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Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
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3 Tools for Virtual Learning

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This week my building principal gave me the opportunity to provide virtual PD for our district on 3 tools that I think are great for supporting virtual learning: Pear Deck, Scientifically, and Flipgrid. I created informational slide decks and recorded one of the webinars I did for each of the three tools. I won't go one much more, but wanted to make these resources available to all. If you have any questions about the tools feel free to reach out to me on twitter @mo_physics or email at mohammam@elmbrookschools.org



Please note that these webinar videos were the first presentations I've ever done using Google Hangouts Meet so please forgive the informal nature of the presentations. They are the raw video from the session. I could easily have spent hours making them perfect, but I figured the true purpose was not aesthetic perfection but timelessness of the information.

Pear Deck

Use Student Paced mode to provide asynchronous instruction or formative assessment in which students progress through a Google Slideshow at their own pace. Like traditional slides, each slide can contain text, images, links, and embedded videos. In Pear Deck, interactions can be added to slides for students including:
  • Text Response
  • Number Response
  • Multiple Choice
  • Drawing 
  • Draggable
Teachers can monitor student responses in real time.

Screencastify

Screencastify can be used to create screen recordings with or without live audio. These recordings are saved to Google Drive and can be downloaded or shared via link.
Screencastify is great for teachers looking to create tutorials or short lessons.
Screencastify is also great for students looking to create in order to share their learning. 



Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a free video creation and submission platform that can be designed for many purposes. These include, but are not limited to
  • Student submissions private to student and teacher
  • Student submissions that can be viewed by classmates
  • Students submissions that can be viewed and replied to by classmates
These videos can serve many purposes including assignment submissions, discussion topics, and reflections.Student created videos can be shared beyond Flipgrid via web link or downloaded.







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