Tag: engagement

Engaging Students with Pear Deck

Image result for pear deck
Image source

Pear Deck is an engaging tool that connects to tools you already use in order to engage every student in your classroom. Pear Deck’s mission is “to help teachers engage every student, every day. With solutions rooted in active learning and formative assessment, we make it easy for you to connect with learners of every age and ability. When that happens, more students participate and learn, and the classroom community improves, and you’ll know you’re making a difference” (source).  

Pear Deck easily integrates into Google Slides, PowerPoint, and more. You can view a getting started video with Pear Deck by clicking here. Matt Miller recently published an article about 20 ways to use Pear Deck in the classroom. You can view this article by clicking here. 

References:

All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above. 

TLDR (too long didn’t read):

Pear Deck is an amazing tool that engages students. You can learn more by watching this getting started video or by reading this article. 

@hollandkaylah

Google+ Communities

Google+I’m a big, big fan of Google+. It’s a very big component of my personal learning network (PLN). Here are some thoughts about about why I prefer Google+ over the other social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). I encourage everyone to take a look at Google+’s services and consider taking advantage of them.

Friend Me

Please feel free to friend me on Google+. Then browse through my Links and Other Profiles to make connections, collaborate, and share resources through other networks. As I frequently say, “Together we learn more.”

Google+ Communities

I’ve developed several Google+ Communities where we can interact and share resources around particular topics. I invite you to join and actively contribute to all of these groups in which you have an interest/expertise.

Build. Make. Hack. Grow. Every Kid Can Be a Maker with DIY Club.

“DIY is a club for kids to earn Skills. DIY Makers share their work with the community and get patches for the Skills they earn. Each Skill consists of a set of Challenges that help them learn techniques to get the hang of it. Once a Maker completes a Challenge, they add photos and video to their Portfolio to show what they did.

Makers are curious about the world and strive to learn all kinds of practical knowledge and share it. They seek adventure in the outdoors, participate in communities, use technology to innovate, and have the confidence to try new things” (Source).

Take a look at DIY.org and consider the positive impact it can make in your family, classroom, club, civic group, etc.

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy,
and we should treat it with the same status.”
–Sir Ken Robinson

Related Articles

Suggested Reading: Clickers in Education

More Professors Give Out Hand-Held Devices to Monitor Students and Engage Them – The New York Times

Simple Technology, Profound Results – Cyberpop!

Using Clickers in the Classroom — Writing Effective Questions – Connexions

Designing Clicker Questions that Promote Classroom Discussion – Northern Arizona University e-Learning Center


Image Source: Dallas News.com

An Ongoing Discussion: Your Input Needed

@Tykerman1 shared this interesting discussion starter and I thought we’d give it a try here.

Guidelines
Below is a question. The first person who is brave enough will read the question, answer it in the comments and pose a new question for the next person to answer. You can participate more than once.

Question #1
What are you most hopeful about with regards to education and the future?