Tag: tesl

E-Learning Day Excitement

Molly Sand on

Long story short, my school had an E-Learning Day last week due to a fire in the art department.

For more details click on this link: https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2019/11/05/south-junior-high-fire-tuesday-afternoon-cancels-school-wednesday/4170500002/

I went into this day frustrated by having to do more work than I would if I had the chance to teach in class that day. I was overwhelmed with the idea of learning more new things because this year is full of too many learning experiences. But as the day began, I realized how much I enjoyed the freedom e-learning provided.

I uploaded an e-learning folder with the materials for each of my classes on Schoology.

Materials included:

  • E-Learning Day Check In (used for attendance)
  • PDF assignment
  • Assignment dropbox

I had not used the feature for asking students a question before and found a lot of use for it by creating my check in questions. I plan to use more check in questions to start my reading class because I need a better routine for starting class.

For the check in, I asked my students to write a few sentences about how their day off was going and what their plans were. I provided them with two sentence frames.

My day is going ____________________________.

I am going to ______________________________.

On short notice, this was the perfect way for my students to engage in the class to be counted as present.

The PDFs were of two worksheets from my reading class’ review packet. We were going to do them in class, so I thought this would be a great way to gauge how many students understand how to complete and turn in assignments on Schoology.

Well, I got my answer. Half of my class completed the check in and only ONE student completed and turned in the worksheets. I am not sure if my directions were not clear, but I chose to keep them simple in the hopes of preventing confusion. I guess I was wrong, but am unsure.

By the end of the work day, I decided to develop a discussion for class the following day about E-Learning Days. Our students had not been exposed to this kind of learning yet and I felt they needed to express their thoughts/questions. The reflection lesson went over well and I was able to address many questions and issues that came up when they were working at home. I also provided them with a few minutes to complete the check in and finish their worksheets on paper.

Before future E-Learning Days, I plan to teach my students how to export the PDFs into Notability, go over how to use Notability, and how to submit assignments from Notability into the dropbox on Schoology. Overall, I am not feeling more confident in E-Learning Days and will develop clear and concise directions for the assignments.

Edpuzzle for English Language Learners

Molly Sand on

Hello all,

Today, I will be discussing how to use Edpuzzle and more specifically how to incorporate it into a 7th grade language arts class with students identified as English Language Learners.

According to Sylvester and Greenidge, “A digital story is a multimedia text consisting of still images complemented by a narrated soundtrack to tell a story or present a documentary; sometimes video clips are embedded between images.” Edpuzzle is a format for digital storytelling. Digital stories motivate students to be more engaged throughout listening to and creating a story.

Edpuzzle is a new addition to the more familiar teaching model, Flipped Classroom. The Flipped Classroom Model is where the educator shares predetermined digital resources with students through a platform outside of the classroom, and related content is also taught through the same outside platform asynchronously (Cabi, p. 203).

Cabi discusses four important components needed in a lesson to be considered as a Flipped Classroom lesson. These components include restructuring the learning environment to be more flexible and consider the needs of individuals, not only the whole group. The next component is developing a learner-centered approach and providing students with opportunities and activities to enrich learning. The third component is for educators to track student progress closely and monitor the level of the content. The final component focuses on giving feedback and assessing students’ knowledge (Cabi, p. 203). As you read this post, you will learn about how Edpuzzle aligns with the four major components of the Flipped Classroom Model.

Edpuzzle is available for both educators and students to use for free. Educators and students have access to limited storage on the free plan, but can upgrade to a paid plan for unlimited storage. It can be used to enhance any kind of lesson from science to math and writing to reading. My experience with Edpuzzle, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is limited to using it as a student. I enjoyed majority of my time interacting as a student, but felt as if my time could have been more productive if the instructor allowed certain features to be available to students. I will speak more on those features later on in this post.

According to Leslie Mischel, video lessons have been “incorporated into the flipped classroom, massive open online courses, and other learning sites, such as Lynda.com or Khan Academy, to allow individuals to learn about topics of interest at their own pace.” Edpuzzle gives educators and students access to videos from Khan Academy, YouTube, National Geographic, Ted Talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, and Crash Course. The videos being used in my lesson will be from YouTube. They are audio readings of the novel Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.

I chose to rework these recordings with Edpuzzle because my co-taught language arts class has various learning abilities and language proficiencies. The features allow for differentiation and scaffolding for all of my students. This is important when working with not only English Language Learners (ELL), but also when working with all students.

As you can see in the images below, Edpuzzle provides a simple and inviting appearance for those who may be intimidated by adding a new piece of technology to their classroom.

Edpuzzle offers videos in various content areas to be edited to fit any lesson. Educators can use this tool to add a voiceover to videos from the site or uploaded videos. There is a feature to crop videos and add questions or notes to enhance the comprehension of the concepts in the lesson.

I will be displaying how I will use this form of technology in my co-taught language arts class. I will be enhancing their learning experience by providing stop and check comprehension questions throughout the audiobook reading of Number the Stars.

I decided to focus on adding questions to the audiobook reading because my students are at various levels for reading. Some are comfortable reading long series like Harry Potter, whereas others might struggle to read graphic novels, which contain few sentences per page. By using the quiz tool, I am able to insert open-ended questions, true or false, or multiple-choice. I have developed stop and check comprehension questions for chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, and chapter 4. I will continue to add questions and notes throughout the rest of the novel. With these questions, I can engage and track my students comprehension while they listen to each chapter.

In this video, you will be able to view a screencast of how to insert a question to a specific point of the video (Video Link).

In ISD 742, we utilize Schoology for our classes. It is a platform for engaging with students and other staff, similar to Facebook or Twitter. Edpuzzle is now available on Schoology for posting the content to different classes and creating assignments. For example: As a class, we will listen to the audio reading of chapter one, discuss what happened, and who we have been introduced to in this chapter. Then for the assignment, students will be able to access the video on Schoology to re-listen to the chapter at home and answer the quiz questions when they appear on the video.

I realize my different learning levels and styles in my classroom can impact how my students will complete this type of an assignment. Keeping that in mind, I chose to turn on the ability to skip ahead in the video, as well as closed-captioning. This will cater to differentiated instruction because students can read the captions and listen to the voice reading at the same time. They will not be required to re-listen to the entire chapter, but will have the opportunity to choose which parts they need to re-listen to in order to answer the questions accurately.

In this video, you will see how a student can skip ahead to a question instead of re-listening to an entire section of the reading (Video Link).

Edpuzzle tracks students engagement with the videos and their overall results. One of the reports indicates which students watched the assigned video, how accurately they answer the quiz questions, and whether they watched the video before the due date or not (Mischel, p. 285). With this information, I will be able to provide informed feedback to each student. They will have access to their score sheets and I will conference with them to ensure they understand why they received a certain grade.

To recap, Edpuzzle provides a flexible learning opportunity for all students, differentiates for individual learning needs, effectively tracks student progress, and encourages educators to provide detailed feedback. I believe this kind of technology will enhance my students understanding and engagement while reading a novel.

Work Cited

Cabı, Emine. “The Impact of the Flipped Classroom Model on Students Academic Achievement.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, vol. 19, no. 3, Nov. 2018, doi:10.19173/irrodl.v19i3.3482.

Mischel, Leann J. “Watch and Learn? Using EDpuzzle to Enhance the Use of Online Videos.” Management Teaching Review, vol. 4, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 283–289., doi:10.1177/2379298118773418.

Sylvester, Ruth, and Wendy-Lou Greenidge. “Digital Storytelling: Extending the Potential for Struggling Writers.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 63, no. 4, Jan. 2009, pp. 284–295., doi:10.1598/rt.63.4.3.

 

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.

Teachnology Philosophy Reflection 5

Molly Sand on

After reading “A Community of Voices: Educational Blog Management Strategies and Tools,” I started thinking about the relevancy and need of using Edpuzzle in a co-taught language arts classroom with ESL and mainstream students.

I believe Edpuzzle will be an asset to my classroom because of the features it offers and content available. The only set back I have currently is the amount of free storage. I have almost met the limit for free storage and as a teacher, I do not have the funds to create content outside of this current project. I was able to develop chapters 1 through 4 of the audio reading for Number the Stars. If I want to continue to use this tool, I will need to purchase more storage or figure out a way to save the video quizzes I have created and move on to more content.

The need for a technology that is easily accessible and is user friendly is important in an integrated classroom. The various learning styles and levels complicate many lessons. We do a lot of starting over from scratch with our co-taughts and this can cause frustration for mainstream students in a co-taught. With Edpuzzle, I am hoping to relieve some of those frustrations because the videos will be posted to their Schoology class page and they will be able to work at their own pace.

The Edpuzzle videos will allow students to reread (re-listen) on their own time and answer stop/check questions to gauge understanding of the story. I think using this form of technology is relevant for mainstream and ESL students to aid in individualized education.