As we are building the 21st century classroom there is a need to develop interactive and engaging assessments that utilize modern technology. I would like to share a few free websites that provide some interesting ways to gather information from students that can drive instruction.
Today’s Meet – http://www.todaysmeet.com
Todaysmeet.com is a website that allows you to create an instant secure chat room at any time. This tool could be utilized in a wide variety of educational ways. Many schools and district cannot afford to purchase student response systems for all students to use during classroom instructional time. Todaysmeet.com allows educators to create instant secure chat rooms that allow students to communicate information to one another and to the teacher. The chat rooms are totally disposable and you can control how long the chat room is “live”. Users can also print a transcript of all communication on the website, thus creating a record of all dialogue presented during the chat room session.
A few educational uses for Todaysmeet.com:
1. Do a question of the day and allow students to answer the question throughout the day using Todaysmeet.com
2. When working in a Computer Lab or one-to-one computing environment Todaysmeet.com allows students to ask and answer questions.
3. Have students answer a specific question from home as homework.
4. Todaysmeet.com allows students to collaborate with one another or the teacher instantly!
QuizStar is a dynamic interactive online assessment tool that allows educators to take traditional assessments such as quizzes and modernizes them via the internet. View the tutorial at QuizStar.4teachers.org to learn how to create assessments and build your classes. QuizStar is extremely easy to use and setup. Multiple choice, true/false, and short answer options. Upload media to your questions. Best of all, QuizStar is completely free!
www.polleverywhere.com allows anyone to respond to questions instantly using their cell phones. Many schools have policies banning student cell phone usage during school hours. In theory this is a very good policy that should prevent negative texting and calling during school hours, unfortunately it is virtually impossible to enforce this policy with the overwhelming number of students who have cell phones. Today’s students are able to text without looking at their phones. Walk through any High School or Middle School in the USA and you will find a creative student who is able to send texts without being noticed at any given moment. At some point public school educators will need to adapt and embrace this technology and harness it for educational usage. While teenagers may not have access to a laptop or desktop computer at home, almost every teenager in the USA has access to their own cell phone regardless of socioeconomic background and status. www.polleverywhere.com is the first step in empowering educators with a way to assess students using the cell phone technology our students are already using in their personal lives! While we may not be ready to unleash the power of www.polleverywhere.com in all public school settings, it does bring up some very powerful questions for educators to ponder about the future of assessment and technology in the classroom.
YouTube.com is a massive database of videos and contains many videos that can be very useful and relevant for educators. Many teachers have asked me, “What is the best way to use YouTube in the classroom?” I feel that teachers should not search for YouTube videos “on the fly” in front of their students. Similarly, I don’t believe that teachers should use search engines “on the fly” in front of their students. Doing so could result in inappropriate content being displayed for students to see. Educators should always come to class fully prepared for teaching their lessons and preparing videos for class is no different. Teachers should search YouTube or TeacherTube before class begins and download the appropriate video in preparation for sharing with students.
By downloading desired videos, educators are not only avoiding any inappropriate content being displayed, but they are also avoiding the many issues that happen when streaming videos live from the internet. Streaming is great at home, but in a professional education setting it is not a good idea. When streaming a video in a classroom the video often takes a long time to load and appears “choppy”, this is because schools have limited internet bandwidth to use. Internet bandwidth is the speed and power of the internet in a specific location. If you have high speed internet at home, you probably have no issues with the speed and reliability of the internet because only a couple of computers are accessing the internet via your home connection at any given time. This is not the case at a school or within a school district. Many computers (sometimes hundreds or thousands) are accessing the internet simultaneously in a school or school district. When one computer accesses the internet it is using a portion of the internet bandwidth available to that school or school district. The more computers being used at the same time, the more bandwidth needed to support those computers. Streaming videos and music requires more bandwidth than just going to a website and reading an article or checking your email, thus it is important that educators are mindful of this. Every time someone streams a video or listens to music via the internet at a school they are taking away resources from another computer in the school or school district. I often hear educators comment on the internet being slow at school, often times this is because a few users are streaming videos or music and are using up the internet bandwidth available for a school or school district. Internet bandwidth is very expensive, so all educators and students need to be mindful of how they are using the internet at school. By being cognizant of internet use, educators can ensure that every teacher and student has access to internet resources at the click of the mouse.
There are multiple reasons for using YouTube videos in the classroom and I am providing two ways to download videos for use in the classroom. The first one is www.mediaconverter.org which is a free website that allows users to download up to five YouTube videos a day. The second one is YouTube Downloader which is a free program that can be downloaded onto a computer and allows users to download and save as many YouTube videos as they would like.
My previous post described a few different ways that teachers can use Photostory in their classrooms. Video projects can help ESL students learn English by having students create an ongoing Photostory project using vocabulary words that are introduced throughout the school year. The students could define each vocabulary word, use it in a sentence, and then narrate the definition and sentence within Photostory. A great way to take this to the next level would be to have the students save the Photostory video in a format that would allow them to place it on an iPod, so that they could review all their vocabulary words using an iPod. This would provide the students with an audio and visual study tool for helping them build their English vocabulary and writing skills. In order to place a video created in Photostory (or Movie Maker) onto an iPod, the video must be converted into an iTunes friendly format. Without getting too technical, when a video is created on a PC using Photostory or Movie Maker the final result is a file type (.wmv) that is usable on any PC, but is not usable on a MAC or within iTunes. For best results, videos in iTunes and on iPods should be MPEG-4 videos. There are many tools available to easily convert a video to an MPEG-4. One such program is Jodix. I have provided user guides for using both of this video convertor. After converting the video to an MPEG-4, import or drag and drop the video into iTunes and then it can be placed onto an iPod.
Student created vocabulary videos could also be used in non-ESL classes. High School level students could create an ongoing video that defines SAT vocabulary words. In the Middle and Elementary level students could take vocabulary words that are being assigned by the teacher and create an ongoing video that defines these words. These types of vocabulary projects engage students in the learning process. They allow students to be digitally creative, while at the same time reinforcing content and providing them with an instant study guide that they created. Like any digital project, teachers should create a rubric for assessment.
Photo Story can be used various ways with all levels of students. Photo Story is an extremely easy program to use. I have attached a step by step guide for using Photo Story and for using PowerPoint to create dynamic Photos to be used in a Photo Story project. The final result of a Photo Story project is a movie that includes titles, photos, narrations, and background music. This movie can then be uploaded or embedded onto a website, blog, or iPod.
1. Using curriculum standards as a guide, determine which standards are going to be the catalyst for creating a movie project. Here are some lesson ideas:
a. Students create a documentary of a historical event.
b. Students retell a story that has been assigned.
c. Students create their own story.
d. Students define vocabulary words.
e. Students recreate the information received during a field trip.
f. Students take photos of geometric shapes and define them.
g. Students define math facts.
h. Students create an alphabet movie.
i. Students create a project to help in SAT vocabulary review.
j. Students create define the periodic table.
k. Students narrate and illustrate a story or poem. (Illustrations can be made on construction paper and then scanned into the computer.)
2. Create a rubric for assessing student work. Introduce the project and provide students with the assessment rubric and directions.
3. Allow student access to computers in a computer lab setting or by utilizing classroom computers in rotation.
4. Provide the attached Photo Story and Saving PowerPoint Slides as Photos User Guides to students.
5. Set a deadline for the completion of the project.
6. Collect and assess student work. If desired, post student work examples on a classroom website, wiki, or blog.
7. Final projects could also be loaded onto iPods as a way for students to review and study for a test or exam.
ToonDoo.com is a free web-based program that allows users to create comic strips and books. Toondoo.com utilizes a drag and drop layout that is easy for all users to use. This program can adapted to be used with any student level and can be used in many different ways. Attached is a user guide for www.toondoo.com and I have embedded an example comic strip.
Lesson Plan:
1. Using curriculum standards as a guide, determine which standards you would like to be addressed by students creating a text rich project. Here are some example scenarios:
a. Students retell a historical event.
b. Students rewrite an outcome of a historical event.
c. Students retell a book.
d. Students rewrite the ending of a book.
e. Students write and illustrate their own story.
f. Students create a 3 frame comic strip to define a vocabulary word.
g. Students write and illustrate a persuasive editorial.
h. Students recreate a famous scientific experiment.
i. Students create short comic strips to help learn and remember math facts and functions.
2. Create a rubric for assessing student work. Introduce the project and provide students with the assessment rubric and directions.
3. Allow student access to computers in a computer lab setting or by utilizing classroom computers in rotation.
4. Provide the attached ToonDoo.com User Guide to students.
5. Set a deadline for the completion of the project.
6. Collect and assess student work. If desired, post student work examples on a classroom website, wiki, or blog.
www.timetoast.com is a free web-based program that allows users to create interactive digital timelines. Students and teachers at every level could use this program. Attached is a user guide for timetoast.com and I have embedded an example timeline into this post.
Lesson Plan:
1. Using your curriculum standards decide what you would like your students to include in their timeline. For example, students could create a timeline of the Civil Rights Movement.
2. Provide students with safe search engines for researching their topic and/or provide them with reference materials from your school’s library/media center. For safe search engines please visit: http://tressler.jottit.com/safe_search_engines_for_students
3. Provide students adequate time to research and collect data for their timelines.
4. Have students create an outline for their timeline.
5. Approve the student outlines before they begin creating their timelines.
6. Allow students to access www.timetoast.com – Teacher’s can create a “generic” login for all students to use. Multiple students can be logged into timetoast.com at the same time and be working on separate timelines.
7. Students should include text, images, and links in their timelines. The links can act as the reference/bibliography portion of this project, so that students are documenting where they found their data. Students should also type in whatever print based reference materials they used into their timeline posts.
8. After the students have completed their timeline, they should save and publish the timeline. After publishing the teacher or students can embed the timeline onto their class webpage/wiki/blog.
![\Toon\](http://www.toondoo.com/public/h/h/s/hhsca/toons/cool-cartoon-530137.png "\Toon\")
