Terry's Tech Tips

Today's tip is a repost of suggested exam preparation strategies for teachers and students.  It is one of the more popular Terry's Tech Tips! As midterm exams approach, your students face the challenge of preparing for them.  Cognitive learning research provides insight into the best practices for studying.   The Top 2 Study Strategies are Retrieval Practice and Spaced Learning: Retrieval Practice  Retrieval Practice is the act of  pulling information out of your brain.   You remember what you know about a word, topic, or lesson,  pull it   out of your mind,  and then articulate it in some way.  For example, you write down everything you can remember.  This is the way your brain really wants to learn!   Retrieval Practice is the opposite of reviewing notes or the textbook and trying to ' stuff ' the knowledge into your brain! Teacher Action:   If you are holding review session(s) o...

Google has developed a new series of fonts explicitly designed to enhance reading speed and fluency for Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. Google teamed with Education Therapist Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup and typographer Thomas Jockin.  Dr. Shaver-Troup found that perception-based solutions were more effective in improving reading performance and cognition than cognitive-based ones.  Together with Thomas Jockin, they developed the Lexend font series.    What benefits do the Lexend font series provide to readers? Bonnie Shaver-Troup theorized that reading issues may be a result of student's sensitivity to typographical factors like size and spacing.  The Lexend font series provide a clean Sans Serif font base with spacing options helping the reader improve both reading speed and cognition.   (Sans Serif fonts assist students with Dyslexia and other learning issues.)  Lexend is especially suitable for readers who are bothered by visual crowd...

Today's post is an update for suggested strategies teachers and students can use for final exam preparation.  I have added one additional strategy tip from the previous post! As final exams approach, your students face the challenge of preparing for them.  Cognitive learning research provides insight into the best practices for studying.   The Top 2 Study Strategies are Retrieval Practice and Spaced Learning: Retrieval Practice  Retrieval Practice is the act of  pulling information out of your brain.   You remember what you know about a word, topic, or lesson,  pull it   out of your mind  and then articulate it in some way.  For example, you write down everything you can remember.  This is the way your brain really wants to learn!   Retrieval Practice is the opposite of reviewing notes or the textbook and trying to ' stuff ' the knowledge into your brain! Teacher Action:...

Your classroom has wide-ranging student needs and situations.  Some of your students may have conditions that make presenting in front of the class challenging. Google Slides provide a lot of flexibility for students who might be reluctant to present in front of the class.  I'm including a few ideas on how you might use Google Slides (or Adobe Spark!) for students with conditions that make presenting a challenge.   Or,  you can use the tools to provide practice for students in a less anxiety-inducing environment. Narrate the Slide Deck Slide by Slide: As I mentioned in my last post, Google Slides now allows you to add audio files to your slides.  You can use any program that allows you to create an audio recording, but I like online-voice-recorder .  Students record what they would say for each slide, and add the audio file to the slide. (Insert>Audio).   Set the audio to autoplay as the slide is clicked, and you have a narrated ...

Rubrics can be problematic for teachers.  Rubrics cost time to create, students may ignore/not understand project requirements if rubrics are complex,  and Rubrics may introduce grading concerns.  (Do you find you tweak your ratings to end up with the grade you think the student deserves? ) My last few posts have been about Rubrics and ways to use them to make grading more efficient.  This post poses the question: How can I change my Rubric so it is more user friendly for me and my students? In my previous posts, I used a typical rubric example: Does this rubric template serve you best?   Based on this blog post by Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy and Mark Wise , consider these 5 steps to ' Repair your Rubric ' : 1.  Measure what really matters Simplify: Single Point Rubrics: Sometimes, we create Rubrics with many categories.  Lots of categories make it hard for students to focus on thei...

Last week's post featured some research I had done on student cell phone use and the impact on student learning .  I created the following infographic: Click here for a larger Infographic view Why use Infographics with my students? Infographics represent a new type of digital literacy.  They tell a story relying heavily on visuals with some supporting text.  Whether you choose to create infographics for your students or have students create them as an assignment, research shows that: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/visual-content-marketing-delivers-results-infographic/116496/#close Research found the following impacts on learning due to the way the brain processes information: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/visual-content-marketing-delivers-results-infographic/116496/#close Because of these factors,  Infographics are 30 times more likely to be read on the web over text based pages: https://www.searchenginejournal...