Experience Edpuzzle

Videos are a powerful learning resource - more than 65% of students are visual learners1, and +95% of students watch YouTube regularly2.

Your child’s teacher may be using Edpuzzle to make videos interactive. With Edpuzzle, students can only watch the video lessons assigned by the teacher. Teachers can embed their own questions and notes in the video, and students will receive immediate feedback so they can see if they’ve understood the content or not.

Experience Edpuzzle as a student with these video assignments:

• Cornstarch Walk on Water (2:20)

• An Old Trick (1:08)

• My Dad’s a Space Alien (0:31)

1) Vakos, Patricia. "Why the blank stare? Strategies for visual learners." (2003). Prentice Hall eTeach.

2) Jarboe, Greg. "No Matter How You Define It, Generation Z Can't Live Without YouTube." (2017). Tubular Insights.

Kami Comment Tools

We’ve mentioned Kami before and now we’re back again. Kami is a digital annotation tool that helps students and teachers interact with pdf documents. All students have the Kami extension pre-installed on their Parkway-issued Chromebooks. Teachers need to install the Kami extension in Chrome. 

Similar to Google Docs, users can comment on pdf documents with Kami. Some additional comment features unique to Kami are:

	Voice comment - This comment type is handy if you need to record a raw video clip rather than typing. For example, you can practice or test for an elementary student’s reading fluency. Or you can give students the option to respond via audio rather than typing in Kami. If you’re interested in doing this with Google Docs, remember to check out Mote.
	Video comment - Users can record a video of themselves directly in Kami, rather than going to an additional external site such as FlipGrid or Loom. For example, students can record their facial expressions in different emotional states. Recording in video also allows for personalization.
	Screen Capture comment - My personal favorite! Users can video record their screen directly in Kami rather than going to an additional external site such as Screencastify or Loom. For example, students can show their mathematical thinking by drawing out their through process on the PDF. This would be similar to the Highlight the Image feature in Schoology.

To access these tools, click on the Comment tool and the different comment options will pop up. Keep in mind, when using these comment tools for the first time you will often be prompted to allow permissions.

Stay tuned for more Kami features in the future!

Video Making

 

Teacher Tip: Kami

Kami is a digital annotation tool that helps students and teachers interact with pdf documents. All students have the Kami extension pre-installed on their Parkway-issued Chromebooks. Teachers need to install the Kami extension in Chrome. 

Some features unique to Kami include:

• Read Aloud - This allows learners to hear the text to be read aloud. Read Alouds are especially helpful for students learning to read.

• Dictionary - When the text is highlighted, it gives the definition of the vocabulary word.

• Stickers - These colorful stickers can be rewarded after a job well done.

Go ahead, test out some of Kami’s features with this fun Kami Geography Scavenger Hunt Activity. Make sure you have the Kami extension installed and turned on in Chrome in order to open the PDF with Kami. If you did it correctly you should see the Kami (K) near the top of the web address in Chrome. If not, you may need to go to Google Extensions to make it appear.

Stay tuned for more Kami features in the future!

Embed an Interactive Image into Schoology

 

Ester Park - Follow on Twitter @MrsParkShine

Google Slides are not just for presentations; they can be used for interactive notebooks, choice boards, games, and breakout rooms. We’ve mentioned before how Slidesmania and SlidesCarnival have free templates and how to's for Google Slides. 

Another similar, great resource is from Ester Park. Ester Park is an instructional designer that creates amazing digital materials. You can access anything from graphic organizers to Bitmoji stickers with videos. Most of her materials are free on her website. Check them out today!

Engagement Strategies

 Each of the short (under 2 min) videos below has a tip about different ways to engage students.

Tip #1 - Station Rotation (submitted by Ashley Wiedman at Central Middle)

Tip #2 - Using the 3E model in Schoology (submitted by Monica Dickens at South High)

AEIOU

Many of us are familiar with and use the 3-2-1 instructional strategy. Mix it up with A-E-I-O-U! This AEIOU slide gets students to summarize big ideas, think about how they feel, decide what was interesting and be curious about the reading or media. If you’re interested in using this template, please go to File and Make a Copy.

Spice it up with the videoconferencing waterfall chat strategy. Have one group of students type in their AEI (adjective, emoticon, and interesting fact) and the other group type in their OU (Oh!’s and Umm…?’s) Remind students to wait before sending their answer so that all students can participate and not feel pressured to follow-up with the latest comment in the Zoom Chat.

Checklist Bank

Providing students and parents/guardians with a checklist allows families to manage their own time and space efficiently. We see and hear how Parkway teachers are staying organized with checklists. For ideas on staying organized in a virtual classroom for students, check out this shared Checklist Bank folder. It has examples of checklists from K12 virtual teachers. Make a copy of these checklists to use from the Templates folder.

Digital Choice Rooms

Written and recorded by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan

• Choose a topic or focus on all of the rooms.

• Design activities for each room.

• teacher led

• outside websites

• quiet working room

• Introduce the stations and review the procedures:

• What is expected?  How many students can be at a station at any one time? What does a student do when s/he completes a station? 

• Remind students periodically of remaining time.   Close activities with small group discussions. Try two broad guiding questions for the discussions: what did you learn and how does it connect to the broad topic? This is where we start to make connections to the big ideas. The discussion time is also an opportunity for students to discover other rooms. Students share what they did and learned with each other. 

Digital Gallery Walk

written by Kristen Harms// posted by Elegan Kramer

During a Gallery Walk or a Poster Walk, students get up out of their seats and circulate the room. They look at images, text and/or student work and identify what they see, think, and wonder.  There may be discussion at each of the posters or students may write thinking or questions around the edge of the poster.  Students have time to reflect at each station, build on each others’ ideas, write clarifying questions, agree or disagree, and provide feedback.  Students may also complete a “See, Think, Wonder” graphic organizer as they progress through the gallery.

Use one of the tools below for students to view the image or artifact and decide how they will note their thinking.  You can also prepare questions, images, videos, etc. that you would like students to respond to during the gallery walk and post them to the tool that students will use for the gallery walk such as Padlet or Flipgrid.

Each slide can be a new image or artifact or multiple Slideshows can be added to a shared Drive.   Students can write their thinking on the slideshow in text boxes or on a separate document.  Example Video

Each frame can be a new image or artifact or multiple Jamboards can be added to a shared Drive. Students can drag, drop, draw, type, and insert images into the frame.

Teachers can create their own image to put into the padlet or the teacher can provide specific artifacts or links. Students can mark their thinking or questions on the Padlet.

Digital Valentine Jamboard Exchange

Valentine exchange may look different digitally on Virtual Campus, but it is still possible with Google Jamboard. A unique feature with Google Jamboard is that students can leave bright, colorful sticky notes. Check out the video above with the instructions below.

Instructions:

1. In your Google Drive, add a new Google Jamboard in order to make a Jamboard (‘whiteboard’) for each student. You can also use this set of 12 Valentine Jamboards to help you get started! (it will force you to make a copy of the Jamboards).

1. To make a copy of a Jamboard, click on the ‘snowman’ of the Jamboard and select duplicate.

2. After customizing the Jamboards for your class, change the share settings so that all students can edit. To do this, click the blue Share button at the top right-hand corner. Change the sharing to Parkway Schools and Editor. Click Copy link.

3. Share the Jamboard link with your students and have students leave sticky notes for their classmates. The sticky note tool is in the middle of the left toolbar.

    

4. On the day of the Valentine exchange, have students look at their Jamboard to see what others wrote.

   

Jerusalema Dance!

Jerusalema is a popular song and dance created by South African artists DJ Master KG and his sister Nomcebo Zikode. This is about bringing unity throughout the masses by song and dance with people of all walks of life. Play this video during a short break and dance with your kids! This is a fun way to get some movement during class and to build community. You don’t need a dance background. All you need to do is let the song and beat move you.

Reading Online

written by Kristen Harms/ posted by Elegan Kramer

The following strategies will help students move beyond random surfing and clicking to using the internet and online reading meaningfully.  Research shows that students need comprehension skills and strategies to specifically and effectively read and learn from text on the internet.

Which Link Should I Follow?

Students should stop, think, and make predictions about which site to explore.  Students can answer specific questions off the computer to help them analyze what they are reading.

How Do I Navigate Within a Site?

1. Read the title of the page and the title of the Web site in the margin at the top of the window.

2. Scan menu choices. Hold your mouse over the navigational or topical menus that often appear down the left frame or across the top of the window, but don't click yet. Get a big picture of the information available within the site.

3. Make predictions about where each of the major links may lead and anticipate a link's path through multiple levels of a Web site.

4. Explore interactive features of dynamic images (animated images, or images that change as a viewer holds the mouse over them), pop-up menus, and scroll bars that may reveal additional levels of information contained within the site.

5. Identify the creator of the Web site and when the site was last updated. You can often find this information by clicking on a button on the home page labeled “About This Site,” but sometimes deeper exploration is needed to find the site's creator. Consider what this information indicates about the site.

6. Notice and try out any electronic supports the site has, such as an organizational site map or internal search engine.

7. Make a judgment about whether to explore the site further. If the site looks worthwhile, decide which areas of the site to explore first.

How Do I Know This Is True? Think and Check Critical Reading

Think	Check
Does this information make sense?	➜Be skeptical and ask around.
Where else can I look?	➜Search the Internet using keywords in quotation marks, or look in a book.
Who created the site and why?	➜Explore the “About Us” link with a critical eye.
Who is the author?	➜Search the Internet using the author’s name in quotation marks.
Who is linking to the site?	➜Type “Link:” followed by the URL of the site in question into the search box of the Google home page.

Teacher Tech Tip: Slidesmania and SlidesCarnival

Slidesmania have free templates and how to for Google Slides. It’s not just for powerpoint presentations. There are interactive templates for:

Notebooks	Choice Boards and Games
Planners	Breakout Rooms

A time-saving characteristic with these templates is that they are all linked within the presentation. For example, if someone clicks on the Monday tab in the planner, it will go directly to Monday’s slide. This allows the presentation to be manipulative and interactive. Students can also use these templates for student projects and group presentations - it is free and open to all!

Another free powerpoint template and Google Slides themes for presentation is SlidesCarnival. SlidesCarnival focuses on making presentations more appealing and does not have as many interactive templates.

Parent Pointer: Talking to Kids about Recent Events

In light of the recent events last week, remember that our kids are also trying to make sense of what they’re seeing and hearing. Kids are often more tuned into our emotions than we realize. As you are processing through family conversations and with the anticipated inauguration happening next week, here are some resources that might be helpful when talking with your children.

• Parkway teacher discusses Capitol chaos - video on kmov.com

• Talking to Kids about the Violence at the U.S. Capitol - Common Sense Media

• Promoting Compassion and Acceptance in Crisis - National Association of Psychologists

• When Bad Things are Happening - Teaching Tolerance

All of these resources focus on listening to the child and giving them a safe and brave place to share their emotions. We also have an excellent social-emotional and counseling team in Parkway who are always happy to support you in any way possible. We hope these tools help you provide the care, comfort, and answers our kids and teens need during these challenging and unpredictable times.

Nearpod for Teachers

Written by Kristen Harms/ posted by Elegan Kramer

 

Nearpod Introduction Video

 

Nearpod enables instructors to limit distraction and multitasking during a lesson by broadcasting content and interactive learning activities/exercises to student devices in real-time.

Slide Content and Activities

Click on each icon for a quick explanation video.

	Thousands of videos featuring trusted brands, curated to save teachers time (No need to search YouTube!  No ads!) Discover relevant and relatable content that respects student interest and identity. Cultivate active experiences with built-in, interactive, standards-aligned questions.  Teachers can also make the video interactive.
	Create a traditional slide in Nearpod or import from Google Slides
	Connect students to any website on the internet opens up endless possibilities to share information with students
	a library of 100 stunning 3D objects that you can easily add to your Nearpod lessons
	PhET simulations engage students in science and math concepts through an intuitive, game-like environment. Students learn through exploration and discovery.
	Nearpod VR takes your classroom on Virtual Reality Field Trips with 450 ready-to-run lessons to inspire students to investigate and broaden their horizons.
	Nearpod is giving teachers the option of adding videos from BBC Worldwide directly into their lessons
	Teachers can enhance their Nearpod lessons with the addition of Sway presentations. Sway lets teachers tell compelling digital stories and design beautiful presentations. Unlike traditional static presentations, Sway incorporates multimedia and interactive elements to offer a rich experience.
	With the slideshow feature, students can scroll through multiple slides on their own pace. This is a great way to include slides you want students to look through on their own during a Live Participation lesson, or a way to break up the way material is presented.
	Teachers can upload an mp3 recording to the for students to listen from the teacher’s device or their individual devices.

	Time to Climb is a highly interactive gamified activity within the Nearpod Student Engagement Platform. Students race to the top of the mountain against the clock by answering multiple choice questions. Time to Climb activities are great for bell ringers, learning checks, exit tickets and more.
	The open ended questioning asks students to work together as a class to write an answer to a question about a text, and include the evidence they found after re-reading the story.
	Select corresponding text and images for your students to match. All you have to do is create the pairs and you're all set. You can use our timer feature when creating the matching pairs activity to specify a time limit for your students as well.
	With a Quiz, you can add multiple-choice questions to your Nearpod lesson. Quizzes are auto-graded, so you'll know right away what students understand, and you can share out the results with students in real-time.
	Flipgrid allows students to record short videos and share them with their teacher and class. In order to use Flipgrid within Nearpod, you'll need a Flipgrid account. If you've never created a Flipgrid account, you can create one here. This activity works only when using Nearpod in a web browser.
	The Draw It activity allows students to respond to a prompt with drawings, text, and images. You can upload a background image, or have students draw on a blank background.
	Collaborate Board allows for crowd sourced ideas within the feature. Students are able to indicate their preference for certain responses by simply clicking on the heart icon. Teachers then are able to sort boards based on number of likes—they also have the ability to delete comments. This is similar to Padlet.
	Poll activities allow teachers to ask a multiple choice questions without a right answer to check for understanding, take a class vote, highlight student opinions, and more. The Poll activity can be used for multiple-choice questions that do not have a correct answer.
	Fill in the Blanks is a drag and drop activity that allows students to complete a passage and populate blanks with words. Students get instant feedback, so they'll know what words or concepts they need more practice with.
	Memory Test shows students a grid of "face-down" image cards that they click on one by one to reveal an image. Their objective is to match identical images. This can be a great brain break or game.