Rather than creating a unit on the Civil War, imagine working with an individual student or small group on a topic that fully engages them, but might be something you know little about. First we looked at how to find resources in multiple formats, to meet students’ different learning needs and preferences.
Building a differentiation & personalization toolkit
I was privileged recently to work with a number of pre-service teachers here at the University of Vermont. All were eager to gain access to tools and resources to help them respond to the variety of learners’ needs they will face in classrooms.
Using the Civil War as our (broad) topic, we developed a workflow for creating a tech-rich social studies unit responsive to different learners’ needs. And using ourselves as learners, we tested out our methods.
A trio of middle grades educators from Mill River Union High School, in Clarendon, Vermont, presented the results of their semester-long action research project, examining what role professional development plays in increasing the amount of time technology is integrated into the classroom in a 1:1 environment.
Brendan Nerney, a middle grades educator at Mill River Union High School in Clarendon, Vermont, explains some of the edtech tools his students use to study hurricanes with their iPads. The students used a variety of edtech tools to produce a mock newscast documenting a hurricane and its aftermath.
Let’s look at some good tools for studying hurricanes.
Part 1: Finding and editing great videos with your students
Flipping your classroom? Found a great video about 18th century French military history that’s far too long for your students to stay focused on? Looking for great videos to share with students but stymied as to where to even start?
Worried that editing videos takes too much time and technical knowhow? Or possibly a different platform than the one you’re reading this blog entry on?
Edpuzzle opens up the possibility for both students and teachers to encourage a two-way exchange, a conversation, if you will, during video viewing. Any video can be uploaded into Edpuzzle including your own, and they make it convenient to do so with this comprehensive side bar access to multiple video-based resources.
Encourage critical thinking & discussion with note-taking
I have been excited lately with the potential of using VideoNot.es in blended classrooms to support active participation in video viewing. VideoNot.es is a web-based tool that allows users to take notes while watching a video. Here is an example of some notes I took while watching Robert Duke’s video “Why Students Don’t Learn What We Think We Teach”
New cool tool for flipped classrooms and personalized learning
Check out this great resource for differentiation and the flipped classroom: EdPuzzle. It lets you mark up videos with commentary, crop them for time and embed quizzes. And as an educator, you can see behind-the-scenes exactly how students are engaging with your content, so you can use EdPuzzle for differentiation.
Let me walk you through how to get up and running with it.
Rather than creating a unit on the Civil War, imagine working with an individual student or small group on a topic that fully engages them, but might be something you know little about. First we looked at how to find resources in multiple formats, to meet students’ different learning needs and preferences.
I have been excited lately with the potential of using 