Improve Reading and Writing Confidence With Read&Write

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

Remember the first time you saw Google docs? The whole idea of students being able to share documents, work collaboratively, embed links, images, etc. regardless of the device and regardless of physical location still completely blows my mind. The list of things we are now able to do to help our kids learn keeps growing but one thing remains, reading and writing is key for student success in any  subject area.Yes, even math. The big question is, what do we do when we have students who are struggling with reading and writing? There is a company called TextHelp whose mission is to bring literacy to life for everyone. They have several amazing products but today I want to highlight my favorite. 

Read&Write for Google is an extension that is free. Many of our students are already using it but may not know the full extent of what it can do. For those of you who are new to Read&Write, it allows students to hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with highlighting that makes it easy follow. It has both a text and picture dictionary. Students can hear words translated into many languages. The read aloud and translating features are free for everyone. TextHelp gives teachers their premium version for FREE and it's yours forever (their words not mine). To sign up and get your free premium version, click here after installing the extension. Students can sign up for a fee 30 day trial of the premium version. The upgraded version, which is completely free for teachers, also has word prediction, speech to text, voice notes, highlighted text can be automatically converted into a new document. The list goes on because TextHelp is constantly adding features. 

Read&Write works on Google docs and on any web based text. For example if you have students reading an article on National Geographic's website, they can use the read aloud features for that article, hopefully with headphones. The premium version also includes pdf, epub, and kes files. 

Adding and using Read&Write is extremely easy. Just go to the chrome web store from your apps doc or click here. Once you click to add Read&Write, you need to give it permission to access your google account. Once it is successfully installed, you will notice a little purple puzzle piece that will show up near the top of your screen. Clicking on that puzzle piece activates the Read&Write features. As you hover over the icons, you will see text pop up that explains what everything does, though I bet you can guess which button stands for "play" and which one stands for "stop".

Helping your students add Read&Write is going to be a breeze because it's the same process. The kids can control the speed and the voice that is used for the read aloud by clicking on the gear icon in Read&Write. Since it is an extension, it will work on whatever device the student is using, as long as they are logged into chrome.

Giving your students access to Read&Write helps them to utilize the supports that they need independently. I'm not sure how it looks in your classes but in my biology class, having a teacher sit next to you and read to you can really negatively affect your self esteem as a student. When my students are able to use supports in a way that does not draw attention, they are more likely to use the supports. Also, having those supports available gives them more confidence in their reading and writing and therefore makes them more likely to participate actively in class. 

Here is a short video introduction to Read&Write:

Are you or your students using Read&Write? If so, post in the comments section below and let us know how it's going. 

Racing Towards Mastery with Quizlet LIVE

@joe_edtech/
@LisaBerghoff

A couple of weeks ago, I was conducting a site visit at DHS and we walked into one of our Spanish classes. The kids were excitedly working together, competing in teams using a tool called Quizlet Live. I've used Quizlet a lot as a flashcard generator, but I hadn't seen Quizlet Live. It is an easy to use tool that turns group activities into fun and challenging games. So, I had to ask the teachers to write about it. This is the resulting

guest post by DHS Spanish Teachers Mercedes Koch (@Profe_Koch) and Matt Wallace. 

Do your students use Quizlet to study key vocabulary terms?  Do your students like to play collaborative and interactive games in class?  If so, Quizlet Live is perfect for you and your students!

In the very recent past, Quizlet has released Quizlet Live, which takes existing Quizlet sets and creates a collaborative, interactive game using the information contained in the set.  The general idea is very similar to that of Kahoot!.  However, there are a few differences which will be highlighted below.  Here is a brief overview of how to access Quizlet Live and how to play.

Step 1: in order to access Quizlet Live, you must request access.  Email beta@quizlet.com  with your username and request access to Quizlet Live.  You will receive an email once it is active on your account and at the top of each Quizlet set you will see this icon:  

Step 2: When you are ready to start a game with a particular set, click “Live”.  You will be taken to a page with a “Create Game” link.  Click “Create Game” and the next step is when your students will become active.  The next page will look like this:

You will want to project your screen to the class so that the students can see and enter the code at quizlet.live.  They will enter their names, and the names will show up in the black portion on the right side of the page.  If a student enters an inappropriate name, simply click on the name to erase it and ask that student to re-enter their information.

Step 3: When all students are in the game, and when you click Create Game, Quizlet will randomly group the students in your class into groups of 3 or 4 and the groups will be given a team name. Apparently Quizlet is very animal-friendly because the team names are always names of animals.  You will want the students to sit next to each other during the game, so they should find their teammates and sit next to them at this point.  You are now ready to start the game.

Step 4: The actual game consists of the students seeing some sort of question posed to them, a vocabulary term for example. Then, they are given multiple options.  However, not all students on the team will have the correct answer as one of their options.  This is where the collaboration comes in. They also see the options given to their teammates.  This is what a student sees:

The middle column contains their options and the two columns on the sides contain their teammates’ options.  The students must discuss to determine the correct answer, and the student with the correct answer on their screen is the only one who can select it.

One difference between Quizlet Live and Kahoot! Is that the questions posed to one group will be different from those posed to another group.  Let’s say that your Quizlet set has 50 terms.  Each group’s questions will be a completely random sampling of those 50 terms.

Step 5: How does a team win?  When a team answers a question correctly, Quizlet Live automatically moves them onto the next question (which is different from Kahoot! where everyone is working on the same question at the same time).  While teams are accumulating points, the teacher screen tracks their points:

The first team to 12 correct answers wins. HOWEVER, when a team answers incorrectly, their points are reset and they start over at zero.  The new questions posed to the group are again chosen at random from the set, not a repeat of what they already answered.

A few extra notes:  

• If you want to play another game/round but also want change the groups, you can do so with the click of a button.  
• You can add students to the game using the game specific code.  
• After completing a game, you can see the stats of the game.  This may be helpful for identifying common misconceptions related to the content.

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I'd like to thank Mercedes and Matt for "volunteering" to write this week's post. If you are using a cool free tool to improve learning in your classroom, tell us about in the comments below - or email me and author an upcoming post!

Student Driven Digital Journals and Portfolios? Yes Please!

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

This week's free tech tool comes to us from HPHS world language teacher Weifang Wang (@WangWeifang).

The sweet spot for teachers of any content is when you have students who are taking ownership for their work, reflecting on their learning, and articulating all of that both in and outside of the classroom. As a teacher, the joy is in guiding students towards learning and then getting out of their way so they can express their understanding of new ideas, concepts, and analysis of information, while connecting this new understanding in a way that is meaningful.

The Seesaw platform is designed for student driven digital portfolios. It is so simple to use, it easily became a favorite of elementary teachers because kids can truly do it on their own. What I love about Seesaw for high school students is that even though it is easy to use, the tools are powerful and robust. As we are searching for tools that help us to differentiate for all of our students, Seesaw allows for students to add photos and videos (uploaded OR recorded on chromebooks), drawings, links, text, notes, or files to be uploaded. Once added, our students can write captions or leave voice recordings of their reflections. Seesaw also has the ability to set up a class blog for you. You can password protect it and decide if you want to allow comments. Once your blog is set up, both teachers and students can post to it. 

Here's how it works:

1. Students log in using their Google account and they input the class code that teachers get when they create a class.

2. As a teacher, you can post to an entire class or just to select students. You might post a prompt and ask your students to show their work, reflect, and respond.

3. If you just want your students to begin without a prompt from you, they can click on the green plus button to add an item. Students can easily use their chromebook camera to take photos or videos and add them into their seesaw journal. 

4. Once they have added an item, your students will add a caption OR leave a voice recording that talks about the work they are displaying. 

 4.Teachers must approve students' journal entries so we are able to help guide them towards habits that will help them create a positive digital footprint. While they are learning, Seesaw provides a safe environment. Seesaw has earned a very high rating on common sense education, which is a very respected reviewer of educational applications. 

From another perspective, as a parent, it is difficult for me to know what is going on with my kids schoolwork now that they are doing so much of their work digitally. I can't just go into their backpacks and look through their folders (thank goodness!). All of the digital work can be unnerving because I want to support my kids and have conversations about what they are doing in school. 

Seesaw makes it easy to connect parents to see their students' work and be able to have a "window into my child's school day", according to the seesaw website. This of seesaw as a communication platform between students, parents, and teachers.  

Seesaw can be used on any device and the free version has an outstanding platform with features that students will actually want to use. 

Here is a screenshot of my first photo journal entry to my Seesaw class!

Are you using Seesaw or digital portfolios and blogs in your classes? Post in the comments below and share your thoughts. 

Decommercializing the Web for the Classroom (and Maybe Home, Too)

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Today we are proud to start featuring Free Tech Tools proposed by some of our classroom teachers. This guest post is from DHS Social Studies Teacher, Dan Kim (@TheMrKim).

I had always considered myself to be a price-savvy, prudent consumer who wasn't susceptible to the same greasy advertisement schemes, ploys, and tactics that suckered the rest of society.

And then I began shopping for an engagement ring.

One of the best and worst parts of planning a proposal is the immense pressure of creating that perfect moment of astonishment and surprise.The mental gymnastics involved in somehow discretely acquiring a person's ring size, or moving the little ring box from its original hiding place in the bathroom closet, into a much safer, much smellier left tennis shoe in the middle of the night, speaks volumes of the necessity for discretion.

You could then imagine my horror when after a few nights of researching engagement rings online, my browsers were now full of engagement ring related ads and pop-ups basically screaming at my girlfriend that things were about to get real.

Now if you've done any amount of online shopping, you will either find it creepy or helpful that firms will often keep tabs on your search history to populate relevant ads on your websites. Led by internet giants like Google and Facebook, ads have become more and more sophisticated and pronounced.

IMBD Site WITH Ads

This is where a neat, light-weight Chrome Extension called uBlock Origin comes in. uBlock Origin will filter and block the majority of ads that you see and experience on the web. Without going too deep into the ethics of ad blocking, it is safe to say that ads are detrimental to the classroom environment.

IMBD Site WITHOUT Ads - uBlock Origin

Ever try to show a YouTube video in class that was preceded by an inappropriate, awkward, and unskippable commercial? Or see a popular website taken over by large, obnoxious advertisements? uBlock Origin can help.

Perks of uBlock Origin:

• Websites will load faster
• Mobile users won't have to waste data on bandwidth-hogging commercials or advertisements. 
• Filters advertisements that contain viruses, malware, and phishing messages.
• Block all ads on YouTube

Once installed, users will not have to do anything to enjoy the benefits of uBlock Origin. It's a simple plug-and-play extension that works so well that at times I forget it’s even installed!

Now there are a few things to consider once the extension is installed. Some websites have caught on to ad-blocking, and will not allow users access to their sites until the ad-block is disabled. Users can simply pause uBlock Origin by clicking on the giant power button on the menu on the top right corner of your browser.

Are ads disrupting your online educational experience? Feel free to post comments below!
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Gotta free tech tool you'd like to share? Contact Lisa or Joe to be a guest blogger!