Friday Matinee: How to Get Students Engaging With Each Other in Online or Blended Classes

Creating an engaging environment when you are teaching online or in the classroom can be challenging.  Getting students to have a discussion is difficult even in a normal classroom setting.  Bonni Stachowiak's article discusses making it easy for students to interact in online or blended classes.

How to Get Students Engaging With Each Other in Online or Blended Classes

Let us know what you think.  Was there a tool or idea she mentioned that you would like to try?  Things you've tried that worked?  Please share your thoughts on this Padlet.

Friday Matinee: Text Comments in Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a great way to have a discussion whether you are in class or remote.  Create your question and let students answer and then reply to each other.  Flipgrid recently added text comments rather than just video, which is helpful for shy students.

Here's more on how they work: Introducing Text Comments

Haven't used Flipgrid before?  It was actually created for Dr. Miller's PhD students at the University of Minnesota.  Since then it has become one of the go to discussion apps for students from K-PhD!  Here's a post on remote learning with Flipgrid in higher education.

For more on Flipgrid, check out the information on our Remote Learning Resources page or check out their blog.

Want to know MORE about Flipgrid?  Take this FREE class with Holly Clark online.  You can do it at your own pace.

Friday Matinee: Using Padlet in Your Class

Padlet is a great app for discussions, formative assessment, sharing documents, brainstorming, and more.  It looks a lot like an online bulletin board with a bunch of sticky notes!  The free version allows you to create 3 walls for free.  If you need another one, just delete a previous one.  Students can upload just about any file, add a link, search and add images, videos and more via Google, take a picture with your computer's camera, capture video from your camera, record their voice, record the screen, doodle, add a place/location, or link to another Padlet.  Wow!  That's a lot!!  What's more is that students can respond to other students.

I've used Padlet for years to have students give feedback on an article they've read, review a Chrome extension that they have tried, as a backchannel, or as a way to share a document with the class.  I've asked a question and had students respond.  I've even had them introduce themselves and add a video or image to show something that they are interested in.  The possibilities are endless and it is easy to use in a hybrid teaching environment.

Check out this video on how it works.  Want to try it?  Here's one I created asking about what the characteristics of effective feedback are.

Friday Matinee: Creating a Backchannel With Google Docs

Having a discussion is an important part of a class but it can be difficult when you are teaching either totally online or using the hybrid model.  Fortunately there are digital tools that can be used for backchannel discussions, including a shared Google Doc that everyone in class has the right to edit.

Use this Google Doc that you can copy (FILE>MAKE A COPY) for classroom discussions.  I like this document rather than just using a Doc without any added guidelines because you can see not only who asked the question, but also who responded and what their response was.  It also keeps the questions and answers together for easy viewing.  Multiple people can also answer the same question.  

A suggestion is to have one student per week or class period who would be in charge of the backchannel document.  They would monitor the questions and answers, and bring up questions in class that might need clarification.

I would keep the original document as a master and then make a copy of it and rename it every time you use it.  All you need to do is change the title and date at the top.

Friday Matinee: Google Slides Discussion on Using Google Meet in the Classroom

As many of you know, I've been teaching our students how to use Google and one of the things I had them do this semester was to come up with a way to use Hangouts Meet in their future classroom.  The way I did this was to share a Google Slide deck with a directions slide and another slide that I called the student slide that was set up for them to add their name and their response.  We sometimes call this collaboration slides.  Here is the file that I shared and their responses:

Using Hangouts Meet in the Classroom

This activity can be used in any class and on pretty much any topic where you want students to discuss something and comment on each other's input.  It works very well as an online discussion board and can be easily changed as the topic changes. 

I'm adding a template that includes a basic set of directions and an additional student slide.  These are the only 2 slides available in the slide deck.

Discussion Slides

To use this, go to FILE then choose MAKE A COPY and copy the entire slide presentation.  This makes it yours to use.  I would keep this as your master and make a copy of it every time you use it for a discussion.

You can edit the slide with different backgrounds and text.  Here's a video on how to do that:

Using Collaborative Slides by Creating Master Slides

Friday Matinee: Using Collaboration Slides in Your Classroom

Welcome back and I hope the semester is off to a good start.  I wanted to share with you a way to create a collaborative template that can be used in many ways with your classes.  We demonstrate it with Google Slides, but you should be able to do the same thing in PowerPoint.

The video will show you how to create 2 master slides, one will have your directions on it and the other will be the slide that the students will add to share their answer.  Once students have answered their question on their slide, they can then read and comment on other students slides.  This is great for discussions, for a quick assessment to make sure your students got what you discussed in class, or even to review for a test.  Once you have done this, you can make a copy of the file, quickly edit it, and used it again.  Be sure to give your students editing access to the file so that they can add their slide and comment on others.

The video will start part way in at the point where I discuss this method.

Using Collaboration Slides in Your Classroom

This file will show you how students responded after reading 3 articles on teaching remotely.  We recommend that once you've created this file, that you call this your template or master and make a copy of it each time you want to use it.  That way you'll always have your template that is blank.