What to Do in Just a Few - Data-based Decision Making with Edmodo?

The quiz feature in Edmodo has really changed the way that we use it. Students can now take quizzes and teachers can use the data to make decisions in the classroom. In the age of school accountability this is a great feature. Not only can teachers view the data, but students can as well. This may provide a great study tool for your students to see what they know and study what they don't.

How do you view this data? Watch and find out!

What to Do in Just a Few (Edmodo Quizzes)

Edmodo is becoming a favorite tool of mine, because of its flexibility and how it has evolved over the past few years. In this first installment of "What to Do in Just a Few," we explore how to create an Edmodo quiz in just a few moments!

 

A New Year Means New Blog Features

Hello everyone. I wanted to let you know that my blog's address is changing to http://bergman-udl.blogspot.com/

Also, I am introducing a new feature to the blog called "What to Do in Just a Few," which is a 2 - 3 minute screencast showing you how to use some of the technologies that I write about in this blog.

As always, thank you for your support across the country!

Do you Learn Visual.ly ?

We live in an age where we are bombarded with information! How do we interpret all of this data? How do we make sense of it?

Brain research shows us that our students need options on how they perceive information and interpret data. This allows students to gain a deeper understanding of material. Let's be honest...data is not the most interesting thing in the world. Why do you think that newspapers and magazines often turn to infographics for easier reader interpretation? It makes it easier for readers to comprehend and fathom the information presented.

Visual.ly is a site devoted to exploring, sharing, and creating infographics. I really like the ability to search for a particular topic and have several infographics to choose from. For instance, I am currently teaching a unit on product safety in one of my business classes. I simply searched infographics and came up with several interesting graphics on Toy Recalls, Recalls over the Past 3 Months, and the Largest Vehicle Recalls in History.

The site is new, but its partners are impressive. National Geographic and CNN Money lead the list. The only way to find out if you can use it is to...well use it. It's as simple as a Google search!

Instead of Showing A Toy Story, Show Something Educational Before Break

Ah yes! The holiday season is upon us and that causes many educators to turn to their old favorites....Toy Story, The Santa Clause, and don't forget Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way. Why do we turn to these films? Because our students have checked out several days (if not weeks) before Holiday break. My challenge to you is...why not show something that they can learn from?

Don't you just love the evolution of the Internet? I remember back in the old days, if I wanted to show my students a film, I would often have to drive to the video store, rent it (usually with my own money), and have to have it back within a week. Top Documentary Films.com is a site that streams top documentaries from all different types of subject areas:

• Art and Artists - containing films on Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Picasso. 
• 9-11 - containing a large variety of films on the day that changed America
• Biography - containing films on Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and even Curt Cobain. 
• Economics - containing films on Enron, Supermarket Secrets, etc.

None of the audio/visual content is hosted on the site, therefore sites like GoogleVideo and YouTube contain the full lengths versions of the documentaries.

Check Out New Blog Feature

For those who have been faithful followers of my blog, I want to give you an opportunity to use a valuable UDL resource developed by the postings over the past year. Simply click the tabs above to get free resources for:

• Principle 1 - Multiple Means of Representation
• Principle 2 - Multiple Means of Action and Expression
• Principle 3 - Multiple Means of Engagement  

If you are not familiar with Universal Design for Learning or its Guidelines, check out the following resources: 

http://www.udlcenter.org/

or 

http://cast.org/

FotoFlexer

The other day I came across an excellent photo editor site called FotoFlexer, which allows you to edit your photos online for free!You can easily upload photos from your computer or sites like Picasa, Photobucket, and Flicker.

I really like the fact that you don't need a username and account to play around and edit photos. You may want to sign up for the extra features and ability to save your photos, but this may provide you an excellent way of letting your students create without being bombarded with another password. I also like the fact that you can save photos back to your computer as either a JPEG or PNG file. There are numerous effects, ways to decorate, animations, ways or distorting or manipulating text.

How could I use this for UDL? 

Vocabulary is always a difficult thing to teach, because our kids are often bombarded with it throughout the day or just plain don't remember the terms. FotoFlexer could provide another way of representing terms, increasing retention for our students. For example, students could create a PowerPoint Presentation with the term, definition, and an edited photo that they created, which would define the term.

Don't have the ability to use computers? Just being able to "create" a visual example of a vocabulary term not only provides multiple means of representation, but it also provides another way of engaging or hooking students with content.