Techie Time with Tiff
Issue 7
Pear Deck Tips and Tricks:
Flashcard Factory:
Often we ask students to memorize vocabulary terms, but we know that memorization does not equal long-term retention. If we want those words to stick, we must introduce and reinforce them within a conceptual framework. Pear Deck’s Flashcard Factory was designed to help students build that framework.
If you’ve tried Flashcard Factory before, everything in the game is exactly the same—but we’re making it even easier to build, import, export and share your vocabulary lists!
Now you can copy and paste terms from a PDF right into the Flashcard Factory Editor. Do you have a list of terms but need to find the definitions? Use the Merriam-Webster integration to look up definitions as you create your list. Want to share your list with another teacher? All your vocab lists are saved in Google Drive and can be easily shared!
Teacher Shout Out:
Amanda Ballenger has been using this in her Accelerated Humanities class. She has stated that her students are loving it and has seen improvement. If you have any questions or need support setting this up please feel free to reach out to Amanda or me for help.
Here are 10 already made prompts to get your students thinking critically using our wonderful tool.
Schoology Tips and Tricks:
Setting Mastery in Schoology:
Try this:
- Give a 3 question warm-up at the beginning of the period
- Give a 2 question exit ticket at the end of every period.
Make sure you have added the Learning Standards to both the warm-up and the exit ticket. Do this for ONE week. At the end of the week, you have valuable data for RTI and you will know who has mastered the TEKS and who has not. Please come and see me if you need help with trying this out in your classroom
Calculated Grades
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
Grades calculated in Schoology my vary from the grades you have in Skyward. This is because they both calculate grades in a different way. You can use this document to fix the way Schoology calculates grades. This especially becomes an issue when you have the exact same grades in both grade books.
Mastery in Schoology - Since parents can see their child’s Mastery of TEKS in Schoology. Please make sure you are assigning TEKS to assignments, discussion, tests, quizzes, assessments...pretty much anything you do in Schoology. Here is some information about using Mastery in Schoology. The Mastery piece will help you when the district moves to Standard-Based Grading.
Due Dates in Schoology - when parents logged in to Schoology during our training sessions, many were concerned at the list of overdue assignments. Please make sure that if you are not worried about students turning the assignment in that you do not have a due date. If you change the due date to a later date, please make sure that you make the change in Schoology as well.
Absent Students - while everything for your class may be in Schoology, please make sure that if you have a student absent, they know where to go to find material that he/ she missed on the day he/she was absent.
Roadmap:
Tiffany Keiser
Email: tkeiser1@kleinisd.net
Website: https://techietiff.youcanbook.me
Phone: 832.249.5735
Twitter: @MsKeiser1