Creating Classroom Games: Bingo

You can customize simple content games for the classroom to help students review and reinforce knowledge. It just takes a little creativity. Follow the steps to create your own content bingo.

Establish a list of terms (people, places, things) students need to know.

For this effort, my list includes: Samuel Gompers, Jane Addams, Theodore Roosevelt, Sitting Bull, NAACP, Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller.

Establish a list of descriptors for your terms. You should include at least two descriptors for each term. The descriptors can apply to more than one term.

Example- “Muckraker” describes Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell.

The descriptor for my set are below.

American Federation of Labor, Ghost Dance , The Jungle, Conservation, Reservations, US Steel, Hull House, Wounded Knee, Captain of Industry, National Parks, How the Other Half Lives, Vertical Integration, Progressive, Civil Rights, Standard Oil, Meat Packing, Homestead Strike, Horizontal Integration, Robber Baron, Meat Inspection Act, The History of Standard Oil

 Ensure that students have organized what they have learned about the terms. Students could use a simple chart to organize what they have studied.

People and Groups of the Gilded Age
Samuel Gompers
Jane Addams
Theodore Roosevelt
Sitting Bull
NAACP
Jacob Riis
Upton Sinclair
Ida Tarbell
Andrew Carnegie
John D. Rockefeller

Students will use the list of terms to customize their bingo boards.  I used the simple board below. Students started by writing a name of a person or group from the set above.

    Once students have customized their boards. You only have to explain the rules and begin game play.

   We played using the rules below in class.

·         The goal of the game was to get three correctly complete three boxes in a row.

·         You can make a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row.

·         A square is complete when the term is matched with two correct descriptors.

·         The term and descriptors must match in both historical accuracy and historical interpretation.

·         Once a row is completed the player yells “bingo.”

·         The squares must be verified before a winner can be declared.

To select descriptors during game play, I used the spinner from classtools.net that can be customized with a simple typed list. The spinner was projected on the board and the chosen word simply popped up.

This was a simple way to add a game to my class. It got students talking about the topic and provided a form of review they were attentive to as they played to win.

How do you add games to your class?

Instagram and Hashtags: Connecting with Social Media

By Nina Kendall

 

July 4th Bingo with the Archives

Instagram offers opportunities to engage students in new and different ways.  Schools and teachers can follow institutions like the National Archives and the National Gallery in using media to engage audiences with observation and curation activities. Here a few thoughts if you are interested in giving it a try.

Hashtags

Embrace the Hashtag

Hashtags are like guide words in a card catalog or key words in a Boolean search as they help you find things.  Using a hashtag allows you to find thoughts and images on a similar topic. 

 

  

Create your own Hashtags with Instagram Assignments

 Use them when you create an assignment so you can enjoy student shares without having to follow students. Make the hashtag as unique as possible so your search will have less cross contamination in the results.

Let students craft their own Hashtags

Have students create their own hashtags when analyzing texts or creating diagrams. Their choices will reflect their understanding of the work. You could even have students create hashtags to reflect different perspectives and have students look for evidence to support that hashtag and perspective.

 

 

Instagram

 

 

Let Students craft the Vision

Have you ever started a lesson with a modern image or phrase to help students connect with the past and then found they didn’t know the modern image? We know that students are more likely to remember something when they can relate it to something learned previously. Instagram can help you engage students in building hooks for units and lessons. Assign a topic like “cooperation.” Have students share images that represent cooperation to them. Use those images as a hook for discussing how communities reacted to Civil Rights change as you study the 20^th century.
 

Make the world your classroom.
Instagram lets students engage in observations of the world around them. Students capture and share images that become a text to relate what they are learning to and share with others.

 

Examples:



Student observations of  modern food landscape

·Have students take pictures of the modern cultural landscape and compare to works about the same area from a different period. The Federal Writer’s Project has some great texts to use for comparison.
 

·   Going on a field trip? Don’t assign a worksheet. Give students a list of things to photograph on the trip and assign a hashtag for the trip. Students can share their day with others and comment on what others saw. Then with a program like Storify you can have a slide show to view as class the next day.

 

These ideas represent just a few of the ways you could use hashtags and Instagram in class. What ideas do you have?

Getting Connected: Preparing to Use Technology in the Classroom

By Nina Kendall

ClassFlow demonstration at #ISTE2014

Technology abounds. It has changed the way you lived and has the power to change the way you teach. However, introducing technology into your classroom is different than getting to know your new tablet or smartphone.  You have to plan for technology just the way you plan for the use of any other resources. In the classroom you can’t pause to access tech support, you need to be the expert in your classroom.

After recent attendance at the International Society for Technology Educators (ISTE) Expo, I have learned about scads of new technology for the classroom.  Educational technology has expanded from teacher tools and websites to new ways to be connected. ISTE had a number of programs had interesting possibilities for the classroom like ClassFlow and BrainPop.  Now is the time to plan for its’ use. Here are a few suggestions to make the integration of new technology in classroom successful.

Become familiar with your digital environment.
What types of systems do you have? You need to know this to be able to select useable educational technology.  I work in a PC heavy environment with a BYOD policy. BYOD  in my building translates into majority of smart phones and a few tablets.  Further an active web filter means that unexpected things are blocked in the system. Therefore when I start to select new technology, I look for resources that work on pcs and have app compatible with both iPhones(iOS) and androids. I need to be able to use it on my phone as well.

Determine the purpose of your technology integration.
What is the ultimate goal of your integration efforts? Is connectivity? Are you trying to find creative ways to address resource issues? Are you streamlining assessment to help increase time spent focusing on students? Are you interested in gamification? These are good questions to ask and answer.  You need to become familiar with what you need to pick out the best tool.

Pick your technology and get access to your resources.
Look for technology to meet your needs. Graphite has a tool that allows you to search through educator reviews of technology for the classroom.  Think about the apps and programs you use. How could they be integrated into the classroom?  What social media do you and your students use? How can it be used in the classroom? Recently, I have played Instagram bingo with the National Archives and have participated in the Instagram outdoor sculpture challenge with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Both these activities have me thinking about how I could use Instagram in the classroom and on field trips.

Try it out.
Much of today’s technology for the classroom can be taken for a virtual test drive. You want to know how easy it is to use and explain. Further, I want to know what the experience is like from the teacher and student view. I do this with every piece of technology I use in the classroom.  When attending ISTE, I tried Evernote. I wanted to know how it worked so I could make decisions about using it and feel comfortable explaining the app.  I did the same with remind last year. It made the program something I was very comfortable talking  about with parents and students . Since ISTE, I have downloaded the ClassFlow app.

Make Directions and Planning Decisions Now
Write the directions for signing up and using the educational technology now. It will make it easier to use and integrate.  Make plans to use the technology so that is becomes an integral part of you classroom. Until the technology because an integral part of you classroom, you will need instructions for use and may need to have a method for managing passwords and usernames. It will also make it easier to share with your colleagues. This could be important for you and your students as their devices have limited memory for apps and use in multiple classes could promote fluency and transfer.

Enjoy!
Technology should be something that makes your class more engaging and enjoyable it should not be something that makes your life harder or more challenging. Figure out what works for you. The same tools are not ideally suited to every environment. Below are some of the technology from ISTE and social media options that I am considering for next school year.  Good Luck and Happy Planning!

ClassFlow	cloud based tool that merges lesson planning with lesson delivery
Curriculet	a digital overlay you can create for texts
Professor Garfield	Comic designer  and option for customizing games
GameUp from BrainPop	Platform that  has games for subject that you can search by state and standard
Instagram	photo sharing app
Storify	web-based program that allows you to curate social media interactions.

Learning How to be EdTech Savvy at ISTE2014

By Margaret Duncan, Ed.D.

I had the privilege of attending the 2014 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Convention and Expo in Atlanta.  ISTE is a nonprofit organization with the mission to “serve educators and education leaders who are committed to empowering connected learners in a connected world.”  This was my first ISTE Conference & Expo, and I can honestly say I was not prepared for how truly big the event would be.  The Conference lasted for four days, and the Expo was one day less. 

I have attended and presented at a variety of conferences in my educational career.  However, most have been in the Social Studies or History field where technological seminars or companies were few.  ISTE2014 was a chance for teachers at all levels to get together and learn more about integrating technology in the classroom.  The Expo was a chance for attendees to see over 500 exhibits and 4,500 industry representatives.  Attendees were so connected to technology that the #ISTE2014 hashtag was trending for the length of the conference. 

One key aspect of the conference for this first time attendee was the realization that technology is evolving and teachers should embrace and not fear it.  Ultimately it is a tool that can make student learning more effective.  Teachers are still the key ingredient. Knowing how to effectively incorporate EdTech is an important part of engaging leaners.  The technology being used is most effective when the teacher is a confident, knowledgeable user or adopter.  The following are just some of the ideas I learned from ISTE 2014 that can help all of us be a more EdTech savvy teacher.

There are wonderful programs that allow teachers to successfully incorporate technology into their lesson planning.  The trend I sensed was that many companies have switched from a downloadable software to cloud based programs.  Programs like ClassFlow and BrainPop allow a teacher to interact with students in real time and obtain real time results.  To use these programs all you need is internet access. For schools like mine, Wi-Fi and a strong BYOT policy make using the programs a real possibility.

Technology is a tool that can make the world a much smaller place.  Teachers can use Skype for a videoconference or virtual field trip.  Twitter can be used to disseminate information quickly via a simple tweet.  It can also be used for a TweetChat allowing students to chat in real time and can later be put into a Storify story to be easily read.  At ISTE2014, I used twitter to communicate to followers and plan a lot of my conference activity.  As a fellow attendee noted, it is much easier to communicate via twitter than email.  It is evident that twitter is the new mode of communication, and teachers not on the platform are really being left behind the technological curve. 

Google has become the mothership for technology storage, apps, and student interaction.  Many of the attendees were Google Certified teachers, or teachers looking to become Google Certified.  Google offers new apps like Book Creator that can be a wonderful tool.  Google Docs is an awesome classroom tool for storage and easy student access and collaboration.  The days of USB drives for obtaining student projects are over.  Using Google Docs means no excuses for a late paper.  As a teacher, I use Google Docs quite a bit and truly have become dependent on it. 

Finally, the conference was a way to contact and communicate with teachers who are all over the tech spectrum.  It allowed for the chance to meet and talk to teachers who can help you incorporate technology in the classroom.  Many of the presenters and attendees were eager to share their knowledge and help with the transition to a tech savvy teacher. The use of hashtags like #ISTE2014 and  #notatiste14 created accessible conversations across multiple platforms that allowed people beyond the conference to learn from ISTE2014 as well.

These are just a few of the EdTech ideas that were discussed at ISTE2014 that I thought were of great value.  What technology would you incorporate into your classroom or urge your colleagues to use?

For more information on ISTE 2014