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Educational TrendsGood TeachingOnline Tools and Apps

Five Tech Tools to Simplify Your Teaching Life

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Looking for quick learning opportunities? Be sure to gift yourself and other digital learners with these five stocking stuffer videos that showcase how to use five different tech tools. The exciting, easy-to-use tools will have you exploring fresh ideas and simplifying your life. Each comes with a short video tutorial and page of resources to expand your knowledge.

Be sure to view the interactive web page to click and view the videos. You can see them full screen via YouTube. Get your own copy of this infographic.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

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virtual field trips
Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Even More Virtual Field Trips

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Previously in TechNotes, we’ve explored virtual field trips across our home state of Texas and even around the world. As students and teachers head to the end of a hectic year, digital tours and field trips can still be useful ways to engage students, whether on a break or at a distance.

In this post, we’ll share some more virtual field trips to take the learning on tour.

Discovering with Discovery

Discovery Education has compiled a large database of interactive field trips that you can search and filter by topic. They also offer tech tips and a variety of field trips that go beyond the standard museum visit. Unique interactive tours include topics like body positivity and the Internet of Things.

Exploring at Home

As school schedules (and delivery methods) change, parents are looking for positive ways to keep their kids engaged with learning, even as so much else around them seems uncertain. A number of outlets have put together digital resources to help families take their kids to the most interesting corners of the world, even when they can’t leave the house.

  • This collection from Good Housekeeping includes virtual trips to places like museums and galleries, as well as farms, zoos, nature sites and more.
  • Meanwhile, Today offers exotic natural spaces alongside amusement parks. You can even find some fun digital classes to take together, or to boost a skill or engage with a child’s hobbies or interests.
  • At KidsActivities.com, you will find more than 40 different digital trips and activities to keep kids off the couch during breaks, or any time. Spelunk into the world’s largest cave, go on safari in Namibia, or scan the skyline from the top of the Empire State Building. The choice is yours!

Natural Wonders

While in some cases it can be safe to explore the outdoors, doing so can be difficult with restrictions and concerns about travel. Those looking to see the wonders of the great outdoors are in luck, though, with these helpful guides connecting you to nature.

  • The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Lab has deeply developed resources for teaching with virtual trips, including videos and a teacher’s guide. These tours even take topics and extend them around the world, meaning tours can cover ideas and not just places. These tours are made for students aged 5–19, but can also be adapted and customized.
  • In addition, you can find compelling natural field trips online, courtesy of the National Parks Service and National Park Foundation. If you like those, you might also look into Google Arts & Culture’s “The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks” or this massive list from PBS.

Getting a Guide

If you’re looking to vet different tours and activities before sharing them with students, you’re not alone. Common Sense works to vet educational pages and online sources, and they’ve done the same with virtual field trips.

Trips to museums, parks, historical sites, and more show students that learning (and life) happens outside the classroom, too. During field trips, students discover new things and learn in authentic environments, placing classroom content into new contexts. Unfortunately, for many schools and students, field trips are rare (if they happen at all). Thankfully, there are great games, apps, and websites that can bring places and experiences fostered by field trips to the classroom. While not an outright replacement, these field trip tools can offer inspiring and intriguing experiences for students.

Virtual Field Trip Apps and Websites (Common Sense)

Check out their list of 32 carefully reviewed resources with detailed information. You can also find digital teaching tools at their Wide Open School site.

Where will you be visiting digitally with your students? Let us know in the comments!

Photo by Zen Chung from Pexels

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comics
ESL/ELLGood Teaching

Comics and Graphic Novels: An Imagery Invasion

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Walk through a paper bookstore and you’ll find a huge section dedicated to graphic novels. Like many children of yesteryear, I grew up reading comic books. Everything from Avengers to Superman and Batman came alive as I sat on the floor of the Army Post Exchange (PX).

Today, that experience is less common. Comic books, as well as graphic novels, remain of interest to all. Whether at home or in the classroom, students themselves can create content-specific graphic novels. In this blog entry, we’ll explore a bit about the background and research, as well as how to make them.

comic

View the images above, created by Jessica Abel. Her work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Is There a Research Connection?

John Hattie points out that imagery is a part of surface learning. Surface learning “includes subject matter vocabulary, the content of the lesson” (source). Imagery (d=0.51), as a surface learning strategy, involves the presence of visual content.  That’s important due to the Modality Effect:

The modality effect refers to how learner performance depends on the presentation mode. Improve learning when you present textual information in enhanced mode. That is, when text includes auditory format, and/or visual materials. Visual materials could include a graph, diagram, or animation. Source: Visible Learning Meta  X database

Comics and graphic novels take advantage of the dual processing of information. Both the text and visual imagery combine to speed processing of information. Also, consider how you can use comics and graphic novels for second language instruction; here are a few:

  • Teaching vocabulary development
  • Familiarization with idioms
  • Introducing culturally-relevant material (source)

Learning opportunities abound with graphic novels, so why not give them a shot?

Why Graphic Novels?

Graphic novels, like comics, combine imagery with text. Some refer to graphic novels and comics as “visual narratives.” Reading and analyzing graphic novels adds depth and complexity.

With graphic novels, students use text and images to make inferences. They also synthesize information.  In this form of literature, the images and the text are of equal importance. The text would not make sense without the images, and the reverse is true as well. (Source: Leslie Morrison, Adapted from The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners)

As Leslie points out, there is inferencing and synthesizing going on. Tracy Edmunds says:

Graphic texts are complex, effective teaching tools. Readers must receive information. They also must interact with both text and images to construct meaning.

Josh Elder captures this perspective in The Case for Comics in the Classroom. Engagement occurs in comics since comics show only the essential actions. Readers have to “read between the lines of each panel of even the simplest comic.” If not, the comic does not reveal its story well.

Creating Comics and Graphic Novels

There are definitely benefits to analyzing and reading comics and graphic novels. But what about making them?

Creating graphic novels and comics can be tough work. You can see how one comic gets created. Let’s explore some quick, inexpensive tools you can use:

Approach 1: Google Slides or PowerPoint

In chatting with Lisa Cupples, a TCEA Online Course Creator, she shared what tools she uses. As you might imagine, one that is a favorite is Google Slides. “We all have access to it, including the students.”

Here are a few video tutorials on making comics with Google Slides:

  • Amanda Werner’s Tutorial. Learn how to change slide size, find and crop pictures, and insert speech and thought bubbles. You also will learn to change the background of slides and then print six slides per page. At the end, you have a comic strip.
  • Richard Byrne’s Tutorial. Create a three-panel comic strip in Google Slides, pulling in images from other locations.
  • Erifili Davis’ Tutorial. Learn how to create a comic strip on a smartphone using the Google Slides app.

Familiar with Bitmoji? You can use Bitmoji characters to create a comic strip, then drop them into Google Slides. You can create panels for your comic or graphic novel in Google Slides. Then fill them with Bitmoji scenes.

Prefer PowerPoint to Google Slides? This video walks you through some amazing options:

Approach 2: Make Beliefs Comix

The Make Beliefs Comix allows you to work via a web browser. You can create an account with your Google login. This easy-to-use comic strip maker offers limited features. That said, there’s a lot you can do with what it does offer. You can see the composition window below:

comics

Approach 3: Book Creator

No list of comic book creator software would be complete without Book Creator. You can easily combine text, images, and audio to create comic books and graphic novellas. This program is a joy to use via a web browser or an iPad. And making comic books is easy for children of any age. Consider this page from the Invasion of the Cookie Snatchers. As you may not be able to see it, there is video embedded in the “Cookies…” panel.

comics

If you thought creating comic books and graphic novel content was a waste of time, think again. These creative activities offer powerful learning possibilities for inferencing and synthesizing.

Looking to learn more? Check out these episodes of TCEA’s podcast, the Ed Tech Club:

Feature Image: Mitosis Alert. Available online at Book Creator.

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remote teacher interacting from a coffee shop
Good Teaching

Essential Gadgets for Remote Educators

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Have a teacher in your home and you need to give them something that will make them smile? Consider these pre-holiday season gifts to ease the strain of teaching online. These essential gadgets will make their remote teaching a breeze. One of them is bound to catch their eye.

essential gadgets

Essential Gadget #1 – Face Tracking Swivel Mount

Whether you are in the classroom or the home office, a swivel mount may be what your teacher needs. For less than fifty dollars each, these face-tracking swivel smartphone mounts follow you as you teach. Some of the benefits and features of these include:

  • Face or target tracking. These rely on auto face recognition and target tracking. Sure, you can use them for selfies and videos, but they’re also fabulous for teaching.
  • Phone holder. The mount doubles as a phone mount that you can use to perch your phone on.
  • 360 degree rotation
  • Remote control. Some more expensive models come with a remote control you can use.
  • Multi-stream so that you can stream your video to the web.

If you’re wondering what the pricing looks like, the lower end models start at $40 at Amazon. The high-end models with a three tracking sensors and wristband cost more ($760). Here’s a quick list of some of the ones that came up in a chat with TCEA members:

essential gadgets

  • Move N See Pixio Robot Cameraman ($760). What appears to an expensive, top of the line tracker that comes with sensor beacons to lock in on your position.
  • Pivo Pod Silver ($199). This auto-tracking smartphone mount comes with lots of features, including voice commands. With a 10-hour battery life, you can stuff your phone into it without worries.
  • Auto Tracking Smart Shooting Holder ($45.98). This offers a lot of functionality.
  • Apai Genie Cameraman ($39.99).   This mount comes with most of the features mentioned earlier and includes LiveStream, YouTube, and TikTok support.

There are many options available on the market. You’ll need to find something in your budget that does what you need it to do.  How many times could you have used something like this in the last few months?

Essential Gadget #2 – Document Camera

essential gadgetsWhen the pandemic sent most educators home in March 2020, some took equipment home. Whatever document camera you had, you took. But there were a lot of teachers caught at home who had no document camera available. The pandemic made it impossible to go back to the office and they needed something reliable. Enter the home document camera.

There are many wonderful document cameras available. Here are a few that are reliable, inexpensive, and good for at home remote teaching. Let’s take a quick look at them below:

As you may imagine, these are eight megapixel cameras that work well for showing a sheet of paper. One teacher I know uses her HUE USB document camera to write on small whiteboard as she demonstrates her math. The built-in app displays the document on her computer screen. It’s a simple matter to share the document camera app via Zoom so that students can watch. For teachers engaged in remote teaching, the document camera is a must have.

Essential Gadget #3 – Headset with Microphone

You would think a gadget round up wouldn’t be complete without a headset mic. Many educators have taken to relying on earbuds and yelling. That laptop microphone never quite does as good a job as you think. For that reason, my first buy for any teacher is a USB headset and microphone.

If you’re using the microphone on your laptop to record, you may want to spend a little money to get a better mic. A BIG tip is to avoid acoustics headphones or microphones like this one. Instead, get a USB  headset/microphone. While there are many expensive options, get a headset/mic combination that you can use for webinars, as well as screen recording.

essential gadgets

My favorite headset/mic combination (shown) is the Logitech H390 USB headset. It features a noise canceling microphone. Due to pandemic, the cost has risen, but it is dropping again.

Some less expensive USB headset/mic options:

Trust me, getting a headset/mic combination is worth the investment.

Those are three of the must-have gadgets for 2020. If  you don’t have them, you’ll wish you did. If you do have them, you will appreciate them all the more. That’s especially true if you bought them before the holiday rush. What other essential gadgets would you recommend for remote teaching?

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instructional coaching
Good TeachingProfessional Learning

Interview with Jim Knight: Instructional Coaching During COVID-19

by Adam Geller, Guest Author
written by Adam Geller, Guest Author

As educators, we talk a lot about how teaching and learning has dramatically changed as a result of the pandemic. We seem to be talking less, however, about how these new ways of operating are changing our professional learning and professional relationships. 

With so many demands on our attention, it’s easy to let the process of self reflecting on instruction fall down the list of priorities a bit. But, as I uncovered in a recent conversation with Jim Knight, the importance of these coaching-style relationships has never been higher. Yes, instructional coaching may look or feel different, but it’s still possible — even if we can’t be together in person all the time. 

I trust Jim’s opinion. He’s a respected researcher and author of multiple books, including Focus on Teaching: Using Video for High-Impact Instruction, who has spent more than two decades studying instructional coaching, effective learning, and professional learning. 

During our conversation, we first discussed why video should be a central part of professional learning, and Jim was clear that this idea is true regardless of whether educators are in the classroom or teaching virtually. Then, we delved into tips and strategies to help coaches successfully support and connect with teachers online.

With the shift to online and distanced collaboration among educators, how is professional learning changing for today’s virtual world?

While in-person workshops are good for providing an overview, I don’t think they are great for deep, transformational change. That’s why we need coaching. And I think we’re moving to a point where the coaching part of professional learning is going to be more pre-eminent than workshops.

Today, we can do a lot of things virtually that aren’t possible if it’s exclusively face to face. We can differentiate in a whole lot of ways, divide up into groups, meet at different times, and use asynchronous communication. While these opportunities for professional learning were there before, they weren’t being fully exploited.

I think these methods are going to work. For example, it’s helpful to have a person to send a video of your teaching to or watch your lesson happening virtually, and then have a Zoom call with after and try different things out. Coaches and educators are able to respond using this method and it should be more powerful than our more traditional forms of professional development.

What new skills should coaches try to build to become professional learners?

It’s really important that professional developers reflect deeply on their beliefs. Paulo Freire in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed talks about a few key concepts that need to be in place if you want to have dialogue with somebody. He said you have to have humility in the way you interact with the person. This means, “I’m open to being changed by what you have to say, in fact, I’m encouraging you, I want to hear you and I’m open.” You also have to communicate faith, which is to say, “I believe in you and I really think you can succeed.” The other condition is love, which means “I’m engaging in my will for the good of you and I have an attitude of benevolence toward you.”

He said when people understand that we want to hear what they have to say, we’re open to being changed by them, and we believe in them and want what’s best for them — and this is authentic — they’ll trust us. But the flip side is also true if any of those things are missing. So, I don’t know if it’s a new skill, but I think to be effective at this work, it’s really important to think carefully about our beliefs.

What new skills should teachers try to build?

I don’t have research on this the way I do for coaching, but I would say the same thing applies in instruction. Teachers can step back and ask what beliefs guide their interactions with students. They can ask questions like: Do I truly see the dignity in every child that I teach? Do I really communicate that I believe in them? Do I genuinely want what’s best for each of my children? Can my students see these things?

Beyond beliefs, it’s important to try to figure some skills out. For example, what does eye contact look like for coaching when you’re doing it through Zoom versus face to face? Overall many of the same skills or best practices apply – let people finish their responses, genuinely want to hear what they have to say and listen, don’t interrupt, don’t fidget with stuff while they’re talking, and pay attention to the person. This can just be harder virtually, especially with a group. When you sit down with a person or a group face to face, you can feel if this is working or not, and that’s hard to do virtually, so working on skills like these are key.

How do you think empathy and listening between a coach or school leader and a teacher changes in an online context?

I think the good thing is you’re able to communicate in a number of different ways, so you can find different opportunities for asynchronous communication using video. And, you can just get online anywhere.

The opportunity is there, but what’s different is you have to find other ways for taking the temperature of the relationship. With face to face, you can usually feel what’s happening and get a sense if you’re in sync or not. But online, it’s a little harder.

Jim Knight is a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and the president of the Instructional Coaching Group. To watch more of this interview with Knight, visit the Edthena blog. To read more insights from Jim Knight, check out our past interview on TCEA TechNotes.

Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels

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american education week
Good Teaching

It’s American Education Week

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Did you know that this week is American Education Week? If not, we understand. Suffice it to say that it’s a busy time. Busier than usual, in fact.

But perhaps that’s all the more reason to recognize public educators for the role they play in society. That’s what American Education Week is all about, according to the National Education Association (NEA).  Here’s how the NEA describes it:

Festivities honor the team of people who work in our nation’s public schools, everyone from the bus driver and classroom teacher to the cafeteria worker and administrative staff, plus countless others.

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/american-education-week-november-16-20-2020

In an editorial to her local newspaper, the Transylvania Times of North Carolina, retired educator Carol Hamann describes the event’s foundations:

Following World War I, it was revealed that 25 percent of drafters for the military conflict had been illiterate and 15 percent were physically unfit. In 1918, the wheels were set in motion to encourage public education by establishing an annual national celebration of the service of teachers and other educators to our country. The National Education Association and the American Legion sponsored the first event in December 1921. Later, many other organizations, including the U.S. Department of Education and the National Parent Teacher Association, joined the parade. Today, more than 20 organizations are officially involved. Since those early beginnings, the week before Thanksgiving has been known as National Education Week.

By the way, a letter to the editor of a local paper or news site can be a great way to spread the word, which is exactly what we’ll explore in the next section.

Honoring Educators 

NEA proposes a number of simple ways individuals can spread awareness and help celebrate public schools, their staff, educators, and students. 

  • Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper thanking public school educators, or encourage your local paper to write an editorial about public schools and American Education Week.
  • Have students write an essay, “What I Would Do if I Were the School Principal” or hold a poetry reading on the topic, “What I Like Best About My School.”
  • Have students make cards showing support for their educators.
  • Invite parents virtually into your classroom via video conference to read to students, talk about their career, or share other educational information outside the normal curriculum. If the parent is tech-savvy, have them record a video you can show.
  • Send or email preprinted “apple” papers with places for students to fill in favorite subject, best time of day, or what they liked about their classroom or teacher, and a section for parents to write their school memories. Share in class or online.
  • Be sure to recognize the work of educational support professionals by having teachers, students, and parents mail or email a thank you letter to ESPs in their schools. 
  • Give a social media shout out to ESPs who have been going above and beyond to help school communities during this pandemic. You can get creative through photos, videos, and more! Use #WeLoveOurESPs in your posts. 

A Weeklong Event

Further, you can break down activities by day, each with its own theme relating to the ecosystems and communities built around schools, like families, substitutes, and professional school staff. Who makes your education life easier? Let them know!

Here are the themes for each day, as explained by the Nebraska State Education Association:

  • Monday, Nov. 16: Kickoff Day. Across the country, schools will celebrate excellence in education by hosting kickoff events and activities.
  • Tuesday, Nov. 17: Parents Day. On this day, schools across the nation traditionally invite parents into the classroom to experience what the day is like for their child.
  • Wednesday, Nov. 18: Education Support Professionals Day: Celebrating the Education Support Professionals who keep schools running and students safe, healthy, and ready to learn.
  • Thursday, Nov. 19: Educator for a Day. In any other normal year, community leaders would be invited to experience the day as educators and experience the challenges of teaching and the needs of students, with the guidance of school employees.
  • Friday, Nov. 20: Substitute Educators Day. Substitute educators play a vital role in the maintenance and continuity of daily education. On this day, we celebrate their important contributions to education.

Recognition, Even in Tough Times

This year, the work being done by teachers — already a lot — seems even more. Across the nation, teachers and communities are looking at ways to support teachers, even when their work is as difficult and changing as it has been this year. 

Special consideration now might include ways to celebrate educators, colleagues, and students in new ways, ensuring safety whether celebrating in-person or digitally. Is your class, school, or district observing American Education week in new way this year?

In addition to the ideas shared by the NEA, feel free to be creative and find ways to express your gratitude. Other teachers can even be a great resource for ideas! Check out what folks are doing on social media in places like Pinterest.

Other Options

Many organizations nationwide take part in American Education Week. Check out information and resources from participating groups like the Pennsylvania State Education Association, Georgia Association of Educators, and Missouri NEA.

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Coding/Computer ScienceContent AreasCybersecurityDigital LiteracyGood TeachingGoogle Tips and Tricks

Tips, Tricks, and Tech Tidbits: Thanksgiving Resources, Names, Templates, and More

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

I’m back with even more cool websites, neat ideas, and other ed tech innovations in this blog. If you missed the previous six, be sure to search our blog site for them. They are packed with tools to use immediately.

Thanksgiving Resources

Julie Smith offers a writing activity called Turkey Texts that can be completed in PowerPoint or Google Slides. Students create a text message conversation between a turkey and any person or character of their choice. Two different templates are provided: five texting bubbles or six texting bubbles. Whichever is chosen, students will have to plan out their conversation to fit the pertinent information in.

There is also a great Scratch coding lesson called Hide the Turkey! The lesson is simple enough for beginner coders, but also provides some growth room for those already very familiar with the language.

The Importance of Saying Students’ Names

tips and tricks

Recent research has shown that hearing our own name makes our brains ecstatic and causes some parts of the brain to light up. But this only happens when we hear our own name, not any other name. This shows how important it is for teachers to say their students’ names as often as we can and to make sure that we are pronouncing them correctly when we do say them.

Word Time Traveler

Take your high school students on a trip through time as they try to guess when a particular word first began to be used. Merriam-Webster offers this free website that shows the new English words and what year they first appeared. The information is kept all the way back to before the 12th century. An easy activity to get them started with this is to ask them what new words they think appeared this year (2020).

Greeting Card Time

The amazing Jennifer Wagner has, for over a decade, run a free world-wide activity called the Holiday Card Project. Students create their own holiday card around a theme. The project is open to all PreK-6th grade classes. If you have older students who would enjoy this activity (and who wouldn’t?), then you can offer the same activity yourself for your classes, your campus, or your district.

More Google Slides Templates

You can never have enough templates, and these, designed specifically for teachers, are fantastic. There are 25 of them to freely download from alphabet learning games to breakout rooms, Harry Potter themes to letter writing slides. You’re bound to find some you can’t live without.

If you’d like to jazz up your teaching (or faculty meetings) with some fun sounds, check out the Teacher Soundboard. Twenty different short sound effects are already set up for you on this Google Slide, all ready to be used.

For those doing station rotations, here’s a very nice template created by Stephanie DeMichele. It can be downloaded for either Google Slides or PowerPoint and includes a spot where you can add an audio message to your students.

tips and tricks

Creating Groups in Zoom

The ability to have students break out into small groups for collaboration or discussion is one of the many fabulous things about using Zoom. But creating those rooms can be difficult. Here are some easy-to-understand directions for intentionally creating groups quickly.

News Literacy Practice

Teaching students (and adults) to be able to tell fact from fiction is critical these days. Checkology – The News Literacy Project helps you do just that. The project offers several resources and services for educators, including an online learning platform, a free weekly newsletter, professional development opportunities, a variety of classroom materials, and more. It’s free for educators and students, but does require that the teacher create a free account.

How Safe Is Your Password?

The graphic below shows how long it will take for a hacker to crack your password and what you can do to make it stronger. This is also good to share with your older students.

tips and tricks

How Technology Supports Relationships Between Teachers and Students

This article by Kevin Baird has some incredibly important points to make about how technology can be used to build and support relationships between teachers and their students. As he says, “Researcher John Hattie’s work into Visible Learning found that combined teacher self-confidence and student self-confidence are among the most critical factors for learning. ” What helps to create that is when teachers are fluent in the use of a focused technology tool such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom or Google Classroom. Be sure to read the article to see how you can implement this in your classroom.

I’ll be back in another week or so with more tips and tricks. See you then!

More Thanksgiving Resources

Ready-to-Use Thanksgiving Resources

Give Thanks with Google Forms

Gratitude Activities for You and Your Students

Native American Heritage Day

Gratitude Towers for Social-Emotional Learning

The Gobble Gobble Breakout

Thanksgiving Digital Resources

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podcastle AI
Content AreasESL/ELLGood Teaching

Learning on the Go with Podcastle AI

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

It is easy to create assignments for students that involve a lot of text. And, unless it is a reading comprehension or fluency assignment, your main goal is that they learn from the text. But, as we all too often know, several problems can happen to disrupt the learning: A student may struggle to stay focused long enough to read the article, another student may have trouble decoding some of the words correctly causing confusion and lower comprehension, and another student may find that silent reading isn’t as engaging.

Unfortunately, all these problems can occur on the same assignment with multiple students in the class. One easy solution to consider is using a free tool such as Podcastle AI.

Text with a Voice

Podcastle AI renders the page by converting text news stories and articles into podcasts. Before you dismiss this tool because it uses a computer-generated voice (your choice of male or female), give it a try; the machine learning algorithm actually makes a pretty naturally sounding voice. The other nice thing about Podcastle AI is that it is free – not “freemium,” but free! So, when you assign a blog post, article, or web page for your students to read, consider generating an MP3 file to go along with it.

Let’s walk through the steps in creating a podcast to an article that you might use with your students.

Getting Started with Podcastle AI

Begin by creating a free account. Go to http://podcastle.ai and click on the LOG IN link. You have the option of using Facebook, Google, or email to create your account. Once your account is created, you are ready to go. And believe it or not, that was the hardest step! For extra convenience, consider adding the Chrome extension.

Let’s find an article to share with our students. A site I enjoy sharing is TweenTribune. Sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute, TweenTribune is a great site for finding articles, each written in four different lexiles. I encourage your to consider creating a free teacher account for additional features and benefits. TweenTribune, on their FAQ page, describes themselves as follows:

…a free online educational service offered by the Smithsonian for use by K-12 grade Teachers and students. TTribune consists of daily news sites for kids, tweens, and teens, and includes text, photos, graphics, and audio and/or video materials prepared by the Smithsonian and others about current events, history, art, culture and science. TTribune also includes lessons, instructional and assessment tools, and opportunities for the registered users to communicate with other participants. TTribune is a moderated comment sharing community where registered Teachers can assign educational content (like news stories) to students and the students using a screen name have the ability to create comments which, if approved by their Teacher, are then published either to the other students within the Teacher’s TTribune classroom page, or publicly on TTribune.

Making the Conversion

We’ll use the article titled “Would you eat soup made from crickets?” and the Podcastle AI Chrome extension. Once we are on the website we want to convert to a podcast, we click on the Podcastle AI extension. The box shown below should appear. If it has a green bar at the bottom of the box labeled “CONVERT TO PODCAST,” click on the green bar. Select whether you want a male or female voice by clicking on the face icon and selecting the other option.

While listening to the page, you can adjust the speed of the audio playback. If you download the audio, it will be rendered as male or female as indicated, but at the normal speed.

podcastle AI

Troubleshooting

If you find a website you want to convert, but you get a message from Podcastle AI that it isn’t able to convert the page for you, you have two options.

The first option is to use the Clearly Chrome extension. With just a click, you can create a distraction-free page. Now try clicking the Podcastle AI extension. This worked for me in various instances when the page wasn’t able to convert for some reason.

The second option is to click on Send This Link in the message to share the URL with Podcastle AI so the company can tweak the tool to work with the website. If you are just using a different website here and there, using the first option may be your best route. If you find that you are using a single website for a lot of content that you want to convert, you might consider sharing with the the Podcastle AI folks and see if they can help make it convert-able.

Some Examples

Here is an example of several pages that have been converted to a podcast. Click on the page title to view the page and the audio link to hear it converted by Podcastle AI. Instead of sharing an MP3 file, the audio file links below allow you to listen online and adjust the speed as well as the voice (male or female).

Putting Podcastle AI to Use

How can this be used for your students? Here are just a few ideas…

Math Integration
Share articles about best practices for teaching mathematics for teachers to listen to on the go. For example, Evidence-Based Math Instruction: What You Need to Know can be shared as an online file they can adjust and listen to. And, if they want to download and listen offline as an MP3, they can just click the download link.

ELA Integration
When your students are reading chapter books, look for a web page that has the chapter on it. If you can find the chapter as a PDF, then you can copy and paste the text as a page of a Google Site you created for the book. You can then use Podcastle AI to create a podcast for the page. In Google Site, select Embed and choose Insert from URL. You can view an example with Where the Red Fern Grows (chapter 1).

Social Studies Integration
If you have an article that you’ve shared with your students about a current event (such as an article from DOGO News, Time, Positive News, or BBC US and Canada News), go ahead and create a link for them to listen to the article as well. Remember, if the article isn’t able to convert, try using the Clearly extension trick mentioned earlier.

Science Integration
When creating a hyperdoc for students about a science topic that you are studying, check to see if you can convert the various sites you want your students to read as podcasts. Giving students the option to read and/or listen may assist them in comprehension and motivation.

While there are several text-to-speech convertors available, I think you will find a lot of benefits in using Podcastle AI’s features to assist your students in learning on the go. Whether it is converting a page to an MP3 that can be listened to offline or sharing a link to the audio for online listening, your students are sure to appreciate the ability to choose.

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Good Teaching

Election Day Resources for 2020

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Major civic events, like an election, can be useful ways to integrate not just lessons on citizenship, but also a broad array of social studies, math, and even science topics. Elections are a great way to explore maps, charts, graphs, and other statistics skills. 

Besides that, presidential elections are always subjects of intense discussion, and this year is no different. Students are likely curious about the candidates, how the election is intended to work, and what the outcomes of a presidential election can be. Educators looking to incorporate the 2020 elections (and some free digital resources) into their classrooms need look no further. 

Elections and Education

It is broadly understood that an educated populace is vital to produce a healthy society, especially in societies which govern themselves collectively. W.E.B. Du Bois, the African American sociologist, historian, and activist whose life began during Reconstruction and ended at the cusp of the civil rights movement, described the importance of an educated electorate in his 1920 essay, “Of The Ruling of Men.”

We say easily, for instance, “The ignorant ought not to vote.” We would say, “No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government,” and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it. Or, in other words, education is not a prerequisite to political control — political control is the cause of popular education.

“Of The Ruling of Men” by W.E.B. Du Bois, Ch. VI in Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1920) http://www.webdubois.org/lectures/DuBois;OfTheRulingOfMen.html

A Few Leading Candidates

Civic organizations, nonprofits, and individual educators have all developed resources, lesson plans, activities, and discussion topics that can help you explore elections in school, all while encouraging civic engagement and thoughtful discussion of real-world issues.

Check out these resources from Teacher Planet, ReadWriteThink, Teacher Vision, and We Are Teachers. These links include coloring pages, clip art, lessons, and more to help you build election-themed lessons at multiple grade levels. 

Going Down the Ballot

A number of other online resources are available to help you augment your teaching with rich and detailed information, tools, and lessons. 

Facing History has gathered several thoughtful resources, including discussion ideas, guides, even classroom routines, and workshops and webinars meant to help educators understand the complexities of politics, and help them translate that understanding to students. 

Scholastic offers discussions, lesson plans, and book lists for students for grades 5–12.

Education World has collected a special theme page around primaries, voting, and elections. This collection includes 10 different lesson plans, along with activities and “completely editable templates to track the issues of this election and the results.” You can also explore their list of related articles, links, and more.

The Election Collection from PBS includes the Electoral Decoder activity, in which students can explore all U.S. presidential elections in history, as well as the nationwide Let’s Talk about Election 2020 challenge in which middle and high school students can record audio or video commentaries on the issues of this year’s election.

The Politics and Public Policy lesson plan from iCivics is an entire unit designed to teach democratic decision making and the ins and outs of American politics. You can dive into their Election Headquarters page, complete with featured resources, many games, lesson plans, and more. 

The National Archives and Records Administration offers a long list of resources that can help students (and educators) understand the workings of America’s unique electoral college.  

Delve into a number of topics about voting with the Center for Civic Education’s five different, resource-rich lesson plans, designed for all learners, from elementary to high school.

Finally, Teaching Tolerance has put together a lengthy trove of activities, sites, and other resources focused on voting and elections. This collection includes a focus on diversity, civic activity, and cooperation. 

Related Readings from TechNotes

Photo by Element5 Digital from Pexels

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Educational TrendsESL/ELLGood Teaching

Remote Learning Strategy #3: Three More

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

In our Remote Learning Strategies series so far, we’ve explored two powerful strategies. Those strategies included classroom discussion and summarization. In this blog entry, we’ll review three more strategies that teachers should use. Ready for a whirlwind review of evidence-based strategies?

Strategy #3: Teacher Credibility

“One high-effect size instructional strategy would be teacher credibility,” says a teacher. She points out that understanding what she is teaching garners trust. Students respect her more when they understand what she is teaching and why. Of course, knowing the research about how to teach is important. To convey her confidence, she relies on screencasting (e.g. Screencastify).

Did You Know?

You can explore teacher credibility, along with other core strategies, via the TCEA self-paced, online course. The course Strategies That Work*: Core Components* explores evidence-based strategies and how to use them in the classroom and is now available.

When you think of teacher credibility, know that it is about perception. Teachers convey competence, trustworthiness, and caring. Students have to be answer affirmatively when they ask themselves, “Is this someone I can turn to?” (Source: Visible Learning Meta X database).

How do you influence student perception? One way might be to meet these three criteria:

  • Show up on time
  • Be prepared to teach
  • Have a thorough understanding of the content and be able to explain why learning it is important

Technology can assist some teachers in appearing as experts. For an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher focused on phonics, a digital platform such as ESL Games works well. When I first saw the website, I was a bit worried because it looked like it was just games focused on pronouncing words and learning vocabulary. Then I realized I had a bit of “old research” stuck in my head that needed replacing.

As a third grade student, I had learned phonics growing up as a second language learner. As a teacher in training, my professors denied the efficacy of phonics. Yet, it turns out they were wrong.

Reading comprehension is the product of two things. First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she sounded out.

Many educators don’t know this.

That’s because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools. Nor has it made it into many schools of education (Source: At A Loss for Words). More reading on vocabulary.

Can a credible teacher admit they are wrong? I’d like to think so. This next strategy taps into several other evidence-based strategies. Lori Oczkus (@LoriOczkus) terms these strategies as the “Fab Four” in her book Reciprocal Teaching At Work. John Hattie writes the foreword.

teacher credibility

Strategy #4: Reciprocal Teaching

“One high-effect size instructional strategy is reciprocal teaching,” says one educator. She goes on to say:

I love this one and I am learning more about this. The tool to help with it is Seesaw as you can see how they are processing and understanding of your teaching.

Reciprocal teaching aims at improving reading comprehension across all subject areas. It does this through the use of four strategies, including:

  • Summarizing
  • Questioning
  • Clarifying
  • Predicting

The teacher and students take turns leading dialogue about the text or media in question. They ask questions geared toward the role a person has assumed. One teacher relies on Zoom to engage in active monitoring of students’ use of the strategies.

Consider how this teacher uses Zoom:

Incorporating active monitoring by having students show me their work during ZOOM! I also love using the chat as a way for students to answer intro questions!

Other teachers rely on NearPod. They share informational text so that students have summaries and questions. Then, students make their own clarification statements and predict how something will work. “NearPod allows me to see all students working. I can provide instantaneous feedback as necessary.”

A final approach involves students using reciprocal teaching via Google Slides. “Do this when you use an organizer via a Google Slide.” She goes on to explain the directions in this way:

  • First, divide students into break out rooms.
  • Second, allow students to discuss and complete their respective roles in the team.

Reciprocal teaching has proven effective for K-12 and adult learners in my experience. Yet, it is a deep learning strategy for when deeper learning of already mastered basic concepts is needed. When introducing students to brand new information, consider using the jigsaw approach instead. Let’s explore that next.

Strategy #5: The Jigsaw Method

Explored in detail in other blog entries, this surface learning strategy is great at introducing new information. The Visible Learning Meta X database describes it in this way:

The Jigsaw instructional method is a cooperative approach to learning originally developed by Elliot Aronson. Following this method, a teacher introduces a main topic and several subtopics.

Jigsaw students are broken into “home groups”, and each member of the home group is assigned a subtopic. Then, students form expert groups to study their assigned subtopic through research and discussion.

After the students have mastered the subtopic in question, they return to their home group to report on their findings. At the conclusion of the exercise, each home group member has learned about each subtopic from a member of the relevant expert group or through their own investigation with an expert group.

One way that teachers are using jigsaw in remote learning involves Google Slides. This approach lends itself for use in the regular or hybrid classroom as well.

To use the jigsaw method with Google Slides, assign expert groups a collaborative slide deck. Each student adds their info to the expert group slide. Comments within the slide deck make up the final presentation slide(s). At the end, each expert group member copies the slide/s to the “table group” slide deck. They include any explanation in the slide comments or as an embedded video.

Aside from Google Slides, Google Classroom was also mentioned. “I love the idea of using Jigsaw in the classroom.” That teacher describes it in this way:

Teachers can divide roles and create prompts in Google Docs. Then they can be assigned in Google Classroom. Teachers can later have students work as a whole by having them collaborate on a final group Doc.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll explore more ways that teachers are matching up digital tools with high-effect size strategies. Stay tuned!

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