Category: Week of September 23rd

Edpuzzle Exploration

Molly Sand on

Over the summer, I participated in a technology training and was introduced to Edpuzzle for educators. As I mentioned before, I had only used Edpuzzle in one online class and did not enjoy the entire experience. There were certain aspects I did appreciate, like the questions added to videos. I did not like the feature of not being able to move freely through the video. The presentation was locked in and this caused for issues with time. I would have to look at how long the presentation was in order to dedicate enough time.

In my classroom, I think I will be setting the audiobook videos to as unlocked because we will listen to the audiobook in class and i want my students to be able to move through the book and answer questions. There will still be the option to re-listen to the chapter and answer questions, but I want to make this lesson available to all learning levels. Some students will not need to re-listen, some might need to re-listen to a specific section, and others might need to listen to the entire chapter in order to answer the questions.

I believe Edpuzzle will provide more differentiation for all my students, both ELL and mainstream. As a teacher of ESL, i have to constantly revise lessons to make them accessible to the various abilities and technology will make this process a lot simpler.

Teachnology Reflection 6

Molly Sand on

My rough draft was just that. Rough. I am still unsure of my exact goals of how I want technology to be incorporated into my classroom. Currently in one of my classes, the students are not able to use their iPads except strictly for their current project. We allowed the students choices for completing their speech project. The choices included:

  1. Google Docs
  2. Google Slides
  3. Notability
  4. Notecards
  5. Notebook

My co-teacher and I thought this would be better than assigning one form of completing the project. Unfortunately, the students have little experience with all of the above choices. To model how to write notecards, I utilized our DocCam and described the steps as I wrote out my own speech. This seemed to benefit them because they were able to see the model, listen to the steps again, and reread the instructions.

Then I showed them how to write their speeches using Google Slides. I clearly labeled my slides for each section (Introduction, Category 1, Category 2, Category 3, and Conclusion). I also included images to demonstrate the three items required for their speech. With the slides presentation, I gave them an example of how to give their speech using technology in the classroom.

I think as the year goes on, as long as we continue to model the behavior and set clear expectations for technology, we should be able to let the students be more creative with the iPads.