Take Your Presentations to the Next Level

Have you ever been in one of these situations?

• You're teaching a lesson that students are struggling with and they ask so many questions that you can't keep up.
• You're teaching a lesson and the kids ask you questions you're not sure of answers for so you tell them you'll look them up later but then forget what the questions are.
• You're teaching a lesson and at the end you ask if there are any questions; you're sure some students must have questions but they're just not speaking up because they're too shy to ask in front of everyone.
• You're teaching a lesson and the questions are coming in fast and furious and you can't keep up with all of them.

Chances are, you've experienced at least one of these scenarios if you're a teacher. And chances are, you've also wished for a way to corral all those questions. After all, kids asking questions is a good thing -- it means they're involved in their learning, they're trying to make meaning out of what they are hearing. It just doesn't sit right to leave questions unanswered.

Here's some good news: you CAN manage all those questions! When sharing a lesson using Google Slides, you can enable your audience to ask questions in a back channel during the presentation! What happens is a link appears at the top of the screen for participants to type in so they can ask questions.

First, just click the arrow next to Present and choose Presenter View.

Click Start New to start a new Q & A session.

The participants see a link they can go to at the top of the screen.

Here is what they see when they go to that link:

A person can ask a question anonymously, and participants can give a thumbs up or a thumbs down (why that option is available baffles me, personally) to a question. A good way to encourage students to use the thumbs up option would be to click that if they think that is a good question or if they have the same question. You can use that as a gauge for how important it is to get that question answered -- the more thumbs ups, the more urgent.

Here is what you as the presenter see when a question comes in:

This is a great way to engage your students in your lessons and give them a way to participate. It is also great for you to have a record of what kinds of questions students asked about the lesson to help you prepare for the next time you teach it.

Give it a try! Share your experience with this in the comments! Or, better yet, can you maybe invite me in to observe your class when you use this? 

Want this information in a step by step format? Check out this page from the Help Forum!

True Confessions 2: Electric Boogaloo

(Is there anyone in the district old enough to get the reference in the title? Anyone? Anyone? I guess I'm old....)

While we were gone over the break, I stumbled on this post about teachers who resist change. I was hoping it might give me some ideas for how to help teachers who are concerned about our shift to 1:1 next year. I don't know that I would say that we have teachers in the district who are resistant to change, but I know that some are more excited about it than others, which is probably par for the course. But I wanted to share my own thoughts about this to hopefully help everyone feel at ease (or even be super excited) about being a 1:1 district next year!

The article says that it appears that teachers who resist change fall into 1 of 4 categories:

• Those who resist change because they're not comfortable with their administrators
• Those who resist change because they don't have enough confidence in themselves
• Those who resist change because it is so much work
• Those who resist change because they just don't want to change

I've found myself at any given point in my career in any 1 of these 4 camps.

I've worked with admins in the past whose ideas I resisted simply because I didn't like who came up with the ideas. Sometimes the ideas really were lousy, but sometimes they were good and I was having a hard time separating the idea from the person. The way I manage to overcome this is to find a neutral third party to talk with. Often that person can help me see the idea for what it is rather than for who it's from, and this helps me embrace the change more easily.

I personally fight the lack of confidence in myself on a daily basis. I have this really great job that I really do love, yet when I find myself in the company of people who are so much better than I am at certain things, I can feel threatened and insecure and want to give up. I can come up with a great idea for something but sabotage myself by telling myself that it's too much for me and I'm not good enough to do it. What I do when I am feeling insecure or lack confidence is let other people push me right out of my comfort zone. I am surrounded by coworkers, family, and friends who tell me I CAN do the things I want to do -- I'm strong enough, I'm smart enough, and the hold me accountable. I don't want to let those people down, so whatever new thing I am trying to do, well, I step right off that high dive and do it.

Since I am a lazy person at my core, resisting change because it's just too much work is another constant battle for me. What I have to do to combat this is be focused on others. This new change -- will it be a good thing for the kids in this district? How about for the teachers? How excited will everyone be when this happens? What new things will happen once we do this? The answers to those questions are what push me to get moving and tackle the changes rather than let someone else do all the hard work (liking things done MY way helps with this, too).

As far as just not wanting to change, well, I'm pretty fortunate that at the times I've felt like just coasting for the rest of my career, they've been just phases, slumps. It's normal to feel like you just don't want to do anything new, like what you're doing is fine and there's no need to change things up. After all, we teachers ARE only human. The catch is that once you're in a slump like this, you don't stay there. Again, here I rely on others to help me. I find people that I can whine and gripe to, but then I try to remember why I became a teacher (it's actually because of a really awful teacher I had in high school -- but that's a whole other story) and that draws me out of my slump.

So it looks to me like the common thread that keeps me pushing forward though change after change is people -- people who support me, people who count on me, people who have high expectations for me.

So my challenge to you is to do some soul searching. We are almost done with this school year -- our first full year using Google. The first year we rolled out a LOT of new devices. How do you feel? Knowing it's going to be another big shift next year with a device in every kid's hands, how do you feel? I hope you're excited. I hope you're looking forward to keeping up that growth mindset. I hope what you've experienced this year gives you the confidence to do ever more next year. But if you're not feeling all that excited, if you're feeling anxious or even downright hostile, I hope you can pinpoint the source of your concern and then, if it's something that I can help with, come to me. We can plan lessons together, we can troubleshoot things together, we can find resources for you and your students. If not me, then hopefully there are others you can talk to -- building levels techs, other teachers in your building. Find the people who can help you be comfortable with change and then we can all enjoy the ride!

Cool Tool Alert -- EquatIO

Today's post highlights a cool tool that Jeremy pushed out to students recently. This tool is called EquatIO. It is a Chrome extension, which means it lives on the Chrome browser toolbar and is accessible with one quick click of the mouse. And what's even more exciting is this a a math tool! I know that sometimes the math teachers have a hard time trying to make computers and Chromebooks fit into what they are doing, so I am hopeful that when tools like this come available, you find them useful and exciting for your kids to use!

EquatIO allows the user to create equations and formulas pretty easily by using the onscreen equations editor. It's premium features make it even easier! These allow equations to be created by handwriting either on a touchscreen or by drawing with a mouse, or by using voice input/dictation. Check out the video below to see how it works.


Another handy premium feature is the integration with Google Docs and Google forms (Sheets and Slides are on their way, too). With a simple mouse click, you can insert the equations you created into a Google Doc or Form to create formative and summative assessments very easily. Here is a video on how to use EquatIO with Google Docs:



And here is how to use it with Google Forms:


The good news: you can have 30 days of access to EquatIO's premium features for free to try them out. Once that 30 day trial is up, though, the only feature you'll have is the onscreen equation editor, so you'd have to copy and paste the formulas and equations you create. Not a huge hassle, but an extra step.

Give it a try; see what you think. Have your kids try it out in class. It was pushed out to them, so chances are at some point, they saw a window pop up on their screen asking to allow permissions for it. I'm sure some kids just blindly clicked "Allow", but some may have canceled it. If that happened, the extension is still accessible by click in the three dots in the upper right corner of the screen, then going to More Tools, then clicking on Extensions, then clicking the box to enable it.

Take the time to try out EquatIO and share your thoughts in the comments below!

P.S. -- My apologies to the teachers at TRS who read through this; I see Rachel sent out some documentation to you about how to use EquatIO, so I'm sure much of what I said was redundant. Think of this post as reteaching :-)

Safe YouTube

This week, I have a sort of guest post from NBG's Building Level Tech Specialist, Mary Jo Minarich. You may have seen her tip on how to use Safe YouTube, whether you saw it when she shared it with teachers at NBG or when our superintendent shared is district wide. You might be thinking, "If we already got this, why are we getting it again?" Well, that answer is easy: because this is so easy to do and can be a really helpful tool that it is worth sharing more than once!

Safe YouTube is a very easy way to show YouTube videos to your students without having to worry about the distracting and sometimes inappropriate ads and video suggestions that always are shown next to the video you are seeing. It also takes away all the comments from view, which can be a waste of time to read at best and completely offensive at worst.

Removing all the surrounding items on a YouTube video helps keep your students focused on the content of the video instead of scanning what's around it, asking for you to play other videos or calling attention to something they shouldn't be seeing at school. And like I said above, it is very easy to do -- it's simply a matter of a few clicks!

I encourage you to give this a try! Use it for stand-alone videos, videos you embed in presentations or QR codes, or videos you post to Google Classroom. Want to see how to do this step by step? Then check out Mary Jo's simple and engaging directions!