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Less Physics Mo Problems

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Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
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Pear Deck, Quizlet, GimKit Appsmash

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As a part of March Madness, my students did a EdTech Tournament bracket. The finals were between Gimkit and Pear Deck. Pear Deck won, but my students love both tools. 




So when someone asked me if I ever thought of an appsmash between the two, I had to try something out. This is a triple app smash that links Pear Deck to Gimkit using Quizlet. The appsmash uses student generated explanations, definitions, and visuals to create a GimKit.
If you are not familiar with Pear Deck Vocabulary it allows students collaborate in the creation of flashcards from a list of predetermined terms or concepts. These flashcards are have both a written and visual component. For all the details on Pear Deck Vocabulary, I’d recommend heading over to Getting Started with Flashcard Factory.
If you are not familiar with Gimkit. It is a formative quiz game that allows students to work at questions at their own pace while competing against their classmates. In addition, participants can go to an in game store to purchase power ups. Learn more about Gimkit in this tutorial.
My students LOVE Gimkit, but it can take a while to create one. That’s why I was looking to harness the power of student created explanations to create a Gimkit set. So, not only are learners creating their own representations of terms and concepts. These representations are being pooled together and being used as a resources to lead formative assessments.
In Pear Deck Flashcard Factory, once a class created a set of flashcards, they can be exported to Quizlet and students can practice with them there. But, you can also export them from Quizlet to create a Gimkit. That’s the general flow of the appsmash.
To test out this appsmash, I put together a Pear Deck Vocabulary List of terms and concepts in our AP Physics Class dealing with Thermodynamics. Students created their own explanations for the terms and concepts along with visual representations.

The video below will show you how I took my students explanations from Pear Deck Flashcard Factory and got them into Gimkit by using Quizlet as the middleman. 



As you will see, I usually don’t provide any definition for learners in Pear Deck, so that section is blank and I put the example in there. If you provide definitions, you can delete them or just be sure that there is no line break between the definition and example by doing a little backspacing after pasting into Gimkit (see below).


Gimkit takes the term and explanation from each card and creates a multiple choice question for each one. It fills out the other choice options by adding other explanations as choices. The one potential issue is if you have multiple flash cards for a single term. It is possible that there are 2 correct answers for a single term because of the randomization of possible answers. So just be sure to double check your questions to make sure there aren’t multiple correct answers for a single question.
This is the first time I’ve tried this so I’m sure I’ll be looking to iterate the process. 

If you have Gimkit hacks, I would love to hear them!!!
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