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Generate Instant Pear Decks

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  I’ll keep this short as the video explains most of you. Any new educational technology can be complicated to dig into from scratch as you attempt to align it to learning outcomes.  Well, a new feature that Pear Deck has introduced has taken a giant leap forward to help educators do just that.  Before we jump into the new features, if you are unfamiliar with Pear Deck and why my students and I consider it the #1 EdTech tool that helps their learning, check out the video in the previous blog post.   But if you are more concerned with why you should even dive into Pear Deck or learn about this new AI generation of Pear Deck sessions to a learning target, check out the video below. Like I said, I’m keeping it short so you have time to watch the video. If you have questions, please contact me at mohammam@elmbrookschools.org or the Pear Deck Learning team at support@deck.peardeck.com . Also, check out the amazing Stacey Roshan's video on this update. 
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Leveled Templates

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After listening to the latest episode of Google Teacher Tribe on templates in G Suite, I was inspired to share out how my co-teacher Andelee Espinosa and I handle leveled templates on our co-taught physics classroom.
In our classroom, we have a diverse range of student learning strengths and barriers to learning. To assist learners in the expression of learning, we create templates for labs, activities, and summative assessments. In addition, to reduce obstacles to expression for some learners, we create scaffolded templates. An example of this can be seen in our current unit on energy. One of the end of unit assessment options is an in-depth analysis of marble roller coasters we created last week.
Since all students worked on the marble coasters, we want to be sure all students have the opportunity to choose this as a potential option to demonstrate mastery of unit outcomes. To facilitate this, we have created 3 different files. While all levels address the same outcomes. each has different level of support.
The top level isn’t actually a template. It is a list of guidelines for students to create their own file from scratch.


The next level is a template with prompts. The prompts are found in the speaker notes. It has the same information as the top level, but provides learners with a structure to work from. Rather than having to create a structure for the whole file, students can focus on constructing a response in the blank space that they are given. 




Our third level is a scaffolded version. This version removes prompts from the speaker notes. It places those prompts within the slide as direct questions or sentence starters. In addition, we break up larger processes like data tables into smaller more manageable pieces. 
These different templates are delivered to students using Doctopus. Doctopus is a Google Sheet add-on which creates & distributes student copies of a single file such as a Google doc, sheet, of slideshow. What is nice is the ability to send different files to different students under the same name.

  So we are able to send each student their own copy of whichever level of support they need. All you need for Doctopus is a spreadsheet with student names and email addresses. Learn more about Doctopus here.
As Matt says in the podcast episode, Slides lends itself very well to template creation because of the ability to use the canvas to create. I couldn’t agree more. What I like about providing students with the non-template option is that they can go beyond the template and choose a file type that fits their form of expression best including videos. Many still fall back to Slides, but are required to go through the process of creating structure out of a set of requirements.

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