Wakelet

For several years, Storify was one of my favorite free "go to" edtech tools.  You could use it to collect digital artifacts -- URLs, pictures, YouTube videos, social media posts -- and you could sequence these items to create a narrative in order to share with others.    However, like other online tools that come and go, it unfortunately shut down in May 2018.

When one edtech door closes, another one often opens.   Last year, I was excited to be introduced to Wakelet.   In the months since, I've not only seen how Wakelet is more than able to fill the void that Storify left, but I have also been impressed with how it continues to mature and improve with new features.

How does it work?
Making a "Collection" in Wakelet is quick and easy; the interface is very user friendly.  First, you need to create a free account.  You can use Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or just use your email address.   When you create an account, you will choose a name that will determine your profile's URL.   (Here's mine as an example.)   Once your account is created, you can follow other Wakelet users, and they can follow you.  Your followers will be notified when you publish a public Collection, as you will be notified when the people you follow do the same.

As you create a new Collection, you begin to make choices such as the title and whether it will be public or private.   Once you start a new Collection, what can you add?  You can insert text, websites via their URLs, YouTube videos, tweets (you can search by username or hashtag), pictures, PDFs, and even include files straight from your OneDrive or Google Drive.

As you add certain content, Wakelet remembers them as "Bookmarks."  This makes it easier to insert that content in future Collections.

One of the newest features of Wakelet is inserting "Flipgrid Shorts."  This is an opportunity for the person making the Collection to record a webcam video up to three minutes long; as with standard Flipgrid videos, you can use fun filters or insert graphics and text. The 49 second video below shows how this works.   Note that this Wakelet option is not really the full Flipgrid experience; you cannot log into your separate Flipgrid account to natively insert what you've already created, nor are viewers of the Collection able to respond to your "Flipgrid Short" with comments or video replies of their own while within the Wakelet site.   (Tip: if you're wanting to create an opportunity for an interactive Flipgrid experience, simply insert your grid's URL into your Collection like you would any other website.)

There are other Wakelet features that affect the viewing experience.  The creator of the Collection can choose various ways of presenting the materials, including a "Mood Board" option.  Another new feature utilizes Microsoft's "Immersive Reader" in order to read aloud your Collection!   Lastly, if viewers are logged into their own Wakelet profile, they can copy a Collection to their account to edit and publish their own version as they see fit, assuming that the creator of the Collection permits this to happen.

Wakelet makes sharing a published Collection very simple, with built in tools for several social media platforms, as well as options like a shortened URL and a QR code.

Recently, Wakelet now allows multiple ways for users to collaborate on the same Collection.  In theory, collaborators do not even need Wakelet accounts to interact in a Collection.   Collaborators can be given access directly via their Wakelet profile name or email, or indirectly via URLs and QR codes.   (Keep in mind that collaboration tools are in beta as of February 2020.)

Last but not least, Wakelet offers iOS and Android apps.   This allows users to be able to create Collections from their mobile device, albeit the options are more limited than the full website version of Wakelet.  I've created a Collection that demonstrates how the mobile app works, which is also embedded below:




How could you use it?  
Teachers could use Wakelet to capture resources while at a conference -- the key tweets sent out from a hashtag, the Google Docs shared by presenters, and so on.  You could also create narratives consisting of text, websites, and social media posts that chronicle a current event to share with students.  Students could use Collections as a way of saving research, composing mini-"hyperdoc" essays, creating an online portfolio of learning artifacts, or collaborating with team members on resources while working through a PBL.

Downsides?  
Storify allowed you to natively find and embed Facebook and other social media posts; I would like Wakelet to easily do the same beyond just Twitter.  For now, the workaround would be to find the social media post's public URL and add it to your Collection as you would any other website.

As I mentioned above, I first discovered Wakelet last year at KySTE 2019 thanks to Stella Pollard, a wonderful educator and frequent presenter!   Because Stella is an experienced user of Wakelet -- be sure to check out her Wakelet profile -- what better time to interview her, as well as share her thoughts on other edtech tools?

Stella, welcome to Edtech Elixirs!  Please share your educator story.
I have been an educator since 2013. My journey began in Perry County Schools as a para-educator for a first-grade classroom. My husband and I moved to central Kentucky in 2014 where I was offered my first official teaching position as a middle school math and science teacher at Williamstown Jr. High School. I was offered a job closer to home in 2015 as a 6th-grade science teacher at Bondurant Middle School in Franklin County. I am currently an Instructional Technology Coordinator (Digital Learning Coach) for Franklin County Schools and I work with each of our 13 schools on effective implementation of instructional technology. 

How do you personally use Wakelet?
I started using Wakelet back in early 2018. I jumped onto the #WakeletWave because I was #NotAtISTE18 and needed a way to store all of the resources I found so I could come back to them at a later date. Since then, I have made Wakelet Collections for recipes to resources, lesson materials to videos, and everything in between. I love how easy it is to use on every platform (iPhone, Chrome browser, Chromebook, etc). 

Have you seen students and teachers use Wakelet?
I have! I have seen teachers use Wakelet as a collaborative workspace for students to digitally share and explore the work of their peers. 

What is one of your favorite features of Wakelet? 
I love the ability to automatically store your Screencastify videos directly to a Wakelet. It's quick and effective and in my role as a Digital Learning Coach, I am always making videos for our teachers. Since you can easily access your Google Drive inside of a Collection, this gives me the ability to share those videos quickly. 

Besides Wakelet, what are some other new edtech tools you are currently using?
One of my newest edtech tools that I have found recently is Actively Learn - it's similar to Newsela but has features that include: asking questions in the text, including specific notes for sections for your students while they're reading, the ability to embed a video or link to a different website, and more. In addition, it speaks directly to Google Classroom so there's minimal set-up for teachers to begin. Finally, one of my favorite things about it is that the free version is pretty solid.

What's your advice to teachers just starting to integrate edtech into their classrooms?
It's okay to not know everything about a tool. Students can and will figure it out long before we ever will. Don't be afraid to have your students try new things and give them the chance to input their voice in the assignments.

I want to thank Stella for taking the time to share her wisdom.  Be sure to follow her on Twitter, Wakelet and beyond! And be sure to share your creative ways for using Wakelet in the Comments below.

Nearpod, SAMR, and Transitional Pedagogy

Welcome back to school!  Due to a new K-8 school being built, Shelby County went to a contingency calendar and our first day back for students was today.  So most of you have at least a few weeks head start on us.

Since my last entry, Edtech Elixirs has hit a happy birthday milestone.  My first entry was August 1, 2014.  That makes the blog five years old, with an average of a thousand views per entry (as of today, 141 entries and over 141,000 views)!  Not coincidentally -- as the blog began partially as a resource for Shelby educators -- I also had my five year anniversary with the district as well. As always, I thank my blog readers for giving me the audience to share my edtech findings and think-alouds, and I thank Shelby County for allowing me to follow my edtech integration passion.

And now onto today's topic focus . . .

Back in June, I attended the third annual Deeper Learning Symposium hosted by Jefferson County Public Schools.  One of the presenters was Danna Pearsall, who shared her knowledge on Nearpod.  I learned about a few new features, including the ability for students to take (and then download) notes while participating in a Nearpod Presentation.  These notes -- complete with the slides themselves --- can even be added to their own Google Drive!  (It should be noted that the notes feature is only available if the presenter gets the paid version of Nearpod.   More on that in a bit.)

An example page from downloaded student notes.  This is a premium "Gold" (i.e. paid) feature of Nearpod and needs to be enabled by the teacher.

Before I go any further, I should mention that Nearpod itself feels like an old friend that I actually first tried out back in my classroom teaching days.   When I came to Shelby, it was one of the earliest edtech tools I recommended to staff, and I wrote about our teachers using it in the first year of Edtech Elixirs.  As much as I admired Nearpod in the past, I continue to be impressed as it grows, thrives and improves in 2019 and beyond.

What is Nearpod?  Put simply, it is a teacher-paced, guided presentation tool with interactive elements that can help you assess your students in real time, as well as give you data reports to analyze later.    Although you can create a presentation from scratch inside Nearpod, most will prefer importing a finished one into the platform, and that is where I want to make a tangent before discussing more about the tool itself.  The real power of a tool like Nearpod is that it is a schema scaffold for tech-hesitant teachers to expand their edtech integration ability into the classroom.

How do we reflect on the deepness and richness of edtech implementation? Consider SAMR as a way of analyzing the net effect (pun intended!) of when technology is integrated into a classroom lesson:

• Substitution is where new tech replaces old digital/analog tools, but the task is unchanged.
• Augmentation is the same task, but there is more functionality and improvement of effectiveness because of the technology.
• In Modification, you have redesigned parts of the task, and begin to see the transformative nature of the technology use.
• Redefinition is the ultimate transformative experience that usually reaches an audience or collaborators outside of the four walls of the classroom.  Here, we design and create tasks previously inconceivable thanks to the technology.

One of the things I love about SAMR as a reflective tool is that the focus is on the task, not the technology.  There are no points earned in SAMR for mere edtech usage; it is all about integration and intentionality.  As an example of this, consider Skype.  When it first became a mainstream tool, it seemed like something out of a sci-fi show.  (On a screen or flat panel, Skype still reminds me of the Star Trek viewscreen on the bridge of the Enterprise.) .However, if you got a person to Skype into your classroom and just ends up a talking head that is remotely piloting a PowerPoint, how transformative is that compared to a guest speaker coming in person and droning on for an hour?  You are, from a learning perspective, breaking even at best.  If it is a non-interactive lecture, one would be better off with the guest shooting a video, burning it on a DVD, and mailing you the disc.  (At least you could pause a DVD!) As you can see, it is not Skype itself, but the use of Skype that has to be analyzed via the SAMR lens.  So it is with any technology you bring into the classroom: you need to first consider your task at hand and the academic objectives you want to meet.

The act of going from S/A to M/R means going from tech enhancement to tech transformation of what a learning experience can be, as well as going from a teacher-centered to a student-centered environment.  Who is making the tech choices? Are students creating or consuming?  Put another way, if the electricity and Internet go out, a S/A lesson can theoretically be improvised and continue ("I'll guess I'll lecture without pictures," or "I'll hand out a multiple choice quiz on paper instead") whereas a M/R lesson would be dead in the water.

Understanding SAMR is all well and good, and most teachers can make a Substitution move fairly easily, such as going from an overhead projector to a PowerPoint.   The struggle is finding a pragmatic way to get to "AMR" edtech integrations.  Here it is a question both of appropriate tools that stretch without overwhelming the educator, as well as finding a judgment-free way for the educator to grow their pedagogy.   While Substitution often (but not always!) is typical of a traditional pedagogical environment (i.e. direct instruction, lecture-minded, teacher-centered), it is unrealistic to assume an experienced teacher can or even should jettison all of their former skills and tools to move into a transformative pedagogy.   Indeed, there are times that Substitution (or no tech at all!) might be best, or traditional lectures and direct instruction may be necessary to properly meet the specific and contextual academic objectives at hand.   The only concern is being stuck in an instructional rut of always doing Substitution/traditional approaches when other ways might be more effective or impactful on learning.

And that is why a tool like Nearpod can be a powerful tool, especially for teachers just learning to grow their edtech practice.   Nearpod's original genius was its assumption that many teachers already have a storehouse of instructional material -- PowerPoints.   Nearpod makes it easy to import these pre-existing PowerPoints into Nearpod Presentations.   All that's left is adding interactive elements such as polls, open ended questions, "draw it" features, and quizzes.  When a teacher is ready, he/she turns the Nearpod Presentation into a live session.  A nice bonus: since the session will be pushed to the students' screens, you don't need a main projector or display.  A student doesn't need to create an account; the teacher's live session generates a unique code only good for the current event, and a student easily joins the session with that code and signs in by providing their name.  (While there are apps for Nearpod that makes it somewhat easier to join a session from a mobile device, any device with a browser and Internet access will do.)  The pacing -- that is, when the slides advance -- is completely in control of the teacher.  When interactive elements occur, teachers can see the data in real time, and even share a student answer anonymously to all the screens for the sake of discussion or highlighting a good model example.  At the end of the live session, a final report is generated for the teacher where you can review the data/answers from all the interactive elements as a PDF.   Thus, Nearpod's potential for Augmentation and beyond can be plainly seen.   Students are interacting with the teacher, content and each other in new ways; a teacher can use the assessment data to impact and change instruction in real time as well as for future planning; a student can think and reflect more deeply via the interactive assessments than a Scantron bubble test could ever reveal.  And imagine if, instead of Slides and PowerPoints, students created Nearpods to lead interactive presentations, or to gather data from a user group as part of a Design Thinking invention process! In short, Nearpod allows for genuine blended learning.

Here is a video which demonstrates how Nearpod led an instructor from his former mode of PowerPoint presentations and pushed him forward to a transformative classroom (1:13):

It should be noted that while the features mentioned above can all be done with the free Nearpod version, paid versions exist (currently $120 and up annually for an individual license) that give additional tools.  The licensing is based on a teacher, or "creator" account -- a student participating in Nearpods never has to pay or even make an account.   Additional features for the paid version include some additional interactive/inserted material elements (such as inserting YouTube videos), increased online storage space for your Nearpod Presentations (from 100 MB to 1 GB and up**), enabling the student notes feature mentioned earlier, and perhaps most importantly, the ability for students to do a Nearpod Presentation "anytime, anywhere" (perhaps personalized to student needs!) instead of only when a teacher makes a live session.

If you are interested in pre-made Nearpod Presentations, there is an online store.  Thanks to a multitude of partnerships with companies such as Common Sense Media, Teaching Tolerance, CK-12, PhET, Newsela, and BBC Worldwide, the catalog is deep, with high quality lessons across a wide gamut of content and grade levels.  However, while some of these are free, many of them cost from a few dollars for a single lesson up to approximately $30 for a bundle.

Other features of Nearpod that have been added in the last few years include:

• Google Slides Add-On.  There already was a free Chrome Extension (Nearpodize) that could take your Google Slides and convert them into a Nearpod Presentation.  However, you can now easily insert interactive material while creating your Slides, then upload it all to Nearpod.  From the Slides menu, choose Add-Ons > Get add-ons and search for Nearpod.  Read here for more details.
• Nearpod 3D.  You have a gallery of over 100 three dimensional, manipulatable objects to insert into your presentation.  Students can rotate them and zoom in and out.  The gallery categories are Ancient Times, Amazing Places and Things, Environment, Human Body, and Microscopic.  Read here to find out more.
• Nearpod VR.   Imagine taking your students on a virtual field trip and seeing a place in a 360 degree environment.  Nearpod has an extensive amount of VR Presentations in their store -- some free, some not.  Two things are outstanding about Nearpod VR.  Firstly, there are incredible choices across multiple contents -- even ELA and math! (Recently, lessons were added that incorporate Historical Perspectives and Literacy, which fits nicely with new social studies standards.) Secondly, Nearpod VR works fine on any device, including Chromebooks.  While phones in goggle headsets may make VR more immersive, Nearpod VR requires no special equipment or setup.  For more details, read here.

The Nearpod Google Slides Add On allows you to insert activities while composing your Slides, which then can easily be uploaded / converted to a Nearpod Presentation.  Note that some of these activity options only work with the paid version.

If there was a downside to Nearpod, it is definitely the price point for the premium features.  While I appreciate what you get for free, and that the paid licenses have likely enabled Nearpod to endure and improve for all these years, I just wish there was a tier between free and $120+.  Perhaps a middle option of $20-30 a year to allow student to take notes and teachers to give students Nearpod Presentations that are personalized "anytime / anywhere" lessons/homework?

Nearpod starts with existing edtech schema and pedagogy (PowerPoints, direct instruction, lecture) and builds upon it to create a deeper learning experience.  I could mention other edtech examples that do the same, such as Google Docs, which takes what teachers and students already know about word processor programs and has the potential to improve the task of writing itself (i.e., Google Docs allows students to have real-time collaboration and use Comments for more effective peer feedback).  The point here is that tools like Nearpod and Google Docs stand on the threshold between traditional and transformational pedagogy.  These tools are part of a much needed bridge of a larger transitional pedagogical framework, necessary for improving not just edtech integration, but the nature of teaching and learning itself.

**Update: the storage size is updated, as of 8/14/20.   As with all edtech, other elements of Nearpod described in this entry may also change over time.

TweenTribune

Note 7/13/24:  TweenTribune is no longer an active platform (you cannot assign articles to students or differentiate text), but the Smithsonian still archives the old TweenTribune articles here.

In my high school English classroom teachers years, true differentiation was always an elusive goal.  I never disagreed with its need, but always found it difficult to do with consistency, depth, and fidelity.  This was especially true with reading materials.  Like most, I faced students who ranged a huge range of low to high reading levels.   However, I highly valued having students be able to have discourse over the same text.  Often, especially with non-fiction text, I would be lucky to find a "on grade," "above grade," and "high grade" version of the same topic without making it obvious the disparity between the "kiddie version" and the others.

But now we have tech tools that can narrow the gap.  What if students could all read the exact same article, yet the Lexile level be automatically shifted up or down?   Newsela was the first and only site I knew that did this well, but another online resource has recently surfaced: TweenTribune, backed by the Smithsonian.

How does it work?   You can browse and search non-fiction articles in various subjects, or click on a band of reading levels determined by grade level (K-4, 5-6, etc.; this is one advantage over Newsela, which doesn't have grade level bands of articles).  Once you click on an article of interest, you can quickly adjust the Lexile reading level of the article by clicking on a higher or lower number.  Each Lexile version of an article has an unique URL, which makes copying and sharing the URL at a certain reading level very easy.

Note under the title that the current Lexile reading level number is in gold. Some options, such as taking a quiz or leaving a comment, are available if you are logged into your account.  Registration is free, and student usernames and passwords must be generated by a teacher who creates a class.

Another positive compared to Newsela:  while Newsela only lets you see five articles before making you register (for free), you can access all the articles of TweenTribune and share their multi-level URLs without teachers or students ever creating an account.

One thing that is interesting as you click across the grade levels is that the name of the site actually changes even as the URL still starts "TweenTribune.com."   K-4 is TT Junior, and 9-12 is TeenTribune.

There are a collection of separate Spanish articles under its own category, but the Lexile level cannot be adjusted, nor do the English articles have a "Spanish button" to convert them.

If you are interested in taking a comprehension quiz or leaving a comment on the article, you have to be logged in.  Teachers can register for free, create classes and student usernames/passwords, and assign certain articles to their classes.  (Note that a student cannot create their own sign in -- they have to get that from a teacher.)  If students take a quiz, teachers can access those results.

The teacher interface to create classrooms and student accounts is straight forward and simple.

How could you use it?   You can create authentic and engaging pair, group, or whole class discussions by having students read the same article differentiated to their needs.   In discussion, it would be nearly impossible for one student to know what Lexile level the other student read, making the equity seamless and invisible.  With an LMS, sharing URLs to specific reading levels of an article would be easy; for example, in Schoology, you could even create differentiated Assignments to different student groups, each with a different TweenTribune Lexile reading level of the same text.

Downsides?  I would like a way that you could have the various Lexile levels of a specific article be translated to Spanish with one button push.  That would make differentiation extend easily to ELL student needs.

I'm thankful that the Smithsonian is helping educators differentiate with ease...and for free!

Do you use Newsela or TweenTribune?  Discuss it in the Comments below.

EdCampKY, a Postscript

Whoa! Wow! (And afterwards: Whew!)  Just over one week after the first EdcampKY in Bardstown, Kentucky, I am still trying to decompress the good ideas from the "unconference," and can't wait for it to continue on a regular basis throughout the state.

I'll get to a list of my takeaways from EdcampKY in a moment, but first things first.  As powerful as Twitter and other social media platforms are, it's always a treat to see colleagues face to face again  (Donnie Piercey, James Allen, Loretta Shake, Matt Arledge), or for the first time (Mike Paul).

Before I forget, I should also mention that it was a pleasure to meet the principal (Wes Bradley) and assistant principal (Heather Warrell) of the host site, Thomas Nelson High School.  Only three years old, it is built for innovation and collaboration.  Several times I wandered into a classroom and couldn't tell if I was in a high school, or a college campus, or a corporate retreat.  The culture of learning is palpable.  (I took several Twitter pics of the facility, so scroll back through my tweets if interested.)

So, narrowed down, here are six things I learned from Edcamp.

1. The "unconference" approach to PD:  As an organizer of professional development myself, it is extremely hard to see how you could leave it to chance and teacher initiative what the topics of sessions might be until the very morning of your conference, much less who might moderate or facilitate them.  But that's what an unconference does.  Although session assignments are sometimes done with index cards taped to a wall, Google Sheets filled out by the Edcamp organizers provided a digital way to keep the latest session information on track. Also, a true session in such an environment is more of a "give and take" discussion than a "sit and get" presentation.  I think there was a bit of a struggle sometimes to accept this, both for moderators wanting to share their expertise and for the attendees.  However, some of the best sessions were ones where educators popcorned their thoughts around the room.   In the end, an unconference model may just be a cure for the summertime PD blues -- creating opportunity for teacher leadership, time for discussion, and immediacy for feeding educators the exact learning they need, when they need it.

2.  KET Board Builder: Amy Grant shared several of the resources available through the various KET digital resources of EncycloMedia (PBS LearningMedia, Discovery Education, and KET ED On Demand).  While I knew there was plenty there, I usually don't have time to explore it, so that was appreciated info. One of the bigger finds was the Board Builder, a way of creating a electronic "poster" by only adding multimedia from within KET's own resources, making it filtered and vetted.  These Boards require a login and can only be shared with other users within the site, but it might especially be a welcome multimedia tool for those wanting a safe project tool for younger students.

3.  Google Form Add-Ons:  Recently I have experimented with running scripts with Google Forms, giving you ways to unlock even more powerful tools. (If you are interested in the same, here's a page about them.)  Scripts are not easy, and have to be installed every time you want to run them.  However, Google Forms finally have Add-Ons (as a menu choice at the top of an opened Form), some of which recreate functions previously available only in complicated scripts.  Better than that, once installed they can be used over and over and in an easy to use way.  My favorites so far are Choice Eliminator (which takes a multiple choice option away as someone choose one and submits the form -- perfect for scheduling meetings or "first come first serve" project choices) and Form Values (which allows you to save recurring lists of answer choices for questions, like all the schools in the district, to easily insert them repeatedly into Forms).

4.  Shelfies.  A librarian shared this term in one of the session discussions, and I love the idea.  Take a picture of your bookshelf and share it with others.  That lead me to brainstorm a little app-smashing: annotate the picture with Thinglink, adding URLS to author websites, book trailer videos of students chatting up the book, or text-based information.  Stick an iPad near the shelf with the Thinglink on view, and your "shelfie" will now come to life for students, becoming an interactive kiosk. (As it turns out, I'm not the first to brainstorm this idea.  For example, here's one in German.)

5.  NewsELA.   This site takes actual up-to-date news articles and provides an incredible service for teachers and students needing differentiation and more non-fiction, as required by Core Content: you can scale the reading by adjusting the complexity of the text at one of five different levels.  Most have comprehension quizzes as well.  You are limited to five articles without registering, but once you do, you have unlimited access.

6.  Photomath.  This free app is currently available for iOS and Windows (Android coming in 2015); with it, Mike Paul easily won the Edcamp Tech Slam.  It's not hard to see why.  Magic seems the only plausible way that it can work. Using a bit of augmented reality technology, scan a math worksheet that is printed (NOT handwritten) and Photomath will not only solve the equation, but show you the steps on how to get there.  Scary?  A bit. It's technology like this that reminds us that students can get the answers without us, so it is up to teachers to change the questions and make sure students can do the thinking.  Here's a video of it in action:


PhotoMath from MicroBLINK on Vimeo.

Looking forward to returning to another Edcamp soon.   Until then, I'll occasionally check in on the hashtag #edcampky and continue following their Twitter account.

Have you used any of the tools above?  Do you have questions about an "unconference"?  If you went to the 10/25 EdcampKY, what did you think?  Please Comment below.