Nearpod and Nearpod Homework=Powerful Blended Learning Opportunities

"Can we try ONE MORE PROBLEM, PLEASE??" This is what I heard from several students in a fifth grade class last week I was asked to teach a lesson about multiplying decimals. In our district we are using Pearson Envision Math and the day in which I would be teaching the lesson 7-4B I decided to use Nearpod to teach it rather than project my display and ask the students to take notes on what they are learning.  I used the school's iPad cart and each student opened the free Nearpod app. They entered the PIN for my lesson and we were ready to learn. Multiplying decimals by decimals and/or whole numbers can be an abstract mathematical concept for 5th grade, especially when the lesson called for the students to utilize models to represent their problems.

One of the reasons I volunteered for this particular lesson was that I wanted to experiment with combining some of my favorite tech tools. The lesson, shown below, utilizes Haiku Deck for the slides because it makes great looking slides. I used Doceri for the 0.3 minute whiteboard video demonstrations. Finally, Nearpod supplied the great interactive activities that engaged the students. It worked so well that the kids were enthusiastically asking for math to be taught this way from now on.

Our district in the process of purchasing a large scale subscription 3-year license for this amazing Nearpod service. This development has the potential to change the way teachers teach and student learn in the classroom. We have such great access to technology in this district, Nearpod is an exciting new way to implement positive classroom practices. In one lesson, using Nearpod, I was able to meet many of the instructional priorities our district has emphasized:

• Feedback
• Maximizing Opportunities to Respond
• Explicit Instruction
• Acquisition, Automaticity, the Application

In order to gain access to this district-wide license, we will be doing short trainings for elementary and secondary teachers to share with you the features and be sure that you have what you need to get started.  For more information, contact your Ed Tech or me (katherine.hill@canyonsdistrict.org).

This the Nearpod presentation I created and used for teaching the multiplying of decimals. Even though I presented this live to the students in class, it is posted here as a self-guided presentation via Nearpod Homework. Go through it yourself and let me know what you think. If you can't see this embedded presentation, you can click here.

Canvas: How to Import Course Content

Earlier this month, Dustin Worm wrote a great post about how to back up your Canvas course:

Summer... How to back-up your Canvas course!

You can use that backup file to add content to a new course at the beginning of a new term or school year. During the summer, you might also create a new course in Canvas so that you can get a head start on creating course content for the fall. To do this, look for the "Start a New Course" button on the first screen you see when you log in to Canvas. You can then copy the content from this course to your official Canvas courses (those created by our upload from Skyward which have all of your students already enrolled.)

The following steps are an overview of this process:

1. Open the course that will be the destination for the course import.
2. Click on the "Settings" tab in the left-sidebar navigation.
3. Click the "Import Content Into This Course" button in the right toolbar.
4. From here there are two options you might use in the "Content Type" drop down menu: if you are importing from a course you created, you can select "Copy a Canvas Course." If you are importing from the export/backup file you created using the instructions above, select "Canvas Course Export Package" from the drop down menu. This second option will require you to locate the backup file on your computer by clicking the "Choose File" button, then locate the .imscc course file you have downloaded to your computer. Click "Choose."
5. IMPORTANT: Check the "Select Migration Content" checkbox.
6. Click the "Import" button.
7. Click the "Select Content" button.
8. Working from the bottom of the list to the top, select the course files that you would like to include in your new course.
9. Click the "Select Content" button. 

Once you have imported all of your content, you can then begin changing dates or other details to make your course fit with your new course and the new term.

If you have additional questions, you can view these and other articles in the Canvas Guides:

• How do I import content from another Canvas course?

• How do I import a Canvas course export package?

Turn your iPad into a Document Camera

For about $45 you can purchase an iPad stand that will allow you to use your iPad as a document camera. You can use the Camera app to show work to students just as you would any document camera. Or you can use an app like Stage to record and annotate over live images captures with the camera on the iPad.

When you pair this stand with AirPlay or AppleTV, you can project these images to your students in class.

This iPad stand can be moved around your room to a lecture stand or a student desk. That way you can teach from any location in your classroom and share your own images, student work, or have students share ideas with the whole class.

Make managing images and videos on all of your devices easy.

If you are like me, you have a camera, a phone, and an iPad loaded with images and videos. Over the years I have found that the easiest way to manage these files is to use Image Capture.

Image Capture is a free program that comes with all Mac computers. It can be used to import photos and videos from just about any phone, camera, tablet, or SD card. It will also delete your images from your device once they are uploaded to your computer or hard drive. Just connect your device, open image capture and you are ready to go.

If you have an iPad or iPod lab, Image Capture makes it easy to collect all of the photo and video projects your students have created on those devices. Just connect your computer to your iPad or iPod storage cart or tray and import all of the photos and videos on all of the connected devices. When you are done collecting the files you need, you can use Image Capture to delete all of the images and videos from all of your devices. It's a great way to clean up classroom iOS devices.

Simplify your life and make managing photos and videos on all of your devices easier with Image Capture.

Safari Montage

What is Safari Montage?

Safari Montage is a Video On-Demand and Digital Media Management/Distribution system. It contains up-to-date, standards-based, content-aligned video as well as other types of digital media, such as digital images, audio, etc.

How do I access Safari Montage

Secondary schools and a select number of elementary schools have purchased access to Safari Montage content. To find out if your school has access to Safari Montage, contact your school's librarian or ed tech. Access Safari Montage at sm.canyonsdistrict.org.

Setting up the Safari Montage Media Player (one time only) 

The first time Safari Montage is used on a computer, the Safari Montage Media Player will need to be downloaded and installed. (See screen shot below.)

Click on the ‘Download Now’ button to download the Media Player to your computer.

NOTE: DO NOT CLICK ON THE ‘Remind Me Later’ BUTTON. Clicking on ‘Remind Me Later’ will not install the Media Player.

Once the Media Player has finished downloading, open the downloaded file and follow the instructions to install the software. Then close all open internet browser windows OR restart the computer if you are prompted to do so.

How to login to Safari Montage

Return to sm.canyonsdistrict.org

Login with the same username/password used for Email & Skyward. Your username is your first.lastname. We also recommend that you check the box to "Remember me on this computer." This will save your login credentials for 30 days.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The first time you log in, you may see a screen that indicates that this site is not trusted. Choose to proceed/trust this site and your login will be completed. We are also seeing an error where some teachers will need to repeat the login process more than once to access the system. Please let your ed tech specialist know if you are seeing this error at your school.

Once you are logged in, you can browse media by title or type, create playlists, upload documents, create quizzes, etc. If you have questions or would like to know more, you can ask your ed tech to enroll you in our Canvas course that contains training videos and tutorials for all of the basic features of Safari Montage.

Turn your iPad into an Interactive Whiteboard

Recording a video lesson has never been easier! 

There are several apps that will let you share a presentation (photos, PowerPoint presentations, etc.) and record your live annotations and voice notes. I want to share information about two of these apps below, but there are several others available in the app store.

First up is Explain Everything. This is a paid app ($2.99) but with all of the recording and import/export options it is well worth the money. When you create a new project with this app, you are given the option to import a PowerPoint, PDF, or photos from your iPad or from your online file storage program, like Dropbox. You can also start with a blank screen and add your own notes and annotations. Once your recording is completed, you can save the movie file to your iPad or share it via Youtube.

Another great app is Educreations. It is free and they are adding features all the time. Any presentations you record are saved to your iPad and can be shared via email or via a link to your video on their website. The Educreations website is also a community of other teachers who are creating and sharing their videos, so you may be able to find other presentations that work for your lessons.

See the images below for a comparison of the recording screens in Explain Everything and Educreations: 

In Explain Everything, the primary controls and settings are listed to the left of the recording screen. The page selector, playback, recording and saving options are listed at the bottom.

In Educreations, the controls for recording and other controls are displayed above the recording screen. You can use the controls at the bottom of the screen to change the paper, duplicate and add pages.

Both of these apps work do a great job of presenting and sharing information live or creating screen recording from your iPad for students to review concepts or to share information with students who may have missed your class. From math instruction to annotating parts of the anatomy, class reading projects to professional development, these two apps have application for almost all teaching situations.

BONUS App: Knowmia Teach is also Free, has a database of teacher-created content similar to Educreations and has a ton of great recording tools like Explain Everything. It also allows you to use the front-facing camera on your iPad to record your face while you are teaching to make the videos a little more personal. See more about Knowmia Teach, including some great screenshots on the Knowmia website or in iTunes.

What Can Canvas Do For You?

We are talking about Canvas in all of our secondary schools this year. To help teachers to better utilize this tool in their classrooms, we want to help provide answers to the question:

Why Canvas?

Maximize opportunities to Respond.

Canvas can help you to better understand what your students are learning. You can give students opportunities to share what they know and ask questions when they need help. You can track concepts students aren’t grasping, which assignments they have missed and who needs extra help.

Re-Capture Instruction Time.

Canvas is designed to give you more time to teach and to give students more time to learn. With Canvas you can extend your instruction time beyond your classroom walls and time limits, and students can learn from your instruction materials anytime and anywhere.

SpeedGrader.

Want to cut down on the time you spend grading tests, quizzes, essays and other assignments? Use SpeedGrader in Canvas to grade student work in a fraction of the time while still providing personalized feedback to each student. The SpeedGrader app for iPad lets you take your grade book wherever you go.

Professional Learning.

Teachers can become students in a Canvas course and share ideas and resources across classes and across schools. Canvas is easy to use and can engage teacher-learners anywhere and anytime, so more time can be spent teaching and working with students.

What should you be doing with Canvas now?

Most teachers won’t begin teaching with Canvas until next school year. But for some groups and for those teachers who would like to get started, there are some guidelines listed below. The goal is to help ALL secondary teachers participate in Canvas as a student this year. If you’d like to do more, contact your Ed Tech Specialist.

Click HERE to download a printable copy of this blog post.

Canvas for Teachers

More and more teachers in Canyons District are beginning to use Canvas for part of their course instruction. The primary idea is to help teachers and students succeed in a Blended Learning environment; or in a classroom where part of the instruction is delivered online. Canvas allows teachers to post and grade assignments, have class discussions, give collaborative assignments, peer reviews, quizzes, and much more. Canvas also give teachers access to powerful analytics tools so that they can see which students are engaged and which are not. Formative evaluations are easy, effective, and comprehensive.

We are working to make the transition to integrating Canvas into our schools a smooth one. We know there will be concerns as we move forward. Here are some of the common questions we are hearing:

Question: Will Canvas replace teachers? or, Are we building the machine that will replace us?
Answer: Envisioning a future where robot teachers are rolling around the classroom isn't a new concept, but we don't think this will happen any time soon. Why? Because great teaching is complex and constantly changing. Your students' needs are just as diverse, nuanced, and quickly evolving as they are. Canvas adds the ability to connect with students anywhere and at any time. It allows you to (and we encourage you to) use your voice or a webcam to keep that valuable humanity in the teacher-student relationship.

Note: If you have 20 mins, this TED Talk from one of the creators of Coursera, one of the largest providers of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is well worth your time to watch.

Question: Can I share my course/content with other teachers?
Answer: Yes! Currently in Canvas, you can add other teachers to your courses so that they can copy your content into their own courses. This make working in collaborative teams, departments, and PLCs much easier. We are working on helping schools, departments, and teachers in building question banks for Canvas Quizzes that can be shared with others. We hope to have training materials and other documentation available for this later in the year.

Question: Do I have to use Canvas? or, When can I begin using Canvas?
Answer: All CSD teachers have access to Canvas and all secondary students (6-12) have Canvas accounts already created. Some groups are being asked to use Canvas this year as we all work together to learn more about this system and how it can benefit our students. Groups who are actively being trained with Canvas include:

• 8th and 12th  grade Language Arts
• Middle School Social Studies
• World Languages Teachers
• Physics, Biology, and Chemistry
• Canvas Implementation Program (teachers who began using Canvas last school year.)

Other teachers are welcome to use Canvas. Training for all teachers is managed through our Canvas Fast Track course. We know that it will be difficult to connect with every teacher and answer every question about Canvas, so we created this course as a way for teachers to learn the parts of Canvas they want to learn, when they are ready.  To fully participate in this course, please contact your school Ed Tech Specialist.

Question: Does Canvas replace my class website?

Answer: Not really. Think of your website as a library of information. You may have videos, handouts, and other files on your website. You can use all of these in Canvas as embedded links. Canvas gives your students the ability to interact with your library. Not only can they download your handouts, but they can edit them and resubmit them to you as their completed assignment. And, you can grade that assignment, give students the assignment to review the work done by their peers, give feedback, and allow for re-submissions. Not only can they watch your video, but they can leave comments, ask questions, share ideas, and even create their own videos.

Canvas can be a great tool for giving and receiving feedback to and from students. It can be a great way to engage students in your classroom. What is your experience with Canvas so far? How are you or will you use Canvas in your teaching? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Infuse Learning: formative assessments at your fingertips.

Infuse Learning is a web-based student response system that works with any mobile device or computer. Where a typical student response system requires a hardware and software investment that can range anywhere from $1000 to $2500, Infuse Learning is free!

Teachers can create impromptu surveys and quizzes utilizing 7 different question formats (see image to right.) All of the text in Infuse Learning can be translated into multiple languages and students can also hear audio narration of questions and possible responses. Teachers can also create quizzes that can be saved, shared, and a summary of responses can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.

Another great feature of Infuse Learning is that teachers can create classes and add students so that they can regularly monitor student progress.

Infuse Learning can also be used to push out a website or other weblinks, so you can help keep your students on task.

Learn more about Infuse Learning in the video and instruction guide below.

Overview of Infuse Learning Video Highlights

• Quick assessments with little setup/prep.
• Real-time results.
• Language translation (text and audio.)
• Draw Responses (can annotate images.)
• Self-paced quizzes.
• Share links (videos, websites, images...)
• Image annotation.
• Share quizzes with other teachers.

Also Check out How to Get Started With InfuseLearning by Infuse Learning on Snapguide. Click on the image below to start the instructional guide.