Using technology for formative assessment in the classroom

I've done some brief trainings earlier this year on quick-response apps for BYOD classrooms, such as GetKahoot and PollEverywhere (check out the training materials here). Here is one great one that offers a little more flexibility in how students are able to respond, with options like open-ended text and free draw.

(This one, like the two above, work with students using phones as well as other devices, like laptops or Chromebooks.)

Infuse Learning

Teacher View

This web-based free tool allows you to create questions that can receive a variety of answers (draw responses, true/false, multiple choice, sort in order, open-ended text, numeric, and scale). You can even create a problem or a prompt, or upload an image and have the students annotate what you provide.

Students go to student.infuselearning.com through a Chrome or Safari browser and enter the Room ID to participate.

Teachers can make questions or quizzes ahead of time or can create questions on the fly. You can save results for grades or just use the results to determine your lesson targets.
I like this tool because of its flexibility and high engagement, and because I can save the responses or results if needed. The drawing response can be challenging on a small device (I probably wouldn't ask students to label a map, for instance) but for larger annotations it works well and setting up a teacher account is very easy.

Give it a shot! Go to http://www.infuselearning.com, click on "teacher login" in the upper right, and play around with it.

Using Chrome extensions for student accessibility and for personal efficiency

If you use the Chrome browser, there are many ways to enhance the experience through Chrome extensions. These are (mostly) free mini-programs that add extra features and functionality. Once you add them, they can be accessed from their icons on the side of your URL bar.

I use lots of these!

Here are some I've found useful for my own work (many are extremely useful for students as well; I've **ed the ones I've used with or recommended for students):

Capturing data:

• ** Awesome Screen Shot -- Capture a whole page or just a portion as an image. It also includes annotating tools. Great for letting School Loop know what kind of weirdness you are encountering. :)
• ** Screencastify -- Records the actions on your screen plus your voice (and your image if you choose). Great for recording a lecture/presentation for students who are absent or want to refer back to it, or for recording a frequently-used task or method. 
• Save as PDF -- Saves a webpage as a PDF (similar to below)
• ** Save to Google Drive -- Takes a webpage and turns it into a PDF that you can send straight to Google Drive.

Accessibility:

• ** Clearly -- Eliminates ads and other unnecessary content from blog posts, articles or websites to make them easy to read. You can also sync with Evernote if you use Evernote to organize your life.
• ** Select and Speak -- Takes highlighted text on a page and reads it aloud. You can set speed, voice gender, etc. Good for students who may struggle with reading.
• ** Read&Write for Google -- Many excellent features including speech recognition, reading text aloud, suggesting text, highlighting and annotating, etc. CAUTION: The premium version of this is NOT free for students -- teachers can get a free yearly premium subscription but students would be limited to the functionality in Google Docs. Still useful for speech-to-text for students with difficulty writing or typing. 

Workflow/Efficiency

• 1-click Timer -- Fast and easy way to keep track of elapsed time for assessments or classroom activities
• ** Black Menu for Google -- Gives you instant access to all your Google Apps from the browser window. Very helpful when you use Google Apps and Drive a lot. 
• ** CleanPrint -- Strips out all unnecessary content before printing or saving a webpage. Saves lots of paper!
• ** Clipboard History -- Records the text that you have copied (goes back 14 days). Great for when you need to store multiple chunks of text simultaneously.
• Goo.gl URL shortener -- Shrinks URLs for ease in posting, emailing or writing. Great for anything where you need to quickly disseminate a website.
• One Tab - Whenever you have too many tabs open, One Tab converts them all into a list, which reduces memory load on your browser.
• ** World Data Finder -- search for relevant charts and data when reading online articles. Good research/background info tool.

There are many, many more extensions to choose from. Go to the Chrome Web Store to install any of these or to browse their other offerings, especially those organized by Collection (there are High School and Education collections as well as others). 

Please share if you have a useful extension that isn't in the list above!

A different way to present

As teachers, we do a lot of presenting and sometimes the same old PowerPoint or Google Slides gets old. Haiku Deck tries to break the cycle of bullet points and clip art with a simple (think "haiku") image-heavy design. Haiku Deck offers thousands of beautiful, well-categorized images to choose from (or use your own, of course). It's free, web-based, and can be installed as a Chrome app.


10 Tips to Transform Your Presentations - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

If it's not a full presentation, but just an image or infographic you need, check out Canva, which even offers "design school" for the less aesthetically capable among us.

Google Apps training

During October, we held a number of training sessions for various features of Homestead's Google Apps for Education account. If you missed them, you can find the documents here.

Educational technology for Homestead teachers

This blog will be a place to gather and curate all things ed-tech taking place at Homestead High School. Tech updates, new apps or technologies, new ideas and suggestions for integration, best practices, teacher successes, archived information ... we will keep it all here to attempt to build on the knowledge base we already have.