In last week's episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff Rushton shared a neat site called Naraview. Those who stayed on for the "overtime" of the webinar got a detailed overview of the service from one of its designers. If you missed it, here's my overview of Naraview and its potential use cases in classrooms.
Naraview is a site on which you can create challenges for you students to connect topics through Wikipedia. The idea is that you give your students two topics and they have to click through Wikipedia articles to make the connections between the two topics. As the teacher, I can see the paths that students take to get from the starting article to the ending article.
Here's an example of how Naraview works. I'll give students the starting point of a Wikipedia article about Oxford County, Maine and the end point is the Wikipedia page about Abraham Lincoln. My students then need to click through a series of Wikipedia entries starting on the page about Oxford County to get to the entry about Lincoln. All of the entries that students click on are framed within Naraview so that students don't have to exit to Wikipedia directly.
Applications for Education
The purpose of Naraview is to encourage students to think about and make connections between topics. Completing Naraview activities could be a good way to get students to make connections between current events and related historical events. Doing a Naraview activity could also be a good way for students to try to make cross-curricular connections between topics in science and math or between literature and history.
This is the time of year when many of us are looking for fun ways to conduct end-of-year review sessions with our students. Playing Kahoot quiz games is one of the most popular means of doing that. Kahoot games are fun to play in a classroom and you can also use them for remote learning activities by using the "challenge" mode.
The challenge mode in Kahoot enables you to assign games to your students to play at home on their schedule. There are many ways that you can distribute the challenges to your students. If you're a Google Classroom user, you can distribute your challenges through your Classroom just like you would any other announcement or assignment. Your students then just click on the link to your Kahoot game to start playing it.
In the following video I demonstrate how to distribute Kahoot games through Google Classroom and how students can play those games right from the Announcements stream in Google Classroom.
On Friday during Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff someone asked if there is a tool that I would recommend for converting a PDF into a Google Doc. Fortunately, you can do that without having to use any third-party tools. PDF to Google Docs conversion is built right into Google Drive.
To convert a PDF into Google Docs format just upload it to your Google Drive. Once the file is uploaded click on it to open it. It will initially display as a PDF. To then convert to Google Docs select "open with" at the top of the page and you'll have Google Docs as an option. Selecting that option converts the PDF into a Google Doc.
Watch my short video to learn how to convert a PDF into a Google Document.
Good evening from Maine where today it finally felt like spring. At this time last week the ground was covered in fresh snow. This evening, it was 60F and sunny. We had a fun day playing outside here and I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you got to enjoy some fresh air too.
As I do every Saturday, I've put together a list of the most popular posts of the previous seven days. Take a look and see if there is something useful that you missed earlier in the week.
Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp!
Registration for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp is open. By popular demand I've added more early-bird tickets. This online PD event will feature ten live, interactive webinars on a wide array of topics applicable to every classroom. It will be held three times this summer. There is a June session and two July sessions. Register for the session of your choice here.
On-demand PD
I've been hosting professional development webinars for a decade.
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One of the reasons that Wakelet has become popular in schools in the last couple of years is that it can be used for a wide range of activities. It's also popular because it can be used in a wide range of grade levels and subject areas. I mentioned this in a webinar that I hosted yesterday afternoon. This morning I woke up still thinking about that so I made a list of ideas for using Wakelet. Here are ten ways that Wakelet can be used by students and teachers.
If you've never tried Wakelet, watch this video to learn how to get started.
1. Make an online art gallery.
Wakelet lets you upload images to display. Students, their parents, or you can take pictures of their artwork then upload it to a collaborative Wakelet collection. You can even embed that collection into a website.
2. Make and share instructional videos.
Last year Wakelet integrated Flipgrid's video recording tool. You can use this to create instructional videos within a Wakelet collection. This can be a great way to organize a series of instructional videos around a topic or unit that you're teaching.
3. Question/ Picture/ Video of the Day.
If you're not using a learning management system that contains an easy way to post daily prompts for your students to reply to, consider using Wakelet. You can post a prompt and have your students reply by writing a reply, recording a video, or by uploading an image. Just make sure you've enabled collaboration on your Wakelet collections.
4. Organize research.
Use Wakelet's browser extension to save links and files while researching a topic for paper or presentation. Use the "easy reorder" option in your Wakelet collection when you need to sort your resources.
5. At-home activity collections.
Parents are looking for suggestions for educational activities they can do at home with their kids. Create a Wakelet collection to share suggestions with parents. You might even consider enabling collaboration on the collection and letting parents contribute to the collection.
6. Video collections.
Want to do more than just make a playlist in YouTube? Consider making a collection of videos in Wakelet. You can include videos from many sources besides YouTube and organize collections by theme or topic.
7. Archive a Twitter chat.
Do you participate in Twitter chats? Do you want to have a record of that chat? You can import a Twitter hashtag into a Wakelet collection.
8. Simple blog or journal.
You can write as much or as little as you like in a post in a Wakelet collection. Use this as a simple way to create an online journal that can be public or private.
9. Aspirations board.
Use Wakelet as a place to share goals or aspirations. These collections could feature pictures, writing, or both.
10. End-of-year reflections and highlights.
Create a collaborative Wakelet collection in which students share their reflections or highlights from the school year.
