Kahoot It!

I'm not normally one for flash and jazz in an app or website, but I'll make an exception for Kahoot! 

I was introduced to this during our FIU summer sessions as a way to engage students, get them to collaborate, and review information at the same time. If you're familiar with pub trivia, you're familar with the format of Kahoot! games. In a nutshell, you (the teacher) create a multiple choice quiz, and when you play with a class, they answer timed questions, the faster they answer correctly, the more points they get, and the leaderboard updates with standings after each question. The only problem I noticed when playing with my homeroom was that they got a little overly competitive and one team got really upset when they weren't in the top 5 anymore! But I guess that's a good problem to have, when they're so into an activity that they want to be successful that badly... right?!

Let me walk you through how to set up and play a Kahoot! quiz:

1. Visit getkahoot.com to set up your free account.

2. Play the intro Kahoot! to get a feel for how it works! You can do this with colleagues, with one of them acting as the teacher, or you can toggle between tabs in your browser - one of them being the teacher dashboard and one being the student screen. But this can be confusing. So use it as an excuse to get together with your colleagues and try it out together!

3. When you're ready to create your own Kahoot!, click on that button and set up your preferences for this quiz.

You will see there's the question text box, the optional image, indicator for whether its a question for points and a drop down box for timed questions (once all students answer, though, it does move on automatically.) You will then type  in our four multiple-choice answers and click the button below to change the right answer to "Correct."* I haven't yet figured out how to make it shuffle the answers each time, but maybe that's coming down the road.

*You can select more than one answer to be correct.

4. When your quiz is finished, you'll be able to access it by clicking on "Me" in the top left corner of your screen.  When you're ready to play, click the "Play" button to launch the quiz in your classroom.

5. Project the Game Pin screen and instruct students to join with the game pin. Or, as our instructor did in the summer FIU session, just project it and tell the kids to join the game. Let them figure it out and develop their problem-solving skills!

As I did it in my FIU session and later with my homeroom, this is a great format in which to have students pair up and collaborate on the quiz together using 1 device between the two of them. 

Each team will select a team nickname...

...which will then pop up on the Game Pin screen. Once all teams are ready, click "Start Now" and get ready, because it'll get rolling pretty quickly.

6. Each question will show on the screen for a few seconds before the choices even pop up. Once they do, the correct answer will have a corresponding shape which the students will use to make their choice.

Teacher/Projected Screen

Student Answer Screen

7. Once all groups have answered or the time is up, whichever comes first, the correct answer will be revealed along with how many teams selected which answer. (Formative assessment, anyone?!)

8. When the quiz is all over, you can crown the winning team! It will even give you options for exporting the quiz results and information. 

Get with some colleagues, try it out, and have some fun!

And for those of you from PJHS, check out the Student Handbook Kahoot! I put together for my homeroom. And you can edit it to suit your own group of students.

Happy Kahoot-ing!

Pinterest for Beginners

Yes, Pinterest can be a great way to gather recipes.

Yes, Pinterest can be good for some laughs.

Yes, Pinterest can make you feel totally inadequate.

But Pinterest can also be a fantastic resource for educators, bringing together people from all corners who have a common interest and common goals.  Last year, I was pinning a bunch of music lesson plans and saw many pins in common with a high school classmate of mine. Its like we were sitting in the teacher's lounge tossing ideas around, when in reality we hadn't seen each other since high school and I had only heard through the grapevine that she was also a music educator.

Here's what you need to do to get started:
~ Go to www.pinterest.com.
~ Create a profile with your own username and password.
~ Click on your name in the top right corner and go to "Find Friends" to connect with others through your e-mail or Facebook contacts.
~ You can browse categories in the top left corner. Start with "Education!"
~ Look for particular ideas using the search bar.
~ As you browse through the pictures and summary, click on the picture to be taken to the original site of the idea. There, you can dig deeper into the resource and decide if its something you'd like to come back to in the future.
~ Once you've found something you'd like to remember, click on the red "Pin It" button.

~ Once you've pinned it, you'll be asked to create a board. Think of this like a cork board or bulletin board with a theme. You can put all of your school-related pins together, or create more specific boards ("Teaching Rhythm," "First Grade Music," "Jazz Resources," etc...)

Get to searching, get to pinning, and don't be too overwhelmed by everything that's out there!

You can start by following two of my boards from my Pinterest account. (You'll have to create your username/login first, and then you can navigate to these pages):
School Stuff (don't be intimidated by the creative title)
IMEC iPad Session 2014 (from my ILMEA conference presentation)

What's your Pinterest board that we can follow? What Pinterest boards do you recommend? 

Pod-what? Podcast!

When I bring a podcast in conversation, I usually get one of two responses:
"What's a podcast?"
or
"I've heard of podcasts, but I really don't listen to them."

There are lots of ways to describe podcasts: they are stand-alone radio shows, recordings you can listen to whenever you want, wherever you are, they are Portable-On-Demand (POD) broadcasts, etc... And they are all accurate. Here is a video from the "In Plain English" series (which I love! Check out more of their explanations on a huge variety of topics here.) that answers the question, "What is a Podcast?" in plain English (of course!):

I started listening to Podcasts when I started running. I couldn't stand listening to music because every time a song ended, I'd think, "Holy cow, that was only 4 minutes?!" But with Podcasts, for me the time just flies by. Now, I listen to them on my drive in to work, while I'm making dinner, when I'm filing music at school, really anywhere I have my computer or iPhone.

There is so much potential for using podcasts not just for your own professional development but also to introduce your students to a wide range of topics, to help them become more knowledgeable on topics that interest them, and to bring experts from around the world into your classroom. (I know that sounds cheesy, but isn't that a big part of using digital tools in the classroom?")

Let's take a look at using the Podcast app from Apple on my iPad - the app is what you call a "Podcast Catcher" or a "Pod-catcher." Its an app that lets you subscribe to a podcast you like or you can just download individual episodes on topics that interest you.

CORRECTION: I intended to find the MENSA podcast and mistakenly showed the Free Libre Open Source Software podcast. The MENSA podcast can be found here.) 

Want some ideas to get you started? Here are some of my favorite podcasts, some are professional (music ed, ed tech) and some are just for fun! You can listen to them online or search for them by name in the Podcast app.

The Google Educast (Google Apps for Education) (on EdReach, a huge source of podcasts in the field of education)
Dr. Frankel's Podcast Page (Music Education)
NPR: Pop Culture Happy Hour (Music, Books, Movies, TV)
The Alton Browncast (Food, Lifestyle) *On hiatus, but worth downloading past episodes*
Go Fork Yourself with Andrew Zimmern & Molly Mogren (Food, Restaurants, Foodie Culture)
Ask Me Another (Trivia, Riddles, Brainteasers)

Please share your favorite podcasts in the comments - I'm always looking for new ideas and new podcasts to listen to!

Google Classroom is Here!

I almost titled this post "Geeking Out Over Google." It would be a totally appropriate title.

Google Classroom was initially going to be by invitation only, and those interested could "apply" to be selected when Google Classroom was launched in mid-September. However, over 100,000 educators expressed interested in being a beta tester, and with the beginning of the school year approaching, Google decided to open it to anyone and to launch it before the beginning of the school year. (It sounds like they got a lot of feedback from teachers about launching a new resource after the beginning of the year. Its tough to change lanes mid-class, so to speak!)

And holy cow, is this a fun tool!

Up front, it is not as powerful as some other classroom dashboards out there, but for someone who is excited about going paperless, this really is the perfect place to start. Its streamlined, is efficient, and because its a Google product, it works seamlessly with Google Drive and other Google Apps for Education (GAFE). And since my school is a GAFE school, all other teachers and students are users and are easily added to my class.  Once my classes are finalized in the next week, I'm going to start setting up classes in Google Classroom, but just to get started, I did set up a test class and it really is so easy.

The part I'm most looking forward to? You can push out assignments as "copies" to your students, so they don't have to copy and move it to their own drive. Then, when they open the file, it will automatically re-name the file with their own username (EX: "Genres of Music" will re-name to "Genres of Music - Lori Evenhouse" upon opening). Then, students can share it with the teacher "For Comment" as they work, and then when its finished, they will click "Turn In" and it will automatically submit to the class teacher and change the student's permission on their unique document to "Can View" instead of "Can Edit." So streamlined! But more information on that to come once my own classes are up and running. After all, one of my Big Ideas is to get comfortable using something on your own before teaching it or implementing it.

Ready to try it for yourself? Go to classroom.google.com and be sure you're signed in with your school GAFE account.

Happy Google-ing!

Keep it Clean

I love playing music in my classroom while students work, and they love to talk about the music they hear. I've worked to create a classroom Pandora station that plays quality music from a wide variety of genres, but there's that nagging fear in the back of my mind that something inappropriate will sneak through. I did a little digging and found a way to filter explicit music to keep it out of my classroom station. Of course, this doesn't mean it will all be appropriate for 11-13 year old students, but its a really good way to start!

Here's a link from Pandora to explain how to do this: http://goo.gl/9KmdK

What music do you feature or play in your classroom?

6 Possible Things with Google

Recently, I've started the process to become certified by Google - first as a Google Certified Teacher, then a Google Certified Trainer, and hopefully one day have the opportunity to become a Google Certified Educator.

As I go through the process, I'll share a few tidbits that I've discovered along the way. Maybe connected, maybe just interesting, and hopefully some things that will make your life a little easier!

1) If you are composing an e-mail in Gmail and include the word "attachment" in the message and do not attach a file, it will ask you if you want to send without an attachment. How many times have we done that?! A cool new feature.

2) When doing a Google search, you can narrow down the results by reading level (Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced). For example, I did a search for Dorothy Irene Height, an American activist featured on Google's homepage today. If I'm looking for materials to use in my middle school homeroom, I would probably want information at the basic to intermediate level. To find this information, type into the search bar as normal, and when your results come in, click on "Search Tools" under the search bar, and then click on the "All Results" drop-down menu and go to "Reading Level." From there, you can select for which level you would like to see results to read and start discussion on the work of an important (but little-known)
figure in American history.

Reading level options to learn about Dorothy Irene Height

3) Google Images can be a fun and interesting way to see the world, but a little overwhelming if you are looking for something specific. Clicking on "Search Tools" after doing your initial search, you can narrow down the results by size, color, type, time, and (perhaps most importantly) usage rights. After all, we should set a good example for our students by using others' work responsibly and respectfully. Go Digital Citizenship!

Limiting my results to "Labeled for Noncommercial Reuse"

4) Trying to plan a meeting with a group that is constantly on the go? (Just try planning a meeting with a music department that has two teachers at one school full-time and three teachers that teach part of each week at five different schools each!) When you go to add a new event on your Google Calendar and go to "Edit Event," scroll down the page and click on "Find a Time" (in gray). From there, you can invite others to the meeting and if they are colleagues who also use Google Calendar and have shared their calendar with you (even just to view), Google Calendar will find a time at which you are all free to meet.

5) Since YouTube is owned by Google, here's a shortcut for you - in your address bar in Google Chrome, if you start typing "YouTube," Google will recognize the address and auto-complete. Once it recognizes it, hit "Tab," and search for whatever video your are looking for (and eliminate students getting distracted by whatever ad YouTube has featured on their frontpage).

6) Give your students and yourself extra practice researching online with Google-A-Day. (New feature - you can play the basic game without a Google+ account.) Make it a class competition to see who can find it the fastest or compete with other homerooms or class periods for a little team-building. Or just learn a fun fact each day and get really good at researching while you are at it!

What is your one incredibly helpful, fun, or interesting Google Tip you can pass along?

Tech Review: AirServer

AirServer 5.0 with Recording
www.airserver.com
From the website:
"AirServer is the most advanced AirPlay receiver for Mac and PC. It allows you to receive AirPlay feeds, similar to an Apple TV, so you can stream content or mirror your display from your iOS devices or Macs running Mountain Lion or Mavericks."

In an hour of desperation at a recent conference, I discovered AirServer as a way to present what is on my iPad mirroring it on my MacAir. It turned out that while I had figured on an HDMI input on the conference center projector to AirPlay to my AppleTV, this was not the case. I frantically searched for an alternative, and AirServer met with raving reviews.

There are three types of licenses: Education ($7.99-$11.99), Personal ($14.99), and Business ($19.99). I am a known cheapskate when it comes to software and apps. If its free, I'll try it.  If its not, I probably won't give it a long look because I know a) its a slippery slope when it comes to buying and downloading programs and b) there are so many free resources out there, what's the point in paying?

However, there aren't many free ways to mirror a mobile device (iPad, iPhone) to a laptop. So if I'm going to pay for one, it had better be good!

With AirServer, I got more than I paid for. For the last few months, I've been asking colleagues, asking on Twitter about ways to record the screen of an iPad so that I can create tutorials for my students and screencast to my laptop. Think Jing, but for iPad. And wow was I happy to find that with the latest version of AirServer, a recorder is built into the window on my laptop! I can narrate as I go too, in order to explain what students are seeing in the video. 

The AirServer window on my laptop - I maximize the
window when projecting to my class.

Benefits

• Quickly and efficiently AirPlay to your laptop that is connected to a projector. Bypassing the AppleTV eliminates delays in audio and video that can sometimes trouble users during presentations
• Record presentations to share with students not in your class during that period or to distribute to your students as "How-To" videos and tutorials
• Students can follow what you do in real-time during class presentations
• Password-protect AirServer on your laptop so that students (or teachers who like to play practical jokes...) cannot AirPlay to your feed without permission

Drawbacks

• If you do not have a strong/reliable WiFi network that both your device and laptop are using, it can be difficult to keep them connected (not usually an issue with 1:1 schools)

Sample video for 8th Grade General Music:

I have not received any complimentary material or product from AirServer. I purchased this product myself and am writing this review of my own volition!