Ed Tech Blog
On the pages under the drop-down menu on this page you will find archives for blogs written by Bob Frye and by Holyoke High School teachers Mike Cotto and Heather Fuller.
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Dear superstar teachers, I now have morning Office Hours:. office hours from 7:30 to 9:00 AM M-Th. I will, of course, be available at other times by pre-arrangement and always by email. The question of summative/ formative assessments and evidence of learning has come up several times in the past few weeks. As midterm exams and report cards approach for teachers, and we continue to strive to give actionable feedback to students and parents, educational technology can greatly simplify this time consuming task. Tasks low of the Depth of Knowledge (DoK) scale can now almost entirely be graded by technology, leaving more time for teachers to give feedback on higher Dok skills primarily through Google Docs. For quick informal formative assessments try : For documenting and feedback on student progress try: For formal and larger summative assessments try: Featured Tech of the week: Edulastic is an assessment database to find, create, and assign state standard-based formative and summative assessments. It has a library of already created and editable assessments and the ability to build a variety of different style assessments, multiple-choice, fill in the blank, matching, graphing, ordering, and writing. Many of the assessments are self-correcting, provide great data collection tools for reteaching, and supporting future planning. Edulastic easily integrates with Google Classroom. Please see the handout to walk through setting up an account and getting started. Of course, I am available to walk anyone through how to use this tool during office hours or another convenient time. Digital Resource of the Week: Facing the Future is a set of lesson plans on Global Issues and sustainability. They “provide educators with the educational materials and resources they need to ignite their students’ interest in complex global issues while helping them achieve academically.”
Have a great week!
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Dear nurturing educators, During district PD I had planned to offer a PD on “Gamification”. Because of changes in district plans, I wasn’t able to offer it. In this week's newsletter: an overview of this concept and some ideas on how to start in your classroom. Gamification is a twenty year old educational buzzword related to student engagement. One definition is: the use of activities and external rewards to encourage motivation in non-game contexts. It is designed to to increase a person’s experience or engagement with a course, goal or system. In our context of remote and hybrid learning, engagement is an ongoing challenge that gamification can help. This is an introduction to ideas and tools. I would be happy to meet with teachers to customize materials or brainstorm specific activities and content for your class. Here is a longer Blog post on the subject from Matt Miller and Ditch that text. Make sure you check out the interactive syllabus! Many of these first resources have been shared in earlier Newsletters and most involve some cost to access all the features. Level 1 - Primarily content mastery based. Adding game-based instruction elements to lessons. Utilizing platforms like Quizlet, Quizizz, Gimkit, Kahoot, or the others below to bring competitive knowledge games into your lessons. These four platforms offer easy to use activities for individual and small group practice of vocabulary and concepts and modes that create competitive whole class games. These are great for Do Now reviews of earlier material or Formative checks for understanding at the end of lesson. Also, a great way to review before tests. You can award homework passes, prizes, or bonus points for winning teams and individuals to increase engagement. Flippity is my go-to for templates for game boards, dice, spinners, and quick simple games all built on a Google sheets platform. Uno for proofs in Geometry class. Includes a virtual Deck of Uno Cards. Shut the Box is a numbers sense game built by Alice Keeler on a Google Slides platform. Make a copy and watch the video for rules to play. Factile lets you play a premade or custom Jeopardy-style game. Level 2: Primarily critical thinking and problem solving based. Role playing games, Scavenger Hunts and Breakout rooms are designed for individuals or small groups to follow a series of clues or puzzles to solve a problem. Along the way, students gain content knowledge. Scavenger hunt using QR codes placed around the classroom, campus, or even city. Students scan the code to complete a task or solve a problem and access the next clue to the next code. You can link to curated collections in Sway or Wakelet to keep students on task. Great activity in a PE class. Why limit your scavenger hunt to your immediate area? Use Google Earth to make your scavenger hunt into a global field trip. Here’s a complete lesson Art History: Italy Save the planet by solving Calculus problems also several Art History simulations LMS that combines role playing and completing quests (lessons) Classcraft Breakout rooms Very similar to scavenger hunts. Students have to solve a series of puzzles to “escape” or win the challenge. Here is a Pinterest collection of a ton of free, premade escape rooms for all ages. Tech Resource of the Week: MoneySkill. A free curriculum for either Middle School or High School college on managing money. You can use whole or in part to teach the basics of income, expenses, budgeting, saving, investing, credit and insurance. MoneySkills can be added to math or Social Studies classes to bring “real-world” applications to your subject. Link to original
Happy New Year, intrepid educators! Welcome back after what I am sure felt like too short of a break! I am sure no one is shedding a tear to put 2020 in the rearview mirror. The new year (and what looks like new patterns in our school day) is a great time to establish or reestablish class routines and limits. Aside from assessing, reinforcing, and upping our digital skills (see info here), we can reset (or maybe, in this case, reinvent) our class procedures. Students often come back reinvigorated with high hopes for a better new year. Setting them up for success with the trio of routines, limits, and anchor points can sometimes extend those New Year's resolutions. While I know everyone has this foundation, it’s great to remind ourselves of what we can do to promote success. Routines are what happens in what order in every class. This is especially important for our students and our times; the more uncertainty and unpredictability outside school, the more they need it in school, virtually or in-person. They are looking to you for that stability. Remember, it takes six to eight weeks of consistency to set a routine. Limits can be class expectations, norms, non-negotiables. They are the things that set behavior expectations, something that can never be ignored and always addressed. And Anchor Points are daily check-ins or grounding at the beginning of every class, preferably done individually, to get a read on where individual students are at and what they might need that day. These are the foundation of relationship building. I urge you to think about how these three legs of the stool can give you balance in the year moving forward. Nearpod The District has purchased a district-wide Nearpod subscription for all teachers! Log in with your HPS Google account, and your existing account will be upgraded without the loss of content, settings, or other work.
Tech Tool of the week: Flocabulary Flocabulary is owned by Nearpod and can now be integrated into a Nearpod lesson from their Create Board or, as always, a stand-alone lesson. Flocabulary uses a rap video (with supporting lesson components) to deliver content to students. Check out this “Year in Rap” video here (also a younger student version available). After watching the video, look to the sidebar on the left for activities: Flashcards, Vocab game, quiz, and “lyric lab,” where students are challenged to write rhymes about the week's news. To create a class on Flocabulary by importing your students from Google classroom, create an assignment, and share the code. |
AuthorRobert Frye is a retired 33 year veteran Of Holyoke Public Schools Archives
April 2021
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