Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 1

13 Many schools, and especially charter schools with the freedoms provided by the vision and mission of the charter, are becoming Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or One-to-One, with a computer for every student in the classroom. For schools like this, or even schools with mobile laptop carts, try Padlet (www.padlet.com ) for a bell ringer activity. Instead of a question or assignment posted on the board for students to complete in their notebooks as they enter the room, imagine a question posted on a digital mediaboard that allows the teacher to instantly see student responses, can be shown to the entire class, and can be saved as an image, PDF or Excel file to use to docu- ment student understanding and needs. As a teacher, I have used this tool as a bell ringer, to get student opinions on topics, or as a KWL chart to start and end unit (check out the “See For Yourself” section at the end of this article). This tool can be accessed using smartphones and tablets, as well as desktop and laptop computers, and like many tools illustrated in this article, Padlet is com- pletely free, and even links to your Google account so you can limit the number of usernames and passwords to keep track of. All students need is the URL for the Padlet wall on which you want them to write. With growing responsibilities, and shrinking time and budgets today, it can be harder and harder to find the time and money to be able to do every science and math- ematics lab that needs to be done to fully illustrate the concepts that students want to see and struggle with most. Without the proper space and lab equipment, let alone the number of days needed to do some labs, how can a teacher get in every one? This is where PhET (phet.colorado. edu) comes in handy. The University of Colorado-Boulder designed PhET to create virtual simulations illustrating various mathematic, biology, chemistry, physics and Earth science concepts. Do you want to have your students prac- tice with fractions in a way other than breaking a pie into pieces? Or maybe want to have your students illustrate Charles’ Law in chemistry class? The PhET simulations provide a mode for students to do so in a fun and engag- ing way, and make it so that mathematics and science labs need not only take place under the supervision of a teacher. At the virtual school in which I teach, I have stu- dents complete these labs together in our digital classroom or on their own at home, and both situations have worked well. Since I cannot be with each student when they do lab activities at their home, having a virtual tool allows for much greater flexibility, as well as decreases student safety incidents. With nearly 100 manipulative simulation activi- ties available, the science or math teacher in any grade can find an activity that will benefit their students. Many of the simulations are compatible with mobile devices, such as cell phones and tablets, though iPads and iPods can only run those simulations that are HTML5 (which are clearly marked). All PhET simulations are free and require no username or password. In addition, many have teacher generated lesson plans associated with them, so teachers do not have to create their own activity to go along with each simulation, thus saving teacher time and energy. One area of schools that seems to be a constant is the use of textbooks, especially mass- marketed textbooks by companies like Glencoe ( www.glencoe.com) and Pearson ( www.phschool.com/ atschool). In speaking with my teacher friends and colleagues, I have found that many did not know that there are a number of free, virtual resources available to teachers and students just for hav- ing purchased copies of the book. Such resources include chapter self- tests, vocabulary puzzles, videos and digital field trips, virtual sci- ence lab activities and Web-Quests (Dodge, 2007). Additionally, with some textbooks, teachers can enter the ISBN or a code found within the teacher’s edition of the text to unlock a digital version of the text- book for students, allowing them to have access to the textbook at home, or on select mobile devices, rather than carry around a heavy copy of the textbook all of the time. Check out your book to see what is available to you and your students. We are surrounded by QR codes, those strange, pix- elated boxes on cash register receipts, signs and fliers, and even in magazine advertisements. When scanned using a QR reader on a smartphone, tablet or computer (using the webcam), the user is taken to the digital content related to that flier or advertisement, thus learning more about whatever is being presented. How, then, do QR codes relate to the classroom? How about a QR code scavenger hunt, piecing together information to solve a puzzle? Or maybe a QR code gallery walk? Instead of students mak- ing oral presentations to the class on a topic, have students create a short web-based audio-visual (AV) presentation on US Presidents, parts of the cell or poems they have written. Then, using free, web-based QR code generating software (www.the-qrcode-generator.com ), create a QR code for the website in which the presentation is located, print and paste the code on the classroom walls, and let Without the proper space and lab equipment, let alone the number of days needed to do some labs, how can a teacher get in every one? CONTINUED ON PAGE14