Figjam

While I didn't attend ISTE 2023 in person last month, I watched the social media about it from afar.  One tool that came up repeatedly was Figjam.  The enthusiasm I read about it encouraged me to try it out for myself.  The result was endless grinning and multiple Keanu Reeves-like "Whoa's" as I played around with it.  Figjam is basically a browser-based collaborative whiteboard tool, but considering the possibilities and the joy it sparked for me, that somehow feels reductive.  My hope today is to convey that joy of possibilities to you.

First, a clarification.  Figjam is technically a program that has emerged fairly recently, but it's actually part of Figma, a popular industry-standard design tool that's been around for years and used by the world's top corporations and designers.  In order to use Figjam, you must create a Figma account, and that ends up giving you access to both tools.  Figma is a powerful program with some features that overlap with Figjam.  Figma is certainly worthy of its own blog entry -- and there are teachers and students who are definitely using it! -- but in my limited time of playing with it, I found the learning curve to be a bit steeper, and its application seems limited to product-oriented projects that may require designing and prototyping.  On the other hand, Figjam feels user-friendly right out of the box, and has the potential to be used by educators and students for learning on a much more frequent basis.

Strap yourselves in, because I'm about to make a new Edtech Elixirs world record for most screenshots in a single blog entry!

How does it work?

As you sign up (using your Google account is my recommended option), there is a process where you verify your educator status.  This takes a minute, but totally worth it, as you will get the full enterprise edition of Figjam (and Figma!) for free.  Let me repeat that: even if you were willing to pay something, there are no other premium features, because as a teacher or student you get the whole ball of wax at no charge.  A round of well-deserved applause for Figma's patronage to education!

Once you are logged in, your home screen will present you with several options, including opening up a previous Figjam board, making a board from scratch, or starting with a template.

This is what your home screen looks like if you're looking at your "Recent" files (see the upper left).

Let's jump right away to discussing Figjam's templates.  The bench is deep on this one.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a web tool that has so many useful pre-made models.  Within sixty seconds you could conceivably launch a learning activity with students.  While there is a whole template category "for the classroom," the other categories give you an idea of how versatile Figjam can be for brainstorming, having a meeting, planning a project, and more.

You will likely find value in using a Figjam by yourself, but why be lonely?  It really comes alive when collaborating with others.  While you could create Teams with students or colleagues for ongoing work on particular Figjam boards, I love how you can also open up a board to anyone for 24 hours and they don't even need a Figma account.  If you can give someone the URL, they can join you and work on the board in real time.  (Here's a timecoded link to a video showing how sharing works; it's at the 17:25 mark.)

By simply hitting "Start" and "Copy link," your students, colleagues or PD attendees could be seconds away from joining you in a "jam session." Note that similar to Google Docs, you can also limit a board's viewing or editing to specific people.

The interactivity of Figjam is user-friendly and straightforward, mainly centered around its toolbar at the bottom of the screen.  You can participate in multiple ways, such as drawing, inserting shapes or sticky notes, making line connectors between elements, using stamps and emotes, and more.  There are also some clever "widgets" available to use.  You are even able to have an audio chat with others in the Figjam board, which can make it an alternative teleconference-style meeting.

An annotated Figjam toolbar, slightly edited from the original found in the "Figjam 101 Overview for Education" Template...yet another aspect of Figjam that I appreciate, which is how many Templates they have that also function as tutorials.

Voice Memo (allowing you to record your voice for up to 30 seconds) and Photo Booth (which uses your webcam to take a selfie) are two particularly useful (and fun!) widgets to put on a board.

As a facilitator of the board, you'll enjoy the built-in timer in the upper left of the screen, as well as the opportunity to play some ambient music.  This can be particularly useful when participants have some work time for a portion of your live session before coming back as a whole group.

Here are some helpful shortcuts and tips that participants can use inside Figjam:

• E for Emotes/Stamps.  
• Tip: While in the Emotes/Stamp wheel, click once on a stamp choice so you can stamp with it multiple times.  You can also hold down you mouse to grow the stamp bigger and bigger until you release it on the whiteboard.
• S for a sticky note.
• X for connectors, and drag cursor to where you want arrow to stop.
• / to open a cursor chat for live interaction (not to be confused with making a more permanent text comment).
• Tip: be mindful when you are in "pointer mode" (which means you can select and move elements around on your board -- perhaps unintentionally!) and when you are in "hand" mode, which allows you to move the entire board around in order to navigate.  Until you get used to this, you may be using Edit>Undo a lot.
• Hold H and move cursor for waving your hand at other participants.  Then they can give you a high five!
• Tip: Copy and paste a URL into a Figjam to create an embedded website or YouTube link.  (This works for Google Docs too!)
• Tip: If logged into the platform on your browser, go to figjam.new in a new tab to quickly make a brand new board with some simple template options on the left side.

The landing page when you go to figjam.new. Note the quick template options on your left.

What if you want to share your board with others outside the platform, or want to save a "snapshot" of the Figjam for archiving your current progress?  You can export the board as a PNG, JPG, or a PDF, either in its entirety or just a selected portion.

Another excerpt from the "Figjam 101 Overview for Education" Template.

Here's a short overview video of some of the basic collaborative features of a Figjam board (2:48):

How could you use it?

I've threaded some examples of use throughout the narrative above; if you're stuck for ideas, check out the massive list of different templates available!  But I'll add a few more.  Figjam can be a powerful way of making thinking visible for learners, as well as providing a wonderful digital space for collaboration and planning.  Additionally, a person could use Figjam as an alternative presentation tool, either in person or as a shared screen in a teleconference -- you could set up its sections in advance and zoom in, out and move as appropriate to highlight the next part, as well as explore an image, play a video, or visit a website.  Lastly, because of its export feature, both teachers and students might use Figjam as a designer tool for handouts, logos, and other graphics. 

Downsides?

You know you're struggling to find fault when the worst thing you can come up with as a downside is the number of questions you have to answer when signing up in order to validate that you are an educator. It's really remarkable how much Figjam can do, and all at the cost of zero point zero zero dollars.

I hope that you try out Figjam with your students soon.   If you do, leave your story on how you used it in the Comments below.  Now go out there and get Figjamming!

Editor's note 11/19/24:  Figjam now allows you to lock down elements of your board -- whole sections! -- which can prevent users with editing access from accidentally moving parts around that they shouldn't.  See the following tweet:

This is a gamechanger! By locking a section, all of the elements contained in it can't be edited or moved. That includes all user additions up to that point (comments, post-its, etc.). However, NEW comments, sticky notes etc can be added "on top." #KYDLC #EdTech https://t.co/mJ6NrjhiRW

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) November 19, 2024

Verso

At the beginning of March, I had the fortunate opportunity to attend and present at the KySTE conference in Louisville -- the first time the conference was back in person since the pandemic started.  (I was literally at KySTE in 2020 when the world shut down, a story I shared here.)  As if fate wanted to re-affirm for me the value of KySTE, I learned of a new tool in the very first hour of the very first session of the conference that got me so excited, I knew I'd be doing a blog entry about it!  The presenter was Roslyn Manning -- more with her in a moment! --- and the tool was Verso.

Verso is a platform for virtually managing discourse in your classroom.   At its most basic, a teacher can create a question or pose an issue, and students can not only respond to the prompt, but to each other.  But Verso has an extensive set of tools that make it much more than just a place for an online conversation thread.

How does it work?

Firstly, you need to create a teacher or student account, either via email or through Google or Microsoft.  (I would recommend students use Google, to minimize remembering yet another username/password as well as to expedite Google integration.)

When a teacher first creates an account, Verso helps walk you through the creation of your first Class; you can create as many Classes as you like.  Each Class has a unique code that can be given to students, making it easy for them to join.  Once a Class is made, you have two basic kinds of discussions you can push to students: an Activity, or a Check-In With Students.

An Activity is the much more robust and customizable option.  You can attach files, links (to websites but also to videos), or something from your Google Drive to build schema before they address the prompt.  Next, you provide instructions in a Rich Text Format editor box.   You can give conversation starters, as well as suggest contextual and academic vocabulary to use.  There are several toggle settings where you can allow students to provide video or audio responses, upload files or images, or even limit them to 500 characters or less.  Lastly, you can indicate a specific start and end date for the Activity, turn on moderation if you want to approve responses before they appear, and determine whether students can comment on each other's responses.   After an Activity is launched, you have some other editing options, such as hiding student names from each other for anonymous responses and comments (although the teacher can still see who said what).

There are several features here worth mentioning that elevate these Activities.  Firstly, while you may not want or need to include every single aspect for every discussion, the formatting suggestions Verso provides is excellent scaffolding to ensure students engage in high quality discourse.    For example, your directions can provide sentence stems to model what a response or comment should sound like, and vocabulary suggestions are a reminder of both academic jargon that is appropriate to the content topic as well as discussion phrases that strengthen argumentation.   This leads us to a second useful feature: from the teacher's dashboard, you can even view responses that highlight when this vocabulary is used!

Check-In With Students is the other task option, which is much more template driven.  Its purpose is not so much open ended discourse as to have students reflect on their recent learning and/or how they are feeling.  While a Check-In may be limited in its customizations, the advantage here is that it can be quickly pushed out -- perhaps as an exit ticket at the close of a lesson, or a social-emotional learning (SEL) pulse check at the start of the day. 

Creating a Check-In can be done in just a few steps.  Note the potential categories in Step 2 which help shape the objective.

Once student responses come in from a Check-In, it's easy to see what category the students have self-assessed themselves so you can plan your next lesson accordingly.

How could you use it?

Verso clearly can make student online discussions more engaging and rigorous, as well as make SEL and learning reflections easy to push out and analyze.   Don't forget to utilize audio and/or video responses to increase equity for EL and ECE students; that way, the focus is on the quality of their responses' content as opposed to the medium of the reply.

Here's an excellent Activity tip from Roslyn: if you want students to comment on each other's responses, turn on moderation.  Once all students have responded, turn off moderation and "publish" all the responses, then remind students to now comment.   This will give all students the best chance to receive comments since all the responses are available at once.  (Without such management, the late responders will be the least likely to receive a comment.)  

Downsides?

With the free version, you are limited to only three active Activities (and can't edit them once created and saved) unless you pay for the premium version; as of the publication of this entry, this upgrade costs $59 a year.  It would be nice to see integrations such as Google Classroom which could pre-load a Class's roster.

As I explored Verso, I was definitely curious to hear more about how it's being used in the classroom, so reaching out to Mrs. Manning seemed a natural next step.  I've gotten to know Roslyn a bit through our Kentucky Digital Learning Coach state network, and I share her passion for student discourse.   So I was thankful she accepted my invitation to be interviewed for Edtech Elixirs!

Roslyn, welcome to Edtech Elixirs!  Share with us your educator story.  

​Thank you so much for having me! I come from a long line of educators--my grandmother was an elementary teacher in Alabama, and my mom was an ECS teacher in North Carolina where I grew up. She taught in a variety of different types of schools, but for most of her career she taught in the state juvenile prison system. Talk about an interesting childhood--I grew up roaming around the local prison! I knew that I would eventually become a teacher. I think it's a part of my DNA. I've always loved reading and writing, so I decided that I wanted to be an English teacher. I attended the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!) and graduated with a B.S. in Secondary Education Language Arts. I taught Advanced Junior English in Tuscaloosa right after graduating, and at the end of that school year, I moved to Kentucky to be closer to my now-husband. In 2013, I started teaching freshman and sophomore English at Oldham County High School while completing KTIP and getting my Master's in Teacher Leadership, focusing on Instructional Technology. In addition to growing in my technology use, I also worked to earn my National Board Certification. I often participated in school and district technology initiatives--Digital Leader Network, iTeam, etc., and in May 2020, I became our district's second Digital Learning Coach. 

Why do you feel that student discourse in general – especially peer to peer – is important?

​It's no secret these days that students struggle with communication. This is a skill that ALL people learn eventually, but I think the increase in technology has the general population complaining that "kids these days" only know how to communicate in text messages. As an educator, I think it's vital that we meet students where they are, and change our instruction to better prepare our students for the digital world that they communicate in. The variety of ways students can communicate just elevates the need to teach peer-to-peer communication more intentionally in MULTIPLE ways: verbally and digitally. 

What does digital discourse achieve differently, or perhaps even sometimes better, than face-to-face discussions?

​Digital discourse, in my experience, is a gateway to deeper face-to-face discussions. So many of our students need time to process their thoughts before sharing with an audience, whether that be a digital audience or an in-person audience. And, as I mentioned previously, students are communicating in writing much more frequently than they are verbally in person or over the phone, so why would we not intentionally give them learning opportunities to practice, make mistakes, and grow in this area? I wouldn't say digital discourse is inherently better than face-to-face discussions, but in the same way that we teach our children dinner table etiquette, we also have a shared responsibility to teach our students digital citizenship through netiquette. 

As an English teacher, I used to emphasize "code switching" with my students. I never wanted to shame them into thinking that their colloquial language  is "bad" or "wrong," but I did want them to learn the appropriate settings for the language that they choose to use. The same holds true for digital discourse, and there's a lot to be learned from digital communication. Students have to analyze tone and word choice to be effective communicators through writing. For most, verbal communication is much easier to deliver and decipher because of verbal and nonverbal cues, but written communication requires far more refined skills. It's important to provide a safe space for students to practice and refine these skills.   [Editor's Note: for more on the value of digital discourse, read this previous blog entry.]

I’m highlighting Verso in Edtech Elixirs, a tool I’m pretty excited to share!  Can you share any stories of how you or other Oldham teachers have used Verso effectively?

​A good friend of mine at Oldham County High School introduced me to Verso several years ago. She will tell anyone who asks that she's not "techy," but she discovered this tool when it was in Beta and started using it with her A.P. English Literature course. I quickly jumped on board and used it to set up a Socratic Seminar with my English II course. My students struggled with verbal discussion, especially if it was whole-class, so this was an easy way to get students talking to each other anonymously and to provide tons of support for them in the way of sentence stems and stimulus material for discussion. There are so many features available to teachers that we can use to help support our students' discussions, such as the ability to comment and "star" student feedback and even hide responses if they're inappropriate or irrelevant. 

Verso  is an excellent tool to give peer feedback on their work as well. I love the collaboration that comes from using Verso in so many different ways! 

Any other digital discourse tools that you’re a fan of?  

​There are so many ways for students to engage in digital discourse such as Padlet, Google Workspace tools, and more. However, I love using Parlay Ideas as well. Be aware that it is a freemium, so you don't get unlimited Roundtables. It's very similar to Verso in that you can have students communicate anonymously with their peers, but Parlay also has a "live Roundtable" option that helps you facilitate live discussions (similar to Socratic Seminars) where students can "tap in" to the conversation and teachers can "nudge" students to share their ideas with the class. 

Roslyn, thank you so much for agreeing to our interview today!  One final question: what’s your advice to teachers just starting to integrate technology into their classroom?

​Always be transparent with your students! As a young teacher, I thought I needed to "know it all" and felt embarrassed if I didn't know an answer or made a mistake. However, students appreciate hearing, "I've never used this before. If it totally flops, we'll figure it out." I experienced MUCH more success with technology when I was totally honest with my kids about the tools we were using. And most of the time, they were much more patient in the process if they knew we were all learning together!

What are your thoughts on Verso?  Have another favorite digital discourse tool?  Share in the Comments below!

Update 3/18/24:  With the free version of Verso, you now are limited to only three active Activities and cannot edit them once created and saved.  I'm not sure if you can delete one of these three Activities in order to "free" a slot, OR if the first three you create are free and you are then forced to upgrade the account (and deleting one wouldn't help).  I've updated the entry to reflect this change. 

Mote and ClassroomQ for Feedback, Discourse, and Classroom Management

 In today's challenging blended learning environment (which may consist of students learning from home, students learning in person, or a concurrent hybrid of the two), you want to maintain the basic building blocks of an effective classroom.  Such a learning space should have opportunities for varied feedback, structured discussions, and scaffolded classroom management.   Mote and ClassroomQ can help with one or more of these aspects!

How do they work?  

Mote is primarily a feedback tool that allows users to make a voice recording up to 30 seconds long inside of a Google Docs Comment.  (Mote also works inside the Comments of Slides, Sheets, and even Google Classroom.) It requires installation of a Chrome Extension to make a Mote, and accounts can be created via a Google sign-in, although neither the extension nor an account is required to listen to a Mote.  In the free version, you can both create and listen to an unlimited amount of Motes.  For more on Mote, please see the following Google Slide presentation I have created, along with an example Mote on Slide 3.

ClassroomQ is essentially a "hand raising" digital web-based tool; students who request help are queued up in the order they hit the button.   Teachers create a free account via Google or email.  When a teacher logs in, a session is begun, and a "class code" is given.  (Tip: this class code is unique to the teacher account and stays the same code for every session you begin, in case you want to permanently post it.)

Students who want to join a session do not need to create an account.  By choosing "student" when they visit the site, they will be prompted to type their name and enter the session's class code.  Once they have joined the session, they can hit their button when necessary along with the option of adding a comment in a text box; a student will be told their place in line, and can also cancel their request.  (From their session perspective, students cannot see which other students have requested help or what comments they may have made.)   

Teachers will see up to 5 student names queued up in the order they hit their buttons, along with any comments.  (Note the teacher interface allows you to toggle off student comments so they are not visible, if you only want names to appear.) When a teacher has resolved a student's question, the student can be removed from the queue.  

One of the advantages of ClassroomQ is its extremely easy interface -- there is no way to get lost, and in fact, a teacher could easily manage a session from a small screen device like a phone.

A screen capture to demonstrate what ClassroomQ looks like from the perspective of a teacher on a phone.  Note that the class code is marked out in the image, and if you turned the phone horizontally, the student name and commentary would perhaps format better.

How could you use them?  Mote provides an alternative feedback method for students that appreciate a kind of commentary beyond just text (and hearing their own teacher's voice feels more personal!). Students that struggle to understand "tone" linguistically will have auditory support.  If your students are challenged by reading (pre-literate, EL, and/or ECE) they will also appreciate a voice recording that you can play and pause and repeat as needed.   Students that have their own Mote accounts could make voice commentary that would enhance peer-to-peer feedback as well as potentially create a "voice discourse" without the possible distractions and anxiety associated with a video commenting tool like Flipgrid.  (Although in fairness to the wonderful video-centric Flipgrid, they recently have added the ability to make text comment responses to videos.)

As the video below discusses, ClassroomQ can be more than a way to digitally raise hands for help (whether your students are in person or at home, or a mixture of both); for example, the video mentions using it as a game buzzer to answer review questions.  You could also gather instant feedback for how your lesson facilitation is going, determine the order of when volunteers will present, or initiate classroom discussion managed by the teacher if students utilize its comment feature.  (This last idea may especially come in handy if you have blocked chat and muted student mics in a virtual meeting.)

You can also imagine some interesting possibilities for app smashing.  Perhaps a student lets you know via ClassroomQ when they are ready for you to read over the opening paragraph on a Google Doc, so you then can make a Mote voice comment for next steps.  With ClassroomQ, you may also selectively choose to share your screen in a teleconference meeting and let all students see student comments, as another way of facilitating discussion.

Downsides?  While both tools have a free initial tier, you have to pay for upgraded features: 

• Mote pricing for premium features start at $19/year for an "Essential" individual plan which extends your Mote time from 30 to 90 seconds; the $39/year "Unlimited" individual plan allows for voice-to-text transcriptions of your voice comments, in-app translation of those transcripts to one of multiple language options (a potentially powerful ELL feature!), and more.
• ClassroomQ pricing for premium features start at $19.99/year for individuals (school or district licensing also available) to lift the limit from 5 students in queue to an unlimited number, the ability to see who joined your session, and exportable session data.

However, the free versions of both tools offer significant usefulness and may be more than enough for your classroom needs.  If nothing else, the free versions give you an opportunity for a robust try-out of the tools before you shell out dinero.  Most importantly, cost is only at the teacher level -- ClassroomQ doesn't require a student to ever make an account, much less pay, and Mote voice notes can be played by students without them ever creating an account (although they need to make at least a free account to create a Mote).

Are you using Mote or ClassroomQ?  How do you integrate them into your classroom? Leave Comments below!

  

Google Jamboard

In the same way that it took a while for me to get around to Google Keep, I am a little late to the Google Jamboard party! Better late than never, I suppose.  This new-ish tool is a welcome and free addition to the Google Suite of tools.

How does it work?    Think of Google Jamboard as a digital corkboard, where you can add "sticky notes," images, and doodles.   Like most Google tools, you have the ability to collaborate with others on the same "Jam" in real time, and export the results as a PDF or image file.

You can add viewers/editors or create links to Jams -- here's a sample one I created shown in the pictures above -- which works like in most Google files.  

For a walkthrough of how to make a Jam, watch my screencast video (10:39):

How could you use it?  Students could use Jamboard as an informal discussion tool (much like a simpler form of Padlet), as a way to graphically organize notes, or to keep track of the planning and completion of a project.  It should be noted that the mobile app version of Jamboard allows for more features, such as the integration of Google Drive files, as well as making drawing easier with your finger rather than with a trackpad and cursor; there are also some options to integrate Jamboard with remote presentations. 

Downsides?  I have only a few quibbles.   The select tool does not allow you to choose an entire doodle for easy removal, which means you have to manually erase them if you are several edits down the line.  I'd also like to be able to upload images from my hard drive instead of only from Google searches, your Drive or Photos. [Editor's note 4/6/21: you can now upload image files from your computer into Jamboard!]  But for a free tool that is so easy to use, it's hard to complain!

What are some creative ways you could use, or are using, Jamboard?  Share in the Comments below!

Note 9/29/23:  Google has announced a sunset date for Jamboard.  After September 30, 2024, you will no longer be able to make a new Jamboard or edit old ones; you will only be able to view previously made Jamboards.  After December 31, 2024, Jamboard will be shut down completely.  For a similar whiteboard-like product that is available free for educators, check out my blog entry on Figjam. 

Note 4/15/20:  As with many tools, several updates have occurred to Google Jamboard since this entry was published; you can find these updates under the "snowman" three dots in the upper right once inside of a Jamboard.  One of the major ones was the removal of the "jam code" function.   I therefore removed the text describing this along with some screenshots of what that looked like.

Note 4/6/21:  Jamboard has gone under some major improvements in the two years since this post was originally published, including integration into Google Meet, the ability to see Revision History, and more.   I highly recommend watching this friEDTech video presentation on Jamboard below (30 minutes); here is the link to the Slides that went along with their session.

Student Journals, Personalized Learning Plans and More: The Power of HyperDocs

Happy New Year 2019!

Are you needing students to make a journal, as well as see and possibly comment on each other’s blog?  Finding a tool with easy visibility and simple user interface inside of some kind of protected space can be difficult to find, in addition to doing all of it for free.  (While Blogger is an excellent free Google tool -- obviously I'm a fan! -- I know it is blocked by some districts due to monitoring and privacy concerns, or considered to be too complicated for their younger students.)

 

One way to have safe, free, and easy blogging, especially with younger students, would be to utilize and organize Google Docs in some kind of “HyperDoc” stylized fashion.*  How much you do, versus how much the students do, will determine the amount of heartache and labor involved to set it up.   The steps below assume a higher capability/age of student, perhaps upper elementary or older (which will make the least amount of work on you); adjust and scaffold the work flow for K-2 students as needed.

 

1.  Create a Google Doc that serves as a journaling “template.”  Be sure to make a space/field at top for them to type their name and a way to date each of their entries. Make it a sharable URL as "view only."  Copy the URL.
2. Do the “force copy trick” with the URL so that, when the URL is clicked, it forces the user to copy to their own Drive.
3. Provide this “force copy URL” inside of your learning management system (LMS). As students click the link and save the copy to their Drive, make sure they change the words “Copy of” inside the title of the Doc to “First and Last Name” (for example, “Copy of Journal Log” becomes “ADAM WATSON Journal Log”).
4. Have each student open the sharing link on their new Doc.  Make sure the permission is “[District Domain] Users Only, view and comment.”  The student should copy this URL.
5. Create a simple Google Form for students to submit responses; again, link the URL in a LMS.  Ask for their names, but make sure the Form automatically collects their email addresses.   The students should paste their journal’s sharable URL as an answer to one of the Form’s questions.  (Note: organizationally you may want to create a different Form for each class; the reasons why will become obvious in the next steps.)
6. Within the responses tab of your Form, make sure you create a Sheet to go with the Form’s responses.  You now have ONE spreadsheet that has links to ALL of the journals of the students.   Now, make the Sheet “view only” and provide that link inside a LMS for your students to access.
7. By clicking on the Sheet’s URL, you now have an easy way for students to access each other’s Journals and read them (without the students, or you, creating hundreds of sharing permissions).   Additionally, if they Comment, they will be identified (no anonymous comments allowed) and some privacy is maintained as students have it restricted to visibility only within your domain's users.   By having “view and comment” instead of edit rights will also prevent students from intentionally or unintentionally writing over each other or even nuking each other's journal with deletions.   Of course, multiple Sheets also make it easier for you to look at the various journals class by class.  Bonus #1:  collecting the journal URLs in this way avoids receiving all of those inbox-cluttering sharing email notifications.  Bonus #2: the Form and Sheet  automatically organizes the journal links without you spending time creating multiple Google Folders and organizing all of the student journal Docs inside them.
8. One last step/tip: if students are to respond to each other's journals, make sure students understand not only what a valuable “uptake” Comment is (beyond “that is great!”), but also make the expectations clear.  Should they Comment on someone else’s journal twice a week?  Two different journals, or two Comments on the same journal ok?  Should they eventually Comment on all student journals at least once? Do they need to reply to the Comments made by other students?  Will they be assessed qualitatively (do you have a rubric?), quantitatively, or both?

 

Note that using this same workflow could be applied in other ways you want students to make a copy of a template, share it with you to review, and possibly have others give feedback.  One example could be a Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) that students initiate, periodically reflect and edit, and share with you (and their advisors).  And speaking of personalized learning, if you want to really create an intricate, HyperDoc work flow that could track mastery per standard and per student as well as link to archival evidence, I recommend taking a look at my “SCANMoST” directions.   While SCANMoST was originally created to optimize the 2017 integration of Google Drive into Schoology, it could easily be adapted for Google Classroom or any LMS by utilizing the same “force copy”/template work flow. 

* "Stylized" is an important qualifier here.  I should definitely point out that HyperDocs are a larger construction than merely a heavily hyperlinked online document; as this article by Jennifer Gonzalez defines very well, a HyperDoc is a "digital document . . . where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub."  The potential impact on pedagogy and personalized learning go way beyond just providing a helpful organization structure for a teacher.  Nevertheless, the further you read into my entry, the closer you get to the student-centered "hubs" that would meet Gonzalez's definition of a HyperDoc.

YoTeach!

While there are certainly very effective ways to have classroom discussion the analog way -- look no further than a well done Socratic circle -- digital discourse can be uniquely powerful.  It has always been a particular specialized edtech interest of mine, going back to my U of L graduate classes in the early 2000's.  As one of my action research projects, I gathered data on college students who raised hands in class to answer questions versus their participation in online forums.  Perhaps not surprisingly, while nearly all students interacted digitally, "real" discussion in class was limited to roughly half the classroom, and only a handful of students tended to dominate the conversation.  Sound familiar?

Besides making the simple amount of participation more equitable, other advantages of digital discourse became readily apparent:

• Because students could think and even revise their questions and observations before hitting send, the responses can be a bit more thoughtful.  However, responders can also be "trigger-happy" and the quality can be just the opposite, so culture and expectations are key here.
• Digital opportunities opened up asynchronous as well as "real-time" opportunities to talk, expanding discussion beyond the four walls of the classroom.
• Dominating personalities in real life become more flattened -- quiet students could sound as "loud" as their more outgoing peers.
• Students more naturally talk directly to each other, rather than through the teacher.
• In a real time online discussion, everyone can "talk at once," something not possible without shouting and chaos in real life.
• Digital discourses can often be easily archived or exported.
• Since a digital discourse creates a physical artifact, it can be formatively assessed, whether with informal feedback or with rubrics that indicate how students are meeting mastery of speaking and listening standards.

One of my favorite and free digital discourse tools was TodaysMeet.  It was around long enough (ten years!) that I actually used it as a classroom teacher for one of my videotaped National Boards lessons.   Alas, it finally closed down several months ago.  Since then, I've searched for alternatives and finally found one that is as simple (and free!) as TodaysMeet -- YoTeach!, a project of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  (More about their "Pedagogic & Active Learning Mobile Solutions" here.) 

How does it work?  Once you go to the site, you can make a chat room in seconds.  Type your room's name and hit the "Make Room" button.  Share the room's URL, and people can join the chat instantly -- no log in or user account required, they just pick a nickname.  While technically users are anonymous, two tips: explain to students that the only way they will get credit for their contributions is if they use their real names, and advise them to use common sense digital citizenship protocol (never say anything you wouldn't in a public space with Grandma listening).

YoTeach! does offer some very helpful features.

• By checkmarking "Avoid Search," the room will not show up in public searches, and gives you a bit more privacy.  I highly recommend this!
• "Enable Admin Features" is also highly recommended.  By creating a password for you (unique to the room you are about to create), you will be able to do some moderation features such as mute or remove a student, get student participation statistics, switch from a chat to a voting mode (perhaps as part of a reflection at the end of the day, where students indicate the most insightful or important contributions), and more.   The only way you can make sure a room can be deleted is if you enable admin features from the beginning; otherwise, the room and its history will linger indefinitely.
• "Room Entry Password" is another security feature to protect your students. Without a password, anyone with the chat room's URL can join. 
• In the chat room itself, participants can do more than just text responses. You can also share pictures with annotations, or use a mini-whiteboard feature to "draw." 
• You can export a transcript of the chat as a PDF.

Richard Byrne, edtech extraordinaire behind Free Technology For Teachers and Practical Edtech, did a great screencast video overview of YoTeach! (5:15):

How could you use it?   Here are three ideas:

1. Create a backchannel chat while watching a video.  The opportunities for students to post questions and insights, as well as the teacher probing and clarifying, can create a rich, engaging experience beyond just passive viewing.
2. Create a virtual after-hours office, where you help students during a scheduled time slot.  Even better would be student leaders running the chatroom doing the same function.
3. Conduct the equivalent of a "Twitter Chat" at a certain time after class on a particular topic. This could be a remediation opportunity, enrichment, or even a flipped learning experience of content that will directly lead to work in class the next day.

Downsides?  Without the teacher having a login account, there is no way to easily save all of your created chatrooms.   (This was true of the earliest version of TodaysMeet as well.) If you close the browser without somehow saving the chatroom URL, you may have to start all over.  I'm also not sure if the ability to search "public" random chatrooms is helpful from a student perspective, since it may lead to more distractions than anything useful for a classroom setting.  In fairness, however, once a student joins a specific chat room the search is not readily apparent.  Lastly,  I wish rooms were "yoteach.com/name" (more like how TodaysMeet worked) instead of the current unusual URL address configuration.  

I wish for digital and analog discourse to happen frequently in your classroom!

Note: special thanks to Noel Gnadinger, my old South Oldham High School colleague and librarian par excellence who led me to YoTeach! in one of her Facebook posts.

Revision 9/26/19:  The YoTeach site is now at https://yoteachapp.com/.  I revised the links above to reflect this.

Spiral

Spiral is an online tool that has remained stuck in my head since I first encountered it several months ago.   It seems here to stay and continues to grow and improve.  Spiral is a remarkably robust "classroom learning platform" that is free** (with some premium features coming down the pike soon).   If it did only one of its main apps well,  I'd be impressed.  However, it does several things well in one online location...in a user-friendly way...with the capacity to supercharge learning.  The teacher's dashboard optimizes real-time analysis of student interaction in an uncluttered view.  Last but not least, a student-centered approach is clearly part of Spiral's DNA.

Spiral consists of four apps:

• Quickfire.   You can create "quizzes" in advance or simply do verbal prompts on the fly for students to answer.
• Discuss.  You can import a PowerPoint or Google Slides (or make slides from scratch).  A running chat room allows discourse throughout your presentation while you push out slides, and you can add discussion questions at certain points.   The mechanics are such that students are encouraged to see each other's comments and respond to each other -- a much more student-centered experience than typical direct instruction.  (In some ways this is like Nearpod, but Discuss is much more about creating conversation among students.)
• Team Up.  An opportunity for students to collaborate and create a presentation to share with the rest of the class.  While Google Slides offers a stronger collaborative tool for a more formal presentation, I like how easy this makes it for a teacher to group students together (randomly or intentionally), create roles, and assign activity objectives and/or group sub-objectives.
• Clip.  Take a YouTube video and insert multiple choice, open response, or class discussion questions at certain points in the timeline; the video stops and prompts the student to answer before continuing to play. EDpuzzle and PlayPosit do similar functions with more depth and options, but Clip gives up complexity for a simple, streamlined tool that would likely meet the assessment needs for most teachers.

The teacher's dashboard easily allows you to see student responses in real time.  If you are connected to a projector, you have options of highlighting and sharing responses on the screen (with or without student names).  All of the student answer data generated from each activity is always saved, and found in the teacher interface under "Timeline."   They are visual and easy to review, but the data from each session is also available as an Excel export.

One of the best things about Spiral is the simple but effective nature of its teacher feedback system.   For most of the apps, you either give a student response a checkmark for "correct" or push it back to the student to edit and improve their answer.  Considering that most of Spiral works best in a real-time synchronous environment, this is the most effective method for a teacher truly facilitating the student-centered learning environment. If it's meant to be essays or formal products that need rubrics or more detailed feedback, consider a different tool.

How does it work? Teachers can create a free account via their email or choose to log in with an existing account; currently, the options are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Clever or Edmodo.  (Note that Google Classroom integration is also possible in Spiral.)

You then can create multiple classes, each one with a unique code.  This code is how students will join your particular class.  (Note that launching an activity from a certain class has this same class code; this consistency is similar to Socrative, where your room code is always the same.)

When students first create an account, they are first asked the class code, but then have a choice; they could just put their name and jump into a launched activity immediately, or use the same options as a teacher in order to join with an existing account.   Also worth noting: students will either use the standard Spiral website and click on student login at the top, OR they can go to gospiral.ac to join a launched activity.

The way a teacher can create an activity to launch is quick and intuitive.  Here are some short video overviews of each app:

Quickfire video (3:11)

Discuss video (4:55)

Team Up video (4:11)

Clip video (5:02)

There are several small but significant aspects of Spiral that I appreciate.  I like how in Quickfire, you can choose for students to either answer in text or via a drawing mini-whiteboard.   A timer can be added for Quickfire, Discuss and Team Up activities.  "Shuffle" in Discuss randomly makes a student have to comment on another student's reply, ensuring all are engaged. Last but not least, Spiral seems very mobile friendly if you have BYOD in your classroom.

How could you use it?  Clip would be perfect for flipping instruction with an instructional video.  By asking a few questions, you not only can track participation but get a pre-class assessment on where student comprehension is.   Team Up can give a more structured approach to collaborating and sharing knowledge, especially when you just need an informal end-of-lesson sharing.  I'd love to use Team Up as a digital jigsaw activity.  Discuss would be great for a workshop whole-group direct instruction anchor activity while still keeping engagement high by having discourse. Quickfire is rapid enough for "pulse of the room" assessment and exit tickets, even if you have not prepared in advance and you are using verbal prompts.  Lastly, Quickfire's drawing response feature allows more of a "show your work" approach, especially useful for younger students in math.

Again, the beauty of Spiral is that you can do all of these apps from one location and login, without having students jump around to different sites (for example, from Nearpod to EDpuzzle).

Downsides?   It would be a nice option for teachers to be able to give detailed feedback or reply to student comments in Discuss or Quickfire, but I admire Spiral for keeping it student-centered and choosing rapidity over depth; as a formative tool, it is only meant to basically let students know "you are correct" or "explain more in detail."

Manually creating rosters doesn't seem to work well.  Students aren't able to pick their names off a list and save any time when you create a roster, although this may be a glitch Spiral is fixing; until then, you need to allow students to create their own accounts via an existing Google, Edmodo etc., integrate Spiral with Google Classroom, or simply allow students to enter on the fly by inputing their name for every new assessment (similar to how Kahoot works).  In the free version at least, you cannot see data across various assessments, so it's not a deal breaker if the student login is not consistent, but if you plan on using this often, I recommend a more uniform approach to how students choose to enter the platform.

Spiral Premium features include adding "steps" to QuickFire questions as well as student progress reports.

Do you already use Spiral?  Can you think of other creative ways you could use it in a classroom?  Please Comment below.

**I recently noticed that the Spiral pricing structure has changed.  In particular, the free version of Spiral no longer includes the Discuss, Team Up or Clip tools. (updated 7/24/19)

CheckThis

Note: as of 5/31/17 and after five years online, CheckThis has now gone dark. I will keep this entry online only for archiving purposes.  

As our district begins to explore deeper ways for students to apply their knowledge and demonstrate understanding (such as exhibitions and capstone projects), there is a greater need for presentation tools besides Google Slides and MS PowerPoints.  One of the newest ones I've discovered is CheckThis.  They use the term "social poster" to describe their published product, but it's really just a simple website creator.  It's free, extremely easy even for younger users, and students/teachers can log in with their Google account (Twitter and Facebook are also options) to quickly register on the site.

How does it work?   You can access CheckThis via a web tool or an iOS app.  Once you register your account and create your post, you can start by editing the title, subtitle and beginning text.   By hitting the green "plus" button, you can add more multimedia: text, images (uploaded from your computer or URLs from the web), video (YouTube and Vimeo URLs), website links (Google Maps, online sound files [SoundCloud, BandCamp], tweets, or any other site URL), and built-in CheckThis apps such as a poll.

When you are ready, you can publish your "social poster" and share the URL via Twitter and other social media.  One of the interesting functions of CheckThis is that not only can you see how many views the social poster receives, but you can also receive "likes" and comments.

I found this helpful video of a user making a social poster.  I like it because it effectively demonstrates how easy it is to click and add media:

It should be noted that CheckThis will allow you to publish a social poster without logging in, but there are many benefits to creating an account, not least of which is the problem of students putting work into publishing without an account and later not being able to find the URL to edit it further or share.


An example social poster I made about "Ideas for Nearpod" is linked here.

Note the embedded YouTube video at the top, the website linked at the bottom, and the commentary column on the right side.

How could you use it?   As I already mentioned, CheckThis could be a basic website page creation tool to go with digital presentations, especially for projects that wouldn't need the complexity of options that something like Google Sites or Weebly might offer.  It could also be a way of creating online multimedia personal notes, since you could easily switch from text to pertinent links, images and videos.  Lastly, the commenting feature might create an opportunity to have digital discourse, as students give each other feedback and perhaps have a running dialogue.

Downsides?  When I first tried CheckThis and created the social poster linked above, you had another option for creating an account by using an email and password.  Recently, however, they removed that option, which leaves my account in limbo because I can no longer log in via my email.  That's a personal problem, but I had to share, as I have tweeted CheckThis and not heard yet how to successfully merge my "email" account with another option.  Of course, if you are brand new to CheckThis, you won't have this issue.

It should be noted that comments cannot be turned off.  Since these social posters are completely public and cannot be moderated, monitoring of commentary (especially with younger students) may be a necessary burden for the teacher.

Do you already use CheckThis or see other ways it could be utilized?  Please share in the Comments below!

Recap

Note 7/13/24: Recap is no longer an active website.  The old URL redirects to Swivl's Mirror app, a different platform, although one that seems to encourage student reflection.

The ultimate goal of technology in the classroom should be making teaching and learning happen in ways that you never thought possible.  One of those areas transformed by edtech is formative assessment. Nowadays,  there are many tools at a teacher's disposal where you can check a student's understanding quickly and in an engaging way.    But what if you want to expand past gathering multiple choice and short text answers?   What if a tool could capture understanding beyond the typical literacy demonstration of written words?

A few years ago, I discovered and wrote about Flipgrid, a student video response system.  Teachers could pose a question in a "grid," and students (via a webcam) could record a response within the website.  It was as easy as going to the URL and clicking a plus button.  In the time since, Flipgrid has improved the tool -- for example, you can now respond directly to someone else's response, creating a thread of digital discourse -- but there were a few downsides. (There were also numerous browser conflicts where Flipgrid didn't work, but in the two years since I originally reviewed it, I'm assuming those are now fixed.) 

[Update 5/3/17: Flipgrid now offers a limited free single grid option for teachers, Flipgrid One.]

 Several of our Shelby teachers used Flipgrid and gave it praise. For a time, in the nascent assortment of student video response tools out there, Flipgrid had few competitors.

Until now.

Thanks to a recent Google+ post by Christy Cate, I have found another tool that is just as easy to use, will work across multiple devices (including Chromebooks and via Android and iOS apps), and best of all, it is free!  Folks, welcome to Recap, brought to you by the same people behind Swivl.

How does it work?  Register using your email or Google account.  (It's important that you choose "teacher" during initial registration, even if you play the student to other people's recaps in the future.)  Your account will come with a demo class to give you an opportunity to play with Recap's features, but adding a new class is easy.  Once you do, you are faced with two options for students to log in for your class: via a class pin directly, or via their email/Google account.  The pin might be best for younger students, as the graphic below explains:

Note that the login setup is permanent for that particular class.  If you choose the direct class pin option, you can add students manually, but you must do so individually.

Next, you can create a recap.  One of Recap's helpful features is that you can make one assignment/recap around a certain theme or topic, but you can have up to 10 questions per recap.

Once students are in the class, they can choose to answer a recap.  Recap will then stop and prompt the student at each question, recording their answer before moving on to the next question.   At the end of the process, the student can also let the teacher know whether "They Got It," "Partially Got It," or "Didn't Get It."  Students can also view other students' responses. Although the teacher can give some text feedback to individual responses, students cannot leave feedback for each other, nor can they respond in video form to another student response.

The teacher's dashboard allows them to see all the student's responses individually, as well as a graphical representation of the "got it" reflections.  A final intriguing feature is the "Daily Review Reel," where randomly picked responses from some (but not all) of the students are edited together with some nice framing graphics.  This video can be shared with others, outside of the Recap website.

The teacher dashboard from the demo class.

This video gives a quick overview of Recap in less than a minute:

One thing that is very impressive about Recap is its simplicity of use, from setup to teacher management to student response creation.  I can imagine it used at multiple grade levels and for multiple contents.

How could you use it?  Reflections on a completed project or test can be done quickly: What was hardest? What was easiest?  Did you feel you were overprepared, underprepared, or studied/worked just enough?   Summative assessments themselves might have an alternative in Recap, especially for ECE students with compositional difficulties or ELL students who may speak more proficiently than they write.  An exit or entrance slip via some Recap questions could give a teacher a much more rich and nuanced appreciation of what students know and understand. The "Daily Review Reel" would be a fantastic way to share your classroom work with parents or staff; as of now, it is automated, but fuller control of which responders/responses are included is coming soon (see below).

Downsides?  It would be nice to have the capability to quantitatively assess a student via a grade or a mastery of standards (as of now, the only "grading" is a student's self reflection on whether they "got it" or not, and the ability for a teacher to give written feedback), but that might also be too heavy for Recap's intended streamlined purpose.  I was pleased to see several improvements coming soon, such as a student being able to resubmit/redo a response.  If they ever are able to have students respond to each other (like they can in Flipgrid), this free tool will corner the market.

It's reassuring to see that developers intend to improve their tool; hopefully that means the site will stick around and mature.

Do you use Recap?  Flipgrid?  Another student video response system?  Post your thoughts in the Comments below.

Update 4/26/17:  A new feature of Recap that can help create inquiry and personalize learning is about to launch: Recap Discover, part of Recap 2.0.  Learn more here.