Yesterday afternoon I hosted a webinar titled Get to Know Your Students With Tract. I was joined in the webinar by Tract's co-founder Ari Memar. If you missed the webinar, you can now watch the recording of it. The recording is embedded below along with links to resources highlighted during the webinar.
To create a free Tract account go to teach.tract.app and use the code BYRNE.
A copy of the slides that I used today can be seen here.
Two of the activities that I featured in the webinar are linked below.
The How to Make an Epic Movie Trailer challenge is available here.
ClassroomQ is a neat tool that solves a problem that anyone who has ever had a classroom full of students working on individual or small group projects at the same time has experienced. That problem is feeling like every student is asking for something at once and you're not sure who asked for help first or how long they've been waiting for help.
To use ClassroomQ simply sign up for a free teacher account. Once in your ClassroomQ account just click the start button to launch your session. When your ClassroomQ session is launched you will be given a class code and a unique link to share with your students. Students then simply click that link to join the session. Students see an "assistance needed" button that they can click to indicate that they need your help. They can also add a little comment to indicate how you can help them. In short, ClassroomQ is a bit like a digital deli counter for your classroom.
One of the features of ClassroomQ that I didn't mention above or in the video is the option to export a record of which students asked for help and the comments that they wrote. Reviewing that record could be helpful in identifying which students ask for help the most and which questions or topics are frequently raised by your students.
The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I've watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. This spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it as a PDF on PracticalEdTech.com.