3 Little Things...

Back at school.  New kids.  New teachers.  Old issues that still need to be addresses yet again.

One big issue we face as teachers, especially is differentiating for the new students in secondary school.

I have introduced independently to many teachers this week 3 little things that are going to increase work flow for students, enable teachers to collect summative assessment pieces from those kids who are in academic Struggletown.

1.  Kaizena  (https://kaizena.com/) - give great feedback, provide ongoing verbal support.  Use it in conjunction with Google Docs. So far the response has been positive from students and parents.  Use it on the go!

2.  TechSmith Snagit -(https://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html) - screen casting apps and software is available everywhere but does it connect directly to your Google Drive?  Does it move the asset into a place where you can then decide what you want to do with?  My life of screen casting has been made so easy with this app and extension to Chrome.  Teachers can create simple explanatory screen casts and then share it with students.  I <3 Snagit!!!!

3.  Speech Recognition - Ok this is a Google Doc add on.  It is powerful and works the majority of the time.  Students who have problems getting their ideas down because they are stopped by their lack of literacy - not their lack of words, can speak into their mic.  What they say is typed - and might I say fairly accurate.  Students check it and it goes straight into their Google doc.

In large class sizes, where there is just one teacher - these three little apps, software options and add ons make life a whole lot easier to cater for all!