Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Be the Mouse: A Lesson on Grit

This weekend Janet Woods and I attended the ICE Mini Conference. The conference is a great opportunity to meet other educators in the area and share ideas. We also got to choose sessions that matched our needs, which is always a bonus. You can checkout all the presentation from the conference here. I decided to attend the following sessions:
  • Tips and Tricks with Technology in a Special Needs Classroom
  • Technology and Writing in an English Classroom
  • Reframe Your Content in 120 seconds
I learned a ton from these three sessions! Feel free to checkout my session notes to get some great ideas for your classroom (Disclaimer: They are notes so if something doesn’t make sense just shoot me an email me with any questions).

One of my favorite ideas from the day came from the first session on technology in a special needs classroom. In this session, Lisa Berghoff described how she uses the short video clip below to help teach students grit and perseverance.


As a class they watch the clip and count how many times the mouse tries get the cracker up onto the ledge. They then discuss how this might apply to class and more importantly life. The rest of the year her class will use the rallying cry “BE THE MOUSE,” when someone gets frustrated or tries to take the easy way out.

This is always a tough time of the school year. Its cold and there are no breaks in sight! This short clip and discussion might be something you can try at the beginning of the semester to overcome the cold days of January and February and inspire students to “BE THE MOUSE!”

If you would like more resources on grit check out the links below:

Resilience and Grit Resource Roundup from Edutopia

5 Steps to Foster Grit in the Classroom

Grit: Motivating Students (A lesson plan on grit)

Monday, January 20, 2014

Become More Efficient on Your Mac with These 5 Keyboard Shortcuts

All the different keyboard shortcuts are one of the many reasons I love my Mac! Keyboard shortcuts can save you time and make your overall user experience more enjoyable. Below are the 5 keyboard shortcuts that I use everyday:

1. “Command + F” (Find)

How often have you done a google search for a lesson plan or resource and come up with thousands of results? Who has time to read through an entire website or article? The “command + F” shortcut can help you quickly identify if a website is going to be useful. Hit “command + F” to bring down a search box (see image to the right) and search the web page for keywords or phrases. The search will tell you how many times and where the key words appear on the page. This shortcut has been a big time saver for me!

2. “Command + M” (Minimize Windows)

One of the biggest differences between a Mac and PC is minimizing and expanding open applications. Using “Command + M” helped me adjust to this difference. “Command + M” minimizes any open window. Now I don’t have to mess with the red, yellow, or green buttons in the upper left hand corner of open applications.

3. “Command + tab” and “Command + Q” (See running applications and quit unwanted applications)

This one I recently learned about from our great TSA Janet Woods. You can hit “command + tab” to see all the running applications at any given time. If you hold down “command” and continue to hit “tab” you can cycle through the running applications. Stop on any application you don’t want running and hit “Q” while still holding down “command” to close that application. This can be a big battery saver!

4. “Command + C” and “Command + V” (Copy and Paste)

Sharing website urls via email and twitter is a big part of my job and requires me to copy and paste quite often. I simply click on a url and hit “command + C” to copy the url and “command + V” to paste the url into an email or tweet. I probably use these two shortcuts the most.

5. “Command + Z” (Undo)

The undo shortcut is a close second to copy and pasting in terms of the shortcut I use most often. Simply hit “command + Z” to undo a mistake you made while typing.

What keyboard shortcuts have you found helpful? Leave a comment below and let us know!


Thursday, January 16, 2014

Google Drive adds new activity stream

Google Drive is a great way to collaborate and share. It's changed the way group projects are done and made classroom time more efficient. Google is always trying to improve on a great product, and this week they are rolling out the new activity stream in Drive - a single place to review actions taken on files and folders. Check it out: Google Drive Blog: The new activity stream to show you what's changed.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Create Interactive Flashcards using Class Mint

Finals are rapidly approaching and it is time for students to hunker down and begin reviewing. In the past I have used Quizlet to create digital flashcards for review. In addition to traditional flashcards, Quizlet allows students to spice up a review by playing a scatter game and space race. I also love that you can save time by searching for a set of flashcards that other educators have already created. Click here to see a sample set of Quizlet flashcards from my US History Class.

On twitter, I recently came across a nice set of digital flashcards for a physics class (click here to view) created on Class Mint. Class Mint looks like a very promising site!  Just like Quizlet, you can search for flashcard sets that other educators have created. There are no review games in Class Mint however, there does look to be several other features that Quizlet does not have. First, Class Mint flashcards are set up into two columns.  This allows for a neat folding feature, which is great for studying (see image to the right). In addition, Class Mint allows you to upload images. You can only do this on the paid version of Quizlet, which always frustrated me. Finally, you can add text and image annotations to a flashcard in Class Mint. The site says they will have audio annotations in the near future! Click here to view some flashcards I created for a supply and demand unit in economics. I believe these four features really give Class Mint a leg up on Quizlet.

On a side note, a great way to share your flashcards with students is creating a QR code and posting it in the front of the room for them to scan as they walk in. This gives them easy access to the notecards on their phone. Students of mine in the past have said they were more likely to review during lunch or a free period because it was easy for them to bring up on their phones. You can create QR codes for your flashcards or any website by using the Google URL shortener (only in Google Chrome) or QR stuff in any browser. Try accessing the flashcards I created with Class Mint by scanning the QR code to the right with a smartphone or tablet.