#TCEA16 Favorite Finds

Guest Post by Rachel Cady, Walnut Grove Elementary School 2nd Grade Teacher

WOW!! TCEA is an amazing experience where a lot of information is given in a short amount of time. You walk away inspired and a little nervous, but truly excited about the possibilities of technology in the classroom.

Two of my favorite take-away ideas from TCEA were:

Quizizz

I have always been a fan of Kahoot, but what makes Quizizz appealing is that the questions appear on the student device rather than only on the main screen. This tool can be used as a formative assessment, whereas Kahoot lends itself to be more of a review tool.



Padlet

I had been previously introduced to Padlet before TCEA, but what got me thinking about this tool more is the possibilities it has to get more kids involved in the discussion. I love that every kid in the room can post an answer to a discussion question instead of just waiting for their neighbor to be the one to raise their hand. Another great feature is that this can be done anonymously or with the student's name attached.


After looking through my many pages of notes from TCEA, these are the two ideas that I keep coming back to and have already implemented in my classroom. Baby steps toward integration of technology is better than digging in your heels. :)

#TCEA16 Favorite Finds

As usual, the TCEA annual conference was a great week full of learning! Here are a few of my favorite finds:

Newsela – This website provides daily news articles with a twist…the teacher or reader can adjust the article to one of five different reading levels with the click of a button. This means that everyone gets the content at an appropriate level. Teachers can also create a class account in order to gain more features. With a class account, teachers have the ability to assign articles and their corresponding quiz and/or open ended writing prompt to students. There is also Newsela for Elementary. 

QBall – A few of the presenters had a new way to interact with session participants. The QBall is a small, throwable, squishy ball that’s actually a wireless microphone. Presenters would toss the ball out in the crowd for people to answer questions and provide feedback and then toss to the next participant. It was FUN! The ball was originally created for teachers as a fun, interactive way to engage students in the classroom, but it can definitely be a fun addition to faculty meetings!

(click here for video)

Formative - Formative is a formative assessment tool that will work on any device. Teachers can build content for an assessment or homework. Much like other formative assessment tools, there are a variety of question types. However, Formative provides a "show your work" feature where students can draw their responses. As the teacher, you can actually see the students' "show your work" responses in real time, even before they submit. Another unique feature of Formative is that teachers can upload PDF, Word, or Google Doc and add content and/or questions to the file. Results can be exported as an Excel file. 

(click here for video)

Even as an attendee of the conference, it's impossible to attend every session. Luckily, TCEA has provided links to session handouts. Click here to check them out.

Digital Worksheets now Gradeable with Ducksoup

Need a way to turn forms or documents into fillable, gradeable digital files? Duck Soup may be the website for you. Here are just a few things I've learned about this site:

1. Duck Soup is a free site that allows you to connect to your Google Drive account. 
2. Duck Soup will show all Google Docs, PDFs saved in Google Drive or you can upload your own files.
3. Duck Soup allows users to create an "ESheet" from their Google Docs, PDFs in Drive or personal files.
4. Duck Soup allows users to create a classroom.
5. Duck Soup will grade ESheets created and assigned to a classroom. 

Benefits for Teachers:

1. Turn worksheets or forms into gradeable, online forms vs. paper handouts that are turned in for a grade.
2. Set how times student can respond when completing the ESheet and users can allow retries. 
3. Number questions.
4. Choose varies question answer types (Example: MC, text, number, paragraph, math show your work, etc).
5. Set question value of your own choice.
6. Add correct answer help text to questions.
7. Add help answer link to questions.
8. Watch live results as students work on the ESheet. 
9. Force turn-in of ESheets once assigned.
10. Download class results of assigned ESheet.
11. Lock the ESheet.
12. GAFE uses can upload ESheets directly to Google Classroom.

Cons for Teachers:

1. You must use the ESheet created inside the Duck Soup site. The ESheet cannot be downloaded and filled in by users outside the site. (I did send a request for this feature to be added.)
2. If your school is not a GAFE district, then you must create a classroom within the site.
3. Students must create an account to use this site. 

Getting Started:

Here are a few screenshots to help you get started...

1. Creating an ESheet

2. Dashboard

 3. Classes

4. Editing questions in ESheets (you must click on answer block to get editing feature)