Flipping the Classroom with EdPuzzle.

If you ever want great professional development and have a random hour to spare check out edweb.net. There are tons of great webinars on technology in the classroom, grant writing, pretty much anything you can think of. Also, you get a certificate for doing professional development for one hour. I was on there one night and introduced to EdPuzzle.

EdPuzzle is a site that allows you to edit youtube videos, or upload your own videos for students to watch. The part I love about EdPuzzle is that you can add questions to the video. The video will pause, and students have to answer the question before they can move on with the rest of the video. They have the option to re-watch a section as well. I used EdPuzzle in my classroom, I had 3 special needs students in my class. It was great because they could re-watch a section over and over again until they got it, and they were doing the same work as the rest of the class! You also can track whether or not a student did (or is doing) his or her work. I love this when I am on a conference and not at school. I can get on EdPuzzle and look at how productive my students are being with the sub (and email them if they are not).

You can see here what student watched the EdPuzzle, and what students did.

The other part of EdPuzzle I love is that it ranks students from lowest to the highest in your class. It's instant data that can drive your teaching the next time you meet with the students. A math teacher at a school I taught at used EdPuzzle and completely flipped her classroom. Students would go home, do the EdPuzzle, and come to school and do the assignment where she could help them in person. She said that her quiz scores improved from using EdPuzzle.

EdPuzzle color codes students that need help.

I am debating on flipping my agriculture classroom at my new school. The fact that I have an awesome shop, and access to a greenhouse, means I can do more labs. My thought is that I could create modules on EdPuzzles students need to go through, then have them do labs one they master the content. It's a working progress, but I may try it in a few of my courses.

It's a Kahoot!

Last school year when I was introduced to Kahoot, I thought to myself, “Sweet! an individual jeopardy!” I used it for a review in all of my classes, but I found that students towards the end of the school year when I was reviewing for finals, they were getting “Kahoot-ed” out. 

I wanted to figured out more ways to use Kahoot in my classroom than just a review game. I wanted to bring it into instruction.  I came up with 3 ways, that are very successful.

• Discussion after a reading the text.
• When you assign a reading to students to read at home, how do you know if they read and understand the reading? Often we quiz students the morning after, and then lecture. Why don’t we quiz and lecture at the same time? By playing Kahoot you are getting feedback on concepts over the reading. And because of this, you know what you need to discuss/explain more. It also brings every student into the conversation in some way.

• True/False Pretest/Pre-lesson
• Ever have a time when you can’t get students motivated for a lesson? I need to teach safety to my Agriculture, Power, Structure, and Technology, and students typically grown when I start the lesson. I started playing a true/false Kahoot before class with accidents, safety tips, etc. The momentum from the game of Kahoot keeps them going for the rest of the lesson.

• Ghost Mode!
• In the winter of last school year Kahoot came out with ghost mode. Ghost mode is where the students play once, then play again against themselves. I use ghost mode in my classroom by having the students play at the beginning of the class period, teach the lesson, then try to beat themselves in ghost mode at the end. Students think it’s fun to see improvement from the beginning of class to the end.

Students can play against themselves in ghost mode!