Answer Garden: a Quick and Easy Polling System

Answer Garden advertises itself as the "minimal tool for maximum feedback," and I have to agree. It's super-quick and easy to use with even elementary age students. You can use it on any device with a browser, and they recently launched a free iOS app.

What is it?
AnswerGarden is a free tool that creates word clouds from multiple users simultaneously. {Reminder: a word cloud is a collection of words or phrases displayed in a cluster -- like a "cloud" shape -- where the words/phrases that are submitted the most frequently appear larger than the other words/phrases in the cluster. The more times a word or phrase is submitted, the larger it appears in the final product.}


How does it work?
You, the teacher, create an AnswerGarden on their website. Afterwards, share the link with students so they can visit your "garden" on their mobile device. {Tip: click here for 8 ways to quickly share links with students.}

Students simply type a short answer and click "submit." The answers appear in a word cloud in real time on everyone's device so it's easy to see which submission was entered the most frequently.


My favorite features

• 100% free
• Does not require anyone to sign up for an account or remember any additional passwords :)
• Works on any device with a browser {perfect for the BYOD classroom because all students -- from the one on a laptop to the one on a Kindle Fire -- can participate from their device!}
• Literally takes 60 seconds or less to set up

Classroom uses
While not made specifically for educational use, there are several ways to incorporate it into your classroom. Here are some basic ideas {but scroll to the end of this post to see more detailed examples of ways to use AnswerGarden with students}:

• Whole group brainstorming
• Voting 
• Discussion 
• Beginning-of-year activities
• Review questions with short, simple answers

Create an AnswerGarden in 60 seconds or less
1. Go to the home page, scroll down, and click "create an answer garden" ...or click the + sign in the top, right corner.

Notice there is no account registration required! :)

2. Enter a question or prompt into the topic area.

If you don't want to do anything else, just scroll and click the "create" button at the very bottom of the page:

If you'd like to have a little bit more control, though, you have that option, too. Below are some of the preferences you can toggle:

• Change the mode {I use the brainstorm mode if students are sharing devices and classroom mode if we're 1:1.}
• Brainstorm: the audience can enter an unlimited number of answers, including unlimited copies of the same answer
• Classroom: the audience can enter an unlimited number of answers, but they can enter each answer only once
• Moderator: you have to manually approve each answer before it is added to the Answer Garden
• Locked: the Answer Garden is closed and no new comments can be submitted
• Change the answer length
• Choose if your audience can submit answers 20 characters in length or 40. This includes spaces, so make sure to ask a question that can be answered in less than 40 characters! 

• Password and Reminder E-mail
• I utilize these options because I want the ability to delete unwanted answers, but it's definitely not a requirement. I do recommend, however, unchecking the newsletter box if you choose to have your password and link e-mailed to you.

• Spam filter and network detection
• AnswerGarden says the spam filter blocks common unwanted answers, including a range of inappropriate words. 

3. Share the link.  The actual URL is fairly short {for instance, the AnswerGarden I just created has a URL with 35 total characters in it, so students can just type it into their browser. {Click here to read about 8 ways to quickly share a link with students.} AnswerGarden provides other ways to share the link, though:

Scroll down on the actual AnswerGarden to see the share buttons.

Click the QR button to generate a large QR code that you can display on your Promethean for the audience to scan {I always had to turn the classroom lights off or else there wasn't enough contrast for students to scan from their seats}.

The "share" button allows you to share on a variety of social media sites or embed your AnswerGarden into another webpage. When embedding, you have two options. You can either embed the entire AnswerGarden, like this:

 

 or just embed a "microgarden" that only shows the answer box -- like a blind poll. That looks like this:

 

If you have a classroom website that students are used to accessing, the embed feature would be a really quick way for students to access your poll. 

Teacher tricks

• New answers do not automatically appear in the AnswerGarden; refresh the page periodically to see new answers. 
• Get an inappropriate answer? Walk the room. When someone posts something, the answer appears in blue on their device. Find the person with the device that has the underlined inappropriate-ness, and you've found the culprit. {Mentioning this up front is a great deterrent!} If you entered a password upon creating the AnswerGarden, you now have the ability to edit it... so you could temporarily close the AnswerGarden or moderate answers if you're in Moderator Mode. {This page gives more information about moderating and deleting unwanted answers -- just scroll down to the part where it says, "I'm a teacher."}
• To see how many times an answer was submitted, just hover over it on the AnswerGarden with your mouse.

Ideas for use

1. BOY getting-to-know-you project: everyone post 5 adjectives that describe themselves or their summer. 
2. BOY getting-to-know-you game: the teacher poses a question (ex. "Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction?"), and the students type their answer. The answer that grows the biggest on the screen is the most popular. 
3. BOY learning styles group quiz: the teacher can pose questions (ex. "Would you rather show your learning with a song or a play?" ... "Do you like numbers or words more?"), and the students type their answer. If you keep it pretty simple, you'll get an idea about what the class as a whole likes the most, and you can design your curriculum around it. 
4. Quick, anonymous poll: quickly assess if the majority of the class understands the concept before moving on to the next part of your lesson. It's anonymous to all the students, although you can walk the room and look at student devices to see how everyone answered. 
5. Short discussion: ask or post discussion questions to a novel or topic you're studying and let students weigh in. Just make sure students can type a short and sweet answer that's less than 41 characters!
6. Exit ticket question {save the URL so you can review student answers later}
7. "What other questions do you have about this topic?" 
8. "What's one thing you're confused about in this lesson?"
9. Whole group brainstorming: At the BOY have students submit their ideal class rules or talk about what it means to be a friend. You could also have students brainstorm things like digital citizenship tips, properties of matter, or character traits from the class novel.
10. Ask for examples to illustrate student knowledge on a topic {Learning about the elements of literature? Ask students to submit examples similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc. Studying parts of speech? Ask students to submit examples of adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc. Learning about polygons or supply and demand? Students can submit real-life examples. Reviewing the scientific method? Students can submit examples of when they could use this concept in their life or even the question they would start with to solve a certain problem with the scientific method}.
11. Get answers quickly to create a class graph: Let students post how many siblings they have, which type of apple they prefer to eat, or anything other data you use when creating a class graph. Once the page is refreshed, hover over the answers to see how many times each was entered. Then create a graph of the data the way you normally would.
12. Vote. Need to decide on the class reward, fundraising idea, or class pet name? Use AnswerGarden! Just make sure students all type their answer in the same way to ensure that the most popular answer appears the largest in the word cloud.

How would you use AnswerGarden {or would you use it at all}? What other BYOD tools do you use?

How to Collect Parent Information {Digitally}

As much as I'd like to push this fact to the back of my mind and forget it, I can't: it's mid-July, and back-to-school events are right around the corner. With that comes the gathering of all kinds of information about your new students. Here are some helpful hints about how to collect information in a paperless way.

Remind

I've written before about a free service called Remind; click here for more information. I highly recommend inviting parents to join your Remind class during a back-to-school meeting because you can clear any confusion immediately and make sure everyone is signed up before they leave!

Now you can use Remind's "stamp" feature to conduct polls or get feedback on your announcements. Not only would this be super-handy for collecting information at a back-to-school meeting, but it would be an extra incentive for parents to sign up for the service since they can't participate in the poll if they're not connected to your channel! Keep in mind that recipients are only able to send stamps from the app -- not from the web or through text messaging. {The Remind app is available in both the App Store and the Google Play store.} The stamp feature is applied automatically to all announcements, so there is no extra work on the teachers' side.

There are 4 different stamps. Typically, the ★ = the recipient acknowledging the message, the ✓ = "yes," the ✘ = "no," and the ? is self-explanatory. :) However, you can easily conduct quick polls of your own by giving new meaning to each symbol. Here's an example of using Remind to ask parents how their child will go home:

I sent a message to my "test" class, asking how each student would get home this year. If I'd been thinking clearly when I did it, I would've just copied and pasted the actual icons into the message to save myself a few characters. :)

A parents' view from the app: he/she gets the announcement you just sent 

A parents' view from the app: he/she clicks the star in the bottom, right corner to reveal the stamp options

If the announcement was sent to the entire class, parents can see an overall tally of each stamp (so they could see that you received 10 stars, 3 checks, and 5 X marks), but they don't get to see how each person answered.


As the teacher, though, you can see who answered and how they answered:

A teacher's view from the web: I can see the name of the person associated with the account and how they voted {in the picture above, "C TestParent" voted with an "X."}

Click here to read more about the stamp feature on the Remind website.


Ideas to Ask Parents at Back-to-School Meetings:

1. Travel: How will your child normally go home this year? ★ = bus, ✓ = walking/biking, ✘ = picked up in car/truck or by daycare
2. Internet: Do you have internet access at home? ✓ = yes, ✘ = no
3. BYOD: Can your child bring his/her mobile device to school for academic purposes? ✓ = yes, ✘ = no
4. Contact: How do you prefer to be contacted: ★ = phone, ✓ = e-mail
5. News: How do you prefer to learn about classroom news: ★ = blog/website, ✓ = social media, ✘ = e-mail, ? = printed paper
6. Tutoring: Will your student attend my tutoring club on Tues and Thurs from 3:00-3:30? ✓ = yes, ✘ = no

Ideas to Ask Students at Back-to-School Meetings or the first week of school:

1. Feelings poll: How do you feel about being in this new grade level? ★ = excited, ✓ = happy, ✘ = nervous or scared, ? = not sure or combination of these
2. Multiple choice pop quiz to assess prior knowledge: 45 - 12 = ... ★ = 57, ✓ = 33, ✘ = 35, ? = 24
3. Getting-to-know-you: Have you ever been to the beach? ✓ = yes, ✘ = no; Did you read a book this summer? ✓ = yes, ✘ = no; Coke or Pepsi? ★ = Coke, ? = Pepsi
4. Anticipatory set: What's your favorite genre out of these? ★ = non-fiction, ✓ = realistic fiction, ✘ = sci-fi or fantasy, ? = historical fiction

Google Forms

I heart Google forms! Forms are so easy to set up, all information is stored in the cloud so you can never lose it, and all entries are organized into a nice little spreadsheet that you can sort however you wish. This is perfect for collecting a lot of information, since you can ask an unlimited number of questions and receive answers in many different formats {typed/free text, multiple choice, checkboxes, scale, etc.}. Here's a blog post about utilizing Google Forms in the classroom.

Extra tip: Put the link to your Google Form in a QR code, and post the QR code by your door. Parents can scan it during meet the teacher hour or back-to-school meetings and quickly provide you with all the information you need.


Sign Up Genius {Or Volunteer Spot}

Need help in your classroom? Want to schedule Mystery Readers? Need to know who is running the class store on token economy shopping days? Organize volunteers the easy way by using Sign Up Genius. It's super-easy to use; just write down the days and times you need help, and send the link to parents or post it on your class blog/e-mail signature. Bonus: reminder e-mails are automatically sent to volunteers a few days before the event so you can focus on what's really important {like figuring out what you're going to bring to the staff luncheon STAAR testing}.

New Dropbox Feature: File Request

If you're not using an LMS, it can be a challenge to find a way for students to submit documents to you online. In the past, I've used Dropbox teamed up with Drop It To Me to let kids submit work. That works just fine, but Dropbox just launched a feature called file request that takes out the middle man. 

Here's an overview:

The notice I received when I logged onto my DB account online

Dropbox's explanation

I decided to give it a try. If you choose to use it, here's how it will look {I just clicked "create file request" on the screen above}:

Type the name of what you're requesting. For teachers, this may be the name of an assignment or a unit. I just wrote "test." Dropbox then creates a new folder for you, based on the name of whatever you're requesting {although you can change the file destination if you want}. Notice that once the files are turned in, you are the only one who can see them!

Type in older kids' e-mail addresses to send them the link directly from Dropbox. For younger students, I'd copy the link above and shorten it or turn it into a QR code.

That's it! I actually just e-mailed the link to myself to see what that prompt would look like... Here's the e-mail I got:

When I clicked "upload files" in the e-mail, I was taken to a page like this. I would assume this is the page someone would see if you just sent the link -- not an e-mail -- but I haven't tested it to be sure.

From here, the recipient just needs to click the blue "choose files" button, and a pop-up of files from their computer appears. After uploading, the file appears in your folder, and no one but you can see it unless you choose to share the folder. 

Ideas for Using Dropbox's File Request Feature in Education:

1. Students can submit digital assignments to their teacher.
2. Parents can submit pictures from class parties, field trips, etc to the teacher. 
3. Parents can submit permission slips and/or notes {about transportation, tutoring, etc.} to the teacher.
4. Teachers can submit paperwork to administrators. 

How to Send a Link to Students {Without E-mail}

Have you ever tried to have your students visit a specific URL, only to still hear comments like this 15 minutes later:

"Hey...what am I supposed to type again?"

"Mrs. X! I can't find the page!"

"Is THIS it?" *turns computer screen around so you can see that no, that is not, in fact, the page she is supposed to be on*

It can be frustrating. And let's face it, nobody has enough instructional time to spend 15 minutes getting to one website. It's enough to almost make you not want to use technology... I get it. Luckily, there are a couple of solutions.

If your kiddos have the newer iPad model, just AirDrop the URL to their device(s). But if you're working on desktop or laptop computers, try using Google Tone.

Google Tone is a free Chrome extension that allows you to broadcast your URL to any nearby computer on WiFi.

To Use: 
1. Make sure all devices are using Google Chrome {click here to download it for your computer}.

2. Make sure all Chrome browsers have the Google Tone extension installed {click here to visit the extension page directly and press the blue button that says, 'Add to Chrome'}.

3. Go to the website you'd like to share. Make sure your speakers are turned up, all receiving devices have their microphone on, and that you are logged in to your Google account. Press the blue megaphone extension {pictured at the very right of the URL bar below}:

4. Your computer will broadcast the URL to all other computers within earshot {including any computers that are listening over the phone, Google Hangout, or webcam}. The other computers will receive your profile picture and Google profile name along with the URL so they can know if they want to accept the link or not.

Although I do think even the youngest students need to learn what a URL is and where to type it, Google Tone and AirDrop can be real time savers if you need students to visit a complicated link {ex: a Google-shortened URL that's just a jumble of numbers and letters}!

Interactive Images on ThingLink

Happy summer break! I'm always torn at this time of year -- do I take a break or use this time "off" to start exploring ideas for next year?

For those of you on board with the latter idea, here's a tool you might want to play with over the summer: ThingLink. 

logo via the ThingLink website

I've known about ThingLink for a couple years now but didn't start using it until this year....and I wish I had started sooner. :) It's such a unique tool with so many possibilities!

What is ThingLink?

ThingLink describes themselves as a way to create interactive images. Basically, you upload a picture and then add "tags" to it. Adding a tag creates a bubble that pops up when moused over; this bubble can provide a link and/or text. 

via the ThingLink website

Free Features

• Access via the web, iOS app, or Android app 
• Create 1 group of up to 100 students by registering the students under your account (so kids don't need an e-mail address in order to log in) OR students can log themselves in with their existing Google account
• Tag images and videos with text and links
• Create slideshows with your ThingLinks
• Students who are logged in can only see other students' and teachers' ThingLinks

Premium Features -- $35/year for the teacher (my fav capabilities are italicized)

• Advanced tagging tools (like these rich media tag options)
• Create up to 30 groups with up to 1,000 students
• Students who are logged into their student account (under your name) have the same abilities as you do (except they can't tag videos)
• Ability to present your ThingLink full-screen 
• Replace the image on your ThingLink without losing any of your tags or other information
• Access to wider variety of tag icons (100+ options)
• Ability to make icons always appear (so that people don't have to mouse over the image in order to see the tags)
• Upload custom tag icons
• Use the rich-text editor on tags (include bold/italicized text)
• Make images private
• Customize the bubble and text color of your tags
• Add multiple interactive images to create one slideshow (unlimited images can be added to a show)
• Google Drive links work directly within the image (see the feedback form embedded into the bottom, right corner of this presentation ThingLink)
• Remove the ThingLink logo at the bottom, right of your slides or replace with your own image

Gettin' Fancy

You can upload any picture to create a ThingLink, but I like to upload images I've created on my own. Click here for an example of a ThingLink where I created the image.

You can create your own image in basically any photo-editing site or app, but I actually just use Microsoft PowerPoint to create my images. This post reviews how to edit and save pictures in PPT. I just use a colored shape for the background, import the pictures I need, group it all together, and save as a picture. This post has a video tutorial that shows how I use PowerPoint and digital scrapbooking elements to create an image. 

Ideas for Use

• Teachers (for students): give your students a paperless or flipped lesson (like this, this, and this) -- works really well if you're incorporating a lot of media (like a Blendspace + EDpuzzle or YouTube video + Prezi + Socrative quiz, etc.) 
• Teachers (for other teachers): create a professional development session/workshop in ThingLink (like this)
• Students (any subject): ask students to create a ThingLink as part of a culminating project to show their learning
• Students (any subject): create a mini-research project 
• Students (back to school): tag a personal image to create a "getting to know me" ThingLink at the beginning of the year
• Students (ELA): upload a student-made illustration, and then place tags that tell a story all around the illustration (Ooh...could you do a "choose your own adventure" story with this?! My wheels are turning...)
• Students (ELA): tag the image of a book cover to give reviews on the book, favorite quotes, descriptions of characters, and/or examples of literary elements
• Students (geography): tag a collage of land forms with a student voice recording explaining what each land form is/looks like and can be found
• Students (geography): tag the capitals on a map 
• Students (history): tag a map where each battle in a war took place (describing each battle and telling who won)
• Students (history/social studies): tag an image of a person as a mini-biography (this would be particularly handy if students were using lots of different tools to display facts about the person -- like a video or audio recording of the person from YouTube, a mock Facebook page for the person, a Voki depicting what that person might have said about x issue, an iMovie with photos from the person's life, etc)
• Students (science): tag a collage of the steps or results of an experiment with a student voice recording explaining what's happening in each picture, a website or video explaining why the results occurred, etc.
• Students (science): tag a diagram -- say, of a cell or a flower -- with labels, and explain each part's function

App Smashing: Using 3 Apps to Create a Virtual Food Chain

Sometimes one app just doesn't cut it, you know? Combining two or more apps into one project is called "app smashing." Here is how my 3rd grade students used 3 apps to create a virtual food chain:

Step 1: Think of a food chain. My third graders had been studying barn owls -- their adaptations, their prey and predators, and their owl pellets. For this lesson, my students were instructed to create at least a 4-step food chain.

Step 2: Open drawing desk. (I prefer "doodle desk" or "kids desk" mode.) Draw the first step of the food chain, save it to the camera roll, and then make your way to a blank screen in Drawing Desk. (Learn more about Drawing Desk by reading this blog post.) Draw all 4 parts of your food chain this way, making sure to include only one energy source/plant/animal in each picture.

Drawing Desk (free)

Step 3: Open Shadow Puppet Edu. Each of the 4 pictures students just drew in Drawing Desk and saved should be in the camera roll. Students should load each of the 4 pictures into a Shadow Puppet Edu slideshow in the correct order. Use the narration feature to record your voice on each picture, telling us what the item is, if it's a producer or consumer, and if it's a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore.

So, for example, we might hear these narrations:

• First slide: "This is the sun. It is the energy source for the plant, so it is not a producer or a consumer."
• Second slide: "This is grass. It is a producer because it uses the sun's energy to make its own food." 
• Third slide: "This is a grasshopper. Its prey in this food chain is the grass. It is a consumer and an herbivore."

...and so on. :)

Shadow Puppet Edu (free)

Step 4: Export the Shadow Puppet Edu show to Seesaw and submit under your name. 

Seesaw: The Learning Journal (free)

I think the kids had a good time "app smashing" to make our digital food chains, and I love that the creation process allows me to see each child's personality in their work! Here's one example of the work I received:

 

Fun!

Draw on your Mobile Device with this App

I found a free app called Drawing Desk that I just had to share. It is available in the App Store, the Google Play store, and on Amazon, so it seems like a great option for a Bring Your Own Device district!

There are lots of apps that let students draw on the screen with their finger, so what makes Drawing Desk so special? Easy: variety of options! Besides being available across a variety of platforms, Drawing Desk actually has 4 slightly different modes that can benefit students of all ages.

The home screen displays the 4 modes inside brightly colored dots. The kids' desk is best for K-2, so even if your students can't read yet, you could tell them to click on the blue dot to get started. Here's the home screen:

Let's tour the modes in the order they're presented on the home screen. First up is "photo desk" mode, which is basically a giant photo editor. You can crop the photos or add stickers/borders/filters to them before saving to your camera roll. I personally don't think there's anything Earth-shattering about this mode, but it's good for basic edits.


Up next is "doodle desk" mode. As you can see, there are a variety of options listed on both sides of the screen. Besides the regular drawing and choose-your-color capabilities, the stamps, 3D brushes, and stickers are a unique touch.

Some stamp options are shown below. The first page of stamps and stickers are the only free ones -- all others are offered via an in-app purchase -- but I don't find it too limiting.

Below are some sticker options.

Here's a tour of the "kids desk" mode. This is geared mostly to the K-2 crowd, although of course anyone could use it.

The red button on the left gives students some stamp options. These look more cartoon-ish than the stamps on the other modes, but it is intended for early childhood students.

The cluster of 3 dots in the 2nd button on the left lets students choose any color from a spectrum, so users aren't just limited to the pencils on the bottom of the screen.

The yellow button on the left gives students some pattern options; choose any of the patterns, drag your finger across the screen, and see that design in the line you just wrote. It reminds me a little of those Crayola Stamp Markers that were all the rage when I was a kid. :)

Stencils are a fun addition to this mode; access them by clicking the pink button on the left. I like that these are black and white, so students could add personality or make them match their drawing by just coloring in the lines -- almost like a virtual coloring book.

Finally, here is the "sketch desk" mode. This looks like it's intended more for the serious artist, as it gives different medium options on the left.

No matter the mode you pick, students can always save the picture to the camera roll. From there, you can import the drawing into any app or get it off the iPad to showcase to the community.

Ideas for Use:
Use as a replacement for paper any time you would normally ask students to draw something! In Science Lab, this means lots of diagrams. But students could also illustrate a picture to a story they wrote, use Drawing Desk in place of a poster board for a project or presentation, or illustrate a series of math problems.

Dropbox Adds Commenting Feature

I've written about Dropbox in the past, but their most recent update is pretty cool, so I thought I'd share!

As a reminder, Dropbox is a place for you to securely store files of all kinds on the web and access those files from any device that is connected to the Internet. Two nice bonuses are that you never have to worry about losing or corrupting a flash drive again, and that you can recover recently deleted files fairly easily.

I've advocated for Dropbox over other cloud storage services because I just think the layout is simple and intuitive, but there was a feature I thought was missing...until now. :)

Dropbox now offers the ability for users to comment on any file. Additionally, you can specifically "mention" Dropbox users who have access to your files -- almost like the mentioning feature on Twitter or Instagram. 

Any user who is the owner of that particular folder, was mentioned in the comment by using the @ symbol, or has participated in commenting on that file before will receive an e-mail about any addition to the conversation.

I could see this being a real asset to teaching teams who use shared Dropbox folders. Easily make a comment to give more information about a particular file is, what time or year or part of the Scope and Sequence this file pertains to, changes that need to be made on a lesson plan before next year, etc.

Learn more about Dropbox's new commenting feature by clicking HERE.

Seesaw: An ePortfolio and Paperless Class Option

Seesaw, who advertises themselves as "the learning journal," is my newest favorite tech tool. It's available both on a browser and on iOS-compatible devices {download the app for free here} or on Android devices. In a nutshell, it's an easy way for students without e-mail addresses to turn in work to you and/or create an ePortfolio. 

More Information You, the teacher, must create an account on the Seesaw app. Afterwards, add a journal for each student -- it's very quick! Seesaw generates a QR code that students scan in order to join your class. From there, students can upload or take a photo from within the app, annotate over the top of it, and record his/her actions and voice. In that respect it's a lot like Educreations, but Seesaw allows each kid to have his/her own special journal.  Pros:

• Totally free.
• Compatible with iOS and Android. Both apps are free, of course.
• Free web access.
• Multiple sign-in options. Kids can sign in with a (Seesaw-generated) QR code or an e-mail address -- choose what works best for your students.
• Unlimited space. Teachers can create an unlimited number of spaces, have an unlimited number of students, and students get unlimited amount of space for work uploads.
• No e-mail address, username, or password required. Each class has a QR code that students simply have to scan in order to access the class. This eliminates the need for logging out and back in before every assignment, which can eat up a lot of time!
• Plays well with others. Seesaw is compatible with lots of commonly-used creation apps so that you can import work from there into the Seesaw journal. It can also help you bypass the need for an account in those other apps. For instance, users typically need an account in order to export work from Shadow Puppet Edu. However, if they export to Seesaw, no account is needed!
• Co-teaching? No problem. Add a co-teacher to your account by simply e-mailing the Seesaw team. 
• Moderate as needed. Ability for the teacher to approve/deny each journal entry, along with reassigning work to students if they accidentally upload to the wrong journal.
• School-wide account option. E-mail the Seesaw team to activate this option. Once done, you can upload student accounts in bulk, and a student's work can go with them from year to year.
• Activate alerts. Get notified via e-mail and/or on your device each time a student uploads work, if you want. {Parents also have this capability with their own child's work.}
• Easy parent communication. Teachers have the option to invite parents to view their child's work {parents only see their child's work}. Parents can view everything that is uploaded to their child's account and comment on individual assignments {if you activate that feature}. If their child is enrolled in more than one class that uses Seesaw, the parent should see all work merged into one stream.
• Optional upgrade for parents. A basic parent account is free, but they can upgrade for $10/year to access additional features. 
• Quickly find student work. The teacher can access a calendar view; click on a day to access all work added to the journal that day. The teacher can also click on a specific student's journal in order to see work only he or she completed. Finally, the teacher can flag work for follow-up, and then later choose to view only the flagged items.

Cons:

• No way to push information to students. I spoke with the support team, and they said they've heard this from a few teachers and might be adding this feature in the future. But for now, you cannot upload anything to a class journal for students to grab and work on, for instance. If your iPads have AirDrop, though, there's an easy work-around. 
• No way to edit. This is a feature the team is supposedly working on, but for now, once something is uploaded, the teacher has to delete it -- as students cannot delete -- and the student will have to edit and re-upload, as there are no "do-overs." 
• School accounts seem needed. Journals do not carry over from year to year unless you have a school account. I'm not sure what happens to the student's work after the school year is over, but it's something to look into. 
• No way to grade. It would be super if this app gave you the ability to grade things or annotate on work, but right now, it's just a storage hub for student work.
• No PDF support. But you can take photos/screenshots of PDFs, so this is only a minor annoyance.

Personally, I think this would be awesome to take into parent conferences. If the parent already has an account, there are no surprises! But if not, all of the student's work is on your iPad, so you can just let his/her work samples do the talking.  You can use Seesaw even if you only have 1 iPad in your class. Just have students take a picture of their paper work and upload it to their own account instead of turning in the paper version. And because Seesaw is compatible with so many other commonly-used creation apps, you aren't limited to just annotation and videos for student uploads. Here's a list of apps with which Seesaw plays well. Plus, the Seesaw website even has lots of activity ideas already posted for each subject area so you can dive in ASAP.

How to Go Paperless with Elementary School Assessments

I love systems like Socrative and Kahoot, but they aren't as conducive for younger students who can't read as well or as quickly as some of my older students.

Luckily, Poll Everywhere has a cool, unique feature that is SO helpful in assessing the little ones. It's called the "clickable image" feature. (Poll Everywhere has lots of options and is free to use, so I definitely recommend signing up for an account!)

When you start a new poll, Poll Everywhere lets you choose how you want that poll to look. Just select the "clickable image" button to utilize this feature.

After that, you can upload your image and get started:

For this example, I just uploaded a picture from Google of 5 lessons from Dr. Seuss. Of course, you can use any picture you want (or make a collage). After the image is uploaded, click on it to set parameters for the answers. So in the picture below, you can see the translucent white box around "1. Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you" -- that means that portion is a potential answer for voters. Set as many parameters as you want and adjust the size of each. If someone taking this poll clicks anywhere within the translucent box shown below, their answer will be counted for life lesson number one.

After you set answer parameters, move on to the poll display page. It might look a little something like the picture below (notice I changed the question so it fits the image now!):

If you look at the row of icons on the right side of my picture, you'll see 7 options of things you can do with your poll at this point. Here is what each icon means:

• Paintbrush: change the color scheme of the poll
• 2nd button from the top: activate the poll and "push" it to student devices
• Eye with a slash: toggle whether or not the question parameters are seen
• Green pin: toggle whether or not the green pins are shown when people click answers (as students touch the screen to answer, a green pin will appear on their screen where they clicked)
• Stop sign: stop the poll
• File cabinet: clear the answers from this poll
• 4 arrows: display the poll in full screen

There are even more customization options in the blue boxes to the right of all the icons -- I'll let you explore those for yourself.  

In the picture above, you can see a URL displayed right under the question; students can use that URL to quickly participate in the poll from any device with a browser, so this is perfect for the BYOD classroom. If anyone visits this URL before the poll has been activated, they'll just see a picture of a pie. Not sure why that's the chosen icon, but it definitely makes it easy for students to recognize when they're at the correct page. :) 

For a weather poll for my kindergarten students, I displayed this while they were working:

I didn't make this collage myself (I found it on a free flipchart I got from Promethean Planet), but it's easy to do so with a photo-editing tool or in PowerPoint.

You can string several questions together so that students can take a multi-question quiz; this is what I did for the kindergarten weather poll. I believe Poll Everywhere gives teachers the option for students to have an account so you know who is answering in which way, but there was something that kept me from activating that option... I can't remember if it's because it costs money to do that, or if it's because my students are too young to have e-mail accounts or register for something like this. Or both. ;) In any case, walking the room while students are answering is a quick fix to being able to see which answers below to which students. They can only vote once, so that green pin will stay on the screen until you clear it or move on to the next question.

Here's an example of what students see on their screen:

Below is a collage I quickly made in PowerPoint to use as a warm-up for my 4th graders when we did a matter investigation involving water content of fruit:

I wanted them to be able to see the fruit as they chose the answer, so the clickable image worked well for my 4th graders in this instance.

The possibilities are really endless with this clickable image option! How would you use this in your class (or would you)?

How to Use Google Forms

There are a plethora of uses for Google forms in the classroom. Two super-simple ways I use them in the classroom are for letting students register for Science Fair and for letting students sign in to the recycling club meetings. This post will focus on exactly how to set up a Google form so as to gain information from your students.

1. Sign up for a Google account if you don't already have one. {If you do have one, just sign in.}

2. Go to www.google.com/drive
If you see a screen like this:

just click "go to Google Drive."

3.  This is my dashboard:

Yours will look a bit different, depending on how much/what you have in your drive and whether or not you've updated to the newest version of Google Drive {I have not}.

Click "create" in the top, left corner:

4. Click "form" in the drop-down menu that appears after you click "create."

FYI: The arrow going up -- to the right of the "create" button -- means that you are going to upload a non-Google document to your drive. So, for instance, you could upload any Microsoft Office {Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher, etc.} document to your drive. The fonts may not look the same after upload, especially if you used any non-default fonts {which may throw the spacing off a bit}, but everything else should remain intact. I typically only upload PDFs for the reasons mentioned above.

 More FYIs:

• Clicking "folder" lets you create a new folder -- just like you would on your computer
• Clicking "document" lets you create a word document -- much like Microsoft Word
• A Google presentation is a lot like Microsoft PowerPoint
• A Google spreadsheet is similar to Microsoft Excel
• You may not have any other options after "form," depending on what apps you have added to your drive

5. You should see a screen like this:

 
This is your blank Google form, and now you get to personalize it. There are lots of things you could do, so I'm just going to show you the basics and let you play with it on your own to find the rest. :)


Title the form. This helps others know what your form's topic is, as well as helps you organize your forms in your Google cloud drive.

 
Add a description. Tell others what your form is about. This is totally optional but sometimes comes in handy!

Type your question in the "title" bar. You can add optional help text, which acts like notes to your readers. 

Change the question type. If you look at the picture above, you can see a button that says "multiple choice." If you click on that, you'll see a drop-down menu that shows you all the kinds of questions you can ask. This can come in handy if you need a certain answer from your audience. For instance, When I needed students to tell me the name of their homeroom teacher upon registering for the science fair, I chose the "choose from a list" option. This way, all homeroom teachers would be identified by their last name only, and all names would be spelled correctly so that I could sort the answers later.

Choose what participants will see when they submit your form. Click in the text box to change the words "Your response has been recorded." For instance, for the science fair form, I included my school e-mail address and encouraged participants to e-mail me by x date if they still had not received their entry number. Below, you'll see I have "Show link to submit another response" checked. This comes in handy when lots of people are going to use the same device to access the form. For instance, I check this box in my recycling club sign in form, because all the kids use my laptop to record their attendance.

Use the gray buttons in the top of each question to edit the question, duplicate it, or delete it altogether.






Require questions if you want. Requiring a question means that a user must answer it before they are allowed to submit the form. I use this for agreements. For instance, when parents sign their students up for my recycling club, I have a "question" that says something like, "I give the school permission to administer medical attention if needed and release the school of all liability. I understand that pick up is at 3:20 by the east doors." I make the question a "check box" type and make it required. I also make questions required when I need contact information.







Click "send form" when you're ready to publish it. When you click that button, it tells you how to share the link with others.

Other information:  click the "change theme" button on the top, left of the screen to change the appearance of the form. You can view what your live form looks like at any time by clicking "view" and "live form."

View the responses. After you publish your form, Google automatically generates a spreadsheet for that form with responses. The first row in the spreadsheet is filled with your questions, and each person's answers are put into the appropriate columns.

Set up notifications. This is one of the first things I do when I set up a new Google form. I go into the responses, click "tools," and then click "notification rules." From there, you can make sure that Google e-mails you when you get new responses to the document. For something where you expect a lot of responses, you can choose to just get a daily digest of the newest updates. If you are setting up a Google form that you don't plan to check immediately or every day {for instance, it's for a sign up -- not a class assignment}, I recommend setting up the notifications.

Sort information. Do this by hovering your mouse over the top of any column with information in it {for instance, in the above-picture, I could hover over column A or B}. An arrow will appear in the right corner of that box; if you click it, the spreadsheet will be sorted according to information in that column. I used this to sort students by teacher name or by grade level when I was getting ready for science fair.

Download responses. If you need a paper copy of the responses and want to make sure it prints okay, you can download a copy of the responses before printing. My top two choices for download would be as an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF, but there are 4 other download options you can utilize if you want.

Edit if you need to. You can always go back into your original Google form to edit, or you can edit it from the response page by going to "form" and then "edit form." You can edit a Google form at any time -- even after you've published it.

Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom:

1. Beginning of the year contact information -- it would be great to give the link or let parents scan a QR code to the form during "meet the teacher." You could gather information about parent contacts, student birthdays, language(s) spoken at home, etc. without the need for index cards
2. Beginning of the year, getting-to-know-you questionnaire for students
3. Bellringer assignment: students must answer a particular question upon entering and record their response in the Google form
4. Sign up form for parent/teacher conference times -- parents could request a couple of days and times that work for them, and you could follow up with a confirmation call
5. Registering for a club or event
6. Signing in to a club meeting or tutoring session. {Each entry is automatically time stamped for your convenience -- you don't have to make that a question.}
7. Assessment
8. Exit ticket
9. Bully/abuse report -- kids can fill in the form anonymously to report bullying or abuse
10. Reading log {kids fill in a Google form instead of recording their minutes on paper}
11. Rubric/project/science fair entry/presentation scoring {you wouldn't share the link, but you'd have a spreadsheet of answers when you're finished}
12. Peer assessment for projects/presentations
13. Record management information: student infractions, binder signs, parent phone calls, office visits, etc. 
14. Voting form for classroom positions {president, secretary, StuCo, etc.} or even for staging a mock voting booth during election years

What other uses can you think of for Google Forms in your class?