Julie Gerding, English teacher at West High, was looking for a way to update the content she’s posted on her website (primarily documents, presentations, and handouts) without downloading, revising, and then uploading a new version. Isn’t there an easier way? In fact, there are a couple, using Dropbox or Box.com.

The Set-up

Julie’s question was simple, and is a common one for teachers who update material on the web:

“Do you know if there is a way to use Dropbox or something similar so that any files I want students to see on my web site will be updated and available whenever I make a change to the file? Uploading and creating a link for each individually has been a huge stumbling block in allowing me to keep things up to date.”

Of the many online document hosting services available, two that came to my mind seemed a good fit for this problem: DropBox and Box.com (formerly Box.net). I’ve written about DropBox before, but Box.com, one of its competitors, offers a few features that seemed helpful for Julie’s particular need. We talked about the benefits and limitations of each in this particular scenario. Our list is below.

The Options

As many teachers are in the midst of MAP testing or approaching End of Course Exams, the season of review is upon us.  A number of months ago, Lara Boles, social studies teacher at West High, highlighted how she uses the online flashcard maker Quizlet to keep vocabulary and concepts fresh in the minds of her students.  This week, prompted by a flashcard-related e-mail, I’d like to highlight 5 more reasons why Quizlet is a review resource worth investigating, and give some direction on how you can get your students involved with the content with very little headache.

5 (More) Reasons to Check Out Quizlet:

1. Quick group creation:  I go into more detail below, but suffice it to say that Quizlet has made it easy for teachers and students to create competitive and collaborative groups focused on vocabulary and concept review.

2. Printable flashcards:  No Internet access? No problem.  Quizlet has a built-in method for printing out your cards for off-road access to review.

3. Embed your review anywhere:  Once available only for the vocab review games, embed code is everywhere on Quizlet now.  Want your cards to display on your Moodle course, a practice test on your website, a game of Scatter on your wiki?  Grab the embed code and display your set almost any place on the web.

4. Audio in English … and 17 other languages!:  Whether you are using Quizlet to teach foreign languages or just looking to engage another learning style, audio is a powerful tool, and audio is now included by default whenever terms or definitions are typed into the tool.  The “computer voice” is rather good – you can try it out on the set embedded below.  Just toggle the “Enable Audio” button.

   Choose a Study Mode Scatter Learn Flashcards

   Study these flash cards | Study statistics flash cards

    

5. Live discussion right on the page:  Each flashcard set gives you the ability to set up a chat window if you wish.  The chats live forever, though each student does retain the ability to delete his or her own comments.  While not an amazingly innovative feature, it does open up a place where students can leave feedback on the set, correcting errors that might have escaped a teacher’s notice or suggesting terms that might be added to the set.

Quick Group Creation

The e-mail I received this week was asking whether it was possible to set up a Quizlet group without manually creating student accounts one by one.  Happily, yes, it is possible.  In fact, Quizlet is designed for students to set up their own accounts, and they can do so even if they do not have e-mail addresses or facebook accounts.  One straight-forward process for creating groups and registering your students is below:

1. Create a group for your class or unit and set a password. (directions here)
2. Reserve lab time for students to create their own accounts, possibly using mailcatch.com if they do not have e-mail addresses. (mailcatch directions here)
3. During that same time, once students have created their accounts, ask them to search for their teacher’s username and select the appropriate group she’s created. (directions here)
4. When students find the group, they will be prompted for the password, which the teacher can write on the board.
5. Once all students are in the group, the teacher can change the group’s password, which will prevent others from “registering.”

A few moments of set-up and about 15 minutes in the lab can get a class up and reviewing with Quizlet.

Are there other features of this tool that have been helpful to you?  Do you have a flashcard set you’d like to share?  Tell us in the comments below!

This was the first year Aaron Hickman, math teacher at West High, and his colleagues adopted a new approach to Algebra 1 – and part of that experience was no textbook. As Aaron began to get questions from parents about how they could support their children without access to a text, he decided to open a window to his classroom. He wanted to record the 20-minute lecture sections of his class and publish them where students and parents could easily access the information, at any time convenient to them.

When Aaron and I talked about a solution for bringing his lectures online, two elements rose to the top:

1. Students and parents should be able to access resources in a familiar, easy-to-use environment.
2. Creating and posting resources should add as little to his daily routine as possible.

Challenge 1: Where to post

We chose Moodle for a few reasons:

• As the learning management system for the district, Moodle’s interface and course listings are familiar to most students. Each student and teacher has an account, with a username and password that are the same as their Novell account credentials.
• Moodle has a built-in video player.  Any .FLV file that is uploaded to Moodle is automatically embedded into a YouTube-like player.
• Moodle allows Aaron to arrange his materials in easy-to-follow blocks, each addressing one of the standards in the Algebra 1 curriculum.

Most Parkway Moodle courses are “walled gardens”, where only registered users can view and participate in activities and discussions. For this course, we opened access to guest users since there are no interactive elements to the course and the audience was primarily parents looking to access the material. If you would like to view Aaron’s work, visit “Algebra I Video Lessons” and click the “Login as a guest” button.

Challenge 2: Make it simple

Filming, editing, compressing, and publishing video can take a lot of time. For the purposes of this project, we isolated two elements that were the most important: the interactions on the Smart Board and Aaron’s voice. Students and parents what to hear how Aaron explains concepts and see the examples he works as he illustrates those concepts.

The Work-flow:

Aaron’s recording sessions work like this:

1. Aaron plugs in his wireless microphone at the beginning of the period.
2. He opens up whatever Smart Notebook presentation he intends to use during instruction.
3. He opens the screen capture software and hits “Record”.
4. He teaches.
5. At the close of the lecture portion of class, he hits “Stop” on the screen capture software.
6. At the close of class, he drops the video file into a converter program.
7. At the end of the day, he uploads the converted file into his Moodle course.

It took some trial and error to fine tune the system, but it’s up and working now with few hiccups. Scroll down for set-up details.

So, students don’t need to come to class, Right?

I had an interesting conversation with a West High student as I was walking in to the library one morning. He was diligently comparing his answers to the ones his teacher posted online. I asked him what he was up to and he explained that he was looking over the slides his teacher had posted from the previous day.

“So, does this mean you don’t need to go to class?” I asked. His response was a quick one -

“Only if I don’t want to learn.”

This student’s perspective is pretty common from what I’m reading and observing right now. Though we have many tech-savvy teens who can grab raw material fairly quickly, they still recognize their own shortcomings – they don’t have the experience or necessary filters to make sense of most information they lay their hands on.

Students know that teachers, that mentors, make the difference when it comes to learning. MIT puts an amazing amount of lectures, syllabi, and even class notes online, and students continue to apply to attend MIT – in person.

Interested to try this out? Drop me a note. If you’re a self-starter, check the set-up details below.

–Drew

The Set-up:

Video Capture tool: CamStudio

Identifying these pieces meant that we could capture the video using a screen recording tool. We chose CamStudio, a free tool that simply and easily records video from the computer screen and audio from a microphone. CamStudio’s default settings had to be changed to accept audio from our external microphone and to save the video file to the desktop.

Video Compression tool:

The resulting video file is enormous – far too large to upload to Moodle. There are numerous software packages and online tools that could convert and compress this video. For this project we piloted a free video compression tool.  As soon as it’s approved by my district, I’ll post details here. Check with your computer specialist to see which one your school would recommend.

Microphone: Sony Wireless Bluetooth Microphone

Wireless microphones are typically very costly and require some sort of mixing board in order to bring audio into a computer. The Sony ECM AW3 wireless microphone is much more affordable, can be shared among teachers for different projects, and runs off of 2 AAA batteries (with a life-span of about 3 hours per pair). Because this solution is wireless, Aaron doesn’t have to worry about where he moves around the classroom or where he projects his voice. He simply teaches.

Jeff Chazen, social studies teacher at West High, and Kyle Roff, comm arts teacher at West Middle, have been attempting a new tool for concept-mapping, LucidChart.com. Similar to Inspiration, another concept-mapping software many have used in the last few years, LucidChart adds functionality to that traditional software by allowing students to work on their creations at school or at home and to collaborate in real time for free.

What is LucidChart?

LucidChart is an online diagramming program that allows users to create diagrams, web page mockups, flow charts, and concept maps. Its quality of design and user interface comes close to programs used in the professional market, but it extends these features by making them available through the web – allowing a user to work on a diagram at school or at home, as well as opening up the opportunity for many users to work on the same diagram at the same time.

Even more compelling, for the education market LucidChart is free.

Why might I use it?

Concept mapping is an established way to create and reinforce connections. Also called graphic organizers, concept maps are part of what Robert Marzano calls “nonlinguistic representations” of knowledge.  According to his work in Classroom Instruction that Works, “The more we use both systems of representation–linguistic and nonlinguistic–the better we are able to think about and recall knowledge.” ¹ Learners can use concept mapping to summarize large chucks of information, synthesize a brainstorming session into meaningful categories, or plan for the future.

Some Examples:

Kyle Roff asked his students to describe the 6 facets of writing using a concept map. He offered students the opportunity to do so using Inspiration or Lucid Chart. Two examples are available below.

Jeff Chazen uses LucidChart to diagram concepts for his students, using his mind maps to act as guides and reminders. Two of his examples are available below.

Images? Templates?

In addition to built-in functionality like descriptive connectors and the typical concept-mapping tools, LucidChart has an integrated image search from both Google and Icon Finder, a feature rarely found on other online tools. For those looking to assign a topic of study, LucidChart allows teachers to create their own templates or search for templates created by others in the community examples gallery as well as easily share templates with their students. Lorembook is one example of a website mockup template that students could manipulate for many types of projects.

But what does it look like?

For a diverting look at how LucidChart diagrams are made, check out a one-minute clip of LucidChart’s version of “Hey Jude” below.

Have questions about LucidChart or using concept mapping with your students? Feel free to drop me a note.

Kelly Dillon, communication arts teacher at West High, is venturing into an authentic audience project, and she’s looking for some help.  Kelly has set up a blog which will be collecting student letters to President Barak Obama in an effort to promote civic involvement among kids.  You can check out an example letter at dmpstudent.blogspot.com.

If your students have been working on public service announcement projects, research papers centered on American society, or discussing the intersection of government and daily life, you might seriously consider participating by asking students to summarize their work in persuasive letters to the Commander in Chief.

If, as the Common Core Standards suggest, “argument is the soul of an education“, projects like Kelly’s offer opportunities for students to express their understandings in a way that not only impacts their own development but the development of the world around them as well.

Each year Peter Papulis asks his geometry students to apply abstract knowledge of proportions, similarity, and ratios to their own experience – through manipulating images in Smart Notebook. Students take snapshots of one another next to prominent places around school, pull the images into Notebook and estimate the height or length of their subjects. If you’d like kids to collect, annotate, or measure images, Smart Notebook might be your simplest solution.

The Project:

“The pre-work makes the project work.” – Peter Papulis

This is Peter’s second year with this project, and he’s noticed that preparing students with the necessary mathematical vocabulary and walking them through the process prior to entering the lab has made all the difference. Here’s his pattern:

1. Students begin the unit looking at proportion word problems, gathering an understanding of the vocabulary of proportions and a sense of what proportion is all about.
2. Once vocabulary is in place, Peter surveys to see who has a iPhone or iPod Touch in the room, arranging the groups so that there’s at least one in each group. He then asks the groups to download the free Multimeasure app and experiment with estimating. The app uses the same mathematics students are learning in this unit. One of Peter’s goals is to demonstrate to students that mathematics isn’t something that’s just on paper. Math is used in tools and problems that surround us, and people can capitalize on that in order to make a profit – as the makers of this app (which has a for-cost counterpart) have.
3. After the hook with the app, it’s back to the classroom for a “hands-on” approach to this idea. Using real rulers and example pictures, students work out how they can use proportion to estimate the height of common landmarks around the world.
4. After the practice, Peter takes a portion of one period (~45 minutes) for students to take pictures around the school using cameras checked out from the library. Each group had at least 3 pictures of a student (the reference height) standing in front of a portion of the building or other landmark on campus. They are given a rubric and tutorial before beginning the work
5. The next day in the lab, Peter oriented students to Smart Notebook (his instructions are here), and the final day is reserved for student work: uploading images, calculating proportions, and annotating their slides. The final product? A student-created estimate of the height or length of a place they walk by every day:
   

A heads-up:

• Students must position their cameras as close to “reality” as possible. A tilted shot will skew the estimation of the larger object.
• When calculating the reference height of their peers, students must use the metric system rather than the English system of measurement (e.g. six feet, two inches should not be written 6.2, but converted into metric units – 188 cm).
• Without the separate “Math Tools” plugin from Smart, ratios can be a challenge to draw on a PC, but Peter’s students worked around this in a variety of ways.

Peter’s unit is effective for many reasons. From the perspective of educational technology, he leverages tech to both hook his students (through their experiences with the app) as well as provide for personalization and choice (as students are able to travel around the campus and select their objects of choice). All the technology is fairly easy to use, moving tech into the background and allowing the curriculum to take it’s rightful place: front and center.

If you or your students are looking for a way to gather and annotate images, Notebook is worth a look!

In August, Will Swihart, science teacher at West Middle, was looking for a digital notebook solution. Students in science record their daily work into a composition notebook, maintaining a table of contents and reflecting on their past work as they move through the curriculum. Will was wondering if there might be a way to record his own work and publish it to parents, without absorbing more of his time. Tucked away in Microsoft Office is a tool that will do just that and more: OneNote.

OneNote is Microsoft’s popular digital note-taking software packaged with the Office Suite. Built to resemble the look and feel of a notebook, with tabs along the top and pages listed on the side, OneNote is especially popular in districts where students carry personal laptops or slates from class to class. Users can record lectures and sync those recordings with type-written notes; copy and paste information from pdfs, websites, and other documents with citation information automatically preserved; and draw right onto the page. Will’s science notebook looks like this:

For a district like ours, where kids use multiple machines throughout the day, this technology doesn’t fit a student’s workflow. However, the tool can be leveraged as a teaching resource, especially when combined with Microsoft’s free SkyDrive service. SkyDrive opens up a space online where users can store Microsoft Office files and others can view them – even without Office installed on their machines.

Will’s goals were 3-fold:

• Easily post his daily bell ringer and class purpose
• Add pertinent pictures from his doc camera, worksheets and textbook materials
• Display the notes online, but avoid the upload/download tasks typically involved in updating a website

OneNote performs these tasks quickly and easily. Will pulls in his bell ringer, a slide created in PowerPoint, simply by dragging and dropping it onto that day’s OneNote page. He can insert an image from his document camera by displaying the item through his AverVision software and doing a screen capture through OneNote. Other files can be added through a “File Print” option in the insert menu of OneNote, making the notebook page a quick representation of that day’s work.

And getting this online? Will posted one link to his website in September. SkyDrive and OneNote have been automatically updating his online science notebook ever since, without Will pushing one additional button. The online version makes the notebook available to students inside and outside school, even if they don’t own Microsoft Office.

If you haven’t tried OneNote yet, check it out. You’ll find it in the Microsoft Office folder in your “All Programs” menu.