With December around the corner I will post today and the next two days video by Common Craft about Covid.
From their website, "This short (and silent) video briefly explains social distancing and why it matters in helping to slow the spread of COVID-19. It's part of a free resource called the COVID Communication Kit: https://commoncraft.com/covid."
New York Times 8th Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge
The New York Times invites middle and high school students to create a short video that defines or teaches any of the words in our Word of the Day collection. Contest Dates: Nov. 10-Dec. 15, 2020.
The good news for Canadians is that this contest is open to the whole world. To see information about this contest click here.
This might be a great idea to do with your English class, ELL class or even in conjunction with your Media Arts class. Below are a couple of the top videos from 2019.
We have all seen those funny little 2 dimensional bar codes like this one called QR codes.
This one should bring you to this page. QR is an acronym for Quick Response. QR codes are a convenient way to store URLs better known as web addresses. Most students have phones that have a QR reader app built into their camera. If not they can get one for free by clicking here for an Iphone app. Now these QR codes can easily be made by a student or teacher. I will suggest some sites in a moment. What I would like to discuss is how they can be used in an educational setting.
As a teacher
1) If you put your assignments on line you can give your students a sticky with the QR code on them and they can put that in their agenda. If you have a classroom blog, wiki or website post a QR code for it on your bulletin board.
2) If you want a quick way for the students to view a video but do not have a smart board or projector in your room you can post a QR code on a bulletin board and the students can watch it on their phones.
3) Some teachers augment their texts books by putting stickies in the right spots to lead them to appropriate websites or videos.
4) On research assignments you may want to put a QR code on it to get students to reputable starting points other than Google or Wikipedia. Maybe a database such as Elibrary Canada. See Mr. H for help with the database.
5) You could have a QR Scavenger Hunt as explained by the following history link.
6) If your students are doing digital projects and you would like to showcase them on a bulletin board in the hallway or just in your classroom, you can post a QR code directed to each students work.
7) On math work sheets you can add QR codes to video tutorials from Khan Academy or other sites to help students out.
8) There are many more things that can be done with QR codes. Play around.
As a student
1) A QR code can bridge the physical assignment you turn in or posted on the black board with the virtual work you have done. Maybe you shot a video and posted it on youtube or you made a glog (see glogster.com) to go along with your project to document it. Place a QR next to your work and students and teachers can share in your digital work. In the past my daughter finished her science fair project and she added a QR code to show how she used some software to make a graph.
Here is a closeup of the QR code
2) If students are doing a video for class, students can review other students work if they are posted around the class. Rather than just watching a video the whole class. Students can preview the work in progress and make constructive criticism.
3) If students have their art work posted in the hall, maybe a QR code linking a Youtube video of the student discussing their artwork.
To make a QR code.
There are many QR code generators. If you would like to make the Scavenger/Treasure Hunt as noted in 5 above you can go here. If you would like to make basic QR codes for a URL such as YouTube or your own blog then use QRMonkey by clicking here. You can use other QR code makers such as Kawaya by clicking here. You may want to change the colour of the QR codes from black and white to another colour so that you have your codes colour coded for courses. This can be done on QRstuff.com in step 3. Just move the cross hair around the colour palette to select a different foreground colour.
If you would like to personalize any of your QR codes you can go here and add any photo you have on your computer to the QR code. As an example the QR code at the top of this page has a picture of my kids on their first day of school. I did for a new arrival in the library that gives a "title peek" of the book.
You can do this by going to visualead or clicking here.
I have posted previously about typing apps/websites. To see some of them click here. Typing club and Z-Type are my favourites. Typing Club will have you work on the home row. Z-Type is a game that reminds me of Space Invaders from the '80's. Typing Rocket might be a game that is a little less complex when compared to Z-Type and so might be better suited to newer typers that are working on the home row as opposed to hunt and peck typers. To see the Typing Rocket website click here.
Seterra offers Geography games but I am going to point out that they have Anatomy quizzes too.You can have your students point and click at the parts of the human anatomy or parts of the cell etc.To see the site click here. I just did the bones quiz and mixed up tibia and fibula. Oh well more practice needed.
A word cloud (also known as a tag cloud) is a visual representation of words. Cloud creators are used to highlight popular words and phrases based on frequency and relevance. They provide you with quick and simple visual insights that can lead to more in-depth analyses. I have posted about several other cloud generators see here. Here is another one that can be seen by clicking here. The nice thing about this one is that if you put in source text you can find out how frequently a word or phrase is used. You might do this for your own work to see if you use a phrase a bit too often.
Google Public Data Explorer is a free way to analyze public data. I first posted about this in 2015. It is worth taking a look at it again. You can look at fertility rate, life expectancy, HIV prevalence, education, etc for many countries all at once. You pick what you want to plot on what axis. You can animate the graph through the century by moving a slider to see how things change over time. To see this website click here. This might work well in your Data Analysis class or Statistics unit. This might work in your Geography class if you want to look at GDP versus Population Density, etc. Play around with it to see what you can find out.
This series of lessons/Videos by Ted Ed are not simply a trailer to classic literature but a deep overview of the book. You might use one of these videos prior to reading one of these novels in class. They all seem to be in the 4 to 5 minute range. To see all the lessons click here.
Welcome to quadmester 2. I posted a random name selector back in October 2018 and September 2016. To see those posts click here and here respectively. Here is another one that is pretty self explanatory. Just edit the names on the right hand side and away you go. If you have a list somewhere that you can copy and paste into where the names go you are all set. Note you can post pictures of your students or any image you have on your computer. To see this site click here.
I am following up yesterdays 123apps with a web app site that allows you to do several different effects to an mp3 audio file that you have or you can record your own mp3 file on this site. Effects include: Gain, Fade In, Fade Out, Paragraphic EQ, Compressor, Normalize, Graphic EQ, Hard Limiter, Delay, Distortion, Reverb, Speed Up/Slow Down, Reverse, Invert and Remove Silence. To see the website click here.
Good luck on your final evaluations starting tomorrow! I will be posting again in one week. CYA on the 11th.
