This session was presented by Kim Randall who makes her living doing these types of workshops around the world. However, while sitting through the session, I thought she was a classroom teacher, because all that she suggested seemed very practical, do-able, and valuable. Here I'll recap of some of the strategies she suggested and I'll provide you the list of resource links she accompanied them with. Although you won't be able to use these strategies quite the way she anticipates (because our students won't have Google accounts until next year) with some modifications they could be used this year.
Strategy One- Vocabulary Development - this strategy could be used when teaching or introducing a wide variety of material. Kim turned the session into a classroom and the session participants into engaged learners. She first showed us a video on the City of London, a city of 11,000 people which is surrounded by London, a city of 7,000,000 people. She paused the four minute video repeatedly to allow us to write down seven to ten key words or phrases. Then she had us put ourselves into groups in which we agreed on a group list of 7-10 key words or phrases, which a group recorder typed these into a Google form. From the form the terms went into a Google drive spread sheet from which she copied and pasted into Wordle to create a word cloud.
Strategies Two and Three - Using Google Draw Graphic Organizers - If you have a Google account, perhaps you are familiar with Google Drive. For those of you who aren't familiar with Google Drive, let me give you a brief introduction, as NEXT YEAR you will have an ACPS Google account. Google Drive is similar to DropBox in that it provides cloud (online) storage. Additionally, there is an online word processor, presentation creator, spreadsheet, etc. Each of these applications can be used collaboratively--two or more people can edit the document simultaneously.
Among these applications is "Google Draw"--which I had previously disregarded as not all that relevant to the high school classroom. Well, I was wrong. Kim Randall had us take what we had learned and collaboratively enter it into a couple of different graphic organizers. I believe she made these herself, but there are a number of templates available for Venn diagrams and that sort of thing.
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Strategie Four - Three Facts and a Fib. Another activity session participants engaged in was to read through four statements and try to identify the fib. These predictions were entered into a Google form so that the "class" could immediately see how many class members chose each of the four statements. We then watched a YouTube EDU video on sea turtles to find out if we were correct. This seems to be a very useful way of getting students to pay close attention to educational videos. Of course there are many variations of this activity--for example having students watch a video and then create their own list of three facts and a fib.
Strategy Five - Half the Story. With this one, the teacher takes an image and simply crops out half of it. The students then speculate on what the missing part of the image shows.
Strategy Six - Caption It - Show the students an image and have them create a caption for it, thus encouraging them to study and analyze the image. As a former social studies teacher I can see a lot of applications for this,.
Here is the list of resources Ms. Randall provided for use with these strategies--or some strategy of your own.
