Each day, whilst the school is closed, I have been sending daily tips and advice to our staff to support with their online learning provision. Sometimes it is in response to common questions, and sometimes it is just great tips and tools. I’ve decided to share them in light of the ongoing global impact of Covid-19.
Thanks for all your kind words about the support we are offering. Here are a few quick tips based on different questions we’ve had recently.
Edpuzzle A few more tutorials are now live, including EdPuzzle. This is a tool that basically turns any video into a quiz. It stores the student’s results so you can see at a glance a) if they’ve actually watched it and b) if they understand it. They will log in with google, and it links to your classes already in google classroom. More info on the slides.
More Flipgrid Tips Two quick tips – when watching back lots of videos – speed them up to give yourself back some time. You can still hear what is being said, albeit in a higher pitched voice.
You can also use closed captions (cc) next to it to have your speech turned into words.
Scheduling in Google Classroom. Don’t forget you can also schedule assignments in GC, meaning you can have work ready for the next day, finished in the morning, but schedule it for 4.55pm so it doesn’t appear while students are working on today’s activities. This is also useful for those of you who are not in the same time zone.
Each day, whilst the school is closed, I have been sending daily tips and advice to our staff to support with their online learning provision. Sometimes it is in response to common questions, and sometimes it is just great tips and tools. I’ve decided to share them in light of the ongoing global impact of Covid-19.
Recording your Screen with a Whiteboard To Write On
Introducing Jam Board – it is a google app that is designed for collaborative meetings – but we can use it as an online whiteboard – meaning you can screencast (using whatever app you are comfortable with WeVideo/Screencastify etc) and use the whiteboard at the same time. It obviously works much better if you have a stylus and touch screen facility. Watch this video to see how it works.
Retrieval Practice My big love at the moment – but I don’t want to get into it all now, so here are some great quizzing tools to use to create your own low stakes, daily quizzes.
Quizizz – This I have seen being used across the school really well – I’ve mentioned it before, but it has some very good quizzes already on there and by the nature of the software, Students review and review their answers to get a bigger score.
WordWall – An example here and here. You can create up to 5 activities at a time (then just delete old ones and rotate). The results are stored on the site and the best thing about this is that when you create a list of words and definitions, or quotes and people, or concepts and meanings, or examples and non examples, the site will then give you umpteen different ways you can present that as a task – from a fully gamified pacman style game, to a simple matching activity. Just share the resource as an assignment – very quick and great fun. TRY IT NOW!!!!!
Diagnostic Questions or Eedi (mainly maths and science at the moment) – links to all UK schemes of work and qualifications. We are looking into creating classes for secondary students and teachers to use. This has bags of questions ready to use. Google Forms – This is a simple way of helping recall – and you can use it for more than simple multiple choice quizzes. Example here .
Kahoot – Did you know that Kahoot has a feature called ‘challenge’ which allows students to do it from home – just like Quizizz above? You can set Kahoot quizzes now as home learning – or even better – flip your learning and ask them to create a kahoot and share it with the class. Creating a quiz requires a great amount of recall as you have to recall the correct answer and think of incorrect answers too, basically creating an example / non example style activity.
There are other great quiz building tools, like educaplay, factile and the beautiful but limited typeform, to name a few.
Each day, whilst the school is closed, I have been sending daily tips and advice to our staff to support with their online learning provision. Sometimes it is in response to common questions, and sometimes it is just great tips and tools. I’ve decided to share them in light of the ongoing global impact of Covid-19.
More help for Google Classroom:
There are still a lot of teachers posting in the stream and not creating assignments. We’ve now had feedback from various parents (and some students) about the presentation of the home learning. Also as mentioned on Friday, the benefits FAR outweigh any reason for just posting into a stream (which only really exists for discussion and announcements). If you still are unsure about how to use classwork in Classroom, please watch this video. (And please don’t have the ‘well this is how we’ve always done it’ excuse)
Differentiation
Whilst we are seeing increasing student engagement, there are still some that have not started their work. Equally, there are some that have not accessed the work as well as others and this perhaps because it being too challenging for them (and their parents ). Remember that in Google Classroom and Seesaw there is no expectation that everyone has to have the same work. One great way to help differentiate is to choose not to ‘assign to all students’ and assign either different versions of the same activity to differing groups or just simply miss students out so they aren’t overwhelmed when they start their home learning. You can easily add them in to any assignment at a later time if you wish. (watch the video above for more info)
Coaching
Thanks for keeping in touch with us for any problems you have, and for all of you who have shared some great home learning ideas and positive stories with us. We are delighted to be able to support you and at the same time show you some wonderful tech, please do check the slides we have provided for you as well to help with accessing certain apps.
Each day, whilst the school is closed, I have been sending daily tips and advice to our staff to support with their online learning provision. Sometimes it is in response to common questions, and sometimes it is just great tips and tools. I’ve decided to share them in light of the ongoing global impact of Covid-19.
Try not to ‘Stream’ in Google Classroom for tasks
Having seen a number of google classroom environments recently, it has come to my attention that many teachers are simply adding activities into the stream page of their class. I urge you to stop doing that and use the Classwork section instead. From here you can set assignments, which allow you to, amongst other things, set due dates, schedule in the future, and most importantly, select a topic. For example, this allows you to group similar tasks together, in Primary, you can set topics for Reading, Writing, etc. This allows an easy way for students to find previous work, without having to scroll through post after post after post. Assignments appear in the main class stream just like comments, but can be named clearly, searched for, and also be ‘re-used’ in other classes, perhaps if you have a similar piece of work for another class. Also when assigning work in this way, you can provide templates, students can create work within that assignment that you can view at any time, and you can even give each child their own copy of the slide/doc that you are working with. Children Y4 and up (and some Y3s) are proficient enough to use this way of working.
Also Google Classroom has been updated in the last two days (it does this a lot) so some things have slightly moved around from previous gifs.Finally, for loads more tips and tricks and to become a classroom expert – watch this video that Angela has found for us.
Cosmic Yoga, Go Noodle etc. As we promote a bit of free time on Friday, it’s a time to remind you about the brain break videos that we love in school, but may not be known at home. Why not set a mindfulness task, or a fun dance routine brain break. Perfect for the young ones and an active way of using screen time.
Teaching in Videos As we settle in to our new roles as distance educators, a reminder that teaching is possible through video, and there are some inspiring teaches across HK sharing their videos across Twitter, like this art teacher, and that videos to home can be much more than simple motivations and ‘well done’s. In Flipgrid, or almost any video recording app, you can download your videos, then upload them to google drive and turn them into a pack of slides with step by step instructions for a lesson. To promote shared practice (note: not best practice!) – here is a link to how I present my Maths work. Each child in the class gets a copy to fill in their answers. In Seesaw, you could just link to the presentation with a videos teaching the kids new things. If you need more info and support for this, let us know.
Google Meet etc.. The tech teachers have been discussing this topic recently, a big concern for many is the idea that if you run a google meet, you MUST NOT record it as well without permission. Google Meet and others should be used for discussions, Q&A, but instructional videos, stick to screen casting and other tools previously mentioned. If you are holding live chats through google meet or Zoom, maybe remind the kids that they should always be wearing appropriate clothes and be in a responsible place. Maybe this will make them chuckle: (shared to me from fellow teacher Ross Parker)–>
Mr Hill's Slice of Education 