Technology Adventures with Beverly
October 23rd and 30th
There will not be a Technology Adventures with Beverly next week.
I will be back the following week with more technology news you can use.
A Few Reminders!
Twitter Chat Tonight!
Digital Breakout Win a $20 Starbucks Gift Card
Fall is here and you would love to celebrate with a Starbucks Limited-Time Fall Frappuccino® beverage. When you go to look for your gift card, you find out that it has been locked away.
Break the code and you might be the lucky winner of a $20 Starbucks gift card.
All Fort Worth ISD employees breaking the code will be entered into the gift card drawing. You must use your FWISD email to be eligible. One entry per email address. Contest ends October 27th at 5 pm.
Look for clues and solve the puzzles found at the link below. Place your codes in the included form.
Our Favorite Pumpkin Thing
Pumpkin Bread appears to be the winner!
Pumpkin Bread recipe from Betty Crocker.
Have it Your Way!
One Lesson, Four Ways
There are a lot of choices when deciding how to deliver digital lesson content. So you can compare, I've recreated the same lesson four different ways.
The four formats are:
1. PowerPoint
2. Google Slides
3. ActivInspire Flipchart
4. Promethean Classflow
The lesson is "create a poem or sentences about Fall using word squares."
I will be discussing the pros and cons of each format. Reviewing these lessons should help you decide what format to use and when.
Each format has a link so you can download the lesson to your computer.
PowerPoint
I started by creating the activity in PowerPoint. The reason being, you can turn a Powerpoint into a Google slides presentation or an ActivInspire flipchart.
Pros: PowerPoint is a common format and relatively easy to use. Graphics are easy to move and manipulate.
Cons: PowerPoint does not have the drag and copy command like ActivInspire. Google slides works better with Google Classroom.
Google Slides
I uploaded my Powerpoint to my Google Drive. Then double-clicked on the PowerPoint to open it. Once the file open, I used the "open with" by clicking on the arrow at the top of the window. I told Google to open the presentation with Google Slides. The new Google Slide presentation will be in your Google Drive.
Pros: It is very easy to distribute a Google Slides presentation using Google Classroom. Google Classroom allows you to make a separate copy of your presentation for each of your students.
Cons: Google slides has to be used through Google Drive. Not all graphics work well with Google Presentations.
ActivInspire Flipchart
I was able to upload the PowerPoint presentation into ActivInspire using the import command. To make this work you need to do the following.
1. Save the PowerPoint file with a name of 15 characters or less. Make sure the file name has no spaces.
2. Save the PowerPoint on your computer desktop and make sure the PowerPoint is closed before you import.
3. Import the PowerPoint as objects so you can manipulate the objects on the page.
Pros: ActivInspire is a very common in Fort Worth ISD. The flipchart will work well on the Promethean Board.
Con: Outside of a school district ActivInspire is not very common, so students will not be able to open the file without the software.
ClassFlow Lesson
ActivInspire is slowly transitioning to ClassFlow. ClassFlow can be accessed online or through a desktop version. The online version is free and does not need a serial number. The Desktop version requires licensing confirmation every three months by attaching your laptop to a Promethean Board.
You can upload your ActivInspire lesson to ClassFlow online and convert it to a ClassFlow lesson. If your students are using devices, you can send a copy of the lesson to the student, and they can then interact with the lesson on a device.
ClassFlow desktop can be downloaded from the Fort Worth ISD Software Center.
Pros: ClassFlow lessons are saved in the cloud, so you have a backup. ClassFlow works on a variety of devices.
Cons: Flipcharts converted in ClassFlow don't always keep their attributes. ClassFlow Lessons sent over the network are sometimes slow.
Happy Fall!
Email: beverly.burks@fwisd.org
Website: beverlyedtech.weebly.com
Phone: 817-401-9700
Twitter: @beverlyedtech