Station rotation is a useful instructional model when you want to have students work independently or in small groups. It also allows the teachers time to work with students who need additional support. Julie Mason at We Are Teachers talks about how How Teachers Can Plan & Use Virtual “Stations” Online:

There’s a reason why so many teachers use [the virtual stations] instructional model. First, it allows us to use data to strategically group students and differentiate their instruction. Second, teachers can teach and reteach small groups, which allows for more guidance and feedback. Finally, students practice a skill in different ways (on their own, with their peers, and with their teacher), which is engaging and supports different learning preferences. I could go on, and on. There are so many benefits.

HyperDocs are a great tool that educators can use to create engaging interactive digital documents. Holly Clark has a great blog post explaining what is a HyperDoc and what is not a HyperDoc in her blog post What is a HyperDoc? A Quick Look:

But when I sit down with those same educators to see their “Hyperdoc” it’s almost always the same scenario. What I see is not actually a Hyperdoc but a doc with links … A Hyperdoc is a lesson that is specifically designed to create a student-facing, blended learning experience. Inside of this lesson, students have voice; they are collaborating, creating, communicating and critically thinking their way through the content. It is created to help inspire students’ inquiry and curiosity - driving them to exploration, to find answers to their questions, build the background knowledge and supports the application of their new knowledge in order to show what they know. Teachers create these lessons with their students in mind, scaffolding every step to help meet their learning needs.

There are several elements teachers can use to build their lessons including (but not limited to) modeling, discussions, research and explorations, assessments, and collaboration. Catlin Tucker talks about these activities and discussions how to building online and offline activities for learners in her blog post The Building Blocks of an Online Lesson

The tools teachers use to engage students online are indeed different. It is also true that engaging students in learning activities online will require (at least initially) that teachers onboard students to those technology tools and support them in learning how to navigate online tasks. However, the activities and tasks teachers use to create their lessons offline can be transferred to the online environment if teachers know what tools to use.

Ice breakers questions are a great activity to help students and teachers get to know each other and build community in the classroom. If students do not feel comfortable with their peers then they are less likely to participate in classroom activities. I also often use ice breaker activities at the beginning of professional development or PLC activities as a way to learn more about the participants and help people make connections. These activities can also be used for hybrid and online learning with tools like Flipgrid. Here are some resources to help you find ice breaker questions for your classroom

There are many engaging assessment tools that teachers can use for face-to-face instruction, remote synchronous instruction, and asynchronous instruction. Many of these tools go beyond multiple choice and short answer question to offer engaging assessment options including video discussions, image annotation, and collaborative boards. These tools offer a variety of features for both formative and summative assessments that provide data to help inform classroom instruction.

I’ve discussed several situations where teachers may be breaking copyright law in their classroom. Whether that is making copies of handouts that are copyrighted to or using Netflix in your classroom, teachers need to be careful to ensure they are not violating copyright law. Recently, a school district was forced to pay a fine when they showed a movie during a school district event.

Recently I finished a graduate program for my school district administrator certification. Like many graduate programs I needed to complete weekly assignments and research papers that required the proper citations. I’ve used several citation tools and my favorite tool to create my citations in the correct format is the free tool ZoteroBib.

I have been listening to podcast for years. I often listen to podcasts when I drive, work out at the gym, and cook dinner. They are a great way to stay updated on current events, listen to stories, and learn about something when you don’t have time to read on a regular basis. One of the podcasts I have been listening to over the past few months is NPR’s Lifekit.

I’ve been working recently with teachers on incorporating more blended learning strategies into their classroom instruction. This includes small group instruction, student paced learning, and an increase in instructional technology usage. With all of these different types of learning activities taking place at the same time the classroom can become very busy. It is important to have good systems in place and effective classroom management to ensure the classroom is functioning correctly.

This is an interesting project using artificial intelligence and data from the Social Security Administration to guess someone’s name. Enter your sex and the decade you were born then start to type your name to see how many guesses before the web app can figure out your name. Here is more from the creator:

This is based on data from the Social Security Administration, up to 2018. It’s relatively comprehensive, but there are a few limitations. First, it’s data for the United States, so the numbers don’t really apply elsewhere. Second, the SSA doesn’t include names with fewer than five people in a year, so the chart doesn’t cover more unique names. Third, there were no Social Security Numbers before 1935, so the name counts are fuzzier for years before that.

Before you enter anything, the chart shows the most popular names for the given sex and decade. Then as you enter a name, the chart shows conditional probabilities. The more information you give it, the stronger the guess.