Elisabeth Park EDU 585 First Blog

Exploring Pear Deck Part II Pear Deck is a Google add-on in Google Slides that makes your Slides much more interesting and it helps with student engagement. It is a really easy to use add-on, but you might have to spend some time getting used to some of their features. Some of the things you have to remember is to sign-up and start their 30- day free trial. This way you will be able to get a real taste of using Pear Deck. I made the mistake to not signing up for their 30-free trial last time. After I got a taste of their premium membership, I like Pear Deck a lot more. Now, I keep extending my free trial but there will be a day that they will stop me from extending it. I am considering showing Pear Deck to the rest of my team and convince them to use it as well. Hopefully, we will be able to get their premium membership soon paid by our administrators. Here is an image showing you what each membership allows you to do: This time around, I chose to use Pear Dec...

This week, I've decided to give Seesaw a try. I heard about it so many times that I wanted to see why teachers love it so much. Also, I've learned a lot from Ms. Dana Dembecks's presentation that it was a no-brainer to try one of the many tech tools she mentioned. One of them was Seesaw. Seesaw it's a great tool for students to keep a journal of everything that they do in class daily. Teachers can also use it to assess students' knowledge and skills by uploading or adding activities in Seesaw. Moreover, parents can even log in to Seesaw and see what their children are doing on a daily basis.  Getting started with Seesaw wasn't hard at all. I think, overall, that the creators of Seesaw took a lot of things into consideration. They make it super easy for teachers to create an account and to help you immediately start by adding a class. Also, they give you tips and tricks on how to get started by sending you an email right after you created...

  Trying Something New Last time, I used Quizizz as my formative assessment tool. It was all multiple choice questions so I decided to give Pear Deck a try. I wanted something more interactive and that would help my students think more outside the box. Also, I heard that Pear Deck is similar to Nearpod. I used  Nearpod before so I was curious to try this new add-on to Google Slides. I started it by watching the “How Pear Deck Works” video since I already had the Pear Deck add on  to my Google Slides. However, if you do not have it here is the link that shows you how to  create an account with Pear Deck and add it to your Google Slides:  https://help.peardeck.com/article/168-create-a-pear-deck-account Furthermore, I like that the students have the option to be anonymous while participating in  class. This will make them feel at ease. I don't remember if Nearpod has that option. I think they do but it is always good to also ha...

    I believe that teachers should always try to improve their skills as much as they can by evaluating  themselves in a regular basis. I struggled a little last time to make my Google Slides a little more  interesting, and that helped me to become better at Google Slides! I know you have to move backwards  a little to move forwards sometimes. I was frustrated but I was able to learn a valuable lesson. This time around, I was able to analyze what I did and change it a little so that it flows better.  In addition to making some changes, I added some more slides that will allow my students practice  their prepositions. I think they will have fun doing the activities and it’s an easy way for me to check  if they understand how the prepositions “in”, “on”, and “at” work. I will have to try it with my students,  and I will report back to you! :)  Here is my Google Slide! Enjoy and please let me know what you ...

        I’m currently teaching ESOL level 2 students, and I find myself always using Power Points or Google Slides. For this week’s project, I grabbed one of the Google slides I’ve created to add links in it. By adding links, it will help me go back and forth from one slide to another without wasting any time. I want to make this presentation to go as smoothly as possible. I created one slide with the question and link to the answer and vice versa. Therefore, it will be easier for me to have my students check their answers right then  at that moment. I am planning on using this Google Slide once I start teaching prepositions. I will have my students grab one of the mini whiteboards and a dry erase marker to write down their answers. I think and I hope that it will be a cool interactive and an easy little warm-up to do first thing in my class!   

Helping Students Become Independent Learners   I’m always looking into ways of helping my students become more independent and help them take ownership of their education. Currently, my students struggle a lot with that. A lot of them couldn't get the education they deserve in their own countries. Therefore, they lack confidence and they want words of affirmation from me every day. It breaks my heart seeing that. Thus, I decided to take advantage of having technology available in my classrooms and help them take over their learning little by little.     Therefore, I’ve created a digital classroom through Google Classroom and I added documents, videos and other things my students may need to be successful  in my classes. I try my best to use something called Hyperdocs. It’s amazing how students can click on those letters marked in “blue” and access all kinds of information I want them to access. It gives them a sense of security and ownership of thei...