Learn Lead Grow

If you are an iPad user, you may or may not know about an important Accessibility feature called Guided Access. This feature is helpful when you want to lock your students (or own children) into using only 1 application. This may be helpful when you have a student who is distracted and needs to focus or if you have a toddler who shouldn't be exploring other Apps. How does it work?  Check out my video below:

Voice and Choice Is Important—but Sometimes It’s Not Enough By  Sargy Letuchy During my first year of teaching in 2002, I walked into my government class on the first day of school to a group of comedic, socially confident seniors. A flashback from the 80’s movie “Summer School” with Mark Harmon ensued. Most of the students acknowledged my entrance by reluctantly quieting down and taking their seats, but one boy, Jack, remained standing, even as I started to introduce myself. I asked him to take his seat, “Where should I take it?” he asked, with a mischievous grin. The class roared with laughter and I knew it would be a long semester. Over the first few weeks, Jack turned in below grade level work while tirelessly promoting himself socially. The assignments he cared to turn in demonstrated his clear lack of interest in the class subject matter as well as a real gap in his writing ability. For a clever wordsmith, Jack had a really hard time expressing his ideas in written form. I w

Are you looking for a quick way for students to reflect or summarize content? You might want to check out Alice Keeler's Webcam Record Extension. This tool allows students to record up to a 30 second video on their laptop, MacBook, or Chromebook. After you select "Finish," your video will be saved in a Folder to your Google Drive. Each video can be shared via a link from Google Drive. This tool is an excellent tool to have students practice the art of short and succinct elevator speeches. Use the tool to summarize or reflect on learning!

Do your students use iPads? Then you have to check out Apple Classroom! It might even be a good tool to manage your own children's iPads! Here is a brief tutorial and demo on using the Classroom App:

I love creating interactive presentations because it increases engagement. I love using a variety of different tools, like Google Forms, Kahoot, NearPod, and Socrative. A colleague of mine shared another great tool called Mentimeter . What is It?  Mentimeter is an interactive presentation tool, which allows teachers to create interactive presentations through a variety of voting question types: Multiple choice Word clouds Image choice Quiz Scales Open-Ended Questions Q and A The free version of Mentimeter allows you to create 2 voting question types per presentation, plus a variety of other features. Learn more about the different voting question types here .  How Do Students Connect?  Students can access your presentation through Menti.com or through a QR Code.  Once students have voted, they can see your results! Conclusion : This could be a great tool to use in the secondary classroom to create more interaction and engagement in the classroo

Google Slides is more than just a tool to present information. Have you ever thought about creating a self-paced lesson or quiz using Slides? Google Slides could be a great tool to help students learn at their own pace. How Do I Do It? Step 1: Create Your Google Slides presentation. I usually bundle each question I ask into 3 slides. 1 slide is dedicated to ask the question and 2 slides for feedback (correct and incorrect answers). Step 2: Link your answers to the correct or incorrect answer slides.  I begin by highlighting one of my answers and visiting the Insert Menu and choosing Link. You can also choose the Link icon. One very helpful resource is to link to specific slides in your presentation! So if students answer correctly, I want them to visit the correct answer slide. If students visit the incorrect answer, they go to the incorrect answer slide. Step 3: Move to the Next Slide or Go Back. So what do you do if students get an answer wrong? You can have part