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Thank You for 20 Years.

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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.
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Pear Deck & Immersive Reader

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Just today Pear Deck launched a beta integration of Microsoft’s Immersive Reader as a part of student view. This means that students can use the Immersive Reader to increase accessibility to text content present in a Pear Deck Slide.

Pear Deck already has the ability for video and audio content playback to be controlled by students when in Student Paced mode. This option allows learners to launch the Immersive Reader regardless of the presentation mode.

If you are unfamiliar with Immersive Reader, check out the quick overview video I made below detailing the Immersive Reader Extension for Google Chrome. All of the same features are available in the Pear Deck integration.



To launch Immersive Reader from a Pear Deck slide, students simply click on the icon at the bottom right corner of their screen.
The Immersive Reader beta integration is currently available for premium accounts. Teachers just need to go to their settings and turn on the integration.

I look forward to seeing how teachers will be using it in the classroom, but I know it'll be of use for increasing accessibility for many students in the classroom. 

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