After two good workshops in a week, I have some new ideas to help me get through the rest of the cold winter weeks! I’m going to share an idea that is born from a workshop on performance based assessment and one on free technology with students.
In Spanish 3 we are studying the Spanish Civil War and in Spanish 4 the Argentine Dirty War. It is hard to share ALL of the relevant cultural information with them in the short amount of time we have in class… so I channeled my inner Cool Cat Teacher and I flipped my classroom this holiday weekend.
We never take the time to study those who disappeared, died, or were exiled during the war and I think by not doing that, we are missing out on the personal connection with the families who lost loved ones…. This weekend I asked them to find one person (famous or common) and bring five facts about them to class on Monday. We’ll share the stories of hopefully many different people whose families lost them during the war.
After I had assigned this project, I worried that they might come back saying that they couldn’t find any information. Enter the workshop on free technology with students…. He showed us how we could use Evernote to share resources with them. He uses it to share ALL of his classroom documents. At this point, I am just using it to help them research! 🙂
First, I followed his (and coincidentally my Network Admin husband’s) advice and downloaded Google Chrome because of its Evernote clipping feature:
After I had chrome, I downloaded Evernote and the Google Chrome add-on. I also downloaded it to my iPhone so I could work from it too! I set up my account and made some notebooks based on what we’ve been doing recently in class:
Then I started collecting resources and putting them into my Guerra notebook:
After I had enough to get them started, I created a link to the notebook that I could share with them:
I use the app Remind101 with all of my classes so it was easy for me to send out the link that I created. Now they have no excuse not to do their work!
The best part about Remind101 is that I can send them another reminder on Monday so they have NO EXCUSE for forgetting their homework!! 🙂 I use that app a LOT! If you don’t have it, I’d recommend it!
The presenter yesterday also talked about Educreations for iPad. Have you heard of it? Oh my gosh, when I get an iPad I am going to use that A LOT!
Hope you find something useful in here!!
I love Educreations and use it a lot during storytelling! I usually have one student draw a story whille telling a story, and sometimes I will have them draw from a reading too! It works great and I can post them online with my own voice telling the story.