Awesome Tools for ELA You Can Use Tomorrow

1. Awesome Tools for ELAYou Can Use Tomorrow Jodie Moorhead IT Facilitator Jodie.moorhead@mcschools.net (318) 325-0601, ext. 5402

2. Today we are going to quickly look at tools in these categories… Assessment Tools Resources Office 365

3. Assessment Tools We need to get students comfortable with online assessment, so using these tools can help prepare students for future online testing. Let’s reach and teach students in a manner in which they live…technologically! These tools are instructive and can provide valuable information, but they are still fun for the students!

4. Interactive, Online Quizzes Research has proven that students learn best when interacting with the material in a real-life, engaging manner. In one study alone, 80% of the students said online, interactive quizzes made them pay more attention to reading/material. It made them go back to the material and reread. There was an increase in learning and comprehension versus memorization. From a teacher's standpoint, online quizzes allow for randomized answers, independent learning, ease of comparison for results, ease of sharing quizzes, and efficiency. Most online quiz sites allow for downloading or sharing quizzes. Remember...Work smarter, not harder!

5. First, get your FREE account by signing up! Go to the website https://getkahoot.com. Look for the purple box like ! It is at the bottom center of the screen! You will see... Follow the steps to create your free account! Just a reminder, use your Monroe City Schools email address and password for ease of remembering!

6. To create a quiz... 1. The program will walk you through creating the quiz step-by-step. 2. Give the quiz a title. Click on the "Go!" button. 3. You are limited to multiple choice questions, but you can make them true/false, yes/no, etc. 4. Type your question in. 5. Type your answer choices (up to four) in the spaces below. If you do not need all four answer choices, hit the minus sign. Make sure you select the answer that is correct. Kahootwill not let you move on until all is done correctly. 6. You can add a question graphic in the middle by selecting "choose file" and locating the picture on your computer. 7. You can add a video, but this is still very experimental. I have found that it does work. 8. Click "Add Question" at the bottom to add more questions. 9. When you have added all your questions, click

7. Getting Started with Socrative

8. Creating a Quiz in Socrative

9. Newsela https://newsela.com Delivers news, but allows the teacher or reader to change the story to read to a specific grade level Teachers can create student logins which will allow them to share articles with the students, monitor the students and quiz them (If you use the naming convention of JMoo23, you do not have to worry about data sahring agreement.) Free 90 day trial then you can request a quote

10. EdPuzzle http://www.edpuzzle.com/ Allows you to upload or link to a video then add questions which can be multiple choice or open-ended Students can then use a code and log in to watch and interact with the video Site keeps track of their answers FREE!!!

11. Okay, now it is time for… Cool Resources!

12. http://www.instagrok.com/ Searchable visual learning tools It is a paid site, but you can use InstaGrok for free. I created an account and it gave me a free 90-day trial. If you recommend 3 other educators, you get a free subscription. You will see this box on the main page. Type your search term in the box, and it will create a "grok" for you. These groks contain terms, sites, and even video/audio files. While it does filter some terms, it will let "scientific terms" through.

13. http://www.cram.com/ Cram will allow teachers and students to search for pre-made flash cards on a variety of subject areas Sets of flash cards can also be created (public or private) There is an account sign-up, which I would do as a convenience We do not have to get a data-sharing agreement as no student data is exchanged or stored off-site

14. http://betterlesson.com/ This is a completely searchable database of lessons and activities created by teachers and other educational professionals, not programmers in a room somewhere. When you find a lesson you like, download the lesson and you have full access to all of the resources you need! There are lessons according to Common Core, Master Teacher Lessons, and by “community” of grade levels. This site is a tremendous time saver and it is… FREE!!!!

15. http://www.professorword.com 1. Good for middle and high school teachers and student 2. Shows what ACT and SAT words are in a reading passage 3. Also, when active, it will show definitions of most words in a passage by scrolling over and clicking on the word 4. Must be installed as an internet favorite, opened, and then run by going to another site or passage

16. http://rewordify.com/index.php 1. Do your students have trouble understanding what they read? 2. Rewordifyis FREE and will allow students to type or paste a passage into the text box to be "rewordified" so it may be easier to understand. 3. Highlighted words have been "rewordified" and you can click to see the original word. 4. Any word can be clicked on and you will see the definition and other information for the word.

17. Okay, now it is time for… Office 365

18. If you have not started using Office 365, here’s why you should! Accesible any time, any where there is an internet connection. Your “OneDrive”TM has 1 TB of storage space. That is 1000 times larger than your MCS cloud. You can share files very easily with anyone in the world, including students! The entire site is monitored and archived to meet the requirements of ACT 54. You have 10 licenses (5 for desktop/laptop and 5 for mobile devices)

19. Office 365 Tools Available • To get to Office 365, open internet and go to https://portal.office.com. • Your account login is your email address and your password is your regular MCS email password. • Do not try to install on any MCS device as it already has Office products. • Watch the website for trainings concerning OneNoteTM and Office 365TM.