Lets get right into some tools that were found this week! The first set of tools were researching various educational blogs. I spend HOURS looking for blogs that were interesting and useful to my classroom and my own ever expanding repertoire of knowledge. Here are just a few:
TED Education
This blog is full of TED talks and lessons to go along with them. It is updated frequently due to all of the new TED talks happening around the world. If you have not started using TED talks in your classroom now is the time.
The Daily Riff
The Daily Riff has great articles about new educational information. This site is unique because is appeals to parents, students, teachers, and administrators. The articles are meant to catch your interest but not take to long to read.
The Thinking Stick
This blog is geared more for teachers and administrators. It give great theory when it come to integrating technology into the classroom and then gives you practical ideas for actually putting the ideas into work in your classroom.
The majority of the class I am currently in uses Google Forms ALL of the time. I am a huge advocate for teachers using Google Apps in the classroom. They are easy and free. I was using them even before my district became a Google district this year! I am sure most of us are starting to get our first glimpse into what students will be required to do for the new common core testing. I know when I saw the things our students will be required to do in just a few months I freaked out. Our little sixth grade department got together and decided that our students need to start testing and working on the computer in a way that simulates the test. (If you are not stressed click here to read and article about digital reading)
Anywho, I promise I am getting to the part where you think I am a genius. This inspired us to create a lovely Google Form containing all of the questions for our unit test. You should have seen the pride that I had on my face when I was done creating the test. It had links to the readings and then then questions. I figured out how to group the questions so it was not as overwhelming for my students. BUT it still did not look like this:
Note how the reading is on the left and question on the right. There is really not a website that will allow me to create my own test in this format. So what did I do??? I taught my kids out to open the reading in a new window (right click-open link in a new window). THEN I taught them how to open the windows so they are side by side (right click on windows bar-show windows side by side). Now it is still not and exact replica but look!
Like I said not perfect, but it is a lot like the test they will be taking in May! Actually my kids enjoyed taking their test online and I was able to gauge what issues we might run into as educators when it come to our students taking the test (computers are sometime distracting to students not used to them!) This is nothing fancy, but I am hoping it will help us get one step closer to preparing our kids for that lovely test that is coming up way too quickly.
Until next time...
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