The following blog is part of my EOTC class. I moved to a paperless classroom 5 years ago. This has helped me out because I was forced to put my material online. At the school I am leaving I had 90 GB stored on my Google Drive. I am not going to say all of it was material that would have been printed.
So it should not be a surprise that my assessments are online too. One of my favorite was to assess my students was to use Quizlet. I encouraged my students to go to the site to study the words using the match game. I had my students log into Quizlet so they could see the scores. I would always play the game of few times. The game kept a record of the high scores. I would challenge the students to beat my scores, the scores of the other classes and old record holders. While the student were playing the game, I would go around a look at the individual student scores to see how they were doing. There were usually a few who get pretty competitive. I judged the class on how the class as a whole averaged out.
When I finished the unit in my class, It would be no surprise to find out that I used Quizlet again for 2 purposes. One is I would use Quizlet live as review. The students were fiercely competitive playing this game. Once one group was ahead a few times, I would switch the groups. The student would often use silly names, I would join in quietly from my computer under a false identity and play along.
The second way I would use Quizlet is to help me write the test at the end of the unit. Whenever I would get stuck, I would use the Quizlet test mode to help me construct new questions. I told the students this and I would see them taking the tests on their own.
The following is a Quilt over film terms I created for my class. I broke down this unit over several days because it is a lot of material. I would give the students time at the beginning or the end of class to use the computers. Quizlett
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The following is a blog for my EOTC class. I have written about this scavenger hunt assignment before. The assignment involves the students taking pictures to demonstrate camera composition. Here is the student assignment. I am revamping my grading tool for this assignment. Here is the upgraded rubric.
Please email me if you have any suggestions for the assignment email@example.com. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom. Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.
The following is a blog for my EOTC class. This assignment was about online discussion boards. Online discussion boards are similar to a comments sections on social media. Everyone has an opportunity to voice their opinion. When they are good you want to read the comments.
This gives an opportunity for the students to participate in the class. The instructor can tell that the students are participating through a variety of tools. I had discussion boards in my previous online classes. I was able to see how many posts my students were making and how they were responding to others. This gave me both the quantity and quality of their post for grading purposes.
It is best for the instructor to be active in the discussion boards. They can do this by participating. It was suggested that the instructor use the socratic method to do this. The instructor would gently prompt the discussion to keep it going my asking for more information. I have not used the socratic method for my classroom but I am interested to see how it will go online.
If the instructor is not participating the students may not feel they are part of the class. This help to give the class a community. The instructor should keep the comments generic and not point anyone out. I am looking forward to have discussions of my own.
The following is a a blog for my EOTC class. I created this news graphic for my class. This is pretty similar to the last assignment. I have been using Adobe Spark Post to create these graphics. I have been happy with it. It has the option to use your own photos or get photos with a creative commons license. I like this program because it gives you the options to create graphics in several preset sizes. For this one, I used the the Facebook option. I have been using the blog post option for my other assignments. I have used both the website on my computer and the app on my iPhone. I would recommend to anyone who needs to create graphics for classroom use.
You can also create short videos. I did this video completely on my phone. Here is a video I created a recently to post online. I am having a little trouble embedding it on my website. It shows up on my computer but only shows a link when preview it. I will need to work on it to get it to embed properly.
Here is a link to my graphic. I believe other users can use it for inspiration and remix it.
Here is a graphic.
I plan on using Adobe Spark to create graphics and videos to use in my class. I have been using it for about 3 months and really like it.
I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please email me if you have any suggestions firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom. Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.
The following is a blog for my online EOTC class. Identify the major tool categories in Learning Management Systems.
The most important tools in most LMS are the ones for communication and grading. For most of my career, I have had some sort of online assignments for my class. Communication tools are those most important to online assignments. Do the students know when the assignments are due? Do they know where to find the requirements of these assignments? Do you have a way to remind the students of upcoming due dates and assignments?
Most of my students who had trouble with my online assignments had the same problem. They simply refused to log on or go to the relevant site to find the information. My students who were good at communication where the students who were most successful. They would often turn in assignments ahead of time or ask questions relevant questions to upcoming assignments.
Another aspect of communication was the ability to announce upcoming due dates. This was a nice little reminder to the students that a deadline is approaching. I also like the ability to send group emails. I use these sometimes to remind students that an assignment was due yesterday or that day. I have found out that some of the students would complete their work but neglect to turn it in. So this helped to get in missing assignments.
Grading is another tool. This allows the teacher to give valuable feedback to the students. This unit didn’t go into depth but I have scanned ahead to other units ( doing work on phone/ wifi issues). In my experience most recently with Google Classroom, was the ability to leave feedback was great. With the feedback, I could say great job but you skipped 2 items. This way the student knows their work is fine but they need to more careful.
The following post is part of my EOTC class. I read several articles about LMS trends and consider myself a little more opinionated about the subject.
One of the big trends I see potential for is more online video. I am both a video teacher and use tons of online video for my classes. Video can easily be incorporated into online classes. I use tons of YouTube playlists in my face to face class. I can use it to introduce a subject, review a subject, remediate a subject or for enrichment about a subject.
One of the nice things about YouTube is the ability to set a start time so the learning doesn’t have to watch the whole video. If you want to reinforce a concept you have the video begin at that point. With playlists, you could even create your own segway to the next topic in between video.
I don’t see YouTube as being a fad. The service gets better every year. The YouTube Kids service was introduced recently. YouTube Kids is great way for parents to safeguard their children when using online video.
The biggest roadblock when using online video is having a place to post the video. As more school districts ease the restrictions on more students will have access to the great content available. There are other video hosting services available for schools to use but the ease of use on these sites leaves a lot to be desired.
There are plenty of YouTubers who put out education videos for both teachers and students. Youtube even had at least one conference for educational YouTubers.
The Khan Academy and Ted Talks seem to cover wide variety of topics. If you look around it is pretty easy to find a list of other educational YouTube channels just waiting to be discovered. My favorites include CGP Grey and Rocket Jump Film School. When a new topic or app is introduced new videos spring up fairly quick. I planned a video on iOS app Clips only to to find out several videos during my research phase.
If you have any questions about using video with online or traditional class please email me at email@example.com. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom. Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.
The following blog is an assignment for my EOTC class.
This assignment asked which LMS is best. This is a tough question. I have used several different learning management services both as a teacher and as a student. I have spent the most time in the Blackboard family of LMS. I was happy with this service. If I had to pick one of the ones listed it would be Blackboard.
It was not listed, as an LMS but I like Google Classroom. There is a little debate over whether it should be considered a LMS. Having used both, I can tell you I prefer it over Blackboard. I have been using it for the last 3 years and it has improved greatly. The latest version allows me to allows me to add additional teachers and parent accounts. It is integrated with Google apps like Google docs and Slides. As the feature improve on these apps, the features improve on Google classroom. The main feature I see that is lacking is the ability to export the grades into a grade book program. However, there are ways to export the grades to a format that can easily entered into grade book programs.
Let me know about your favorite LMS and suggestions firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom.