Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Last year prior to science fair one of our middle school science teachers asked me to come in and speak to the classes about plagiarism. We had a great talk and the students were engaged with the Prezi and study guide ( see the original post here ).  This year, another teacher asked me to come in and  do a refresher.  Being that I was going to be addressing the same topic with the same kids and the same content I thought it might be time to try out a new tool (even coaches are still learning how to use new tools!).  My tool of choice was Nearpod . Near-what? Nearpod allows for interactive presentations that are sent directly to student devices; instead of students watching you in front of the classroom in front of a screen this is the one time you won't have to yell at your students for looking at their Chromebooks/iPads/laptops instead of at you! This also gave me the ability to control the presentation from my iPad while walking around weaving in and out of stu...

Our middle school is 1:1 with Chromebooks so students spend a fair amount of time researching topics online.  A teacher noticed there is a lot of copying and pasting of information by students and asked me to come in and have a conversation about plagiarism.  I developed a Prezi with an accompanying notes guide for the students to complete as I presented the content to them.  The Prezi and notes guide are below.  As we wrapped up the students were able to use their Chromebooks for a bit of fun (with a topic that isn't so fun).  We played a Kahoot game where they reviewed concepts about plagiarism from their guide.  They loved it!  What I loved is that Kahoot also provides a summary of student responses to the game- I can see which students missed specific questions which allows me to follow up if needed. Resources used in the presentation (good for teachers and students): http://www.plagiarism.org http://en.writecheck.com (this has a plagiarism...