Digital Citizenship? Check out these eye-opening statistics from Common Sense Media:

 

Among 0- to 8-year-olds, 98% live in a household with a mobile device (2017).

The average 0- to 8-year-old spends 48 minutes of time on a mobile device. This is up from 15 minutes in 2013 and 5 minutes in 2011 (2017).

70% of teens (13-17 year-olds) report using social media many times a day (2018).

74% of teens believe that tech companies manipulate users to spend more time on social media platforms (2018).

85% of parents say that monitoring their children's media use is important for their children's safety (2016).

41% of parents say that they check their children's devices and social media accounts "always" or "most of the time" (2016).

44% of kids (age 10 to 18) feel that they can tell fake news stories from real ones. 31% of kids who shared a news story online in the last 6 months say they shared a news story that they later found out was wrong or inaccurate (2017).

Happy Teaching!

A Way for Students to Actually Understand Your Feedback

As a former English teacher, I have spent hour upon hour writing feedback on students' work and papers. There was a point there where I'd set myself up at my desk at home with a cup of tea or coffee and my favorite purple felt-tip pen. I'd end my comments with smiley faces with the hope that students would see my good intentions in my constructive criticism and be motivated to make the changes that I suggested. I hate to say it, but I would take it a little personally when students did not read my feedback, let alone make actual changes to their work according to my suggestions.

I should also mention that I work in a school for students with dyslexia, and therefore reading and writing are a challenge for most. Perhaps giving students a paragraph of handwritten feedback wasn't the best way to communicate with them in a meaningful way. But then, time just didn't allow for me to have an individual conference with every students every time a big writing assignment came around. What was I to do?

Technology is a beautiful thing. It allows teachers to be in many places at one time in meaningful ways. If I was still teaching students how to write essays today, I would definitely use more tools that allow me to give video feedback to students. Research is starting to prove that video messages are more effective that written ones because they carry more nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice and facial expressions. Check out this article from KQED's MindShift blog about the effectiveness of video feedback. You can also read the article on The Hechinger Report.

There are many simple and free tools that can help with video, or even audio, feedback. The middle school teachers at my school use a workflow iPad app called Showbie. Within the app, teachers can leave voice comments on students' work with the click of a button. Teachers can also use the screen recording feature (available in iOS 11 or higher) on their iPads to give video feedback as well. You can find it in the menu bar that pops up when you swipe up from the bottom of the screen.

On computers, teachers can also use free online tools like Screencast-O-Matic or Screencastify for the Chrome browser to create simple and shareable videos quickly.

Whatever the tool, it's important that teachers make sure that video feedback stays manageable. Develop an efficient system for sharing video files with students and make sure that you're okay with recording okay-quality videos that won't win you any Golden Globes. As the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of the good.

Trying out video feedback? Leave a comment below. Bonus: Send me some video feedback about video feedback! Whoa!

Participate in the Global Read Aloud - It's Starting Soon!

The Global Read Aloud started in 2010 when a teacher named Pernille Ripp set out to connect students with the world through reading. Since then, the program has reached more than four million students from over 80 countries.

What is it?

During a 6 week period spanning from October to November, participants pick from set list of books to read aloud to students. Using those books as a catalyst, students make as many global connections as they can. There is no set way to connect with others, but many teachers use tech tools like Facebook, Padlet (see my previous post about Padlet), Skype, Edublogs, and Twitter (see my previous post about Twitter) to facilitate communication. Of course, you get more information about making these connections once you sign up to participate on the site. Imagine Skyping with a classroom in Singapore to engage in a debate about a book's conflicts! Wouldn't it be cool to collaborate on a Padlet board with a classroom in Brazil about how you connected to a story's main character?

When does it start, how do I learn more, and what books are on this year's list?

The 2018 GRA starts very soon: October 1! If you are interested in learning more or perhaps want to participate, head over to the event's main webpage to sign up. This year's books are listed on GRA's blog - they include picture books, early readers, middle readers, and a Young Adult choice.

Why is it important for students to make global connections?

 

The term "Global Competency" gets thrown around a lot when we hear talk of "21st Century Skills." And now as technology makes our world smaller and smaller, recent news headlines only remind us that we can run into trouble if we don't consider others' perspectives, communicate well, and make compassionate decisions. A 2016 article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education titled, "How to Thrive in the 21st Century" makes the argument that informed citizens with strong intra- and interpersonal competencies will be the ones who can make the most positive global change.

More questions about the Global Read Aloud? Head over to the extensive FAQ page on the GRA site!