Applying tech tools to meet classroom needs.
One of my favorite outcomes of technology being so readily available and cheaper for students to use, is that our students can make use of green screens in videos that they create. There are so many apps or programs out there that have the ability to do the green screen effect well that this is…
Swivl recently released an update to their software, also a new app (https://www.swivl.com/pro-plus/), that allows you to use multiple iPads to record at once. You can have up to 5 iPads recording video, and audio, at once. This allows you to easily record up to 5 different students, or groups, in a classroom at once.…
As someone with pretty much no artistic ability whatsoever, I am continually looking for images and graphics from others to use in my resources and presentations. I always look for copyright free media or media that has a Creative Commons license for reuse/remodification. This is why I like to use https://pixabay.com/ so much but there might…
For my first time teaching a college level course (4 week online seminar class for College of Education students), I wanted to make sure I was following all of the research I have read since my last time teaching. One of the biggest things I have read was on the impact of effective feedback and…
Earlier this year we purchased Swivls for each building in our district to be used by our teachers in their work in the classroom, as well as their work with our instructional coaches. The Swivls are great when we want to record classroom situations to be shared with others, but they can also play a role…
One of the areas that I am trying to focus on lately is the focus on intrinsic motivation of teacher learners. As someone who helps to design professional learning experiences and for my work on my Gamification of Teacher Professional Learning Project (Project Falcon), it is important to understand how we can improve the motivation…
Thinking back to my college days, I remember sitting in lecture halls and feverishly writing down all of the notes I could while the professor lectured. It was always a challenge to keep up with what they were saying, writing while at the same time trying to understand and make sense of the new information. This…
Students are expected to present in so many of their classes, but how often do we actually spend time on helping students become better presenters? So many of the student presentations I see involve a ton of words on a slide and the student reading them off, word by word. The students do not look…
One common issue that I hear about a lot, is that as teachers have adopted a more digital workflow in their classrooms, students are not always clear on the how/what/when of the class. Students may get lost in all of the resources or become unclear about what they are supposed to be doing, due to…
You can easily enable a transcript or closed captions for videos in YouTube. This will assist any students, or anyone for that matter, who may have trouble following along, have a hearing issue, or where the video is not in their native language. While the transcripts are not perfect, they are computer generated for the…
