School on a Snow Day

I will admit that I can't get away with this with all of my classes, but my AP Comparative (which is AP US Government and AP Comparative in one year) is a motivated bunch. So while today is our second snow day (actually a "cold day" since it is 5 degrees right now) we have managed to work around the day off and not miss any time.  How you ask?

1. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate so I created a class and gave my brick and mortar kids the link back in late October and we all agreed that at 10 am on a snow day we would have class.  24 of my 30 kids made the class and the others watched the session which was recorded.  
2. If you don't have something like Blackboard Collaborate you could you a Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture (here's how).    You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions.   You would be able to do this by splitting your screen. 
3. Today based on what we are doing I decided not to how an online session and instead made the video above as both an introduction and a continuation of our material.  Then my kids will watch this video and look up these court cases.  
4. I communicated with the kids by using Remind101, Blackboard and even using my gradebook which has all of the kids' emails.  For the Remind101 message I used a shortened tinyurl (tinyurl.com/fcpscoldday) which linked to my normal homework e-sheet. so I didn't have to text the kids multiple times with the assignments.  
5. We will start our class on Thursday with questions (several have already emailed me with some) and then take a quiz where the kids can use their notes.  Then we will move on and still be able to have our test next week without a hitch. 
6. So if you have a motivated bunch and you can afford to miss a day of school you might want to try some of the techniques. 

Snow Day Reprise

In ten years of being a chair, tomorrow will be the second day I have missed a county wide meeting (so I can work with my AP Comp kids to better prepare for the AP exam).  I was going to present on how to teach students on a snow day.  But using my favorite technique, I can flip the presentation using the video above.  The video explains how you can use Blackboard Collaborate which is something we have in Fairfax County.  But there are other alternatives as you can see below.

1. You could Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture (here's how).    You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions.   You would be able to do this by splitting your screen. 
2. If the day is cancelled tomorrow we will spend much of the period answering questions on review problem sets and then I will assign a few more so that we can have our quiz on Wed and our test on Friday without missing a beat.  
3. But you don't always have to meet your students.  For example last year  I decided not to have an online session and instead made the video above as both an introduction and a continuation of our material.  Then my government kids watched this video to look up these court cases.  
4. I communicate with the kids by using Remind, Blackboard and even using my grade book which has all of the kids' emails.  For the Remind message I used a shortened tinyurl (tinyurl.com/fcpscoldday) which linked to my normal homework e-sheet. so I didn't have to text the kids multiple times with the assignments.  
5. So if you have a motivated bunch and you can't afford to miss a day of school you might want to try some of the techniques. 

The bottom line is that we had 12 snow days in my county and a number more late starts and my kids still got in all their work and are where we should have been should we not have missed school.

I should point out that this is one of the many techniques I go over in my book Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud To Individualize Instruction.

What to do on a Snow Day Tomorrow

The other day I learned that my book has gone to be printed and will definitely be out on the 27th of this month.  One of the topics I discuss is how to deal with "alternative days" such as snow ones.  If you like what you see below, you might want to pre-order my book: Deeper Learning Though Technology."

I will admit that I can't get away with this with all of my classes, but my AP Comparative (which is AP US Government and AP Comparative in one year) and AP Economics are a motivated bunch. But tomorrow is looking like we will have either a two hour delay or more probably no school at all.  So for me that means I have pre-determined a time when I am meeting my students online.  This will be our second day in a row that we have missed so, as with the first we will just move our classroom into the cloud.  To help you do this, you might consider the following:

1. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate.  So I created a class and gave my brick and mortar kids the link back in late October and we all agreed that at 10 am on a snow day we would have class.  24 of my 30 kids made the class and the others watched the session which was recorded.  If your school district doesn't have one for you, here are seven free ones you can look at using.  
2. Alternatively you could Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture (here's how).    You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions.   You would be able to do this by splitting your screen. 
3. If the day is cancelled tomorrow we will spend much of the period answering questions on review problem sets and then I will assign a few more so that we can have our quiz on Wed and our test on Friday without missing a beat.  
4. But you don't always have to meet your students.  For example last year  I decided not to have an online session and instead made the video above as both an introduction and a continuation of our material.  Then my kids will watched this video to look up these court cases.  
5. I communicat with the kids by using Remind, Blackboard and even using my grade book which has all of the kids' emails.  For the Remind message I used a shortened tinyurl (tinyurl.com/fcpscoldday) which linked to my normal homework e-sheet. so I didn't have to text the kids multiple times with the assignments.  
6. So if you have a motivated bunch and you can't afford to miss a day of school you might want to try some of the techniques. 

My New eLearning Blog

I am stuck at home with two feet of snow, but thankful that I can still do my job as I have recently changed from a classroom teacher and chair to the eLearning Coordinator of our 4000 student, 53 course strong Online Campus.

To that end I have, as you might have noticed found some other to help continue my other blogs and have continued adding posts myself to them.  But my new site - "eLearning Blog" is where I am putting anything related to learning online.  You can also receive the posts using Google+ and/or following me on Twitter.  Recent posts have included

• How to make your own flipped videos
• How to teach online during snow days
• Texting homework reminders
• Using Twitter as a teaching tool
• Digital Resources for the US Department of Education
• How to quickly convert a Microsoft document into a Blackboard test
• Scripts for shortcuts in your grading
• Url (link) shorteners 
• and much much more. 

Misunderstanding History

I sense an assignment coming on or even an end of the year project if we can get beyond all of our snow days.  As I like to tell my students we study history in part of understand different cultures and to be able to better relate to people around the US and the world.  So why not have your students look at one misunderstanding and try to be a sleuth and figure out why we have accepted this falsehood as fact today.

Consider the fact that Paul Revere did not say "The British are coming."  To say such would be akin to saying "The Americans" were coming since we were all British (he said the "Regulars" were coming).  While we are at it why do we best remember Revere when he was the only one the Regulars captured that night while Dawes and Prescott did a better job of warning residents. But neither of the other two were memorialized in a Longfellow poem nor had physical items (pewter, pictures) to be stored by history.  While we are it, what about Revere's own work in calling the Boston Massacre a massacre and in copying someone else's work and claiming it to be his own!

What about the belief that Columbus proved the world was round which was patently false and had long been accepted otherwise.  The why we see it that way is a better question and most believe that Washington Irving was the conveyer of that falsehood.

Of course the tallest of tales is the one that says that Napoleon was a bully because he was short when the reality was he was average height for his time.

Here are a bunch of misperceptions that you can start with showing your students.

So imagine the assignment.  1) student has to find a misperception 2) explain how it got to be a misunderstanding which in of itself is good analysis 3) how, if it did change history.  While you are at it, watch the video above for some inspiration.  

The Cold War

It has been a while since I posted a John Green video but with all our snow days you might be going a wee bit quickly to finish the year and might want a quick review.  So above is a flipped video on the Cold War.    All John Green videos can be found here. 

Twitter, Hashtags and FakeTweet

My "teacher-students" have a snow day today which means they are looking at two flipped videos for their assignments today so I thought I'd share it with all of you.  The video above is 11 minutes and goes into how to set up a Twitter account, how to use it.  Secondly it looks at hashtags and when and why you might want one and finally it looks at FakeTweet which is exactly what it says it is.  

Remind101 Adds Attachments

If you follow this blog, you know I use Remind101 every day of the week to remind my students about their homework.  Simply put it is has greatly improved my students ability to complete homework, but also to communicate with them, especially this year when I had to put up with eleven snow days and ten delayed openings.

Above is a video giving you the highlights and below is one teaching you how to use it.  The latest addition to the service is that you can now text an attachment.  Of course you can use Tinyurl or Bit.ly to shrink a link to a Google Drive document which is what I often do. 

This past semester I used Edmodo in my AP class, and I thought it would be a great time to post about it on this blog since we are winding down/finshed with the semester and we now have time to explore ways to enhance our curriculum. Here is essentially a "review" of Edmodo.

According to their website, Edmodo is "a private social platform for students and teachers to share ideas, files, events and assignments." According to my students, Edmodo is a lot like Facebook for school (except it is unblocked!). According to me, Edmodo is awesome!

The process to sign up is easy and painless, and within 2 minutes you have created a class and have been given a code for your students (and only your students) to enter so they can enroll in the class you have created. From there you can send links, alerts, files, and assignments to all the students enrolled in the class. Here are some thoughts:

The Good:

• Ease of use Edmodo is one of the easiest learning applications I have ever used. The students are familiar with the layout because yeah, it is a lot like Facebook and they can Facebook in their sleep. From a teacher's perspective organizing and publishing is also pretty easy.


• Ability to stay connected with students From snow days, swine flu, extended absences, or just attending to a conference teachers are able to always connected with their students and give them new homework or remind them of homework that is due, or other upcoming events.


• Its mobile Students can sign up to have alerts, notifications, links, or events sent directly to their cellphones. Also, Edmodo has a great interactive mobile site for iPhones and Droids (more on the Blackberry later).


• It collaborative Students are able to post on the main message board for the entire class and have discussion about upcoming tests, assignments, readings, etc.


• Its private Since you need an access code to sign up for the class, if you do not have one of those codes, you cannot participate in the class. This high standard of privacy has given me (and my administrators) great piece of mind and allowed for more leeway with allowing more social networking for classes.


• Support The support Edmodo offers is amazing! I had a question, sent them a message and had a response within an hour. From what I hear this is true throughout their network.

The Drawbacks:

• Student-student communication Students are not able to direct message each other unless you create specific groups that students can join. I can understand wanting to control this for younger students, but it should be an option for each class you created so older students could collaborate in real time on assignments by talking directly with each other instead of posting on the board for all to see.


• Digital Divide Some students in our district do not have access to internet at home and do not have a cell phone (or with one text messaging) so being able to log on to check assignment becomes a little more difficult because they will have to access Edmodo from the school library.


• Doesn't play well with Blackberry I have had a hard time navigating the mobile site on my Blackberry for whatever reason. It won't let me post/update from the browser. I hope they are able to change that soon so I can have the same accessability from my Blackberry as my students with iPhones and Droids do (I know, I know, fix the problem permanently by joining the iPhone dark side!)

The "Not Quite Explored Yet"

• The Edmodo Calendar Ok, to be honest I have explored that a bit, but right now it seems a little too clumsy for me to do all my lesson planning in.


• RSS Feed You can have an RSS feed from your favorite blogs fed right into your class page so the updates can be viewed by your students with ease. I am going to spend some time this summer looking for blogs to incorporate into my class sites.


• Assignment Grading There is a feature that allows students to turn in their homework online. You can then grade it and score it right there online. The score will then show up on the students home page. A pretty cool feature that I look forward to exploring in the near future.

In closing, if you are looking for a great social networking site that is private, safe, easy to use for both you and your students check out Edmodo. If you already use it in class, I'd be interested in hearing from you and how you use incorporate it in your classroom. Feel free to comment below or contact me via Twitter @jjanczak

Big Blue Button and Teaching/Meeting Online

My county uses Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate) for our online classes (and will soon be letting teachers use it for their own purposes).  But you can use Big Blue Button for free to teach your students (as I tell my students it could mean the end of snow days) online.  Not only that, but think about how you could have meetings with teachers from across your county, state or the US.  For example my county has an annual meeting between AP teachers and this would be a good way to do it.  As you can see from the video above you can record your screencast, see the other participants (if you choose), have a whiteboard, can share your desktop or just show a PowerPoint.  There are also a bunch of tools, such as being able to mute students, an IM board for the entire group or for one on one and more.  Oh and best of all it is entirely FREE! 

Kahoot for Competitive Quizzes

I really enjoy the way the Internet works.  I just finished watching a movie with my girls and now that they are headed to bed, I just checked Twitter and found a new follower on my account by named Mr Koz who in turn led me to Glenn Wiebe both of whom had posted on Kahoot.  That made me wonder if Richard Byrne had posted on it and sure enough he just did a few days ago.

So what is Kahoot.  It is a bit like PollEverywhere which I have posted on in the past which lets you put up questions in front of your classroom using your LCD and your students can answer quick review questions using any Internet connected device.

• The difference here is that students compete against others in the classroom
• they can use any name they want 
• do not have to give anything other than that) 
• you can take other people's quizzes and use them as well.  
• you can set a timer

So for example here is one on

• Greece and Rome
• The Progressive Era
• Nigeria (we are starting this in AP Comp on Thursday)
• Inflation

Now it is looking less like I will have school in person on Tuesday so I am thinking that I might use Kahoot in my AP Comparative's online classroom (yes we meet on snow days) to see if my students have done their work.

Images and Citing Them

Yes t is a snow day and I am all caught up in my grading and have everything set for the next week, so hence times for a bunch of posts t oday.

To that end the video above shows you how to quickly weed out images that do not have citations and how to then get the citations.

I got this from Chad Kafka's Google+ post. 

A Little Fun

I am one of those teachers who actually teach all the way up to winter break, but I do allow kids to bring in "learning food" so that we can relax a bit, but still learn.  Being a techie we spent a few minutes with "tech fun" as well.  For example if you go to Google, type in "let it snow" and after your screen has fogged up, use the cursor to write as if it were a fogged up window.  Other fun can come from writing "do a barrel roll" in a Google search engine or even seeing what you get when you write "where is Chuck Norris" in the search engine. Have fun and know that I will continue putting up updates over the winter break.