Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Do you need a quick and easy way to create forms, quizzes, and polls? Microsoft Forms has you covered. Create surveys and collect data in real-time, assign quizzes with your point values for automatic grading, and create polls on the fly to receive responses for immediate use quickly. Sign in to your Microsoft account to begin (or make a free account) and select either a new form or quiz. Click on the plus mark and follow the prompts to add new items. Add an image to any form part using the search bar or upload your own. Forms also offer the option to add a YouTube video within questions. A recent addition to this tool includes an option for practice mode, which allows students to take quizzes and receive feedback on correctness without submitting data to the teacher. Forms works on all devices, use the preview to see your form as it appears on computers or mobile devices before sending. Share your form using the URL or QR code, or embed it in a website or email. View responses through the response tab created with your form. Return to previous forms to review the collected data or duplicate forms to make new polls or surveys.

Future Ready Schools Planning Dashboard provides a 5-step framework for technology planning for district teams. The framework starts with guidelines and planning assistance and advances to creating your district team. Additional steps guide you through assessing the district's current readiness and moves toward the final goal of creating an ongoing future-ready plan that is in line with district goals. All work is created and shared within a password-protected format using templates and other tools provided within the dashboard.

Gooru is a free, online learning management system for classrooms. Use their Learning Navigator system to assess and assign content based on student knowledge. The Learning Navigator provides information on student knowledge then provides a course of learning. Content is continually adjusted and monitored to match student growth and engagement. Use your teacher dashboard to assign and customize learning using Gooru's content. Content is provided for math levels from preK through calculus, English/Language Arts from preK through 10th grade, and middle and high school science and social studies. Students engage with assigned materials using the code generated when adding content.

Create your own 4-Circle Venn diagram with Canva's 5-step creator. After logging in to your free account, select a template from among several choices. Customize your design by adding text and images and personalizing additional elements, including colors. When finished, save your diagram and download to your computer or share using the many options provided, including publishing as a website.

Kialo offers a platform for focused online discussions, this version is dedicated to educational users. Use Kialo to create and map out debates onto an interactive tree featuring arguments both pro and con. Create your own forum or participate in the questions posed by other site members. Choose to make your question private or public then invite others to contribute. Throughout the debate use the site's tools to rate the impact of arguments and switch perspectives to view opinions from the other side. Be sure to watch Kialo's introductory video for an overview of all of the site's features and check out the sample classroom activities and assignments.

Share the best of European art, history, and culture through video presentations by Rick Steves, a renowned authority on European travel. This site features over 300 searchable video clips of 3 to 5 minutes in length. Use the search tools to narrow topics by theme, historical eras, or countries. Create an account to save videos to playlists and share with students. You will also find videos for the Middle East. If your school blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

Save the Video converts and downloads videos from several different video hosting sites including YouTube and Vimeo. Paste the video link then choose to download, convert to mp3, or convert and cut your video. One of the most interesting features of this site is the option to download playlists, convert into smaller files, then cut or crop to merge videos into one single video. Convert and cut takes you to a different application to use after downloading the video file to your computer.
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ClassroomQ is the digital solution to organizing help with student questions. The premise is very simple - the teacher creates a class code and gives it to students, as students work and find they need help they provide their name and class code along with a comment, and they add their name to the help queue providing the instructor with a list in the order of help requested. If students find they don't need help after requesting it, they use the cancel option to remove their name from the list. This tool is exceptional for the shy or special needs student who won't have to raise their hand and get the attention of the entire class.