Kahoot! for Learning Fun

One of my favorite recent discoveries for the classroom has been Kahoot!  My students just love it (and so do I!) Kahoot! is a student response system, accessible on any device with internet.  

Teachers may utilize pre-created quizzes or create their own quizzes.  Once the quiz has been decided upon the teacher can launch the quiz and will be provided with a pin number to share with students. 

On the student end, students may use any device that is connected to the Internet.  The will go to kahoot.it and enter a pin number that is provided by the teacher.

The teacher will share the quiz on a projector screen with the class, the students will enter their answer on their device.  Teachers are able to review and go over answers with students before moving onto the next screen/question.  Students accumulate points/score based on how quickly they answer a question and the accuracy.   At the end the teacher may download a class report. 

This is a great tool for use as an exit ticket, quiz/test review, etc. 

This 3 minute YouTube video (above) provides a great visual explanation and examples for those of you interested in learning more.  

Symbaloo

Symbaloo is such a great resource for finding resources. I have been converting many of my bookmarked websites to Symbaloo for personal organization.  Symbaloo is also a great go to search engine for looking for resources for use in the classroom.  For example I was recently looking for sites for student practice on keyboarding.  Rather than going through all the Google search results, I find it easier to look to Symbaloo and look through the resources that another educator has already pooled. 

You can sign up for a free Symbaloo educator account here

Hackschooling for Happiness

I woke up this morning and in my traditional fashion of wanting to be a little lazy on Saturday mornings, I scrolled through my Facebook feed and to my surprise I found some amazing inspiration from this kid.  Who is he?  

Logan LaPlante as his website states is a "skier, speaker, aspiring designer, director, writer."  He is a 14-year old boy who hacks schooling.  As he states "Hackschooling" is about creating an education that is about efficiency, experience and outcome in learning. You can view his TEDx talk here.  

Logan gives us educators a lot to think about.  What is it that people really want out of life?  What are we teaching kids? And what SHOULD we be teaching kids?   

Logan speaks about how schools should be teaching the practice of how to be happy and healthy rather than just simply assuming that because one goes to school, gets a job, gets married they'll be happy and healthy. 

In his TEDx talk Logan speaks about Dr. Roger Walsh's 8 Ways to Wellbeing. (Featured in the photo below.)

Photo Credit: Logan LaPlante TEDx Talk

Many people, children, teens, adults spend years, some decades trying to figure out how to be happy and healthy.  Some find it while others never do.  What if schools spent more time designing, integrating and implementing lessons on the practice of being healthy and happy?  What if we made the practice of being healthy and happy a priority in our education system?  

What would our schools be like?  What would our world be like?  

Do you GoNoodle?

We all know how much kids love to wiggle and dance, thanks to our friends at GoNoodle it is easier than ever to reinforce those much needed movement and brain breaks.  GoNoodle is a FREE website with a plethera of digital videos and activities to get students moving and give their brains a break.  GoNoodle keeps things fun and rewarding for the entire class by keeping it game like. The class earns points, which is shown through the growth of the "classroom champ."  Most importantly GoNoodle is fun for kids and allows them to get the brain break and exercise needed to perform better academically.  

You can check out GoNoodle {Here}

Noise Monitoring Apps

Hi Everyone!  I wanted to share one of my saving graces this time of year... a noise-monitoring app for iPads and iPhones.   

With my entire class, I like to use My Class Rules.  I access it using my personal/teacher iPad and project it onto the interactive white board, while the class is working.  It helps them to self-monitor themselves and each other, which allows me to work with individual or groups of students as needed.  

This is what the students see on the I.W.B. as they are working. The quieter they work, the more points we receive.  When we accumulate a goal number of points we get a class reward of their choice (usually voted on).  

Another FREE app I like to use on the student iPads is  Too Noisy Lite.  I prefer this app on student iPads because it is free and helps students to guide student noise level when they are working in cooperative groups.  

How have you used these apps or other noise monitoring apps with your class?  

  

Digital Citzenship Using Online Images

I love having students create things.  Now that our students have easy access to mobile devices they are able to create more and more digital products.  In creating these digital products, students often seek images from the Internet. One thing we want to do is promote digital citizenship and teach students about copyright, where and how they can seek images and clip art appropriate for use in projects.  A few of my favorite sites that are educationally friendly and have easy terms of use for students are listed below... 

My Cute Graphics 

Geek Philosopher

Pics4Learning

Graphics by Ruth& Chantelle

Another way students may use Google for images is by changing the usage rights (shown below)

A few other resources for teaching copyright are:

Teaching Copyright- Website full of lesson plans on ideas for teaching about copyright in school.  Appropriate for middle school through high school.  

This chart on Copyright and Fair Use for teachers  is also a great resource to guide our own actions.  

What are some of your favorite resources for students using images?

Socrative

Socrative is FREE student response system.  It can be used for a variety of purposes such as exit tickets, classroom discussions, quizzes or formal assessments. In order to use Socrative, each student will need his or her own device; the teacher will also need his/her own device as well. 

One of the thinks that make Socrative so versatile is that both students and teachers can access and use it from any device that has an internet connection such as a smartphone, tablet or computer.

To utilize Socrative, the teacher will create an account using an email address. The teacher will be required to complete a quick initial set-up.  The teacher may use this account whether he/she has one class or many classes.  The teacher can pre-create quiz-based assessments or go with single question (spontaneous/verbal questions).  Students will access Socrative using the student app or web address.  They will then enter the “room number” (class access code created during initial teacher account creation).  After entering the classroom number, students will enter their name (first name is fine); therefore students do not create their own account.   

Teachers have the option to share the results or hide the results with students as they complete the activity.  Teachers can also download the data to an excel spreadsheet for further use.

Students enjoy using Socrative as it is more fun than a paper assessment and provides instant results for informal discussions.  Teachers love it because of it’s instantaneous feedback and data results.