The Power of Formative Assessment

How do you truly know students understand what you are teaching? Do they really grasp the concepts? Formative assessments are designed to give students specific feedback that will help them grow in understanding and guide them to mastery. Let's get explicit and intentional with our instruction.

One great tool to help you with formative assessment is Peardeck. It is an online interactive presentation tool that features a variety of question types to get instant feedback from your students. It can be used for live presentations, center rotations or homework.

You can create decks from scratch or import content from Powerpoint, Google Slides, or pdfs. It's all saved in your Google Drive with unlimited space.

Be sure to also visit The Orchard for some great example decks at https://www.peardeck.com/orchard

It's Not Just About Going Paperless

The wide variety of technology tools that are flooding the market for classroom use can be overwhelming.  There seems to be fewer excuses not to make teaching materials, better yet, learning materials digital.  However, it's not just about going paperless or making all our materials digital.  That doesn't necessarily change much in the classroom for a student.  Teachers must examine how to take advantage of this opportunity and make a transformation in their teaching strategies. 

As classrooms become more digital there can be a tendency to teach the same way as always.  Teacher must embrace how making things digital provides them a great opportunity to increase collaboration and interactivity.  Technology must be leveraged to unleash a student's skills and show their mastery and not merely used to create digital worksheets.

Save Time Adding Contacts in Gmail

Did you know you could possibly save time adding individual contacts by simply typing in their email addresses first? Here are the procedures.

• Click the App Launcher. (waffle icon)
• Click Contacts.
• Click the red/white plus button.
• Instead of typing their name first, type their email address.
• Click Save. Depending on what the person shared publicly, more contact information may be automatically added for you.