BYOD Activities That Work! | Smore Newsletters for Education

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Giving Students Choices

Today's technology tools can provide teachers with the ability to give their students choices when assigning projects. Every student may not have the same apps as their classmates, so instead of requiring the students to use a particular app or website, why not give them a choice? You will find that student engagement and creativity will increase when students are given the freedom to use different tools to deliver content.

Here are three examples of a project about President John F. Kennedy. The examples contain the same content, however, the information is presented in a different format in each project.

Sources for JFK Presentations

Tutorials:

Examples of assignments that give students choices:
Tic Tac Techo
Choice Board

Articles:
Liven Up Your Lessons by Giving Students Choices

Empowering Students: Add Choice to Assignments

Student Choice and Engagement - Ohio Research Center

Tutorials/Resources:
Videolicious Academy
Videolicious Blog Post & Video Example - Physics
Prezi

Prezi Tutorials on Sophia Learning
Animoto

Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto from Read Write Think

Quizizz

Quizizz is very similar to Kahoot, except the questions appear on the students' devices.
Let's try it out!

On your device or laptop, open quizizz.com.
Click Join a Game.
Enter the Game Code the teacher provides and click Go.
Type in your name and click Join Game.
Wait for the teacher to begin the game.

Good Luck!

Quizizz Tutorials

Socrative

Socrative is a free student response system used for formative assessments. Students can answer multiple choice or short answer questions on any web-enabled device, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

All results can be emailed to the teacher or downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.
Use Socrative to visualize the responses of your students! Step-by-step directions and question ideas can be found in this post from Socrative.
Using Socrative for writing and taking a poll. www.litandtech.com/search?q=socrative&m=1
Socrative also has an App for most devices!

Are you ready to try it out?
Go to socrative.com.
The room number is football.
Wait for the teacher to start the quiz!

Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a video response tool that is used to create discussions between all students within your classroom. Teachers post a topic or question via text or video and the students respond to the prompt. Flipgrid also gives students to ability to comment on their classmates' responses.

Key Features:

All of your videos are located in one location.
You can Freeze a Topic to continue sharing the videos but prevent new recordings.
Student comments can be turned on or off.

Flipgrid Examples:

Flipgrid Tutorials/Blog Posts:

Pricing options:

Flipgrid One (Free) - 1 grid, unlimited students, unlimited topics, unlimited responses
Flipgrid Classroom ($65 per year) - unlimited grids, unlimited students, unlimited topics, unlimited responses
Classroom 10-pack ($400) - 10 Classroom subscriptions

NearPod

The Nearpod platform enables teachers to use their iPads, smart phones or computers to manage content on students' devices or computers. It combines presentation, collaboration and real-time assessment tools into one integrated solution.

Nearpod also has an App for most devices!

Are you ready to learn something new?
Open www.nearpod.com.
Click on the Join Session button.
Type in the Pin Number the teacher gives you.
Wait for the teacher to begin.

Quizlet

Quizlet is a free website and app that allows students to study vocabulary words on a mobile device, laptop or computer.
You can create your own Quizlet flashcard sets or search Quizlet's database of over 15 million flashcard sets to find content already created.

Features

Use Flashcards, Speller, Learn, Test to study the set.
Play study games with Scatter and Space Race.
Print out a copy to take home

Quizlet has recently released Quizlet Live, a game-based mode for whole class instruction and studying.

Spiral

Spiral is a collaborative suite of tools for the classroom.

Quickfire - Use Quickfire as a formative assessment tool to see what the whole class is thinking.

Discuss - Allows the teacher to create interactive presentations to spark creativity in class.

Team Up - Teams of students can create and share collaborative presentations from linked devices.

Clip - Turn any public video into a live chat with questions and quizzes

Adobe Spark (formerly Slate)

Adobe Spark - Turn your next newsletter, report, invitation or travel adventure into a gorgeous story. Your Spark web story gets its own URL and can be shared via text message, email, posted on social media accounts or embedded on blogs or personal websites. Also so available as an IOS app.

Examples:
The Colorado River
Music
Fractions
Key Club Service Project

Desmos

Math Teachers - This is AWESOME! Desmos is a free, online graphing calculator. Desmos can plot a variety of different equations, from lines to parabolas and more. It is available online and as an app.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4

Understanding the Desmos Features
Desmos provides an excellent classroom examples on their home screen and an extensive list of classroom activities.
Check out this Pinterest Board for lots of Desmos video tutorials.
Google Site of Desmos activities.

Using Digital Tools to Explore Conics in Math - Includes lesson plan, student examples and teacher tutorial

3 Wonderfully Awesome @Desmos Activities

"Match My Parabola" Desmos Mini-Challenges by Michael Fenton

"Match My Graph" Desmos Mini-Challenges by Michael Fenton

Tangent Activity for Algebra II

Polygraph: Exponential Functions

How to Use Desmos Videos

EdPuzzle

EdPuzzle is a site that allows teachers to choose or upload a video and customize it by and add questions to create an engaging interactive lesson.

Open EdPuzzle.com.
Click Login.
Select Student.
If you do not have an account, select Sign Up at the bottom of the screen. (no email required)
Click Join.
Type in the Code uhaduso
Click Join the Class.
Choose the Blue Start Button under the video.
Click the Play button to begin the assignment.

Newsela

Newsela is an online news-as-literacy platform that includes current articles in seven categories: War & Peace, Science, Health, Kids, Money, Law, and Arts. The articles are Common Core-aligned and available in five Lexile levels. Each leveled text includes a quiz and a writing prompt about the article.

Quick Start Guide for Teachers
Newsela Worksheet

Animoto

Animoto for Education is one of the original sites that allow you to create videos from your photos, videos and audio files. Your students will find many creative ways to use this program! Make sure you go to Animoto education because teachers don’t have to pay to use Animoto! (WEB or APP)

Examples:
Vocabulary
Meet Mr. Clark
Civil Rights Examples

Augmented Reality

What is augmented reality? Movies have given us a sense of “alternative reality” for years. Augmented reality makes something come to life! It seems like magic.
Let's take a look at a few of my favorites:
Aurasma and $1.00 and $20.00 Bills - Aurasma in the Classroom
Elements 3D Cubes - daqri.com/elements4D-mobile
Coloring Pages from Quiver Vision -quivervision.com.
NASA Spacecraft 3D - NASA

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