Learning in the Lou

Frantic. That is how many of us work. There are about a billion things that come up every day and I'm sure we miss super important things. What if... there was a way to help prevent that? What if you could magically email yourself and have that message pop up at the exact date and time you specify? The future is here, right now. All you need to access it is a tiny little Chrome extension called Boomerang . Installing and Using Add the Boomerang extension . When it is fully installed you will see this icon appear in your Chrome browser. Open a new Gmail message. Compose the message. Click the red Send Later button. There are a number of options to choose from. For this example, I clicked on the little calendar at the bottom. I like this as it gives me very precise delivery options. You now can select an exact day and time for the message to be delivered. Click the blue Confirm button when you are ready to send. This is a great option f...

Edcamps are pretty sweet and this one is not to be missed. The whole focus for this is Chrome and the G Suite ecosystem. Why not join us at ChromeCamp coming up in March .

TodaysMeet is a super fast way to create a backchannel in your classroom. The whole setup process only takes a matter of seconds and a click. That is all. Getting Started Navigate to todaysmeet . 1. Name the room. 2. Pick how long you want the room open for. Once this time elapses all that information will disappear. 3. Click Open your room . What it looks like 1. This room is called facs1sthour so my address is todaysmeet.com/ facs1sthour  and this is what the students would need to type in to find the page. 2. Students will add their name. 3. Click Join . 1. Type the answer in the box. 2. Click Say . This is what the messages will look like as they come in. Next Steps 20 useful ways to use Todaysmeet in school - from the DITCH blog.

We have not posted about Formative in a while and thought it would be a good idea to revisit the single best feature of this tool. This also goes along with some of our most recent ELITE sessions that have focused on BYOD. What is Formative? Formative is similar to the other tools, like socrative , with a tiny little twist. This tool takes advantage of the touchscreen, you can draw and submit that as your answer! Check out our example and see how this could be used in your classroom. Getting Started Teacher View - Set Up I logged into  Formative  using my school Google account by clicking on the  login  button. It makes it much easier to use, all I have to do is click to login.  For this example, we will be creating a quick question that requires students to draw their answer. To start a new quiz, click  +New Formative in the upper left. 1. Label your quiz. 2. Click the plus symbol to start adding questions. I am ...

We are publishing this slightly out of order, this is post 2 of 2. We are currently writing about the professional development side of Voxer and will publish at a later date. Voxer is one of those tools that can be used for professional development and giving quick feedback to students. This idea comes from our Sappington principals Dr. Parker and Dr. Albers, so thankful for you sharing this idea with us! The big idea of using Voxer is that it is fast, simple and impactful. This post will detail how to use Voxer to record an audio clip and share it with the students you are working with. This could be the tool you have always dreamed of, timely feedback that does not take a ton of time to create. Getting Started Download the Voxer app on your Android or iOS device. Create an account. Open the app. Click the hamberger icon (three lines) in the upper left corner. Click My Notes . To record an audio note, click and hold the little radio button in the...

This post was created to be used during an experimental ELITE 3 session. Flipgrid is a super fast way to get kids to share their thinking about whatever topic or idea you assign. Video responses for the free version are limited to either 15 or 90 seconds. Getting Started Start by visiting the Flipgrid  sign up page . Using Flipgrid One I am allowed to create one grid but I can add unlimited topics. Start by clicking on the blue New Grid button. 1. Name your grid. A grid is where all the topics are kept. 2. This link is what the students will use to access the grid. I have blurred mine out for right now. 3. I would always recommend filling in some type of purpose. I like to refer to these sections as a place to post your directions. 4. Click Create Grid . There are many, many options if you keep scrolling down the page. I'm leaving everything set to default for this post. You should be prompted to create a topic. Topics are discussion st...

In an ELITE session, we took a look at a thinking protocol called See/Think/Wonder. We built upon this idea by finding ways for the students to share what they are thinking with each other on the fly. We picked this app because it was free, it does not require an account and it is available on Android and iOS Getting Started Search for Easy Voice Recorder by Digipom in your app store. It should look like this.                                     iOS                                                                    Android To begin recording click the app. 1. Name the recording. 2. Click the red button to begin the recording. Click pause when you are finished recording. 1. Find the recording ...