It’s June teacher friend! I hope you are relaxing, or will soon be, with your feet up and your favorite ice cold beverage in hand (and maybe listening to the latest episode of Simple Tools for the Online Teacher Podcast). My personal favorite drink? Iced coffee, strawberry limeade, or sweet tea. When the stress dies down, my creativity soars. And, it resulted in something exciting for you, teacher friend. (I’ll get there in a minute.)
First, I want to tell you a story about one of my college professors 10 years ago (what the actual heck. 10 years?!) My freshman year of college one of my core requirements was political science. I’ve always been interested in law, so this class wasn’t the dread that most people feel it is. This class was HUGE. And by huge, I mean a couple hundred of us packed into a lecture hall. Attendance was a grade for this class (I hated those!). Could you imagine taking attendance for a couple hundred people a few times a week? Well, Dr. King had the best way to do it. One of the course requirements was a clicker. Yes, just like a tv clicker. Each day she asked a question that we were all required to respond to with our clicker. You can imagine the dread when somebody realized they forgot their clicker that day. These questions served 2 purposes:
- To take attendance.
- To formatively assess her students (us) throughout the lesson
While I hated this at the time, as I grew in my teaching, I realized just how smart Dr. King was. She managed to take attendance for hundreds in a minute, and also managed to quickly see where we all were and what she needed to adjust in her instruction.
Which brings me to this week’s podcast episode…
That’s what today’s EdTech resource will do for you, teacher friend. You won’t have to require your students to buy a clicker that’s a couple hundred dollars. Instead, you just need to install a free app and print off one piece of paper for each student. This is an easy online teaching tool to learn, and should help increase student engagement with those end of year or end of unit review games.
And that brings me to my big announcement…
I’m so pumped about this. Seriously. This is me right now:
If you’re a visual learner, like me, then just hearing about these EdTech resources probably isn’t enough. That’s why I’. currently creating a video series for you! But, this will come with more than just video. But, we will get more into that when the time comes. The space is limited, and my email list is always the first to know. So, make sure you don’t miss any of the action and get your name on the list here! This will ALSO get you that PDF file I’ve been talking about for 4 weeks now.