Something New for Mother's Day Gifts: Make an App!

Share this code with your students and then have them make changes to make it their mom's favorite things. Go to Bitsbox.com/go 

If you'd like to share the app in a card, share this Google Slides file with your students. Have them add the screenshot and QR code from the app. Print it out, fold, and write a nice message inside.

Mother's Day Card Template - Go to File: Make a Copy to use the file.

If you need to make accounts for the class to save their apps, go to https://bitsbox.com/tools/

Note: Bitsbox is a subscription service. There are quite a few options that students can do for free. I do subscribe to this but I don't get any compensation for posting. I just like it :) 

Goose Chase Edu

Goose Chase, an amazing app for digital scavenger hunts, just released an EDU version for schools, making it even better and easier for teachers.

Goose Chase 

New Educator Free Accounts
The new Educator Basic Plan allows you to run an unlimited number of team games with an unlimited number of class sections. No need to complete a request form or wait for approval from the Goose Chase team! You can have unlimited number of games and classes, but run just one live game at a time on the free subscription. It's super easy to run a team game, and you can have 5 teams participating at a time. Great collaboration!

If you need more, the Educator Plus account is very reasonable at $49 per year. That upgrades you to unlimited number of simultaneous live games, 10 teams per game (team games), or 40 participants per game (individual games).


New Library of Game Ideas!
This is amazing! Check out the library to see how other educators have used Goose Chase with their students. Copy the game and edit it in seconds to fit your class! Goose Chase EDU Library

Mission Feedback
One of the cool things about Goose Chase is being able to follow the game in real time and check on submissions. You can give bonus points (+ or -) or delete submissions but we haven't been able to give feedback as to why. Now we can! With the new notifications feature, you can provide feedback to participants in real time or after your game. Giving you the opportunity to communicate why a submission was deleted, how they can improve, or even just how great they’re doing!

My Games
The first full class game I did with Goose Chase was a field trip to the San Diego Zoo. It was a huge success! The kids had fun finding the missions and adding photos or answering questions. Since I had a parent chaperone or two with each group, it was easy for them to work as a team. It was great to see the submissions coming in! Student teams can see the other teams' photos but cannot see their text answers.

We've also done team building and some math games. Here's a submission from a geometry game. (He's pointing to the correct shape for the mission.)

With the new library, I started thinking of all sorts of other ways to use Goose Chase. How would you use it? Share your ideas in the comments!

Updated to add: How I set up team accounts - 

I've had a couple questions on how to setup team accounts. This is how I do it to manage accounts. I setup the five team accounts at the beginning of the year and we reused them for each game throughout the year. Team members could change throughout the year, they just changed color login. 

Make a Copy of Instructions by clicking here.

Empowering Students - Tech Leadership Teams

Students as Leaders - Recently, I've been asked a few times about our Eagle Tech Squad - this is our student technology leadership team. I'll try to put as many of the resources here to help others interested in starting a program. Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions.

Background: Several years ago when we began our 1:1 chromebook rollout, I was one of 4 classes who had a class set of devices on our campus. I decided to start an after school tech class to offer more of our kids opportunities to learn about technology. I did not have all the answers, in fact, most of the time the kids teach me about new tools and great ways to use them.

As more devices have become available on campus, we've had a need for more teacher and student support. Two years ago, one of our after school classes, led by Christine Dixon, began a tech leadership focus. They started to create a website and some tutorials. This year, two of our schools formalized the process of selecting our leaders and began a before school tutoring session, led by the Tech Squad leadership students.


So here is what we did: First, Marla Rosenthal, from Discovery Elementary, and I met several times during summer 2016 to research other tech leadership programs and decide our focus. Many of the programs we found were geared to middle and high students but we were convinced our elementary students could do it too. We found this SWAT Team program from North Star Elementary. We also found this high school help desk example from Burlington High School. More info here about Burlington.
And amazing resources came from Mari Venturino and Alicia Johal of Mar Vista Academy

The Plan: We created a website to share our vision using ideas from all these sources and with our schools in mind. Here is mine for San Elijo Elementary Eagle Tech Squad Recruitment Website Link  My school took a little longer to get approval so my applications were pushed back till October of 2016. Interested 3rd - 5th grade students filled out the application and created a resume. Seriously, nothing is cuter than an elementary student's resume - you HAVE to include this in your process. Student Resume Sample 

This first year I received about 26 applications and resumes. Most of the students were kids I knew from previous tech classes or my own students. It was easy to accept them all and get started. We met once a week after school. The first couple meetings we went over ideas we had for the program. We created a list of topics we thought were needed based on student suggestions and teacher requests that I had gotten. I had the kids pick areas they would like to work on and create tutorials and resources for. I also gave them a tech training link to complete that I found from James Sanders: Zero to Ninja Google Docs Challenge  We added the resources to a Google Classroom group and they got to work.

Tech Squad Tasks: Student leaders started researching and created a website that will continue to grow with resources to support students and teachers in technology. They added links, slides, and screencasts to help. They also will go into classes or meet with teachers on their recess of after school times to help. We created a resource of Google shortcuts that we printed out and delivered to each teacher with chocolate :)

Hour Of Code: Our first big task was to support the Hour of Code activities at our school. As a school, we have been taking part in Hour of Code since the first year, but many teachers still feel hesitant doing it on their own. Eagle Tech Squad students were able to visit classes and help get things going, especially with the younger classes. We also started our before school tutorials that week. We had leadership students sign up to help in the half hour before school starts where kids are on campus. I had my classroom open and they helped with the coding challenges for Hour of Code. 

Open Tech Time Begins: Our Hour of Code before school tutoring time was such a huge success that my admin team asked if we could continue with it. They offered to cover my duty so I could arrange it so win-win for me! As a group we decided two days a week would be a good amount of time. 

Off Campus Support: We were invited to participate in the local university STEM Saturday program. Most of our Tech Leadership kids were available to come out and build and demo robots with the 4,000 participants that day!

 

Recognition: Students were given ID badges (pinback buttons I made) and earned badges when they finished the Ninja mini course. Also, we had Tshirts made that they could wear at training sessions. Students really seemed to enjoy their time on the Tech Leadership Team. We completed a reflection at the end of the year and got lots of positive feedback and suggestions for the next year. 

Moving Forward: Year 2 should be pretty interesting. I'm anticipating an increase in the amount of applicants for the team just based on visibility of the program in it's first year. It's going to be tough, but I'm sure I will have to be selective to keep the number of kids manageable. I'm already thinking about how to offer those who don't make the team opportunities to support their classes in other ways. I'm looking for other opportinities for the student leaders to share - including putting in a proposal for them to present with me at SDCUE and maybe even the CUE National Conference in Palm Springs. We've reached out to our local senior center to arrange time to meet with seniors who would like some support with their devices. And we'll be planning a Back to School family tech event at our school. 

All in all, it's been a very positive experience working with kids who are interested in helping others learn more. They have worked hard to research new tools, develop tips, and spent time teaching others. Teachers on our campus have been very open to receiving the student help. I'm excited to keep this program growing and see where it leads. 

If you're thinking about starting an elementary Tech Leadership program, do it! It's awesome!

Coding Math Facts Practice

Do your students like to play games? How about make their own games? But you need them to practice math facts. What if they could code their own math game to play?

Bitsbox has an Educator page with free lessons, including math practice. I took the Billy Goats Gruff addition facts code and then changed it to my own rainforest theme. Your students can take the code and create their own theme too!

Rainforest Multiplication Code

Have students go to https://bitsbox.com/hoc2016.html and start there.

Google Expeditions - The WOW Factor!

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to attend EdCampSD in Escondido and learn from Jen Roberts as she shared Google Expeditions. I had read about Expeditions, which was released shortly after my Google GEO Teacher Institute in June 2015, but hadn't tried it myself.

- I had actually participated in a web meeting with an Expeditions team member this past spring with two of my kids. He interviewed them about what they were interested in exploring in Antarctica. It was pretty cool to have a connection to Expeditions and I've been really excited to get started.

So Jen pulled out a few Google Cardboard boxes and had us all download the Expeditions app to our phones or ipads. Out of about 30+ people in the room, we had about 8 viewers so most of us just used our devices without the viewer.

First take away - We don't need to use cardbooard or a VR viewer to do an Expedition! It works just fine full screen on our phones or tablets. The device just needs to have a gyro.

Next, she had me set up as a leader on my ipad. It's as simple as clicking LEAD on the app. I searched for an Expedition - chose an Underwater Excursion, downloaded it - and off we went. Others in the room opened the app, found my name and clicked JOIN.

Teacher View - Starting Expedition

Student View - JOIN Teacher's Expedition

Seeing the teacher and student view at the same time was exactly what I needed to understand how this works and be ready to share with my class and my team mates. I can't wait! We are going on some Expeditions! Next stop - Mt. Everest! or Yosemite! or the Googleplex! or Stanford! or Antarctica! So many choices!!

Click link - Spreadsheet of Expeditions

Student View - Waiting for Teacher to Press Play

Student View - Toggle Between VR Viewer and Full Screen

Student View - Full Screen

Teacher View - Swipe cards to the left for next scenes

Teacher View - Select Feature to View. Happy faces show where students are looking

Student View - Arrow shows where the teacher wants you to look

Student View - Target Feature

Student View - Cardboard Mode

While it would be pretty fun to have a class full of VR viewers, knowing that this is possible without is exciting! I have 7 ipads in our class and can probably borrow others from colleagues. We could set up a list of those on our site willing to share and schedule Expeditions to some of these amazing places!
Thank you, Jen, for sharing this amazing resource!

Collaboration: Sharing Google Forms

Teachers are so amazing about sharing! It goes under the category of "why recreate the wheel?" most of the time. I share with you, you share with me, our lives just got easier and both teachers and students win!

This is why having a wonderful PLN that includes teachers on Twitter that I've never met has been so amazing! Recently, I was reading a blog post from Ms. Drasby (Google Forms Supports Spelling Mastery) where she shared a copy of her Google Form. I had tried to find a way to do that for over a year with no luck. 

I replied and asked about it and she wrote up the procedure in a blog post: Google Forms Force a Copy. It's super easy and simple but if you don't know the trick, it won't work like it didn't for me for so long! It's definitely worth the few minutes to check out her blog and learn the trick!
Google Forms Force a Copy

Now, I am so excited about being able to make forms as a grade level team and share the workload. We can share forms resources just like we do with Hyperdocs, Graphic Organizers, and everything else we do as teachers.

Here are a few of my favorites to get you started: When you click on the form link it will force you to "Make a Copy" of the form I created. So you will have your own, not shared with anyone, and your data will be yours alone. Since it's your copy, you can change it however you would like to make it work for you.

Parent Info Form (Click this link for the Form):
I post this on my website at the beginning of the year and usually get most of the info before school even starts on Monday morning. 

Favorite Genre of Books (Click this link for the Form):

<<This one is a good beginning of the year inventory of your students' reading interests.


Here is a spreadsheet of forms my 3rd grade students created to practice multiplication facts. When you click the link, it will copy the form into your drive. There is the tutorial to use Flubaroo to make them autograde. OR, you can turn them into Google Form Quizzes. You will just have to change the answers to multiple choice answers to use Google Forms quizzes at this time.

Multiplication Practice Forms (Click this link)



And here are several other Google Forms to share. 
Click to copy forms and make them your own. Follow the directions above from Ms. Drasby and share your forms too!
Google Forms (Click this link)

Using Quizlet

Quizlet.com is a great resource for review, practice, or to pre-assess and get excited about a topic.
Lots of quizzes are set that you can search for in their shared library, or build your own easily with their images. There is an option to assign to Google Classroom to get the link to the kids quickly.

I had them practice individually with the flashcards however they wanted for 5 minutes - most used Scatter, which is a matching game.
Then we tried the LIVE game. Students went to the LIVE link I gave them, and put in a first name. I started the game. (Live is a choice when the teacher is in the Quizlet dashboard.)

This is the link to the set we did https://quizlet.com/_2729m2

• Students are assigned to random 3 player teams.

• Students move with their device to be near teammates.

• Each student sees a set of answer cards which is only a third of the possible answers.
• As a question comes up, they may or may not have the answer in their set. It could be on a teammate’s set. They need to talk to each other to see who has it.

• As they answer correctly, their team advances. If they answer incorrectly, their team goes back to the beginning.
• Race Results Board
• Awesome collaboration, language, and HIGH interest!

Flubaroo for Autograding

Autograding?! Can it be? Yes, it can!

(Screencast created for staff at my site.)

Create a Google form as an assessment or assignment. Go to the live form and enter the correct answers yourself. I put Answer Key in the name section to help me identify this set of answers.

Go to Responses. Create a Spreadsheet.

You can see the answers I already entered in the image above.

Now go to Add-Ons and Get Add-ons. Search for and add Flubaroo.

Enable Flubaroo as below.

Then go back and click on it again to start the Flubaroo. Go to advanced to enable autograde.

It will take you through several steps to choose how to grade each part. You can skip grading some pieces. If you need to hand grade an item, you can still use Flubaroo, but can’t autograde.

Choose your Answer Key row with the correct answers from when you took the quiz first.

Decide on whether or not you want the answer key sent with the scores.

And that’s it. All submissions will be graded and scores will be collected in the spreadsheet and students will get results in their email.

Answers will be collected on the first sheet.

Grades will be created on the second sheet with some highlighting for error analysis. 

Time saved on the things that can be assessed easily so you have more time to teach.

Form to Formative Assessment

Documenting student progress doesn't always need to be another piece of paper. When students are actively working, you can observe and use a google form to track mastery. This idea came from Shawn Reed @swkreed and @ClassTechTips on Twitter.

Create the form and add it to the home screen of your phone or ipad for quick access. I used the Grid option to add levels of mastery. For this sample I used sample student names as numbers but I would use actual names on my form. Here's a link to the live form.

When you view the spreadsheet, you can use the Transpose function and conditional formatting to organize the info and visualize it better.

To use the transpose function, add a new sheet by clicking the + in the bottom left corner. In cell A1, add the function =TRANSPOSE('Form Responses 1'!B:T)
'Form Responses 1' refers to the first sheet where the data is coming from.
B:T is having it pull from all rows in columns B through T

Conditional Formatting:

Highlight the columns, under the Format menu choose Conditional Formatting. On the right side under Format rules, choose Text contains or Text is exactly and then type whatever your text option is. In my example I used Mastery and chose it to be blue, Working toward mastery as green, and Needs extra help as yellow. Each color is set up as a new rule.

Give it a try and see if it helps streamline your formative assessment.