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Desmos Geometry
MathOnline Tools and Apps

Desmos Adds Geometry Tool

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

Desmos has long been a popular name in the world of math educators. Their free, online graphing calculator is simply beautiful, and since it’s easy and works on any device, it’s perfect for the classroom. They even have a a free Android or iOS app for it, along with excellent classroom activities.

Desmos GeometryBut now they’ve released a new tool specifically for geometry, and it’s just as amazing. Although not as fully featured as a website like Geogebra, Desmos Geometry is still a great resource for the secondary math classroom. It’s designed to help students understand geometry concepts through the use of drawing and diagram manipulation tools. There’s a simple tutorial video, along with a page of resources to help master the tool. And clicking the “three lines” icon in the top left-hand corner of the program will provide a number of powerful examples.

Because Desmos is so universally liked and adopted by schools around the world, there will soon be a variety of lesson plans and activities designed by teachers that go along with this new resource. That makes it an even more powerful tool.

While I am not a math expert, I still had fun playing with Desmos Geometry. And I think that, if someone more knowledgeable were there to help me, I could really learn a lot about the subject while experimenting. The tool enables students to construct and test their own theories about geometry, which is a powerful and engaging way to learn. And that’s what technology is best at, isn’t it?

 

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assessment tools
Good TeachingOnline Tools and Apps

High Five: Free Web 2.0 Assessment Tools

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

This is a guest blog by Beth A. Burau, Instructional Technology Coordinator and German teacher at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, TX.

Perhaps the most frustrating sound for a teacher is that of complete and utter silence following the question, “Are there any questions?” While a student or two may take a teacher up on the offer for some clarification or insight, more often than not, the silence simply indicates to the teacher that the class understands the material. It’s not until homework is turned in later that the truth and the teacher’s assumption are revealed – there should have been questions.

To monitor whether or not students are learning and to help provide immediate feedback, we should make sure that “checks for understanding” or formative assessment tools are a consistent part of any lesson. Here are five simple Web 2.0 tools to help teachers quickly assess student understanding before the bell rings. They’ll be certain to prompt high fives at the end of class for a job well done.

Socrative – With this free app, students can use their own computers, tablets, and phones to respond to teacher-created questionsl which are either self-paced or teacher-paced to check for understanding. Socrative also has an easy-to-use Exit Ticket option, which is great for getting student responses to spontaneous questions during class or as a way to check for understanding after the lesson is done. The responses are graded, and the results are easy to use.

Plickers – If students don’t have access to devices, but the teacher has an iOS or Android device with a camera, this is the perfect free Web 2.0 tool to use. However, this tool requires some preparation in advance and is not suggested for last-minute assessment. The teacher needs the app installed on a mobile device to use during class, but can create the true/false and multiple choice questions on a desktop computer. Teachers create their questions online and print out Plickers Cards for each student to use. The teacher poses questions to monitor class learning. Then the students simply hold up their card to show their answer, and the teacher scans the room with a mobile device to record and view the results.

Quizizz – Have you used Kahoot! with your classes? If so, you may want to try Quizizz, a similar Web 2.0 tool for formative assessment. Students can use their own device or share devices to answer teacher-generated questions. As a teacher, you can use the app in class or assign quizzes for homework or review. Unlike Kahoot!, Quizizz is self-paced, so students don’t feel as much pressure under time constraints, which is great if you have anxious students or students who need more reading time for each question in class. Students are afforded more time to process the questions and respond instead of simply guessing quickly to earn points.

Microsoft Forms  If you’ve heard of Google Forms, but have Office 365 Education at your school, you may wish to use these forms for formative assessment instead. As the instructor, you can require the students to log in using their Office 365 account to access the form, which allows you to not only verify the student’s identity, but also to view student results by name. The teacher can then quickly scan all the class responses to check for understanding or identify select students who may need some additional help or instruction.

QuizSocket  – This free, online “fast quiz” beta tool doesn’t require an account, just an email address. Using mobile devices, students are given a quiz key to join in. A teacher can then ask real-time multiple choice questions verbally, write them on the board, or include them in a presentation slide. The pace of the poll or quiz is controlled by the teacher, who advances the multiple choice options “ABCD” one at a time for the students. Individual question responses can be viewed synchronously on the website during each question and can also be downloaded as a .csv file at the end of the quiz for further analysis by the teacher.

These are just a few great—and best of all, FREE—assessment tools, so you’re never left wondering if your students are truly understanding the material. Do you have any favorite assessment tools? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Beth A. Burau has taught levels PreK-College across various content areas since she began teaching in August 2000. She now serves as the Instructional Technology Coordinator and German teacher at Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, TX. Beth holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame and has published education articles and chapters both in print and online. She is a proud member of TCEA and a TCEA certified Campus Technology Specialist. 

 

 

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Dotstorming
Online Tools and Apps

Dotstorming: Brainstorming on Steroids

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

If you want your class to brainstorm ideas for their next project and then vote on the best ones or have the faculty decide how to increase reading on the campus or get your relatives to decide on a location for the next reunion, then Dotstorming is for you. Dotstorming is a Web 2.0 tool that lets people brainstorm ideas and then vote on them, quickly and easily. And it’s free.

How Dotstorming Works

Create an account with just your email address and you’re ready to begin. You’re given a blank Dotstorming board. Add your topic or question and then invite participants to join in. They can post ideas, links, graphics, text, and more. Once the brainstorming process is over, set the number of votes that each participant will have (up to 10) and ask them to vote. It’s just that simple.

Dotstorming

Dotstorming New Features

In April 2017, Dotstorming added some new features. You can now choose to clear a board of all votes and comments. This would be great for having the same poll for a number of different classes to take or if you wanted to poll a group at the beginning of a discussion and then again at the end to see if their opinions changes.

Another new feature added is an easier way to put images into a Dotstorming poll. While you could add images before, the new process allows you to simply past the URL for an image and the image will appear.

Similar to Padlet but with more features, Dotstorming should definitely have a place in your toolbelt. Not only is it great for brainstorming ideas, it’s a wonderful way to post discussion questions, math problems with several correct and incorrect solutions, and anything you want students to discuss as it includes a chat box. It works on any device and can be used by even very young students. Take a look at it today!

This blog was updated with new content on April 19, 2017.

 

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administrator
Google Tips and TricksiOS Tips and TricksLeadership

Four Tools Every Administrator Should Be Using

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Being an administrator can be hectic at best and chaotic at worst. Whether you are an administrator on a campus or serve at the district level, there are tools that can help you be more organized and confident as you strive to juggle all the demands and tasks that come your way. Here are four I recommend, all of which I’ve used and found helpful.

Pomodoro Technique – If you are like me, multitasking usually means that I end the day with lots of things started, but few finished. This technique is the opposite of multitasking and helps keep me focused. The Pomodoro technique is a strategy in which you focus on a task for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break. After several 25-minute blocks (pomodoros), you get a 15-minute break. The goal is to work as focused as you can to accomplish the task in as few pomodoros as possible. That’s perfect for the busy administrator.

Andrei Kurtuy posted a great tutorial on the Pomodoro technique that you might find handy if you’ve not investigated it before. When things move from hectic to chaotic, I usually pull up the app and work to move through it. There are many Pomodoro tools out there, but here is my recommendation for each platform: Android, iOS, Chrome app or extension, and web.

LiveScribe Pen – When I’m in meetings, I can take notes or I can listen and process what is being said, but I can’t do both well at the same time. In those cases, my LiveScribe pen has come in handy. Using special paper (which you can download and print for free), I can take notes while recording audio. The written notes and audio are synced, so tapping on a place in my notes will jump to that part of the audio. I can then download data from the pen to my computer and the handwritten notes and audio (which are still synced) are on my laptop for later review. There are several versions of LiveScribe pens available, but I’ve found the base model to be more than adequate. It’s such a good tool that my college children have confiscated it for their own class work.

Flipboard – My job requires that I stay up-to-date on many topics. I find that searching the Internet, using Pinterest, or visiting my trusty go-to sites is too time consuming. That’s where Flipboard comes into play. I can use the iOS, Android, or web version to create a customized ezine of topics and sites that I want to keep up with. It pulls a fresh list of updated information every time I open it. While I follow several specific sites using Flipboard, identifying topics that I’m interested in has been even more beneficial. Besides reading fresh content, I can easily share articles and posts from within the app. I can definitely say that I use Flipboard on a daily basis.

Chrome Browser – I use many great Chrome apps and extensions, but here is a short list of some especially for administrators to get you started. You can find more by searching the Chrome Web Store. You can also check out Diana Benner’s post, Chrome Apps You Can’t Live Without, for more specific tools you might want to try.

  • Goo.gl URL Shortener – With just a click, I get a shortened URL of the website I’m on copied to my clipboard so I can share it with my staff or others. If I’m logged in to Chrome, it will remember the shortened URLs and track how many clicks each receives, which is handy if you are sharing with parents, teachers, etc.
  • Send from Gmail – This handy extension creates an email with the name of the website as the subject line and a link to it in the body so that all I have to do is add the recipient’s email address. I usually tweak the body of the email so the recipient knows why I’m sharing the website. Many times, though, I’ve used this to send myself a link to a website that I want to come back to, but don’t have time for right then; it will be in my inbox when I am ready to look at it.
  • Print Friendly & PDF – This clever extension creates a distraction-free page of the website I’m on by stripping out the ads, background, etc. so that I get a cleaner page that I can print and/or save as a PDF. If you are one to print websites often, this will reduce your toner costs. You can also edit the page down so that you only print what you want.
  • Screencastify – This Chrome app is handy tool to use when I need to explain how to do something online or on the computer, but I need more than words to make it clear. Using just the free version, I can record screencast videos up to ten minutes in length. This tool is great for those just-in-time trainings that we do when someone asks a simple question, but the answer may be more cumbersome and not so straightforward.

Regardless of which tool you use, I think you’ll find these will help you be more efficient with your time and still be able to share important information with those you support. Do you have a tool to add to the list? I’d love to hear about it. Email me at bellis@tcea.org and let me know.

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Chrome Music Lab
ChromebooksContent AreasGoogle Tips and Tricks

Why You (And Your Students) Must Try the Chrome Music Lab

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

Google Chrome is such an amazing browser, primarily because of its ability to be personalized for each individual using it with different apps and extensions. And now Google has come out with yet another amazing resource developed for Music in Our Schools Month: the Chrome Music Lab.

Now, before you stop reading because you are not the music teacher on campus or because you don’t think you are musical, please wait. The Music Lab is for everyone, and especially for your students, regardless of what you teach. This free resource features a series of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. Designed by musicians and coders (what a fun conversation that must have been!), the site is designed to help you learn, understand, and have fun with rhythm, chords, arpeggios, sound waves, harmonics, and more.

I started playing around with the Music Lab and must confess that I soon lost all track of time; it’s just so much fun! I was able to create amazing (at least to me) pieces of music, experiment with sound waves, interact with major and minor chords, program a drumming monkey, and so much more. No directions were required, although they are available for each experiment; I just had to be willing to wade in and try.

The Chrome Music Lab would make a great center in an elementary classroom or work well in a makerspace at a high school library. Innovative teachers will be able to create engaging, interactive lessons around the science of sound, how tone in music can be compared to tone in writing, the natural mathematical relationship between a string’s length and its pitch, and how the speed at which we speak impacts what others hear. Because the site is so open ended, there is really no limit to what students will be able to learn. I would encourage you to put students in pairs and assign each pair one of the experiments. Ask them to play with it and become an “expert” in it. Then have them share what they’ve learned with others. And then turn them lose to experience the joy of music.

What will your students create today?

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digital storytelling
Online Tools and Apps

Getting Started with Digital Storytelling

by Dr. Bruce Ellis
written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Digital storytelling is the method of using technology to share your narrative. The tools that students use can run the gamut from very simple presentation tools that just use audio recordings and photos to more complex creations requiring screencasting and appsmashing. If you are just getting started and trying to figure out the best tool for your students, then consider the following sites to acquaint you with some of the more popular tools used:

 

Regardless of which tool(s) you use, consider the following to help ensure your students’ success:

  • What do you want them to do with the end product? Will their stories be shared in a public online place for a wider audience or just viewed from the device on which they are created? Your answer to these questions will narrow the field of possible options.
  • Younger students, or students that may be open to distractions, will do better if you have them use tools that have fewer bells and whistles. These no-frills tools (such as 30hands Starter) minimize distractions and help students focus on the content of their story.
  • Have students plan their digital story prior to using the apps/websites. Consider using a template such as the 8 panel (Word) template, the film and video projects (Zipped) template, or the TCEA storyboard (Google Doc) template. Look through this Google search of completed storyboards and select a few to share that are relevant and appropriate for your content as examples.
  • Provide your students with a rubric to hold them accountable and guide them through the assignment. Consider using this general storytelling rubric, one of Rubistars rubric templates, or Kathy Schrock’s digital storytelling rubric.

 

Digital storytelling is a great way for students to demonstrate understanding of the content and in a context that makes sense to them. After all, we all love to both hear and tell stories. You should find that your students are more motivated to do their work when given the option to use digital storytelling as an assignment choice. Let us know your favorite digital storytelling tools and how your students used them to create amazement in your classroom.

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Online Tools and Apps

Celebrate the Season with Holiday Websites

by Peggy Reimers
written by Peggy Reimers

Looking for some fun holiday websites for your students? Here are a few of our favorites, both old and new.

Grinch-mas

Grinch-mas is a holiday tradition inspired by Dr. Seuss’s classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  Grinch-mas encourages readers to “grow your heart three sizes” through the celebration of family reading, giving from the heart, and community spirit. National Grinch Day, on December 1, will kick-start the 25 Days of Grinch-mas. During this time, bookstores and local retailers all over the country will be hosting Grinch-mas events that will incorporate holiday storytimes for families with opportunities for kids to win prizes for doing good deeds throughout the month of December. It might be too late to join in this year, but the website includes print-color-create activities, clips to watch, and games to play.

Play the Game: How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Pinterest

Explore tons of Grinch ideas found on Pinterest!

Reindeer Cam

Watch Santa feed two of his reindeer during this holiday time on the Reindeer Cam.

Snowflake Maker

This easy-to-use website allows you to virtually cut folded paper and preview the snowflake. Whether you have students create a flake and then write a story of the flake’s travels or whether you have them incorporate specific mathematical features (rhombus, trapezoid, triangle, etc.), this site will be a fun start.

Holiday eCard

This site shares a lot of different options for sending a holiday e-card. 

Holiday Activities

Northpole.com celebrates the holidays with dozens of activities for children and families. A child-safe, award-winning holiday site, northpole.com promotes a traditional look at Santa’s Secret Village at the North Pole, but with high-tech, creative features to keep children and adults entertained—all for free.

Winter and Christmas Mad Libs

Mad Libs is a phrasal template word game where specific parts of speech are substituted for blanks in a story and then read out loud.  A little history on Mad Libs:  110+ million copies of Mad Libs books have been sold since the series was first published in 1958. This site has some fun holiday-themed Mad Libs your students are sure to enjoy.

41 Christmas Songs

Here you’ll find the lyrics to popular Christmas songs and carols. The Grinch Theme, of course, is included.

20 Christmas Stories

Links to the full stories.

The Polar Express

A Teacher’s Guide

Interactive Activities

Math Activities and Problems for The Polar Express

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Lesson Plans and Activities

The Twelve Days of Christmas

12 Days Lesson

Trivia Facts

Holiday School Party Games

Great Holiday School Party Ideas

More Winter Resources from TechNotes

Featured Image: Created in Canva by TCEA staff.

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8 Electrifying Tools graphic
Online Tools and Apps

Eight Electrifying Elementary Web 2.0 Tools

by Peggy Reimers
written by Peggy Reimers

Here are some fun Web 2.0 tools to use in your elementary classroom.

1. You’ve heard of the fastest draw in the west? Well, here is the quickest timer on the Internet. In the Chrome browser omnibox (search box), type “timer 30 seconds.” As soon as you press enter/return, the timer starts! Try it out; any length of time will work.

2. The thought of letting students search on Google for images…very scary. Photos for Class from the good people of Storyboard That is a website for students to access images that are age appropriate. Flicker safe search and proprietary filters make it possible for teachers to breathe a little easier. The downloaded images are licensed for school use under Creative Commons and are automatically cited.

3. Canva is a free graphic design tool with drag-and-drop functionality where teachers and students can create presentations, posters, and so much more. Students can collaborate on the same design or provide view-only access. Teach your students to use the free images or upload your own photos.

4. Kahoot! is a quick-paced game learning environment that includes suspenseful music (which can be turned off) and an instant scoreboard. Easy interface for teachers to set up a quiz, discussion, or survey. Teachers create an account at GetKahoot.com. Students on any type of device enter a game pin at a different URL – kahoot.it. If you’re already familiar with Kahoot!, check out this blog on how to take it to the next level.

5. Try out the online form of Boggle. How many letters can you chain together to form a word before time runs out? Point value: 3 or 4 letters = 1 point, 5 = 2 points, 6 = 3 points, 7 = 5 points, 8 or more = 11 points.

6. Check out these Magical Math Puzzles to mystify your students.

7. Wheel Decide is a nice online spinner that is great for vocabulary, student voice and choice, and questions. Keep a spreadsheet with your students’ names, then copy and paste them for a quick decision-maker.

8. Have students write their scripts and enter their text into the online Cue Prompter. After adjusting the speed and controls, they are ready to use the monitor as a real teleprompter. Have them use the laptop’s webcam to record as they follow the prompter on the monitor.

Featured image created in Canva by author.

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Online Tools and Apps

Tech and Treat: A Free, Fun-Filled Webinar for Everyone!

by Chance McKee
written by Chance McKee
The bewitching hour is here at last
And we’ve planned an event sure to be a blast!

 

From witches to warlocks, goblins to ghosts,
Join TCEA as your spooktacular host!

 

The staff are dressed up and wanting to teach
Fun resources to use that will earn you a screech!

 

October 22nd – what are you doing, I ask?
How about teaching and learning and wearing a mask?

 

Creep and crawl on over, monsters and ghouls,
And learn from TCEA about some wonderful tools.

 

Just trust when we say this won’t be a fright.
You’ll learn all the tricks to do your Halloween right.

 

4-5 pm Central, it’ll be a treat, oh my!
Just keep an eye out for bats and broomsticks that fly.

 

We hope to see you there, costumes and all.
This will be a treat for one and for all.

 

Join TCEA on October 22, 2015 from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Central for a fun, free-to-anyone webinar as we show you wonderful tech ways to get your students into the spirit for Halloween.
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Kahoot
Online Tools and Apps

Take Kahoot! to the Next Level

by Lori Gracey
written by Lori Gracey

By now, most of you have tried Kahoot!, the game-based student response system that is a wonderful tool for formative assessment. The teacher creates a free account and then can design quizzes with embedded images and video or use one of the millions of already-created quizzes. Students respond to the quiz using any device with Internet access. The faster they respond, the more points they score. In addition, teachers can create items in Surveys, which does not use points, or Discussions, which are single questions without points that can be used at the beginning of a unit to get ideas flowing.

Accessing the Data

Kahoot! is lots of fun and really engages students. But you may not know that, once the quiz is over, there is good data that you can access and analyze. After logging in to her account, the teacher can look at data from each quiz by clicking on the cloud download icon next to the name of each quiz. This will download an Excel spreadsheet that includes a minimum of three tabs: an overview of the total percentage of correct and incorrect answers, ratings from students on the activity, and a detailed breakdown of each student’s answers and the time they took for each question. This last tab is color coded to make it a quick read with correct responses in green and incorrect ones in red. All of this data is automatically generated and is an excellent resource to guide future instruction.

Taking Kahoot! to the Next Level

Here are some other great ideas for taking your Kahoot! to the next level.

  • If your students are using iOS or Android devices, you can have them add a quick link to the game on their home screens with these guides. There is also a free Android app and a free iPad app for Kahoot! that you may download.
  • Have a class-to-class battle. Use the link in the Results page to get one class to play against the results of a previous class.
  • Do you have students who want to take the quiz again? Now they can in Ghost Mode. Once a quiz is over, you will see a Play Again button that contains a ghost icon. When you click on the button, the same quiz is re-launched. Now, as the class plays again live, all students are joined by their “ghosts,” their previous answers. So students can easily see how they did before on each question and try to increase their score. This is a good way to increase retention.
  • Use the Send a Link feature to provide the link to each student after they’ve played it once in class. Then ask them to take the quiz again at home to try and beat their previous score.
  • If your class has a partner class in another location, the teacher can use the Send a Link tool to share a completed ghost game with them. This can give your students the chance to compete against others around the world.
  • For a major holiday, create a Kahoot! and share it with other classes who will all play the game at the same time. You could do an Earth Day game, one for Martin Luther King Day, or just one over a particular math skill.
  • Keep a Leaderboard of high scores in Kahoot! and watch your students try to reach the top.

New Features

Kahoot!Kahoot has upped its game by adding a Team Mode. Students get into teams with just one device between them. The teacher opens up a Kahoot! and now has the choice of selecting between Classic and Team Mode. Team captains (kids holding the devices) enter their team’s name and their players’ nicknames. Then they begin the game. This will be great for helping kids learn to work together or for those classrooms where devices are limited.

Another recent feature is Ghost Mode, which allows a student to play against himself. This is a good way for students to informally assess themselves to see if they are mastering the required content. They can play the same review game over and over, comparing their current score with their previous ones.

The latest Kahoot! update offers Jumble, a new game format. Like earlier games, Jumble has students take part in quizzes. But in the update, players are challenged to place the answers in the correct order by dragging and dropping rather than just selecting one correct answer.

On May 2, Kahoot! announced two Windows apps. Kahoot Create is the app for teachers to use to create and run Kahoot quiz games. Kahoot Play is the app for students to use to play a Kahoot game individually or in team mode. Both apps are now available in the Windows Store

Updates from ISTE

Kahoot!At the ISTE conference in San Antonio, Kahoot! unveiled a new mobile app for the game. What’s great about the app is that now both the questions and the answers will appear on the student screens. (Before, students had to look at the projected image in the classroom to see the question and then answer it on their own devices.) It also includes Challenges that can be issued by the teacher or by students to each. You can preview the new app (available in both Android and iOS) by signing up to be a beta tester here.

New: Kahoots Aligned to the Math Standards!

Kahoot! has now released some wonderful resources for math teachers. These quizzes are aligned to the national standards and are top quality. Additional games for science and ELA will also be coming soon.

Additional new features will be added. To make sure you have access to them, go into any of your Kahoots as if you were going to start the game. You’ll see a new option called Kahoot! Experiments. Turn this on and a list of add-ons will appear. Right now, the only one is Answer Streak Bonus, which is designed to reward player accuracy with bonus points for correctly answering multiple questions in a row. Get an answer wrong, and the streak is broken.

This post was updated on September 2, 2017 to include new features.

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