After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content. The point of this post is to take a step back, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them. I don't take many yay me moments. But after 20 years, I think I'll soak this one in.
I was listening to the newest episode of the Shukes and Giff Podcast when they mentioned a new Chrome extension from the EdTech Team called AudioPlayer for Slides from EdTech Team. I was super excited to check it out as it allows users to record new audio and add it to a slide.
I teach physics in a co-taught classroom in which many of the students have difficulty demonstrating their understanding by composing written text. Many times they are able to successfully demonstrate their understanding verbally, though. This new extension will allow students to record their own audio explanations and add them to a slide to be played when viewed in presentation mode.
Last school year, we converted all of our lab reports from Google Docs to Google Slides as it allows for more robust creations and creates manageable chunking of tasks for learners who can easily get lost in long scrolling documents. In addition, it allows us to provide prompts and directions in the speaker notes leaving the majority of the canvas blank for learners to create. So, this new extension is a perfect fit for allowing all of our learners the ability to demonstrate understanding in the mode that suits them best. For example, a student may have a graph on a slide of their report in which they are expected to provide a detailed explanation for.
For some learners, describing the graph verbally may remove some barriers to demonstrating mastery that typing out a complete answer would present.
Below is a short video walkthrough of the app I created. I do a voice recording at one point so watch your audio level.
As you can see, it is not just for recording new audio. Existing audio can be added right from drive to the slide. It can be played on one slide or over multiple slides! So get the extension here. Then enable it and you'll be ready to go! Thank you EdTech Team for the great extension!
My only wish is that it didn't sit in the center of the screen when recording, or that it could be moved, as it blocks the current slide from being viewed. But, that is a minor complaint for a major leap forward in slide creation!
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