Friday Matinee: Kahoot for Student Engagement & Review

Kahoot! is a fun game based way to engage your students and also check for understanding.  You can create a variety of questions and either play it live (even via Zoom) or you can assignment it as a challenge game where students play at their own pace when they have time.  Instead of you creating the questions for the game, ask students to submit questions to let them take over the review process.  

The Basic version is free and allows you to play live class-sized games or student-paced challenges so that students can play at their own pace.  Games will use multiple choice quiz questions.  There are 3 levels of premium accounts with various features including questions that drive deeper learning like puzzles, student typed answers, and more. 

All games can be played via Zoom!

Resources to get you started:

How to create a Kahoot

Host Kahoot! games - a step by step guide

Kahoot! challenges: how to assign Kahoots as Homework

Playlist of Kahoot! Tutorials

EDU Webinar on Kahoot for Distance Learning (the free upgrade to the pro version is no longer available)

Want to try a self-paced challenge?  Click here.

Need help?  Just ask.  We're here to help.  Also check out our Remote Learning Resources website.  We keep adding new ideas!

Did You Know? Continue Where You Left Off in Google Chrome

Did you know that you can continue where you left off in Google Chrome?  You can adjust your Chrome settings so that the Chrome Tab Groups that you created and other tabs you have open will reload after you restart Chrome.  This setting is a game changer!

To change your settings and see how this works, watch this video.

Friday Matinee: Review Jeopardy Game Using Google Slides

It's getting close to the end of the semester and using this Jeopardy template will allow you to either create the game for your class to play as a review or you can let groups of students use it to create the questions and answer then share their game with the rest of the class.  

Jeopardy 5 Topic Template

In order to use this template, go to FILE and choose MAKE A COPY.  Don't forget to "file" it in Google Drive in a folder so that you keep your Drive organized.  You can do this by clicking on the folder icon to the right of the file name at the top right of the screen.  

If you would like to use this template again, I would suggest that you make not 1, but 2 copies of this file.  One I would add the word MASTER to one of them so that you will know that it is your blank template

Did You Know? Easily Crop an Image in Google

Did you know that you can easily crop an image in Google Docs, Slides, or Drawings?  This is a feature we use a lot.  Here's how:

How to Crop an Image in Doc, Slides, or Drawings

Go ahead and get rid of that extra white space or background in your image quickly and easily!

Friday Matinee: Engagement With Digital Escape Rooms

Digital escape rooms (also called digital breakouts) are a spin on the popular Escape Rooms and are a great way to bring game playing, group work, collaboration, and problem solving into your classroom.  They can also be done remotely!

Jason Reed, the Digital Learning Coach at Marshall County Schools, has created this great tutorial on creating and using digital escape rooms in your classroom.  

EscapeRoom PD

He's embedded an example on slide 2 and more ideas on slide 3.  If you are a math nerd, I highly recommend this one: Shape Escape.

Here's an easy Halloween Haunt Escape Room.  Click in different places in the image to get your clues.

For more ideas on creating or using an digital escape room (there are many shared examples online) for your class, check out these additional resources:

30+ Digital Escape Rooms (Plus a Step by Step Guide for Creating Your Own

40+ Digital Escape Rooms

Creating your clues is half the fun!  You can even have your students help you with these and put them all together in an escape room to challenge your class.

How to Create a Digital Breakout for the Classroom (has great ideas for clues!)

Breakout EDU Digital Resources (great sites for sites to use to create your clues)

Your "locks" should be created in Google Forms using response validation.  Here's a helpful post on using response validation in a Form.  Remember that they have to get the answer right in order to submit their form and breakout!

KATE challenges you to create an escape room for at least one of your classes and we would love for you to share it with us!  Need help?  Let us know.

Did You Know? Group and Color Code Tabs in Google Chrome

Did you know that you can group and color code tabs in Google Chrome?  Believe it or not, I didn't know that you could do this until just now!  Check out this video to learn how to group tabs by topics and colors:

Name and Color Code Chrome Tab Groups

Happy grouping, y'all!

Friday Matinee: Using Nearpod for Engagement & Formative Assessment

As you start planning your classes for the rest of the semester, you might want to check out this post on engagement while teaching remotely.  If you scroll down to where it says Keep it simple with eLearning modalities, you'll see where the author mentions using Flipgrid and Pear Deck with her online college classes.  We've sent out information on using both in previous Friday Matinees.

Nearpod is an add-on for Google Slides and works with PowerPoint and is very similar to Pear Deck.  Here's a comparison of both tools.  Both have free versions and offer interactivity during presentations with either Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint.  The free version of Nearpod seems to have more interactive features available than Pear Deck.  Like Edpuzzle, you can also make your videos interactive.  Nearpod offers some pre-made interactive lessons and videos with the basic plan and your lessons can be presented live or in student-paced mode, which is great for online learning.  You can also add a lesson to Zoom with one click!

If you go here, you'll find some resources that KATE has curated to help you learn more about Nearpod by clicking on the link at the top of the page. There are videos on getting started, using it with PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canvas, and more

Back to Pear Deck for a minute:

In case you are more of a Peardeck fan, here's a link to get 3 months of unlimited access to all of Pear Deck's premium features. When the 90 days is up, you can go back to a basic free account. Not sure when this deal with end.