I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a training for teachers in my district on Google Slides. It was a training for k-12 educators who wanted to take their use of Google Slides to the next level. The feedback from workshop attendees has been positive and I wanted to share some of my favorite Google Slides features. Poll Everywhere for Google Slides ExtensionYou might be familiar with Poll Everywhere - it is a tool that allows for live audience participation during a presentation (in the classroom, your students are the audience). How it works is simple - you ask a question, and your students can respond, in real time, on their device. As the responses come in, they are visible immediately to the audience. You can create a variety of different types of polls including multiple chose, free response questions, live word clouds and rank order. Once you add this extension to your Chrome browser, you will see that Poll Everywhere becomes an option on your menu bar on Google Slides. When you are ready to insert a poll into your slide deck, just click on Poll Everywhere and you will be able to create a new poll or insert a poll you have already created (you will need to log in to your Poll Everywhere account - you should create a free account if you don't already have one). After your poll is ready, you simply click on insert and the poll will be inserted into your slide deck. While you are editing your slides, it will look a bit odd and at the bottom you will see a grey bar that says "Start the presentation to activate live content". When you are in present mode, the audience will see how to respond to the poll and as they do, you will see the results in real time. Interactive Slideshows using Google SlidesWhen most of us think of slideshows/slide decks, we imagine a series of slides that are viewed from the first to the last. But, Google Slides allows inserting links, not just to external websites, but to slides within a slide deck. You simply insert a link on your slide to text or an image using the "chain" image on the menu bar or click on "Insert" and then "Link". You will have the option to link to any slide in your presentation. For organization purposes, I'd recommend you create all of the individual slides before setting up your links. What can you do with this? For starters, you can create an interactive quiz where you can have students review a topic or story. You ask a question with multiple options, and each option links to either a slide that tells them they have the correct answer or an explanation as to why their answer is incorrect. This way, students can get instant feedback. Students can also create their own interactive quiz slide decks to share with their classmates before an assessment.
Another way this can be used in the language classroom, is to have your students create "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories. I remember reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories as a kid and thinking it was so cool to be able to have different endings based on the choices you make as the reader. Students can write alternate endings to a story you are reading together or create their own story from scratch. What is important is to make sure they click on the links in the slideshow rather than to just click next slide while viewing. I had my students create "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories using Google Slides while I was missing a morning class for state testing. The afternoon classes spent the time creating these stories. They were so much fun to make and view as a class. Jeopardy games can also be made on Google Slides where the links help you navigate the board. Here is Eric Curts' blog where he has templates that you can use to make your own five or six topic Jeopardy games. Do you use the Poll Everywhere extension for Google Slides? Have you used any of these interactive slideshows in your classes? Do you have any other ways to use interactive slideshows? Feel free to share in the comments!
2 Comments
I have written before about creating digital breakouts. You can check out my post on creating digital breakouts here. (One small edit to that post - Google has changed the name of “data validation” to “response validation”.) I recently attended a session in my district by Jen Fischer & Kristen Tsaoys about BreakoutEDU. Even though I consider myself fairly proficient in creating breakout games (thank you for that, Jen), I am always looking for new ideas. We played the “Trapped in the Classroom” digital breakout from the BreakoutEDU digital sandbox during the session which helped inspire me to create a new Spanish breakout with a similar concept. While on the Digital Breakouts page, I also noticed the “Stuck in the 80’s” game. As a bit of a lover of all things 80’s, I decided to play that one myself when I got home from the session. It took me longer than I would like to admit to figure out the “date lock”, but that game introduced me to Snotes which is a great tool for creating clues for breakout games, especially digital games. Snotes are a web-based, fun, creative and colorful way to deliver a secret message. In our session, we discussed the idea of using a breakout game at the beginning of the year to help students get to know each other and practice cooperation and problem solving. As a teacher, they can also give you insight into your the personalities and strengths of your students. This insight can help with forming groups early in the school year as you get to know your students. So, armed with a new idea, I set out to create new breakout games that could be used at the start of the school year (or anytime, really). I will be teaching two levels this school year - AP Spanish Language & Culture and an honors class of mostly 9th graders who have taken Spanish for several years, with a proficiency target of intermediate low. I am hoping to collaborate with some of my colleagues (I’m looking at you Sí Señora) to create one for the 9th graders. I am the only AP teacher in my building, so creating a breakout to start the year in AP was something I was willing to do on my own. After attending the session, I also decided to go to Dollar Tree to purchase some toolboxes and locks to create hybrid games. My idea for this digital game is to give a key to the students who solve all of the puzzles and have them open one of the toolboxes. Inside I will have “Lo hicimos” (we did it) cards that they can take pictures with & some chupa chups lollipops. Without further ado, I present “Atrapada en la clase de español”, a digital breakout game. I made it with AP in mind, but I think it could work in any upper level class. Let me know what you think of the game and feel free to comment or contact me if you would like a hint.
Happy breaking out! The last month or so of the school year is often very hectic for teachers. We are working to complete our curriculum, wrapping up all of the end of year paperwork, finalizing grades. Deadlines surround us and it can feel like we are juggling several things at once. It is easy to get distracted. (It is also easy to neglect your blog.) Students are also anticipating summer break. And, as the weather warms up, it can become harder to focus. I often find myself in survival mode. But, one of my favorite things about teaching is that each school year comes to an end. We get time to process, reflect and recharge. And, it is all brand new again the following school year. Looking back At the start of this school year, I was excited to have only two levels to teach for the first time in my career. I also did not have an extra class for the first time in four years. I had more time than I had been accustomed to. Of course, I used some of that time to get myself coffee (I am a hopeless caffeine addict). Over the last few years, I had been implementing changes to my teaching. I have been moving away from a textbook centered curriculum and focusing my teaching on comprehensible input. And, after three years of teaching AP Spanish Language and Culture, I also felt comfortable enough to implement some changes. What that looked like in my classroom - a lot more reading. I used Fluency Matters novels with my ninth graders and two young adult novels in AP for “Book Club Friday’s”. I have never had so much fun teaching. Reading the novels lead to such rich class discussions. These discussions often lead to conversations about current events. I could not have planned it better to be discussing immigration with both my 9th graders while reading Esperanza and with my AP classes while reading Cajas de cartón in the months before a presidential election where it was one of the most debated issues. My students were acquiring vocabulary and language to discuss this complex topic. They enjoyed reading and having a class that wasn’t “normal”. My AP students became very confident in their reading ability and were not intimidated by that portion of the AP exam. I plan on continuing with the novels and the increased focus on literacy. 1:1 I would be remiss not mention our district’s new initiative - now every high school student is issued a MacBook Air. The addition of this level of technology was a bit intimidating at first, but it also was a complete game-changer for me. I had always considered myself to be fairly “techie”, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I would manage a room full of students with laptops. Our district also has G Suite for Education. With both of these tools, there were new ways to collaborate, new ideas and new apps to try. I was eager to embrace the technology. I knew it would be helpful in AP simply because my students would always have the ability to make a recording in class. I then spent lots of time looking for new activities, apps and project ideas. I also spent a lot of time with Jen Fischer, one of the tech coaches in my district. I would spend a prep period with her and come away with a new idea to try. And, I would try them all (just ask her - I would try just about anything). Some were more successful than others - Flipgrid, digital breakouts & #BookSnaps (if you are not following Tara Martin on Twitter, get on that ASAP) were huge hits - I know this from reading the end of year reflection surveys I had my students complete. A few were duds - 6 second videos were not what I had envisioned. Were there days where I would get frustrated with some students for playing games or translating everything they could on Google Translate? Yes. But, overall, I like to think I am utilizing the technology we are fortunate enough to have to improve learning and to make my own life easier. More new ideas In January, I started blogging. By February, I had become so comfortable with G Suite that I decided to become a Google Level 1 Certified Educator. From the training modules, I picked up lots of new ways to harness the power of this technology. By April, I had completed the modules for the Google Level 2 Certified Educator and passed that exam. It was then that I started trying some new projects that the technology allowed - student-created screencasts & iMovies, digital breakouts and Choose Your Own Adventure Google Slides presentations. These ended up being the highlights of the class for many of my students. Now that it is nearly a month since school ended - not exactly sure how that time went by so quickly - and AP scores came out (I can happily report a 100% pass rate), I am starting to think, in earnest, about what I want my classes to look like next year. I am never satisfied. Instead, I am always looking to improve and for new ideas to engage my students. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing some of that while sitting by the pool. Hope all of my fellow teachers are enjoying the fleeting moments of summer break! |
AuthorHigh school Spanish teacher in NJ. Proficiency-oriented teacher. Always looking to try new things in my classes. Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey 2019 Teacher of the Year. Archives
December 2019
Categories
All
|