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Adobe Khan+Create Activities

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Did you know that blending media into text has a powerful impact on student learning? In this blog entry, we’ll explore an offering that combines Khan Academy with Adobe.

The Modality Effect

John Hattie via the VisibleLearningMetaX database defines this instructional strategy like this:

The modality effect refers to how learner performance depends on the presentation mode. That is, how you present studied item with other media aside from text. When you present combine text and media, you improve learning. The media can be auditory with graphs, diagrams, or animations.

The effect size is d > 0.55, which accelerates student growth in one school year (standard growth is d = 0.40). That’s what makes Adobe’s Khan+Create Activities so exciting.

adobe activities

Introducing Adobe’s “Khan+Create” Activities

These free activities build on the non-profit Khan Academy’s work with free educational videos. Adobe’s effort seeks to:

  • Extend meaningful instruction and practice Khan offers today
  • Use Adobe’s creative toolkit to assist students to create and communicate
  • Model the use of writing, images, video, audio, animation, and design
  • Assist students to show deeper levels of knowledge, critical thinking, communication, and creativity.
  • Enable opportunities for peer- and teacher-feedback
  • Make digital creative work easy to share and make collaborative

Adobe partnered with classroom teachers to create activities that they call “Khan+Create.” These activities present students with Khan Academy materials that are paired with guided activities that allow students to create. Students have the opportunity to express themselves and explore new subjects.

adobe activities

Using the Activities

Adobe suggests that you keep the following information in mind. Activities are:

  • Available for free and enjoy Creative Commons licensing
  • Appear as editable Google docs
  • Present as activities anyone can take, copy, and adapt to suit their own context, needs, and goals
  • Are easy to customize for purposes to align to the content

Teachers will need to use cross-platform tools like Adobe Spark. Remember, you can get Adobe Spark for free as an educator.

Let’s take a quick look at the activities, which fall into three categories:

  • Elementary School
  • Middle and High School
  • Higher Education

Activities at the elementary level are a nice mix of language arts, math, and social studies. Middle and high school focus on several subjects, including language arts, science, math, social studies, careers, and art history. Higher education activities fall into the careers space in some way or another.

adobe activities

Elementary School Activities

You can find a list of activities online, but here are a few that jumped out at me:

Let’s take a closer look at one of them.

Activity Example: Tell a Story with Memory and Perspective

This activity gets students to:

Tell a story from memory answering the big question: How can you tell a story with pictures and words?

The activity starts with a Khan Academy video. The goal is to scaffold students creating a story from memory. At the end, they respond to reflection questions and end up in an activity.

Excerpt of the Activity

Create a Spark Post that answers the following questions:

  • In one sentence: How do you describe your memory?
  • In one sentence: Why do you think you remember it so well?
  • In one sentence: What feelings does it bring up?
  • Look at the colors in the image above. Does your memory trigger colors? If so, what colors?

*Extension: If you want to go further, you can add more description!

Take a look at this student sample if you want some inspiration. Use the tutorial to guide you if you are new to Spark Post.

The Google Doc offers a step-by-step guide for every aspect of the lesson.

More to Learn and Do

As you might imagine, there are many more activities for middle and high school. Take a moment to explore these. Adobe’s “Khan+Create” makes it easy to get started with Adobe Spark and Google Docs-based activities are adaptable for G Suite EDU schools.

This article was updated with new content on October 19, 2021.

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Good TeachingWeb 2.0 Tool

Create Interactive Lessons with Deck•Toys

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Teaching anything online can be a challenge. How to make static resources and texts become interactive, able to be manipulated, and provide hands-on learning is at the heart of the problem. We learn because we interact with life around us. We engage when we touch and partake of the movable feast. How do you do that when so much of what we must learn is static? That’s where tools like Deck•Toys come in.

Before we jump into  Deck•Toys, let’s take a moment to revisit the value of interactivity in learning.

Deck•Toys

Valuing Interactivity

How do we know that interactive learning has value? Consider John Hattie’s assessment of classroom practices:

“There is no fixed recipe for ensuring that teaching has the maximum possible effect on student learning, and no set of principles apply to all learning for all students. But there are practices that we know are effective and many practices that we know are not.”

Hattie concludes that if teachers are using practices that have a less than 0.40 effect, then it “may mean that teachers need to modify or dramatically change their theories of action.” (Source)

New technologies lack the wealth of a long history of research into their effectiveness. For that reason, we must ask what is the cost of innovation? Change that does not speed up student growth is a time waster. Time is one of our most precious resources as teachers and learners.

Deck•Toys

When we seek to value interactive learning lessons, we must ask the question:

Do interactive lessons add value to the learning experience? That is, do they accelerate student growth?

Without direct research on a technology that creates interactivity, we can’t say. What we can do is place strategies that work in new technologies. Think of it as putting jewels into a crown. The jewels are the proven strategies; the crown is the technology. By doing so, we get both innovative value and improved functionality.

For Deck•Toys, one strategy I see that would work well is spaced vs massed practice (effect size of 0.65). Here’s what Visible Learning Meta X database has to say about it:

Students are better able to commit information to memory. This happens when they study that information in spaced (or distributed) intervals. Studying “massed” interval(s) does not work as well as spaced.

You can see the effect of research on simple topics like multiplication and spelling:

To test the hypothesis that expanded practice is superior to massed practice in a classroom situation, a test series with expanded intervals to teach multiplication facts and spelling lists to 44 Grade 3 students, formed into massed and expanded groups based on their spelling and mathematical abilities, was conducted.

Results show that, for multiplication facts, retention in the expanded series condition was almost twice that in the massed series condition; for spelling lists, a significant difference in the same direction was also obtained. These differences were obtained regardless of the level of ability of the Ss.

It is suggested that an expanded test series not only engenders effective retention but also maintains a feeling of success throughout (Source).

Studying information over shorter sessions in a longer period of time yields benefits. How can we structure student learning with a variety of interactive, distributed learning? The answer might be Deck•Toys.

Introducing Deck•Toys

Deck•Toys, which has an active Facebook group, makes it easy to space out learning. What’s more, the availability of structuring tools allows you use existing content. Notice the learning path of this mathematics activity:

Deck•Toys

You can see a variety of activities that can cover the same content, making it more interactive. Students begin with the Lesson and then proceed down a learning path that presents activities such as:

  • Sort Me
  • Match
  • Choose Your Path
  • Lines
  • Word Search
  • Choices
  • Crossword
  • Maze

As an example, under the Sort Me activity, students encounter an activity that requires them to sort 2D and 3D shapes into appropriate boxes. They do this through click-and-drag.

Deck•Toys

After completing the activities, they end up at the Finish line and receive quick feedback on their results. If students drag a 3D shape into a 2D box, Deck•Toys moves it to the correct location. The results screen shows how many they got right or wrong.

Deck•Toys

Deck•Toys works with Google Classroom. Students can login with their Google account or as a guest. It supports tracking of student progress as well.

Deck•Toys

You can see student names in blue next to each activity.

Types of Activities

Wondering what types of activities Deck•Toys enjoys? It has two major sets. The first is Slide Apps. Use it to get real-time responses from students. You can even put your own worksheets into it.

The second type of activity is Study Set Apps.

Again, one of the key ideas is that Deck•Toys makes it easy to take existing information and make it interactive. Now,  Deck•Toys also includes classroom tools, such as the ones shown below. I’ve adapted explanations from the website with a few edits.

  • Report. The Report app is where you can view and grade all student responses in a single view.
  • Lock Features. This includes two types of locks. Activity Lock provides an obstacle or extra challenge for the student to complete. They must do this before moving on to the next activity. The second type of lock is Lock in Slide. The Lock app in Slide App gets student’s answer to more questions in different modes.
  • Treasure Key Lock. Treasure Key lock requires students to collect a Treasure Key with a matching Key ID to unlock the lock. Watch the video tutorial.
  • Team. This allows you to assign students to up to four different colored teams. The goal is to turn your classroom into a positive competitive environment.

Feeling overwhelmed by everything  Deck•Toys can do? Be sure to explore their Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions.

Deck•Toys Examples

There are a lot of examples of how you can use Deck•Toys across different. What are some of the ways you imagine yourself designing interactive learning experiences with your students?

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hands in the center, together
Good Teaching

Make It Relevant: The Collaborator ISTE Standard

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

In classrooms today, the goal remains learning how to solve problems together. Authentic learning often involves learners in joint problem solving. We work together towards a goal, each of us knowing what part we play to resolve the issue(s). How do you do set educators up for success in this endeavor? In this blog entry, we’ll explore several approaches. Before we do that, let’s step back and ask ourselves, What is authentic learning?

ISTE Standards for Educators: Collaborator

To better understand what authentic learning is, let’s take a look at it through the lens of the ISTE Standards, a way to do three things:

  • Improve practice
  • Discover and share resources and ideas
  • Solve problems

When you look at the four indicators, you realize that the last action is quite important to the standard. Here are the four indicators:

4a: Dedicate planning time to collaborate with colleagues to create authentic learning experiences that leverage technology.

4b: Collaborate and co-learn with students to discover and use new digital resources and diagnose and troubleshoot technology issues.

4c: Use collaborative tools to expand students’ authentic, real-world learning experiences by engaging virtually with experts, teams and students, locally and globally.

4d: Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.

As you can see, two of the indicators refer to “authentic learning experiences.” Each enjoys the benefit of real-world problem-solving. When you unpack the vocabulary, you see that each indicator expands on the other:

  • Authentic learning (4a): Activities based on student’s real world experiences or current issues. These use real data and seek to solve real-life problems.
  • Authentic, real-world learning experiences (4c). This involves solving local and global real world problems. It could involve design thinking as well.

This presents tremendous opportunities for situating student learning in real-world problem-solving scenarios. How do you do that? Let’s review the steps that lead to authentic learning experiences with technology.

Step #1: Engage with a Real-World Problem

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” says Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, X. Many of us know that real-world problems, a la 5E Model’s Engage stage, help to focus learners. The problem engages students when it is relevant to them. Let’s review what a real-world problem should look like:

The PBL challenge is one that captures students’ attention. It stimulates their thinking, and assists them in accessing prior knowledge.  (Source: 5E Model + Technology)

Note the importance of prior knowledge. (We’ll explore prior knowledge in Step #2 due to its importance.) In crafting a real-world problem, I would be quick to rely on relevant life issues and challenges.

A real-world problem must engage students in the inquiry process. You can present news or troubling information from a primary source. Students can derive a problem from that information. Or you as the teacher can craft a problem narrative/engagement scenario. You can show a video, or resource, that engages students. The next step is critical because it engages students in identifying what they don’t know. One way to do this is to rely on a concept map about the following areas:

  • What do I know?
  • What do I need to know?
  • What questions do I have about what I know or don’t know?

This assists students in seeing the bigger picture. It’s not enough to depend on this. You, as the teacher, as well as experts on the problem, must step in.

Step #2: Build Background Knowledge

A fascinating tidbit about problem-based learning (PBL): When you allow students to do all the work of knowledge gathering, it’s not very effective. In fact, Dr. John Hattie reports it has an effect size of 0.35. This is less than the 0.40 hinge point for a normal year’s growth in a classroom. This makes all the work for PBL, “Meh, not worth it.” But wait; before you give up, keep reading.

Note how Quadrant D learning is focused on real-world, unpredictable situations. That is where problem-solving teaching must take students. But they can only go AFTER they have learned content and skills needed to solve it.

You can use several strategies to speed up student growth in a particular area. That is, to build prior knowledge, you can use strategies proven to work. When you do this, and then introduce students, PBL’s effect size increases. I like to think of PBL introduced at surface learning stage as a beginning Pokemon. Use it too soon, students fail. Use it after evolving, you get powerful results.

Image Source: YA Web Design

If you spend some time building knowledge capacity in your students, PBL evolves. It evolves from PBL to a more effective, transfer learning strategy. The evolved PBL strategy is problem-solving teaching. This strategy enjoys a respectable 0.68 effect size.

This evolved PBL appears after you have introduced content (a.k.a. surface learning). It appears after deep learning, when students have gone beyond knowledge conceptualization. It’s only when students are ready to engage in transfer learning that PBL works.

The Visible Learning Meta X database defines it in this way:

Problem-solving involves learning to solve a problem that one does not already know how to solve. It can also involve teaching specific, subject-area focused strategies for attempting to solve such problems.

As you can see, this is like ISTE’s expectation in the Collaboration standard. The focus is on real-world problems, authentic learning, and skill-building.

Mapping Learning Growth via Reflection

You must give students the opportunity to build up background knowledge. How do you do that? Support your students in making their own concept map. They can begin with questions, then track their growing understanding. This means that their concept map will change over time. It’s not a “make one and then forget it” situation.

You might ask students, “What would you add to or how would you change your map?” Ask them to revise their concept map as part of their reflection time. To build background knowledge, rely on one of the surface learning strategies. Need some ideas of how to get started? Check this list.

Step #3: Present the Problem

The key concept behind the problem-solving teaching strategy is that of novelty, presenting students with a problem they have not encountered before. It is novel, requiring them to apply their newfound knowledge and skills. In a skill-building scenario, it could be to use design thinking process. Or encouraging students to apply their knowledge of an engineering design process. Students can begin to explore the problem from various stakeholder roles. One way to focus them on solution development is to ask, “What will success look like?” Have them put the criteria they use for success into a rubric.

As you embark on a PBL unit, align it to the ISTE Standards for Educators’ Collaborator aspect. It will focus your work on authentic learning and real-world problem-solving. What’s more, make sure that you use surface learning strategies first. These will build students’ background knowledge. Then, they can apply their knowledge to a new problem. In this way, you can accelerate student growth.

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spoken feedback
Good TeachingGoogle Tips and Tricks

Crafting Powerful Spoken Feedback in Google Workspace for Education

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

“I have been able to give personal feedback on all 85 of my kids’ work today in under 90 minutes,” says Karen Ervin. “They can hear the tone of my voice!”

“Feedback is the most powerful single modification that enhances achievement. The simplest prescription for improving education must be dollops of feedback,” says John Hattie

Our feedback efforts have relied on face-to-face instruction. What happens in remote teaching and learning situations? The inability to emote while giving feedback is frustrating. In this blog entry, we’ll discuss a new solution for voice feedback in G Suite EDU’s products. Those products include Google Docs, Google Classroom, Slides, and Sheets.

spoken feedbackAs you may know, John Hattie has something to say about the power of feedback.

Feedback’s effect size ranges from 0.62 in the most up-to-date meta-analyses at Visible Learning Meta X to 0.72 as shown in John Hattie’s 2009 book, Visible Learning. Of course, anything greater than 0.40 accelerates student growth in one school year.

Before we jump into digital tools, let’s pause and ask an important question: How do we ensure learners receive the feedback necessary to grow?

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

Defining Feedback

Feedback in the classroom can be defined as “information allowing a learner to reduce the gap between what is evident currently and what could or should be the case.” How does YOUR feedback assist learners in getting from one level of learning to the next?

Feedback strategies are critical to learn. We have to know how to offer feedback for two main reasons:

  • Accelerate student learning
  • Encourage student ownership of their learning

There is ample research to support Hattie’s assertions regarding feedback. Let’s review some of it.

What the Research Says

Feedback does affect students’ perceptions, speed, and motivation of learning. For example:

  • Feedback can have a significant impact on learning, but this impact can be positive or negative depending on the type, delivery, and timing of the feedback. (Hattie and Timperley, 2007)
  • Effective feedback doubles the speed of learning. (Dylan William)
  • Feedback affects students’ motivation to learn and their perceptions about their intelligence and their ability to learn. (Black and Wiliam 1998, Butler, 1988)
  • Descriptive feedback is the most powerful tool for improving student learning. (John Hattie)

There is feedback that does not work. Failed feedback is evaluative (e.g. percentage marks, letter grades). It also fails when it is too frequent. It is ineffective when it focuses on the learner (including praise) rather than on the learner’s work. We know that most teacher feedback is presented to groups. Students think that such group feedback is seldom about them as an individual. Thus, their perception is that they get little feedback from their teacher.

If your feedback for students has been about praise or student focused, how do you shift to more effective feedback?

Power of Feedback: Rays of Sunshine
Words cannot express the appreciation that I have in all you have given to each parent. I am greatly appreciative of your effortless support, constant feedback, communication and making remote learning fun for [student name] and his classmates. He misses you and sends many hugs and kisses. You made his days rays of sunshine with your positive comments on all of his assignments. (Source: Note to teacher from parent during remote learning (April, 2020))

What Feedback Is

“What’s the most effective thing that comes out of my mouth that can help a student get from one level to the next and be successful?” Use that question as a guide to craft effective feedback. A teacher providing feedback is effective when two conditions are met:

  • When the teacher shares specific learning goals
  • When the teacher discusses success criteria with students

Feedback works when:

  • Students learn and their work improves.
  • Students become more motivated. They believe they can learn, they want to learn, and they take more control over their own learning.
  • Your classroom becomes a safe space where feedback is valued and productive.

We can provide feedback about the goals, progress, and next steps in student learning. Goals focus on the target learning objectives, include success criteria, and start where students are. Progress is made relevant to a standard, prior performance, or success/failure on a specific part of a task. Next steps center around enhanced challenges and improve self-regulation over the learning process. And next steps focus on different strategies and processes to address the task. The goal is to achieve a deeper conceptual understanding.

“Teachers, being nice people, have a lot of praise for kids who struggle. The problem with praise is that it has zero-to-negative impact on improving the task or the work. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t praise kids, because that’s the essence of a lot of relationships. But you should separate it, so when you are talking about the work, you should be talking about the work, not the person.” -John Hattie

You may find this chart useful in differentiating types of feedback. Remember, focus on task, process, and self-regulation. Use praise where it’s most effective to build relationships with students, not spur their work.

spoken feedback

Adapted from David Perkins (2003) The Ladder of Feedback and John Hattie (2014) The Power of Feedback. You can also:
Get Your Own Copy in Google Slides format

How to Structure Feedback

Wondering how to structure your feedback? Follow these guidelines:

  • Make sure the feedback is factual, objective, and safe.
  • Prioritize feedback to address the most important needs first.
  • Limit the feedback to two to three specific recommendations linked to the learning goal(s).
  • Ask a student to tell you what he thinks you are trying to say to him.
  • Provide elaborated feedback (describing the what, how, why) in manageable units (don’t overload).
  • “In light of what I have provided you, what would you best do next?”

Now that we’ve revisited key concepts of feedback, what digital tool could we use to provide it?

Note: Here are some specific links you may want to review to learn more about feedback.

Digital Audio/Annotation Tools for Spoken Feedback

One of the specific challenges we face during remote teaching is providing spoken feedback to students. We are able to record videos of student work and post them in Google Drive. This can become cumbersome for the teacher with 85 students. Tools like Microsoft OneNote and Seesaw allow for easy audio recordings so that teachers are able to leave their feedback. But how can we do the same in Google Workspace for Education?

Some digital tools you may be using now include the ones shown below. If you are not familiar with these, here’s a quick overview of each:

  • Kaizena: Makes it easy to save voice comments, embed explainer videos, track skills, and auto-complete rubrics.
  • Talk and Comment – Voice Notes anywhere:

spoken feedback

Time to welcome a newcomer to the spoken feedback scene.

Meet Mote for Voices Notes

A newcomer is the mote Chrome extension. It tries to make it easy for you to add voice note feedback for students. With mote, you can give spoken feedback within Google Docs, Google Classroom, Slides, and Sheets.

Mote describes its benefits in this way:

  • Create a voice note – click the mote icon in any Comment box
  • Edit your voice note transcript – click ‘Edit’ on any voice note card
  • View web page previews within Comment fields – just paste your URL
  • Easily add an emoji to your comments. For example, to give a thumbs up, just type :+1 (Source: Email, Will Jackson, mote)

This animated gif of mote’s new user tutorial provides a speedy summary of how to use it:

spoken feedback

Using mote is easy. Below, you’ll see what it looks like. The steps involve highlighting text, clicking the Add Comment button, then using mote to record your spoken feedback.

spoken feedback

Learning how to give feedback remains of paramount importance. Affect, as much as the content of your feedback, communicates emotion in many ways. Mote makes that easy.

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nonfiction
Content AreasGood Teaching

Nonfiction Media for Remote Learners

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

If you need more nonfiction content for your remote learning classroom, several online providers of nonfiction have made resources available for K-12 education. In this blog entry, we’ll explore a few high-effect-size instructional strategies that can enhance the use of nonfiction media sources.

Did You Know?

More than 85% of the reading and writing we do as adults is nonfiction. But most of the reading and writing in K–3 classrooms is fiction or personal narrative. Students competent in reading fiction are often not competent in reading nonfiction. Seventy-three percent of students read nonfiction three levels below fiction. That’s at least three Reading Recovery levels below. Students who were competent readers of nonfiction were ALSO competent in reading fiction. (Source).

The Structure of Nonfiction

What’s the structure of nonfiction content? If you haven’t asked yourself that question, you may be missing out on a key insight. Readers who understand the schema of a piece of writing are halfway to comprehending it. When you know the underlying structure of text, that assists your understanding and focuses student attention on key elements of the genre. It makes it easier for learners to expect what’s next. And, most important, it helps them track their own comprehension as they process media (source).

Flocabulary has a wonderful breakdown of text structures in this video:

  • Description
  • Sequence
  • Cause and Effect
  • Compare and Contrast
  • Problem and Solution

Here’s another way to look at it:

nonfiction

via Mrs. Odle’s Class

Nonfiction content structures make learning predictable. Once you know how nonfiction content is structured, you can better comprehend it.

To deepen comprehension, you can combine high-effect-size instructional strategies.

High-Effect-Size Instructional Strategies

Read the TCEA TechNotes blog? If yes, you know of our ongoing focus on the work of John Hattie. Hattie conducted meta-analyses of research on instructional strategies. Some strategies fall above what he characterized as the “hinge point,” or an effect size of 0.40. Strategies that speed up student growth in one year fall above the hinge point.

For example, the jigsaw approach (1.20) yields three years of growth in one year when used in a consistent way. Reciprocal teaching (0.74) yields almost two year’s growth in one year.

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

Picking a high-effect-size strategy is not enough. These strategies also fall into general categories that include “surface,” “deep,” and “transfer” learning.  You can introduce students to these strategies with text and then expand that to media.

Strategies That Support Surface Learning

Surface learning strategies build foundational knowledge. When you want students to gain deeper, conceptual understanding, rely on deep learning.

Strategies That Support Deep Learning

  • Reciprocal Teaching (0.74) strategy fosters deeper reading comprehension. Learn more and here’s a guide you can use.
  • Outlining and Summarizing (0.66) has students identify the main ideas. Then they put those ideas into their own words. The essential skill involves differentiating between main and supporting ideas. Read more.
  • Concept Mapping (0.64) has students doing the heavy lifting. That’s because they learn best when they are required to organize new information. They are the ones who have to make the connection between old and new information. Learn more.

Now that we’ve reviewed those strategies, let’s dig into media sources for nonfiction.

Nonfiction Media Sources

Need access to nonfiction media sources? You’ve come to the right place. Ask your students to create a concept map as they listen to an audio story from NPR or watch a documentary.

Source #1: Netflix Documentaries

In an April 2020, announcement, Netflix says you can now screen documentaries. While intended for classroom viewing, they have made a new option available which allows a select number of documentaries to be available via the Netflix US YouTube channel.

You can find a complete list online. Here are three that caught my eye:

  • Babies: A series that explores the first full year of life.
  • Chasing Coral: Follows marine biologists as they invent the first time-lapse camera to record bleaching events in real time.
  • Our Planet:Explores the natural world and comes from the creators of the award-winning series Planet Earth.

There are other documentaries available. Check them out.

Source #2: Open Culture

Need access to more than 250 documentaries? Look no further than Open Culture’s collection. They have a rich list of content you will need to review as an educator.

Again, a few of my selections with original text from Open Culture:

  • Conversations with Myself – Free – Alan Watts walks in the mountains. Talks about the limitations of technology and the problem of trying to keep track of an infinite universe. (1971)
  • Creative Process: Norman McLaren – Free – Explores Norman McLaren’s process of artistic creation. (1990)
  • Future Shock – Free – A short documentary based on a book written by futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. It’s narrated by Orson Welles. (1972)

Be sure to explore the extensive list.

Source #3: Top Documentary Films

A mind-boggling collection of documentary films are available online. Top Documentary Films offers a searchable index of websites.

My quick picks:

Knowing how to analyze the structure of content is important. Having those structures in mind, along with strategies that work, can impact student learning.

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meeting of people at a wooden desk
Leadership

Enhance Instructional Leadership with Digital Tools

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

What digital tools are available to help the school principal or administrator be more effective? After decades of research, we know what the principal’s primary role is to practice instructional leadership. That has the greatest effect on student learning. In this blog entry, we’ll explore digital tools that make that job easier.

Before we do that, let’s review some of the research.

What the Research Says: Instructional vs Transformational Leaders

The climate and culture of school mediate the principal’s impact on learning (Source). We know that different kinds of leadership are more effective than others. For example, Hattie’s research points out that transformational leadership differs from instructional leadership.

Reminder: John Hattie says that any instructional strategy has an impact on learning. The average impact on learning of any strategy is 0.40.  Anything greater than a 0.40 effect size accelerates student growth in a calendar year.

What are the effect sizes for these two types of leadership? Transformational leadership has an effect size of 0.11. Instructional leadership has an effect size of 0.42.

Activities associated with instructional leadership had a greater impact than those associated with transformational leadership” (Source).

What activities do researchers associate with instructional leadership?

  • Engaging in classroom observations
  • Interpreting test scores with teachers
  • Focusing on instructional issues
  • Ensuring a coordinated instructional program
  • Being highly visible
  • Communicating high academic standards
  • Ensuring class atmospheres are conducive to learning

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo has some specific suggestions as well in his book, Leverage Leadership. He offers seven levers that allow for consistent growth. We’ll explore some of his points in the next section below.

If a principal can adopt these behaviors that speed student growth, shouldn’t he? Researchers and reformers say, “Yes.” Many principals ask another question:

Are there digital tools that enhance these activities?

The answer to that question is also an affirmative.

Digital Tools Enhance Instructional Leadership

Let’s examine each of the activities. There have been a variety of digital tools shared that make these activities easier. I’m going to adjust Hattie’s wording a little to make it clearer, then share a potential digital tool. If you know of others, please drop them in the comments. That invitation is open to solution providers, as well.

Did You Know?

Sign up for one of our Google Certified Educator certifications. You’ll learn about more than Google Meet, as well as earn 12 CPE hours per course. Use these courses to get Google Educator certified. Find out more online.

While some educators are using Google or Microsoft Forms, there are others. Some of the problems with “home-made” solutions may include:

  • Tough to aggregate data across the school with a data dashboard solution (e.g. Domo, Google Data Studio)
  • Hard to get data in and out of the spreadsheet Forms saves data in for feedback purposes
  • Permissions and account management can be a problem when trying to keep data private

To that end, finding a dedicated solution is necessary. Let’s examine three activities of an instructional leader.

Activity #1: Engaging in Classroom Observations

Engaging in classroom observations can be stressful and tough. When done in the wrong way, it can engender resentment among teachers. This is often due to a lack of transparency in communications. There may be  a gap between expectation of what the teacher should do and what they actually do. That can result in stress for both the teacher and principal. While coaching for results can address this, the principal plays a critical role.

The principal can reduce resentment and confusion by conducting regular walkthroughs and adding more communication. (Note that classroom observations are not the same thing as appraisal walkthroughs.)

A few digital tools appear below. These can ease confidential communications while gathering critical data for campus-wide analysis. Two tools include:

  • Bullseye for Schools. This tool works to capture observations aligned to rubrics. It also allows you to capture videos and take notes on what is observed.
  • iWalkthrough Classroom Observation tool. This is a tool that works on your device of choice via a web browser. It allows you to collect three to five minutes of observation data, then analyze it. You can analyze a teacher’s work or aggregate across the campus, district, or nation.

Activity #2: Interpreting Test Scores with Teachers

“Do you have a data wall in your school?” This question is often asked among principals. Data walls in teacher planning areas focus staff on potential growth areas. These days, data walls are often electronic and appear in data dashboards. These dashboards have the potential to identify areas of growth. But, data walls may reflect interim assessments and may have a negative effect on students and staff. In fact, a Harvard study found that teachers often do not understand the underlying problems that block student growth. For example, in response to math problems, teachers “often proposed non-mathematical reasons for students’ failure” (Source). Then, teachers moved on. This suggests that the teachers studied lacked the depth in mathematics to understand collected data.

Focus on patterns in the data that suggest long-term strategy changes. Some tips:

  • Work through data together with a content expert (especially in dense content areas like math, science, reading)
  • Explore what implications it has for instruction
  • Ask what systematic checks for understanding could you put in place to ensure long-term student support
  • What’s the next student outcome you can support students in reaching? The next after that? Plan lessons to support that.

A big part of analysis is crafting a shared system of norms and strategies. You can use coaching and microteaching to encourage reflection needed. In Leverage Leadership, the author suggests the following:

  1. Share video clips of master teachers.
  2.  Have teachers discuss what they have seen in small groups before sharing with whole group.
  3.  Develop a specific set of norms or system that every teacher in every classroom will commit to implementing.
  4.  Teachers rehearse the system in pairs.
  5.  Teachers engage in a dress rehearsal, offering critiques for that work, with teachers acting as students.
  6.  By the time students arrive, every teacher knows exactly where s/he is supposed to be and exactly what he or she is supposed to be doing at all times.

Displaying a data dashboard may be more effective for big picture results. Learn more about data dashboards and warehouses in this blog entry.

Activity #3: Focusing on Instructional Issues

Focusing on instructional issues may best done with coaching tools. One way to focus on instruction in the classroom could involve micro-teaching. Micro-teaching enjoys an effect size of 0.88, making it quite effective. The Visible Learning Meta X database defines it in this way (edited):

A technique in which a teacher delivers a short, video-recorded lesson. The teacher and/or others analyze the lesson for improvement purposes.

There are many digital tools available to record teachers in action. Associating the video with a teacher’s record could involve a specific tool (e.g. Bullseye). To get the full effect Hattie references, you will have to do more than record a classroom. Fisher and Frey (2019) suggest the following:

  • Each video clip must be fuel discussion between a teacher and a colleague (observer).
  • The video must encourage the teacher, not the observer, to notice what they do and how what the teacher does impacts students’ learning.
  • The observer asks reflective question without stating what s/he thinks of the lesson. The observer’s job is to think with the teacher about what is in the video clip.

You can see an example via this link. What I notice is how reflective the teacher is about her teaching and student learning.

The best part of microteaching (see toolkit) involves giving and receiving constructive feedback. Participants do so with an open mind and align their comments to academic goals. Done right, it improves the teacher’s self-confidence in a safe space of mutual respect.

This confidence can inspire students to rely on the teacher more. This student-teacher relationship leads to greater teacher credibility. And, as you may know, teacher credibility has an effect size of 1.09. When all teachers become credible, you achieve collective teacher efficacy (1.39).

Collective Teacher Efficacy (1.39): The shared belief by a group of teachers that they have the skills necessary. And the belief that they can use these skills to have a positive impact on student outcomes.

In this blog entry, we took a look at three activities instructional leaders engage in. I hope each examination of an activity assisted your thinking about what it takes to be a leader who impacts student learning.

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Content AreasGood TeachingWriting

Note-Taking and Outlining: Five Digital Helpers

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Wish you had an easy way to annotate websites or research articles and then share them with others? Do you need to guide high school and/or college students in the area of note-taking? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog entry, I’ll feature a few digital tools that should come in handy for this purpose. At the end, I will share my recommendations.

Before we do that, let’s revisit the importance of note-taking and annotating content.

A Note-Taking Strategy That Works

Many educators are now familiar with the research that the act of handwriting your notes gets you results. Consider this quote from NPR’s interview with research study authors Daniel M. Oppenheimer and Pam A. Mueller. The authors sought to test how handwritten notes affect learning compared to notes taken using a computer or digital device.

“The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies had to be more selective. You can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”

The researchers noted the two types of note-taking and defined them in this way:

  • Generative: Summarizing, paraphrasing, concept-mapping characterize this approach.
  • Nongenerative: Verbatim copying describes this approach.

As you might imagine, the generative approach has a greater impact on learning. According to another study, researchers found that handwritten notes also engage your senses. As a result, the act of note-taking makes your brain more active. Learning improves because of your brain’s activity (Source).

Hattie’s Mindset

As you might imagine, John Hattie’s meta-analysis of note-taking research reveals something, too. That is, that note-taking has an effect size of .51, which accelerates student growth in one year. Remember that standard growth has an effect size of .40, so anything greater than .40 is beneficial.

While handwritten notes do much, it is the acts they force us to engage in that actually yield results. Those acts take place during generative note-taking and include:

As you can see, each of these activities has the potential to speed up student growth in one year. Two other strategies are also useful here. The first is outlining and summarizing (effect size of .66). Defined below, this .66 effect size strategy can be quite effective (edited for blog):

Identifying the main ideas and rendering them in one’s own words. The core skill is being able to distinguish between  main ideas and supporting ideas. Or, main ideas and examples

The second is spaced vs mass practice (effect size of .65) . Notes, outlines, and summaries allows us to remember information over time. We can refer to this strategy:

Students are better able to commit information to memory. This happens when they study that information in spaced (or distributed) intervals. Studying “massed” interval(s) does not work as well as spaced.

Studying information over shorter sessions in a longer period of time yields benefits. Given the value of notes, outlines, and summaries, we can revisit content again and again. Providing this information up front to students would help them.

Change That Adds Value

A change that adds value is one definition for “innovation.” In this case, the technology tools shown below are innovations. They not only ease post note-taking, but address the other strategies that work.

Technology enhances outlining and summarizing, making it easy to outline and annotate. The ability to revisit content is helpful here, as is how we interact with that content together.

Let’s explore some digital tools that can provide better support to students’ efforts with strategies that work.

Five Digital Tools

You may be familiar with some of these tools already or be exploring them for the first time. My goal in sharing them is that you do so with the strategies that work in mind. Share these with your students. I address age appropriateness in the descriptions.

outlining

Tool #1: Diigo

Diigo.com is a social bookmarking tool. While the social aspect of learning is important, Diigo does more. It lets you create digital outlines, bookmarks, and highlight websites. You can get a Chrome/Firefox extension, too.

annotating

Diigo makes it easy to annotate and add comments to web pages. You can share your annotations/comments with others and can also do the following:

  • Highlight critical features of text (essential text or text to NOT read)
  • Ask students to define words, terms, or concepts in their own words/language
  • Provide definitions of difficult/new terms
  • Mark up online text with comments, observations, and corrections
  • Add bookmarks for the students to interact with
  • Use the highlighting and sticky notes like a word processor’s Track Changes feature

I first started using Diigo in 2008. There’s a lot to like in Diigo, even if “social bookmarking” has fallen by the wayside. You can see that tools that work, like outlining and summarizing, endure.

Tool #2: Hypothes.is

“Visible, active, and social.” That’s how the no-cost Hypothes.is tool describes itself. Hypothes.is makes it possible for students to “write in the margins” and annotate online text. Even more important, it makes that work social if needed.

Like Diigo, it offers both private and public commenting/annotation options and includes a variety of online resources/videos for those who want to get started:

Are you a Canvas LMS user? How about moodle, Sakai, Schoology, or Blackboard? Or D2L’s Brightspace? If so, you may be happy to learn that Hypothes.is integrates with all of those. You need only add the app to your learning management system (LMS) of choice. There are also resource guides for students and teachers.

Tool #3: Mendeley

Aimed at higher education, Mendeley allows you to annotate what you read. Some of its features include:

  • Add your thoughts on documents in your own library, even from mobile devices
  • Share documents with groups of colleagues and annotate them together
  • Import paper and other documents from your device, existing libraries, or websites
  • Automatic capture of author, title ,and publisher information
  • Have all your annotations and library backed up to the cloud

Mendeley offers “cite as you write” plugins. That means that if you use Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, Mendeley has you covered and supports more than 8,000 citation styles. Although a research tool, you are able to engage in shared annotation like Diigo and Hypothes.is. And, unlike Diigo, but like Hypothes.is, it is no cost.

Tool #4: WeavaTools

WeavaTools has a variety of features at varying costs. It offers some basic citation styles, but nothing like Mendeley. With WeavaTools, you can highlight text, make annotations, clip images, and organize your clips. The free version includes some simple export options like Word, Excel, text, and CSV. The premium version has a monthly cost.

Tool #5: Zotero

Zotero offers collection, organization, citation, and research-sharing options. Although a no-cost service, you can choose to upgrade your storage. This allows you to save everything you have on the computer version of Zotero to the cloud. Zotero works on a variety of platforms. It is more of a citation and research sharing tool. This makes it useful to college students. Some might consider it too complex for high school students, unless advanced.

Using the Five Digital Helpers

If you’re looking for tools to assist you in outlining and summarizing, then these may meet your needs. My recommendation is to take a hard look at Diigo.com and Hypothes.is for use in high school classrooms. Mendeley is great for advanced high school and college students.

Updated 02/09/2021: Added an infographic.

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Good TeachingWeb 2.0 Tool

Class Discussions Gone Digital

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

A colleague recently posted the following request for help in finding an interactive way for his students to respond to literature questions via class discussions. He received some fascinating responses to his question. In this blog entry, I’ll try out some of the suggestions and share my thoughts about them.

“All teaching boils down to three key processes…The processes are: finding out where learners are in their learning, finding out where they are going, and finding out how to get there,” says Dylan Wiliam (2011, The Case for Formative Assessment, page 45).

Create Opportunities for Digital Class Discussions

Here’s a copy of the original request that a teacher shared:

Hi, would you happen to have ideas? I want to create opportunities for digital interaction around a short story. We’re reading the short story, and I want students to respond to the questions. Students need to be able to read each other’s responses and leave comments. I want to keep track of how many comments they leave so I can grade them. Thanks in advance for your ideas.

This teacher, whose request I’ve revised for length and clarity, is really looking for a virtual space. In this virtual space, students should have the option to post their responses to questions and should have the ability to comment on other students’ posts and responses.

The main challenge here is keeping the virtual space a safe place for learning conversations focused on the content. For K-12, the goal is to create a walled garden where students can interact. In this way, others (e.g. parents, community, strangers) don’t intrude on fragile chats.

Caution: In some districts, providing students with a virtual space is not allowed. Even when there is teacher supervision, in a secondary setting, there may be too many posts to review. That said, as teachers, we need to encourage civil discourse in our classrooms. Students’ failures to interact in an appropriate manner are opportunities for growth. Do you agree? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Solution #1: Learning Management System (LMS)

A learning management system with a built-in discussion board is one possible response. Many schools provide teachers access to an LMS for use in their classrooms. If not, there are many other solutions you can take advantage of that are no-cost. Whether you are using Instructure’s Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, or Moodle, solutions abound. You can even use Microsoft Teams and set up a specific area for discussion. Google Classroom may offer some opportunities as well.

One response to this teacher stated the following. I laughed when I read it because I did something like this once. Since then, I’ve learned to push for a school/district approved response. The one thing that will raise eyebrows is the following:

Get a free moodlecloud site and create a chat forum! It will do exactly what you want.. You can even make it so they can’t comment until they’ve posted their own response. Source: Kerry Crawford via Facebook group

If you are in a situation where going rogue with an LMS not under district control is okay, then options abound. You can find Moodle hosting sites everywhere with a low monthly price. Some districts or schools host Moodle instances in-house. This is great because it makes account management pretty easy.

Here’s a video overview of discussion forums in Moodle:

If you want to try this suggestion out, get yourself a “Droplet” in Digital Ocean. If you want to grow and learn more about GNU/Linux distributions, there are many you could start with (e.g. Ubuntu Linux).

Solution #2: Flipgrid

“Flipgrid? That could be fun!” says Bethany Nopajaroonsri. Would you like to try a solution that’s not text-heavy? Consider giving Flipgrid.com a try. It’s a versatile tool, cross-platform, and works great on smartphones. You can set up your Flipgrid to capture students’ responses to questions. Consider this example of Flipgrid use for Student Book Talks.

There’s no reason why a teacher couldn’t set up a Flipgrid Topic for their short story. If you want to learn more, explore Mike Tholfsen’s Wakelet collection, #FlipgridPD: Getting Started.

class discussions

One of the best aspects of this solution is that Microsoft’s sponsorship has made it completely free. And Flipgrid’s developers are conscious that their product must be K-12 friendly.

Solution #3: Padlet for Class Discussions

Need a virtual bulletin board solution? Padlet might be your answer, if you don’t mind paying almost a hundred dollars. Imagine your students posting content of all sorts, such as video, text, G Suite EDU documents, and more. Everything appears in the form of a post-it on a bulletin board. Ben Fisher describes it in this way:

Padlet is like a virtual bulletin board. Students can comment on a post you’ve made or they can make their own post on the Padlet board. It allows them to post text, images, and videos.

Padlet offers many different ways to organize content, as well as protect content. Your padlet can be as public or private as you like. As a veteran Padlet user, the only question you need ask yourself is, “Are you ready to pay $99 a year?” If so, you’re ready to get going.

class discussions

Solution #4: Verso Learning

“Check out Verso. It allows you to post a video, link, text, etc. and have students respond. They can then respond to each other’s answers. They even can upvote the responses they find helpful,” says Keith Schoch. You can read about Keith’s use of Verso Learning in his blog entry “How to Teach a Novel: How to Create Interactivity, Even Remotely” where he lists ways that teachers can use Verso to:

  • Build understanding of historical context of a novel
  • Review a concept or skill covered in class
  • Generate background information for a current events debate or writing
  • Review the steps of a process
  • Integrate SEL and discuss sensitive topics such as bullying
  • Provide alternate interpretations of classic literature
  • Practice inference skills
  • Create an online crowd-sourcing site

You will want to read his blog entry for the details. Verso’s website includes references to evidence-based, high-impact strategies. They  assert they have put these together around the work of luminaries such as John Hattie, Robert Marzano, and Michael Fullan.

Watch the video appearing on this page to learn more. There’s a lot to like on the Verso website, and may well be worth a separate blog entry. There is a cost associated.

class discussions

Solution #5: Parlay Ideas

Parlay offers discussion prompts at a price. Teachers can get started with a no-cost account. You can see how it works via their website or watch video below:

As you might imagine, there are ways to use many of these digital tools to enhance class chats. You can stay old-fashioned with discussion forums (e.g. LMS-based forums) or go all in for video (e.g. Flipgrid). You can rely on Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, or even G Suite EDU Slides comments. There are many choices. Remember to keep it simple and inexpensive.

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empowerED
Good TeachingProfessional Learning

empowerED: Giving Your Teachers the Tools to Be Successful

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

Today’s educator has a lot on her plate. Besides knowing all of the key concepts of the content area she is assigned to teach, she must at times also be a: counselor, disciplinarian, coach, motivator, parent, nutritionist, listener, advocate, mediator, scholar and researcher, assessor, leader, manager, environment creator, role model, protector, trouble spotter, prompter, tech user, resource, and organizer.

I could keep going, but you get the idea. Today’s educator has an unbelievable amount on her plate. To make the job of teacher even more difficult, she has literally no time to become better or learn how to manage all of these roles. That’s where TCEA can help.

The empowerED Program

TCEA recognizes that dedicated educators need help in the form of time and opportunities for innovative learning and practice. To help meet those two needs, we created the empowerED program, designed to provide teachers and their leaders with the resources and tools needed to affect change at the classroom learning level.

The year-long program provides a proven methodology and process by which districts and campuses can create purposeful teaching and learning that accelerates student learning and is based on the latest research and the effective use of technology. Through a pre-assessment, two full days of onsite professional development tailored to your needs, full TCEA membership for all participants for one year, a community of practitioners sharing questions and insights, and post-assessment and planning, program participants can learn the latest on effective teaching strategies and technology integration. This gives your entire team a unified set of instructional techniques, as well as a school or district-wide game plan for future success.

empowerED

Dr. John Hattie’s Research

Based on the proven research of Dr. John Hattie over the past 25 years with more than 3,000,000 students, the program gives educators specific strategies that increase achievement in all grade levels and subject areas. Hattie found that, while there are a number of instructional strategies available to use, there are specific ones that are the most effective and provide the maximum results in the same amount of time. Strategies such as reciprocal teaching, teacher clarity, and the jigsaw method are just a few of these. The empowerED program establishes a basis for using them and then provides educators with hands-on practice in using them, regardless of the content or the grade level they teach.

In addition, teachers learn how to best integrate technology so that the tools support and enhance the learning and the content being studied. Instead of technology being an add-on or, even worse, taking over the lesson, the devices and resources compliment the instructional strategy being used to maximize student focus and learning.

“The overall information related to Hattie’s work, as well as the presentation and practice related to reciprocal teaching, was incredible! Many of our teachers are “practicing” what you “preached” and the current culture reflects the excitement that quite a few are experiencing in their classrooms!

-Dana E., empowerED Participant

Program Costs

Because TCEA believes so strongly in the power of this program and in the need that exists for it across the country, we provide it at very little cost. For up to 50 educators on a campus, school, or district, the total cost for one year is just $2,800. (Additional teachers can be added at a reduced rate.) That price includes the following:

  • Pre- and post-assessment to determine where the campus/district is currently and how much it improves
  • Strategic plan to fully implement the strategies that are taught
  • One full day of onsite professional development for administrators and leaders
  • One full day of customized, onsite professional development for teachers
  • One year of TCEA membership for all participating educators within the district/campus (to ensure that the learning continues all year)
  • Access to a cohort group of participants to share ideas, questions, and insights
  • Access to a library of pre-recorded webinars and online resources
  • Complimentary registration for 10 individuals per enrolled campus/district for the TCEA Innovative Learning Strategies Conference, September 26, 2020 in Austin
  • Complimentary registration to the TCEA 2021 Convention & Exposition for the district superintendent or campus principal
  • A 20% discount on all other TCEA events and additional professional development

If you have questions about the program and how it can fit in with other initiatives, please contact Executive Director Lori Gracey. Then register your campus/school/district today and help your teachers master the instructional strategies that will ensure success for both their students and themselves.

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Content AreasGood Teaching

How to Create a Choice Board

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Creating a choice board has never been easier than it is now with digital tools. At the recent TCEA 2020 Convention & Exposition, my colleagues Peggy Reimers, Diana Benner, and I shared a little of what we know. We set out to curate a variety of resources and present examples with templates. Maximizing student choice remains an important tenet of learning. Come along, if you like, and learn more about choice boards. There’s a Wakelet of resources provided, too.

What Is a Choice Board?

A choice board is a graphic organizer that allows students to choose how they will learn a concept. Usually a choice board includes these aspects:

  • 9-square grid
  • Each square has an activity
  • Each activity might relate to one of the multiple intelligences
  • Level of difficulty can vary or stay consistent throughout the board

Hattie’s Mindset

One of the powerful aspects of strategies that work is how they connect to the ways humans learn. John Hattie (Visible Learning, 2009) says the following:

“Learning progressions ensure that appropriately higher expectations of challenges are provided to students…there is not one right trajectory of progress for all students.

Instead, it is more critical to analyse closely how students progress….there is also the question of how to move each student forward from wherever they start through these levels of achievement….”

The money quote here is, “There is not one right trajectory of progress for all students.”  Educational research clearly shows that choice leads to more confident, capable, and interested students. The classic article “Choices for Children” (Alfie Kohn) cites relevant findings that include:

  • Giving students choice in learning tasks led to greater task completion in less time. 
  • Students asked to write up chemistry problems without step-by-step instructions completed better write-ups. What’s more, they remembered the material better. This is no surprise given generative note-taking (d=.51) research.

Put in a simple way, student choice, when implemented in the right way, works. Choice boards are one way to do it right.

How to Create a Choice Board

Now that you’re convinced, let’s revisit the choice board creation process. The process you choose reflects what you know and how you connect ideas and information. Some steps you can follow:

  1. Choose the target concept/standard .
  2. Outline or draw out your concept map.
  3. Make a list of discrete ideas/skills/strategies.
  4. Connect those to modalities that meet the needs of different students.
  5. Design the choice board in your tool of choice.

Ready to give it a try?

Some Examples and Templates

Here are some examples with templates, where appropriate.

Google Slides

Templates

(Source)		Google Drawings

Template		Wakelet
Example
Microsoft OneNote

Take advantage of digital tools to empower self-directed learning choices for students. No child follows in another’s footsteps. The changes exist, even if we can’t see them. Choice boards are one way to scaffold their learning journey.

References and Resources

All references and resources for links above appear in the companion Wakelet collection.

Choice Board Resources

Want to learn even more about Choice Boards? Take the TCEA course: Choice Boards for Educators.

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