Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Minnesota eLearning Summit Presentation - Easy Formative Assessment Options For Mobile Devices

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My first presentation at the Minnesota eLearning Summit is on Wednesday, July 30. The topic of the presentation is easy formative assessment options for mobile devices.

Participants in this session will experience quick online and app-based formative assessment and quizzing options on your iPad, Chromebook, or other mobile devices and learn how to engage your students and gauge their understanding of your lesson.

Session participants will learn about specific apps and online tools and how to repurpose other apps and online interactive tools to create collaborative learning opportunities that will allow you to gauge student learning on the spur of the moment.


Crowd Sourcing:
What apps and websites are you using for formative assessment in your classroom? Please take this quick survey

Results


Resources for this session:

Flipgrid - This is a fun app and web-based tool that allows you to pose questions for your students to respond to by recording a video response. 
Try it out - Click here to contribute to a Flipgrid
21 day free trial and then a fee
More information - http://flipgrid.com/info/
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flipgrid./id756972930?mt=8
Video tutorial


Geddit - This website and app-based tool allows students to indicate their confidence level in terms of understanding content material as well as responding to quiz questions.
More information - http://letsgeddit.com
Resources - http://letsgeddit.com/public/articles/teacher-resources
Video tutorial


Google Forms - Free tool available from Google through the web or as an iOS app.
More Information - https://support.google.com/docs/answer/87809?hl=en
Video tutorial -



Kahoot - One of my colleagues jokingly refers to this student response system as being similar to bar trivia without the alcohol. Kahoot is website-based, but you can create a web clip icon on your iPad that links to the website and looks like an app icon.
More information - Sign up for a free account here - https://getkahoot.com
Link to website for students to join your quiz - https://kahoot.it/#/
Video tutorial - Creating A Kahoot  and Playing Kahoot
Quick Guide - https://getkahoot.com/tutorials/Kahoot_Tutorials.pdf





Plickers -
Do you have just one iPad or Android device? This app/application lets you use your phone, iPad, Android device to scan paper cards that students hold up in one of four directions to indicate their multiple choice answer response.

More information - https://www.plickers.com
Plickers App for iOS
Video tutorial


Socrative - This tool is both web-based and an app. The teacher can create a quiz in advance and then gather and export student performance data.
More information - http://www.socrative.com
iOS Teacher app
iOS Student app
Video Tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/user/SocrativeVideos/videos
Creating a Quiz and Running a Quiz
User Guide - http://www.socrative.com/materials/SocrativeUserGuide.pdf



Voxer Walkie Talkie - This fun walkie talkie push and talk app can be used in many ways to gather quick and authentic performance data from students.
More information -http://voxer.com
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voxer-walkie-talkie-ptt/id377304531?mt=8
Video tutorial and Overview



Monday, July 28, 2014

EdCampMN Reflections

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Today was a great day of informal sharing at EdCampMN at the Anderson Student Center on the Hamline University campus.

I participated in sessions on Voxer, edtech coaching, 1:1 Chromebooks, iPads in the classroom, standards-based grading, literacy resources, Twitter, and flexible learning spaces. The EdCamp model of informal group discussion and resource sharing instead of formal presentations offered plenty of opportunities to share work going on in my district and professional interests of my own.
I also had a chance to practice a little sketchnoting and uploaded my sketch here to share. I definitely see the value in visual note-taking and the connections between doodling and summarizing and how it can help students remember content better in the classroom. Sketchnoting also helps teachers document major takeaways from professional development conferences.

Monday, July 21, 2014

TEDx BurnsvilleED Speaker

I am thrilled to have been selected to be a speaker at TEDx BurnsvilleED on September 20!
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"TEDxBurnsvilleED is a local, independently-organized event that strives to recreate the unique experience found at TED, where the world's leading thinkers and doers congregate to share what they are most passionate about.  The mission of TEDxBurnsvilleED is to bring together local community and field leaders to engage in ideas worth doing that will have a positive impact in our education community."

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Minnesota eLearning Summit Presentations - Easy Formative Assessment on Mobile Devices

I started thinking about my presentations for the Minnesota eLearning Summit today and the connections between formative assessment tools and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
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Ensuring that classroom assessments are set up to ensure that no student's performance is hindered due to the design or format of the assessment itself is critical.

There are many iPad apps that make formative assessment easy for the teacher and very accessible for students.  I will be talking about how to successfully use the iPad for formative assessment with students and will be demonstrating a few apps that make it easy for teachers to gauge students' content understanding at the upcoming Minnesota eLearning Summit at the end of July.