Video Creation Tools & Ideas - Slides from #TETC16

This afternoon at the TETC conference I gave a short presentation on classroom video projects. As always, I promised to share the slides with folks who wanted them. Those slides are embedded below.


The concepts and tools that I talked about in today's presentation are the same as those that I shared in my webinar, Quick & Powerful Video Projects. That webinar is now available on-demand on Practical Ed Tech.

Slides from #TETC16

Earlier today I had the honor of giving the luncheon keynote at the TETC 16 conference in Tennessee. The some folks asked me for a copy of the slides. While the slides aren't as meaningful without my words, they still convey some of my message. The slides are embedded below.


By the way, I still have a few openings in my 2017 speaking calendar. Please get in touch if you would like to have me speak at your event.

Use Stories to Help Students See Possibilities for Helping Others

This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley. Rushton is the founder of Next Vista for Learning and an all-around great guy.

Some of your students may doubt their hopes can make a difference for themselves and for others. This is the time of year, though, to use stories to help them see their possibilities.


After watching this video, challenge your students to make a commitment to how they will make a difference for someone else in the coming weeks. Even if it is something small, help them remember that they can act on what they imagine, and that others can benefit.

The commitment may be to volunteer, or even to tell the story of others who are working to improve their communities. A social media campaign, a good video, or a little time visiting a shut-in one afternoon after school could make a major difference.

'Tis the season!

See other videos of helping others at the Seeing Service collection at NextVista.org.

Two Ways to Grade Short Answer Questions in Google Forms

Last night I received an email from a reader who wanted me to clarify that is possible to grade short answer questions in the default "quizzes" mode. When you are selecting quiz settings in Google Forms you will need to choose the option for releasing grades "later, after manual review." Then you will need to manually score your students' responses to your short answer questions.

Another way to accept and score fill-in-the-blank and short answer questions in Google Forms is to use the Google Sheets Add-on called Flubaroo for scoring responses. Flubaroo will let you have fill-in-the-blank responses automatically scored. When you create an answer key in Flubaroo you can specify one or more correct responses for each question. If you enable the automatic grading option in Flubaroo, students can receive their grades within seconds of submitting their final answers.

Join my January 4th webinar Google Forms for Beginners to learn more about how to create and grade assessments in Google Forms.