Throughout my Master's degree, I've learned of several educational technologies that I believe can be useful in the classroom. In an effort to share these gems I will post my own two cents with a video or summary of the technology.
Recently I was mentioned in the Infinite Thinking Machine's twitter feed (check out @itmshow on twitter). My resume video was featured, and ITM said, "Great tutorial for how to create a #resume for HS students by @stephuren," so I thought I'd share it here too!
Here's my "How to Create a Resume" video, aimed at teaching
high school students how to create a simple and effective resume. It's fairly fast-paced, but the purpose is to resource students with this video and encourage them to watch, pause, and create. I expect students to pause this video and/or re-watch pieces several times as they create thier resume in class or at home.
Please feel free to show this video in your own classroom, and leave a comment about how it went!
Note: If you're an English teacher in California, know that this video can be used in eleventh and twelfth grade to accomplish the Writing Applications state standard (2.5) that requires students to write a job application or resume.
Evernote is more useful than you thought! I know, you thought it was just a good place to write down some notes - but it's cooler than that. Although, it's true, you can take notes on Evernote. You can take notes and read notes on your phone, your tablet, and your computer!
Here's how one teacher uses Evernote to organize her lessons and resources:
Another thought:
As a teacher, do you archive the notes your write on your whiteboard?
Evernote allows you to search text in the photos you save. So take a picture of your whiteboard, save it in Evernote (organize however you organize), and then when a student says, "I missed the notes about cells," you can look up key words you wrote on the whiteboard, and pass on the notes you wrote on the board. Or you can reference them the following year when you're ready to teach this subject again.
Evernote can also be used as a student portfolio that can be shared with the students and students' parents:
Since Evernote is free, give it a try and let me know how you use it in your classroom!
It's time to admit that your school phone number and extension aren't working for you. You don't even have a landline at home anymore, right, so it's time to snap your classroom into reality too. It's time to get relevant and start communicating with your middle school and high school students and parents the same way everyone else is communicating with them. Remind 101 is a great app and web-tool that allows you to do just that - text your students and/or their parents without giving out your personal number. You can download the app onto your iphone (sorry, no android app yet!) or use the web-tool at www.remind101.com.
When I was substitute teaching for a high school math class and I told them I'd be back another day the same week, they asked if we could do a potluck lunch that day I came back. I made the deal that if they finished everything that the contracted teacher assigned we could do a lunch thing (after all, there were four students in this class, so not a big deal). Then they all volunteered to bring something. I was thinking to myself, "There are only four of them, so if someone forgets something this could quickly turn into a not-so-potluck lunch." So I turned to my trusty companion: Remind 101. I logged in, set up a "class" (this makes a group and then provides a code word for your students to text and phone number to text to so they can join the group). They texted their code word, @subb, to the phone number I provided on the whiteboard. When I saw all four had signed up, I scheduled a text to be sent to them the night before our mini-potluck. That easy!
Imagine the things we could remind our students!
Homework assignments, due dates, bring your book to class, extra credit if you go to ____ event/museum, ect!
And imagine texting the same reminders to their parents too! Great accountability!
Or imagine texting their parents different reminders, like, "Your students will need to have a reading book, in class, starting on Friday. Please help them choose a book from the list I sent home."
Pretty handy, and definitely more relevant and realistic than calling each parent or believing our students will remember everything we tell them.
My first experience with NearPod was as a student of course. My friend and professor was showing NearPod to us in our Video Editing for the Classroom course. He explained photography principles by displaying sample photos and having students identify (via drawing) the focal point of the images.
What I like about this handy iPad app is how the teacher can control what students are viewing and monitor students through viewing their iPad actions, but students can also interact with the information being "projected" to them. If you don't fully grasp the function of NearPod, it seems to be just as useful as that old slide-projector or over-head projector that you're hoping to store in your school's utility closest and never see again. But if this is your perception, oh how wrong you are. You can present information through slides, it's true, but students can also answer quiz questions or draw examples, and then you can view them or project them for all the others to see! It's interactive multimedia!
