BombBomb is hands down the best way to upgrade your email game

What it is: BombBomb is an email service that lets you record and embed video directly in your email. That is a totally oversimplified explanation because BombBomb does SO much more. This is one of those pieces of technology that has been life-saving for me during the pandemic and one that I will continue using forevermore! In addition to easily adding video to your email, you can add images, button-type navigation, build and send forms right in BombBomb, and even create automations. BombBomb shows you who opened your email and what they clicked/engaged/watched while they were there.

How to integrate BombBomb into the classroom: During the pandemic, BombBomb has been an incredible way for us to communicate and keep connected to our students and their families. Each day we were in remote learning, I sent a daily email with a video message for the community, links to all of our teacher’s daily plans, links to tech-support, and a daily check-in survey so parents could share how remote learning was going in their house. At Anastasis, we start every day with a whole-community meeting. Obviously, 2020 wreaked havoc on that daily tradition. Since we couldn’t be together each morning, I recorded a video as if we were together. I invited the kids/families to send me content that would show up in future videos (Mindstamp helped with this as well!). In one email, families had access to all teacher’s plans for the day as well as a way to share feedback about what was going well or what they were struggling with. As the admin team received feedback about what families were struggling with, we could offer real-time immediate support. Any time a family shared something that was hard, we either adjusted or contacted them to support them. BombBomb made this process seamless for us! Because we could see who was opening and interacting with each portion of the email, we knew we had a high level of engagement and could see what was and wasn’t working well even for families who didn’t fill out our survey each day.

BombBomb is a great way to provide video feedback for your students while you are remote. You can use the screencast tool to walk them through the work they submitted with your comments and suggestions.

We are currently back to in-person learning, but I’m still using BombBomb to send my weekly newsletter. I’ve never been one who loves recording video (I wouldn’t say I love it now…but it has gotten SO much easier), I prefer writing, but I have to say families seem to love the video content. Parents who are not inclined to read the weekly newsletter seem more inclined to watch a 2-minute video update. That makes all our lives easier! I’ve also noticed that parents seem more connected and likely to interact when they see me on video than a written message alone.

As a teacher in the classroom, BombBomb would be a great way to flip your classroom and send students videos tailored to what they are learning. Because you have a built-in video library, email library, form library, and the ability to automate, you could set this up one year and continue using it year after year! You don’t have to record all of your video content, you can also import videos from a link expanding the content available about a million fold. BombBomb also allows you to screencast directly from email making it a great way to send support to students.

If you teach young students or students who don’t have their own email, you can still use BombBomb to create video content and related links (seriously, it’s almost like having the ability to create mini-websites). BombBomb gives you a share link for every email you create so you can share it with students as a link or even create QR codes that link to the email you created. At Anastasis, we individualize for every student every day. A lot of our independent learning is set up as center rotations with one of the centers always being one-on-one with the teacher. With BombBomb you could record yourself explaining the center, and include any other links or information that students may need. You could also create a form that acts as an exit ticket for that center rotation. If you have a mobile device or Chromebook at the center, it’s almost like having you right there with them. Again, with the email/video/form library you could create this one year and keep using it over and over. The analytics help you see how students are interacting (how many times they viewed the video, what links they clicked on, etc.).

We’re an inquiry-based school. This means that the kids are constantly doing research and digging deeper. The research process can be too much for our littles. Using BombBomb, teachers can break down that research process in video and provide guided research links.

BombBomb is also a major upgrade to email you are sending to parents. Imagine sending a quick video of something brilliant that their child did in class. Or, you could record a conferring session between you and their child so they can gain insight into your assessment process and student growth. You’ll be able to see which families are opening and interacting with your emails, and those who may need a different approach.

Tips: To help teachers through the pandemic, BombBomb is FREE for educators. You should sign up today, I truly cannot say enough good things about this platform!

Here’s an example of an email I sent out in prep for Giving Tuesday…see you really don’t have to be fancy with your videos, just record and share!

How We Express Ourselves: Making a Museum in a Box

In the last eight years, my posting habits have become pretty sparse, to say the least. Starting and running a school…it’s a lot. It keeps me busy and thoroughly exhausted. I miss it. I miss the cadence of posting regularly and interacting with my education friends virtually. I miss swapping ideas and being thoroughly steeped in what is happening in ed tech.

Not being in the classroom impacts this as well. When I was in the classroom, my posts had an immediate purpose; they were things that I was doing or dreaming of doing, with my students the next day.

As I was considering the best way to jump back into blogging, I couldn’t see going back to the way I’ve posted in the past. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the way I posted, but it isn’t where I am today. It doesn’t feel as natural and genuine. I also am unwilling to retire iLearn Technology all together. For one, I still come back here regularly to find a resource that I used with students to make recommendations to teachers. Secondly, I still have so much to share! It just may look a little different than it has in the past.

For all of my education friends who have been with me since 2007, I can’t tell you how enormously grateful I am for all of you. You have shaped me as an educator and a human more than you could possibly know. For those who have joined somewhere along my journey, I’m grateful for you as well! I hope that you’ll continue to find reasons to come to iLearn Technology.

These days, rather than merely sharing a technology tool that I’ve found useful, I want to do so within a broader context. At Anastasis, we are a school powered by questions. We love the way that questions open opportunities for exploration, discovery, and new connections within learning. Within our inquiry blocks, we use technology as a tool that helps us dive deeper, capture our learning, think critically, and make connections. My intent is to share our learning through the inquiry, introduce you to new (and old) technology tools that have supported our inquiry, and hopefully inspire you to use technology in new ways.

This will likely lead to longer posts that are packed full of ideas and links, the posts won’t be daily as they were for so many years, but (hopefully) they will be rich. I’d love your thoughts and input as I try out this new format! Thank you for sticking with me even as my posts have come to a crawl. 🙂

How We Express Ourselves: Museum in a Box

At Anastasis, every 5-6 weeks, we begin our exploration into a new inquiry block. These blocks begin over the summer when I dream and put together a new lens to view the inquiry block through for our primary, intermediate, and jr. high classes. Not to get too in the weeds about that process, but essentially I’m looking at Next Generation Science standards, Colorado Social Studies Standards, and Common Core as I build each block.

Over the last five weeks, students have been working on a block called: “How We Express Ourselves.” Based on the IB’s PYP, this is “an inquiry into the ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend, and enjoy our creativity; our appreciation for the aesthetic.” Using this as my base, the lens for our primary students became: Art can help us understand other cultures, histories, celebrations, rituals, and spiritual beliefs.

Students would explore this inquiry prompt through the following questions: What are artifacts? How does art help express and reflect culture? How do cultures express themselves through story? How does art help communicate and reflect the history and technology of the time? How is art used in celebrations? How has this changed throughout history? How do fossils tell us a story of the past? How do artifacts tell an account of the past? How has art been used throughout history to help us understand the values, understanding of the world, and spiritual beliefs? How do archeologists work? How does a museum curator work?

The nature of the inquiry is that each one of these questions grows legs and pretty soon we are delving deep into rich learning and exploration!

We began our inquiry block with a provocation; in this case, we took our students to explore artifacts at the Denver Art Museum. Students also examined artifacts using Google Arts and Culture online. During these trips, the learner’s job was to notice and wonder. What did they notice about the artifacts they were exploring? What did it make them wonder? This led to wonderful classroom discussions and further investigation of archeology and curators.

The primary students continued their exploration with the following some videos about how archeologists work and how museums curate.

Scishow for Kids

NatGeo Kids Archeology

iLearn Technology: Museum in a Box

I had stumbled across this Museum in a Box site as I was pulling together some resources for teachers, and my first thought was: we should make our own Museum in a Box collections with a central “hub” where the students could share their learning! I immediately showed the teachers this site, convincing them that we could figure out how to re-create the central hub.

iLearn Technology: MetKids Artifacts

We went to the local cigar store to collect some suitable “museum boxes” for each student with an extra box that would become the hub. The students went to work researching artifacts that they would like to create. They used the METKids website as well as the DK find out! site to conduct their research. The METKids was a great place to begin because even our early-readers could conduct research independently with this well-designed site. They learned about basic notetaking and made decisions about which items they would like to include in their own collections. Next, they set to work creating their artifacts out of clay, paper, fabric, paint, and glue. They used their artifacts to measure and develop dividers for their boxes.

iLearn Technology: Voice Recorder app

Each student made an audio recording with a free app called Voice Recorder (ios) saved as an MP3 file.

While the students were busy at work, I was too. I wanted to help create a hub so that the students could place their artifact on our main box and have it trigger the kids sound file. To do this, I used a Raspberry Pi, a cheap Target dollar-spot speaker, an RFID reader, and RFID stickers. My Raspberry Pi coding skills are severely limited, but I knew that it was possible to connect an RFID reader to the Raspberry Pi and have it trigger a saved audio file. Internet to the rescue! After a quick search, I found an Instructables with pictures to help me out! Following the directions, I connected the pins from the Pi to the RFID reader and installed a power button and an LED light so that I could see when it was powered on. I deconstructed and connected the cheap speaker. My husband, eager for a reason to use his CNC machine, designed the top of the box so that the speaker could sit inside the box and allow for the sound to come out (the honeycomb design you see in the pictures). To make it extra fancy, he also carved our school logo out of the top of the cigar box.

Teachers sent me the kid’s audio files, and I uploaded the MP3 files as individual folders on the Pi and linked each file to an RFID sticker. When the RFID sticker gets passed over the RFID reader, it plays the associated audio file!

Sample of the audio file.

Now for the most fun: teaching the kids how all of the “guts” work and showing them how the stickers cause their audio files to play! They were suitably impressed by this feat! The kids placed the stickers on the bottom of the corresponding artifact, and we had our very own museums curated with their voice walking each visitor through the collection.

The kids learned so much in this block! The obvious: archeology, curation, artifacts, the technology behind our boxes. The less obvious: research and note-taking, reading with expression, measurement, making decisions about the resources needed to create their own artifacts, reasoning with evidence, building explanations, making interpretations, making connections, observing closely, considering different viewpoints, and a hundred other “soft skills” that occur naturally in the inquiry process.


Class Pad: Free digital scratch paper for the math classroom

ClassPad free digital scratch paper for the math classroom

What it is: ClassPad is free online software that lets you digitize your math scratch paper. You can create original teaching materials for the math classroom quickly and easily. With ClassPad, you can quickly add mathematical formulas, graphs, spreadsheets, and geometry sheets to share with your students (and other teachers). ClassPad can be accessed from tablets and computers. On touch devices, you can write calculations and graphics by hand, just like on actual paper. Students can access your materials through a unique URL.

How to integrate ClassPad into your classroom: ClassPad is a fantastic tool for the mathematics and science classroom. It makes it easy for you and your students to create original materials. Whether your students need extra practice, you want to make your math materials more hands-on and relevant for your students, or your students are creating proofs, ClassPad is an excellent addition to your classroom.

ClassPad could also be helpful for your math students who struggle to get ideas out through paper/pencil work. The ability to use a tablet or computer may help those students with dysgraphia excel in the math classroom.

As a teacher, you can use ClassPad to create learning material for your students. However, my favorite use would be for students to explore the world as a mathematician and utilize ClassPad to help them express themselves mathematically. I think it would be exciting to pose an inquiry question or word problem for students and allow them to come up with a proof addressing the problem. Because students can share work with a unique URL, each student could submit their work for the class to review. Likely there would be multiple ways to think through the inquiry. This would be a great way to talk perspective, different approaches to problems, and how we solve problems in life. This would also give the teacher additional insight into how students are approaching and thinking through problems. Rather than simply looking for a right/wrong answer, this could provide the space to talk mathematics with students.

Tips: There are three different ClassPad plans to choose from. The free Guest account gives you the ability to utilize the calculation, graph, statistics, and geometry options. The Basic account for a registered user offers everything the Guest account offers with the ability to save up to 999 papers, share papers, search papers, add favorites, and save your browsing history. The Plus account requires an annual subscription (they are currently offering a free trial). The Plus account gives you all of the features of the first two plans plus the ability to save unlimited papers and comes with additional features for computer algebra, advanced statistics, and handwriting recognition.

Flipgrid for every classroom

Flipgrid for every classroom

What it is: Flipgrid is a video discussion platform for your classroom that lets you engage and capture learning in new and awesome ways. It’s simple (and free) to get started, just create a grid and add a topic to spark some discussion. Students can respond with short video responses using any browser, Chromebook, iPad, tablet, or mobile device. All the students can view the videos and engage. You can moderate videos, provide custom feedback, and set the privacy rules. The free version of Flipgrid lets you create one grid (this is your classroom or community), unlimited student videos (up to 90seconds), simple individual student feedback, and private video sharing with families.

You are the Flipgrid Topic Designer (your students could be as well!). Embed YouTube or Vimeo videos, upload images for your students to discuss, feature a file or a weblink.

How to integrate Flipgrid into your classroom: Flipgrid is a great way to get your students reflecting on learning, collaborating, and providing peer feedback. Students can create and share a book talk or chapter reflection, discuss current events, delve into a topic, engage in an online Socratic seminar around a given topic, collaborate, verbalize their learning process, etc. Flipgrid works in any classroom, with any age student, and within any subject. The sky (and your collective imaginations) are really the limit!

Flipgrid is a fantastic add to the language arts classroom where students can: share a word of the week, complete a video chapter summary, create a character monologue, explore themes and ideas in a text, complete a book review/book talk, ask questions of the author, come up with alternative endings, make text predictions, dramatic readings, practice reading fluency/voice/tone/inflection, reflect or wonder during reading, make connections to other learning, explore metaphor, practice and reflect on presentation skills, collaborative Flipgridding with another classroom, explore perspective, or conduct interviews.

In the math classroom students can: talk through their process or problem solving approach, share examples of found math in context, number talks, weekly math challenges, find the mistake responses, student created math tutorials of new concepts they are learning, stump the class challenges, demonstrations with manipulatives, solving or creating their own “what doesn’t belong” challenges, or solutions to math challenges with multiple outcomes.

In the science classroom, students can: share each step of an experiment through the scientific method with each step being a new video, document dissection, reflect on failures, show the process of building or designing, make predictions, document process, demonstrate, post wonderings, or class challenges.

In the history/social studies classroom students can: do living history exercises where they take on the persona of a historical character, reflect on an era or connective topic like: “what are contributing factors to revolutions,” conduct interviews, explore perspectives, reflect on and discuss current events, create a video timeline of events, connect past events to current events, explore historical trends, connect with other classrooms from around the world, explore place and environment, teach classmates about a historical theme that they geek out on, explore social justice issues, or give a voice to those who historically haven’t had one.

Flipgrid makes for an excellent addition to the portfolio. I love the way it encourages collective intelligence and highlights the social nature of learning. Flipgrid is also a great way to build a growth mindset and self-assessment. As students complete any project or assignment, they could add their reflection on the learning as well as where they think they are currently in their learning journey (we use the progression of Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner, Scholar, Change Maker).

At the end of every year at Anastasis, we host an event we call “Storyline.” Flipgrid would be an excellent addition to that end of year celebration and review of the year. Students could use Flipgrid to document learning progress throughout the year and use it as a way to review their growth.

Tips: Flipgrid integrates seamlessly with other education products you are already using including WordPress, Canvas, Teams, Google Classroom, One Note, Edmodo, Schoolology, Blackboard, Sway, Brightspace, and Power school. The paid versions include tons of added features and are worth exploring more if you find yourself using Flipgrid regularly.

 

How do you use Flipgrid in your classroom?

Mathigon: engage, play, and explore math

Mathigon explore, engage, play with math

What it is: Today I was working on our inquiry block framework for the 2017/2018 school year and, as often happens with inquiry, fell down a wonderful rabbit hole that led me to this site. Mathigon is a fantastic *newish* math site (it’s still being built and added to) that brings textbooks to life. I know you’ve probably seen this claim before, but this is unlike the other online interactive textbooks I’ve seen. It’s more…alive. It’s like a personalized tutor, combined with story, and exploration. Really, textbook is the wrong word, because this is something totally new. A chat bot tutor makes Mathigon like having an additional team of teachers in the room, ready to answer questions and support your learners in real time. Real life application and narrative is part of the Mathigon DNA. This means that beyond learning the “rules” of math, learners are actually invited to engage the concepts, play with them, explore them in context, and find out what other concepts they are linked to. Rather than a linear approach, Mathigon lets students explore math in a more organic way through interest, linked ideas/concepts, and in a ‘down the rabbit hole’ approach. There are very few math sites that I’ve come across that truly support an inquiry approach to learning math, Mathigon is one such site.

How to integrate Mathigon into your classroom:  There are several ways to use Mathigon. Students can get a personalized math curriculum that adapts to them and offers recommendations based on what they are interested in and their understanding of different concepts. They can begin from several places: exploring the applications of math in every day life, the link between math and origami, Eureka Magazine (published by Cambridge University), through problems and puzzles, through fractal fiction, or through courses for grades 6-college.

The Treasure Hunt is a complete PDF Kit that can be downloaded and printed out. Split your students into teams and send them on an epic math treasure hunt through your school (available in primary and secondary levels) where each of the clues leads them to another.

Fractal fiction is particularly cool because it lets students explore mathematical concepts through interactive narrative of popular films including Alice in Wonderland, Oceans 11, and Harry Potter (the latter two are coming soon). You really have to go experience these to really understand the brilliance of how Mathigon has combined story with math exploration.  From the site: “The key to successful teaching is captivating storytelling – through real life applications, curious examples, historic background, or even fictional characters. These interactive slideshows combine an engaging narrative with beautiful graphics – explaining mathematical ideas in the context of popular stories and movies. They can be watched individually or be presented in classrooms.”

I cannot say enough about how impressed I am with the vastness of what this site brings to the classroom. Even if you don’t have the capacity for each of your students to have an account with Mathigon, the site can be easily adapted for the one computer classroom (as a center activity). Much of the content could also be explored as a whole class with a projector-connected computer.

Tips: I’ve found that really well done content for grades 6-12 (and beyond) in math to be severely lacking. This is a welcome addition to the math teachers tool box of resources!

Check123: Video Encyclopedia

 

What it is: Check 123 is a new video encyclopedia site for kids. All videos are validated and ranked by Check123 professionals, are 1-3 minutes in length, and a curated on just about any subject you can think of.  Broad topics covered on Check123 include: history, sports, politics, food, performing arts, economics, earth, nature, tech, philosophy, music, cars, pets, human body, arts, geography, religion, psychology, TV, gaming, science, literature, fashion, media, and space.

How to integrate Check 123 into your classroom: Check123 is a great place for students to begin their research. These videos are between 1 and 3 minutes each, keeping students engaged in a topic and giving them bite-size information. I like that the videos are so well curated, it keeps search results on topic rather than the endless dig for quality content that can happen in a YouTube  search. Check123 videos are also wonderful as provocations for further inquiry. The short format gives students just enough information to whet their appetites and encourage additional questioning. Check123 is a great one to keep bookmarked on classroom and library computers for quick reference.

Video is the preferred learning method of 90% of our students at Anastasis, when they do a search, they usually begin on a video site. With Check123, they are sure to get some quality results back to kick start their learning and research.

Tips: Check123 is free for teachers!

Making & Science with Google

Making & science with Google

What it is: Making & Science is an initiative by Google aimed at showing students that anyone can be a maker or a scientist. Using the featured Science Journal app (Android and Chromebook only), students can measure light, sound, and more. They can also use the app to record observations, organize data, and add observational notes. Making & Science has partnered with Exploratorium for some fantastic activities that will have students exploring the world as a makers and scientist in no time. Students will explore light, sound, motion, graphs, conductivity, and much more through activities powered by the Science Journal app.

How to integrate Making & Science with Google in your classroom: The Science Journal app makes any Android phone or Chromebook computer into a scientific tool that students can use to collect data on light, sound, and motion. The activities included encourage students to explore the world as scientists and makers. The activities are simple enough for any classroom, and lead the students through understanding how the world around them works. They are a great kick-off to more in-depth studies of light, sound, and motion and teach students how to use the sensors on their phone and computer to collect data.  Most activities take 15-30 minutes, so would be the perfect length for groups of students to visit as a center if you have a few devices for students to use. I love the way each activity thoroughly introduces a concept, and equips students with the tools and understanding for further experimentation and investigation. The activities included are wonderful, but after students have a basic understanding, encourage them to come up with their own investigations of light, sound, and motion.

Students could use the Exploritorium Activities as guides for creating their own investigations and activities to share with the class.

Don’t miss out on the Making and Science YouTube channel, and recommended podcasts. They are AWESOME!

Tips: While the activities reference the Science Journal app for data collection, if you have access to other types of devices you can still use these activities! Just download a light, sound, and motion sensor app and your students can complete any of the activities on the Maker & Science site.

StackUp: track self-directed learning online

Assign and track reading online: StackUp

 

What it is: I’ve written about StackUp before here but, over the last three years, the company has grown up enough that it warrants another post! StackUp has a pretty great back story. Nick Garvin, the founder of StackUp, was fresh out of school and wanted to apply for a job at Tesla Motors. The problem? His traditional resume failed to document the thousands of hours that he spent online in self-taught learning about the automotive industry. This frustration led to the creation of StackUp, a way for Nick (and others like him) to better document self-directed learning. As an educator, StackUp immediately appealed to me for the way that it could capture my own learning. Though I don’t hold a degree in educational technology, my years of independent study should be captured! My blog does a decent job of helping me share my learning with others, but it is still just a small representation of all that I have learned over the years. Similarly, my graphic artist husband has realized that he has a love for industrial design and machining. He has spent hours and hours learning 3D digital design, playing with 3D printers, CAD programs, woodworking, welding, and recently machining with a metal lathe. Though his traditional resume wouldn’t easily reflect it, he has a pretty impressive industrial design background. StackUp is a Chrome browser plugin that tracks everything from personal productivity (I’ve learned I spend way too much of my life in email hell), to verifying independent reading/learning, to helping quantify self-directed learning.

How to integrate StackUp in the Classroom: The beauty of StackUp is that it isn’t one more program to add to your curriculum, it isn’t one more piece of technology that your students have to learn. Simply add the plugin, ask your students to sign in, and it runs automagically in the background while they carry on with their learning. As a teacher, you can login to StackUp and create reading challenges for your students. At Anastasis, we are using these challenges in inquiry to encourage students to spend time on a variety of website types. Right now our students are doing an inquiry on How the World Works. They are inquiring into different types of energy. This lends itself to a lot of research on science websites. The challenges help us encourage the kids to diversify the types of sites they are incorporating into the inquiry block. Yes, we want the kids to be researching the science behind different kinds of energy, but we also want them to explore the history of energy use, the social and economic implications of how we use energy, the current political climate and it’s impact on how we use energy. You know…connective inquiry! StackUp lets our teachers challenge students to diversify their learning in this way by creating a category challenge. Teachers choose categories for students. No matter which websites they visit, if they are included in a category, they will get ‘credit’ for visiting that site. I love the way StackUp works for your classroom, and doesn’t box students into specific requirements for the tracking to work. Teachers can also set up challenges based on a specific website or time spent learning in a category.

One of the unintended consequences of using StackUp with our students, is they way it has added to our Learner Profile. Using StackUp has helped us gain a better understanding of who our students are by uncovering hidden interests that they might have. If a student spends a lot of time in a specific category or on specific websites, StackUp  gives us insight into those passions and interests.

Students (and learners of all kind- teachers count!) can use StackUp to showcase the reading and learning they do online by subject area. At a glance, students can see how much reading they are doing and what topics have been of most interest to them. This can help them discover the things that they are most passionate about, and even help them discover where they waste time. It is pretty revealing when you see how much time you sink into things like email, Facebook, etc. While I appreciate the time to connect with others through social media, I realized that I spend more time there than I probably need to. StackUp can help you manage online time more efficiently by revealing where you spend it.

Students can engage in classroom reading challenges and see how their learning compares to their classmates. This can be used as a motivational element, though we don’t use it this way at Anastasis (inquiry lends itself more to competition with self than competition with others).

One of the things we’ve loved about StackUp is the ability to help parents see the learning that their children are doing online. So often our time spent on devices can appear to be frivolous to those who don’t know what is happening while we are online. With StackUp, parents can see the time students are spending learning and what they are learning about. Of course, if students are spending 90% of their time on gaming sites that tells a story, too.

I really appreciate the way that StackUp helps teachers and students alike metacognate about where and why we spend our time online. It is a great tool to spur on reflection about where we spend time, and what we care most about.

One of the StackUp stories I love was from @SenorG, he talked about students taking a credit recovery class online. One of the things StackUp revealed was for every hour spent on the credit recovery site, students spent 20min on Google Translate. This information was invaluable for those assisting students. It was also valuable information to consider for the credit recovery course platform. Could they better empower students by embedding a translate feature? By translating the whole site? Way cool!

Bottom line: StackUp can help give you insight into your students online reading habits. It gives you a way to see where their learning takes them and how much time they are spending on their online reading/learning. We realized after a few weeks that our students had the bad habit of site hopping. They would start research using Google, but if the answer they were hunting for wasn’t immediately apparent on the site they clicked on, they would go directly back to Google. This helped us realize that we needed to teach students how to search smarter, and that when they arrived at a site, we needed to better equip them with the tools to dive into the learning.

Tips: StackUp is super easy to install, you can do it in under a minute! If you have Google apps, you can do this in under a minute for your whole school! Students can sign in using their existing Google education accounts. Don’t have Google for Education? First, I’m sorry! Second, not to worry, students can sign in using any email address.

The StackUp plugin can be easily turned on or off at any time. All information is private and can be deleted at any time. It is both COPPA and FERPA compliant. Students can choose which information to share on their profile.

StackUp Chromebook

Shout out to StackUp who generously donated a class set of Chromebooks to Anastasis students! Thank you!

 

Are you coming to the 5Sigma Edu Conference in February? If not, you should be! It is the place we were originally introduced to StackUp!

 

Grmr.me Empowered Editing

Grmr.me Empowered Editing

What it is: Grmr.me is a great site for middle school and high school English teachers (and anyone else who edits student writing). This site was built by, and for, English teachers to help students learn how to fix the most common grammar and punctuation errors found in writing. Topics include: Pronoun disagreement, subject verb agreement, pronouns with compound word groups, commas and clauses, comma splices, direct address, usage of words, passive voice, literary present tense, iambic pentameter, and dramatic irony. It’s like having @michellek107 in your pocket! 🙂  For each topic, there is a short video explanation of the problem and how to fix it.

How to use Grmr.me in your classroom: I would have so appreciated this site when I was a student! (Let’s be honest, I still appreciate this help.) I’ve always loved writing, but would often get feedback about comma splices or run on sentences. This feedback was less than helpful because while it identified a problem with my writing, it didn’t help me understand how to fix it. With Grmr.me, you can not only help your students see the problem in their writing, you can offer a quick link of immediate support. Grmr.me empowers students to take your edit notes and understand where the problem is and how to fix it. Rather than just writing “comma splice” on student writing, add  grmr.me/csp/ in the margin. Now those edit notes make sense, and give students the instruction to re-write with confidence that they understand where and what the error is.

Tips: Points to anyone who comments with links to the videos I should have consulted when writing this post!

Literature-Map: Help students find new authors to fall in love with

Literature Map: Help students find new author to fall in love with

What it is: Literature Map is a literature recommendation system. It is really easy to discover a new author. Start by searching for an author you enjoy, and magically a map of names will appear based on what other readers of that author have read. The closer that two writers are on the map, the more likely it is that you will like both of them. Click on any name on the map to travel further and find more recommendations.

Literature Map- find your next favorite author

How to integrate Literature Map into the classroom: It’s a common problem, a student falls in LOVE with an author and devours everything the author has ever written. Then they come to the end of their journey and a sort of sadness hangs over them, there is nothing more. Enter Literature Map. Students can easily enter the name of the beloved author and discover others they are sure to love, leading them down a rabbit trail of reading utopia! Students can discover new voices, genres, and keep the love of reading alive. Literature Map is a great site to bookmark on classroom computers, in the library, or on student devices.

If your students do an author study, this site could be useful for helping them find related authors and then using Wolfram Alpha to compare the authors they find side by side.

Tips: Hat tip to @michellek107 for sharing this with Anastasis staff this week!