Tag: Cool Tools

Posted in Cool Tools, Creating Accessibility

Collaborative Gaming with Quizlet Live

Posted on by edtechawesomeness

For review opportunities or gathering formative assessment data on individual students, many teachers love Kahoot and Quizizz. And while these tools are awesome and can be played with the whole class, they are actually very solitary in nature. Each student is responsible for their own responses and an unengaged student can remain unengaged in a classroom of their peers. This is one of the reasons that I recommend you mix it up every once in awhile and use Quizlet Live. Quizlet Live takes the solitary experience of game play and requires all students to participate after they are placed together in randomly formed groups. No longer can a student sit back and let the game pass them by; it might just be their answer that leads their group to victory!

To play Quizlet Live, you must first create an account on Quizlet. Quizlet is a program that allows students and teachers to create study sets and then practice their sets through flashcards and mini-games. Quizlet Live lets the teacher take study sets and turn them into classroom games that require group participation. Look at all the awesome features and tools Quizlet provides for teachers and students!

Features

  • flashcard creator that allows teachers and students to create study sets
  • independent practice within Quizlet in a variety of ways including matching, spelling, and rapid fire recall
  • study sets can then be opened in game format by using Quizlet Live
  • collaborative /social learning within Quizlet Live
  • randomized team creation allowing for flexible grouping
  • use your own study sets or search for sets created by fellow users

Game Play

  • quiz style game can only be played in Quizlet Live
  • students must play in collaborative groups because correct answers are dispersed amongst all group members
  • game requires 12 unique terms
  • game requires a minimum of six students
  • students are randomized into teams
  • each student must have their own device: computer, laptop, tablet or phone
  • teams race to match all terms with definitions
  • incorrect answer resets the entire team score back to zero
  • first team to match all 12 (or more) terms, wins

Tools

  • classes can be linked to existing Google Classrooms
  • study sets can be shared directly to Google Classroom
  • classes can be created within Quizlet so that all student names are preloaded for easy group creation
  • Android and iOS apps are available if you want to make your gaming portable

If you are interested in getting started with Quizlet and like to explore on your own, check out their Getting Started page. If you would like a little coaching assistance and are a member of the Lebanon Schools staff, email me at zolnier.melanie@lebanonschools.org or fill out the Request for Integration Assistance Form.

Posted in Cool Tools

EDpuzzle – The Easiest Way to Engage Your Students With Videos

Posted on by edtechawesomeness

You found the perfect video for that concept you are covering today.  You show the video, but you have to keep pausing it to go into greater detail or ask the students questions to make sure they understand what they are seeing.  You get to the end of the video and discover that one of your little darlings was in the bathroom….THE WHOLE TIME.  And another kid appeared to sleep through the whole thing.  What a waste of time…..

But wait!!!  What if there was a FREE tool that you could use to engage all of your students.  A tool that

  • allows you to create quiz questions during strategic sections of the video
  • allows you to insert your own images and voice comments
  • lets you see how long each student watched each section of the video and stops the video if they try to multitask in another internet tab
  • allows you to upload your self-created videos
  • gives you a large library of videos on multiple subjects already created by other people
  • allows you take and edit videos directly from YouTube, Khan Academy, Vimeo and many other sources
  • easily shares your newly created video with any one of your Google Classrooms

EDpuzzle is the easiest way to engage and hold your students accountable when using videos. Instead of having all students sit in the dark to watch a video at the same time, EDpuzzle gives you the flexibility to have students watch the video independently, in small groups, as a center activity, or as an activity outside of the confines of the regular school day. By having each student interact with the video, you are ensuring that they at least attend to the content and interact with it in a meaningful way.

EDpuzzle has FREE features that make it extremely valuable.

  • Search – You can search for videos with questions already created by looking within the EDpuzzle library. If you want to make your own video and create your own questions, you can narrow your search to channels like YouTube, National Geographic, TED Talks, and Khan Academy among others.
  • Assign – EdPuzzles are easy to share with your students. If you are a Google Classroom user, simply link your class to your EDpuzzle account and you can create an assignment that is delivered right to your students. If you are not yet a Google Classroom user, EDpuzzle allows you to create classes that students join by entering a code. You can even Tweet or email the code to your kids!
  • Video Controls – Want to keep your kids engaged with your video? Through some strange voodoo, EDpuzzle knows when you leave the tab where the video is playing and it STOPS PLAYING!!! What??? You mean I have to actually watch the video and not just put it on while I play video games in another window? You can also set videos so that the viewer cannot skip ahead or move on until they answer a question correctly.
  • Progress Tracking – Speaking of answering a question correctly, progress tracking lets you see how much of the video a student has watched and how many questions they answered correctly. You can even see how many times they watched a specific section before they were able to answer the question correctly.

EDpuzzle can be a very powerful tool because there are so many ways that EDpuzzle can work for you.

  • Flip your instruction by giving students a brief video quiz to watch and complete for homework. That way you can repurpose the time in your classroom to differentiate practice and instructional opportunities based on the data you receive back from the “EDpuzzle” you’ve assigned.  EDpuzzle makes flipped learning much easier as you have the accountability mechanism in place to ensure all students are reviewing and comprehending your flipped instructions.  
  • Differentiate your instruction by creating leveled questions, sharing videos of varying difficulty levels, or assigning videos based on interest or formative assessment data.
  • Encourage creativity and mastery of content by having students create their own videos and question sets to share with classmates.
  • Engage students instead of allowing them to be passive consumers of information.

Now is the time! Get out there and create awesome learning opportunities for your students.