October 22, 2018

Here are your 3 tips that you can use in your classroom today for the week of October 22, 2018.

1 - Canva

It's great to think outside of the box and have students create instead of consume their learning.  A fantastic way of doing this is have them create infographics - but where do you begin??  The best answer is you don't - have the students get creative and amaze you at what they come up with.  Get them started with some easy to use amazing templates though - so the effort is on the topic and not on the tool.  Canva have some amazing templates ready for your eager students to fill them with the knowledge of this weeks subject matter.  Check out the template gallery here - https://www.canva.com/templates/

*There is a 13 year old age limit on Canva, but if your kids are under 13 it will allow them to use Canva as long as they are supervised... You can supervise them!!

2 - Make a Musical Slideshow (free)

If you have used the Slideshow maker on YouTube – you’re probably bummed out they killed the feature. But they have built it back into Google Photos! Now in the Photos app, you can select up to 50 images or video and create a move slide show with back ground music and everything. Just in time for your end of year celebration.
Find out how - 

3 - Hyped up HyperDocs

As classroom teachers, we hear constantly about 21st century learning - we want students to be creative, collaborative, critical thinkers, and communicators. Then we ask them to sit quietly, while we explain everything, and tell them exactly how it’s to be done. It doesn’t have to be that way. Students are curious by nature, we just need to provide opportunities for them to be curious. They are amazing problem solvers when given the opportunity to create rather than consume information, to talk to each other rather than sit passively listening. They just need inspiration. Given one Google Doc, what could you put on it to engage, educate and inspire your students?

HyperDocs, a transformative, interactive Google Doc replacing the worksheet method of delivering instruction, is the ultimate change agent in the blended learning classroom. With strong educational philosophies built into each one, HyperDocs have the potential to shift the way you instruct with technology. They are created by teachers and given to students to engage, educate, and inspire learning. It’s not about teaching technology, it’s about using the technology to TEACH.

Check out the HyperDoc's website with Templates Galore - https://hyperdocs.co/

In the classroom just keeping students on task and learning is hard enough.  Add technology to that mix and you have an incredibly difficult task to keep student engagement and learning on track.  Throw in social media and some teachers think the world might end.  But that’s not the case for thousands of classroom’s all over the world.

I get asked every so often, “what is Twitter all about”, or “how can you get away with having your students use Twitter during class”, or “I don’t get Twitter and I don’t know why I should”.  Well, my answer to all of those questions gave me this top ten list.

Read about the Top 10 Reasons to use Twitter as a Teacher at - My Other Blog