Terry's Tech Tips

Spice it up!  Create a Course Expectation Infographic Think about most students' first day of school.  They start out in Advisory, reviewing a multitude of compliance documents and completing a form agreeing to all the contents.  Not that exciting.  This year, they'll receive their laptop in Advisory as well - very exciting!  The rest of the day will be spent in each class, getting to know their new teacher (inspiring) and reviewing course expectations (not as exciting). If you are thinking of spicing up your first day, you may want to consider presenting your Course Expectations using an Infographic!  The example above is based on a course that I will teach in the spring. Reasons why Infographics work: Infographics are everywhere on the web - with good reason.  Infographics play to our brain's strengths: 60,000 times faster Humans process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. https://images.app.goo.gl/82HPWapeQh5raZe...

I was so excited last year when I noticed that Google Classroom provided the ability to copy the classroom for the next year. Good News: I tested this process out at the end of last year, and my results were great!  Every assignment saved as a draft with all related documents and support links placed under the topics I had created.  I knew teachers who had used Moodle in the past would appreciate the new feature.   Bad News: That's good news.  But, there was something that I didn't consider last year.  When you copy a Google Classroom, it makes a copy of everything in the Classroom.   Every document, every video, including your directions, course syllabus, and other 'view only' documents you provided to your students in their assignments.  Let's consider how that might look: You have a Course Expectations document.   You taught two sections last year.  You added this document to each course.  If you...

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 ...

Google Slides provide the most flexibility of any tool in the Google App suite.  Some people call it the Swiss Army knife of Google!  Now you can add audio files!  From the Google Slides top toolbar, select Insert>Audio for any audio file stored in your Google Drive.  Your audio file appears on the slide in the form of a sound icon. Select the icon and  Format options dynamically appear on your menu bar: Click Format options and playback options are now available to you on the right side of  your screen: You can control how the audio file starts playing, its volume, if it should continuously play, or whether to stop or not when the slide changes.   Why would I use this option? If you use Google Slides as your presentation software for your courses, I'm sure you can think of a wealth of ways to incorporate audio into your classroom.  A few I thought of: Add music files to the first slide, so mus...

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...

Grading is definitely NOT one of most teachers' favorite tasks.  Feedback is so vital to the learning process, yet providing that feedback is time-consuming and sometimes soul-crushing.  In a previous blog post , I talked about using your phone to grade a rubric quickly using Google Forms while students were presenting.  Today we'll explore the useful tools automatically created for you when using Google Forms as a rubric. Using the simple rubric example from the previous post, we assigned the grade ourselves.  Using the Individual tab in the Responses section , you can see each individual presentation you graded.  You can click the three dots and select ' Print all responses ' to print a copy of the graded rubric to share with your students.  Automatic Grading with a Rubric Creating a related Google Sheet: One of the fabulous features of Google Forms is that you can create a linked spreadsheet with one click.  Click the Gre...