195: Snow days ahead? Ideas you can use in class or remotely

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A Welcome to the Ditch that Textbook Podcast, your source for practical teaching ideas using technology, creativity, and student engagement. Listen, learn, and plan your lessons for class tomorrow. Now here are your hosts, Matt Miller and Carli Mora.

Speaker B So, Carly, it is January. Most of us are back to school at this point. And I know where I live here in Indiana, that usually means one thing, and that's snow. We have kind of like a snowstorm coming in our general direction where it's kind of hit and miss. And even where you live in California, you guys still get some snow, right?

Speaker C We do. We like. So here it's pretty cool. We can drive from the snow to the ocean in one day if you want to be in the car for a while. But we have, we have the mountains. There's Tahoe's not too far. And we, we're actually going up to the snow this weekend, so we have to drive to it, but then we don't always have to drive in it, which I, I think is. Is kind of nice. It's kind of one of the benefits of living in California. But. But yeah, lots of snow. There's been tons of storms going through here, so there's sometimes that we get like little flurries of snow. It's very rare, very rare that snow will actually come through our town and then all. Everyone freaks out. It never, it never sticks or anything. But. But it's been cold enough. It's been cold enough to snow lately.

Speaker B So, yeah, yeah, we just had a whole bunch of rain the other day and I was telling my kids, I was like, if it was colder, you know how much snow we'd be getting here. But thankfully, we haven't had to deal with any cancellations or delays, anything. So if you're listening to this, whether you are in a place where snow is a thing, if you're having to deal with cancellations or delays, or if you never get snow, I mean, it is January. We're back to school. And of course, Carly and I have lots of very helpful, useful things for you. So hopefully you'll get some good stuff out of this episode. So let's get to it.

Speaker A News and updates.

Speaker B So one little bit of news I wanted to share with you all is an update to the format of our Ditch that Textbook emails. So if you're listening to this, there's a good chance that maybe you're also subscribed to the emails. And we decided we wanted to kind of give it a little bit of a refresh, a little bit of a facelift. So we started doing. Was creating These things called the Big Idea, where we do kind of like a deep dive into something. The idea is for you to be able to read it in the email and be able to go and do something with it right away. But then we've also got this thing called the DTT Digest, which is kind of like the news and updates in the podcast. Honestly, if you listen to the podcast, the emails are starting to look a little bit more like it. We also have weekly features of tech tips and templates of the week and quick teaching strategies just like we have here. So, so if you're familiar with the podcast, the emails are going to look a little bit more like that, so you can keep an eye out for that. And of course, if you don't subscribe to the email newsletter, you can go to ditch that textbook.com join to subscribe.

Speaker C And we have the the new email format is fantastic. I'm really, I'm really liking it. I'm enjoying enjoying the the new format of the email newsletter, especially the DTT Digest. I think we're getting to share a lot of really cool and timely resources with the readers, so I'm hoping that everyone enjoys them as well. There is a bit of news and updates from Google and you may have heard and you may not have heard because it's not, not quite rolled out yet is that Background Remover is coming to Google Slides. And this is a big deal because if you do any sort of design or you use Google Slides, you might find that you want to remove the background of an image because we'll pull in a JPEG and the background is in there and we want to make it transparent. And a lot of times you can use an outside resource or or something else. You can throw it into canva and remove it, which is what I often do. And so having inside Google Slides is a big deal. So I am excited about it. It's not rolled out yet. I just checked my Google Slides and it's not in there yet. So it's slowly coming. But we will have in the, in the podcast notes we'll have a link to the support document so that you can see how to do it once you do get it. And you can find those at Ditch Link Podcast.

Speaker B Yeah, I just opened up a slide presentation in my personal Gmail and I noticed that it was there yet, but I don't think it's there in my Google account yet. So it's kind of like, kind of depends, I think, on where you get it, but I just threw a picture in there and removed the background. And it did a pretty good job, I'd say. So. Yeah, that's pretty nice. The last thing I thought I'd do, a quick update from my classroom. If you've been listening, you may have heard that I've been out of the classroom doing ditch that textbook full time for the last eight years. And I just took a job teaching high school Spanish six periods a day for an entire semester from January to May. And so I'm trying to kind of like get back to speed, get my sea legs back, you know. And one of the things that has been helpful to me is getting my students lots of quick practice and immediate feedback. You know, when they're practicing with new vocabulary words and when we're practicing, you know, trying to change verbs into different verb tenses and stuff, it's good for them to be able to get lots of reps and then to know whether they're doing it right. And I've had really good success with Pear Deck on that. I know if you're listening to this, probably Pear Deck isn't a brand new thing to you, but I was kind of curious to see when I went back in the classroom which tools I would like actually, actually use because we talk about a lot of them on the podcast and in the email newsletter and on the blog and everything. And I Pear Deck, my students have kind of noticed that Pear Deck has been my GM this week because we get to put lots and lots of questions up there and then they get to respond to them and then I can put all of their responses up on the screen and about them. So really great for instant feedback. So anyway, that's, that's been going well. My feet aren't as sore as they used to be. I haven't gotten a sore throat, which I kind of thought that I would. So, yeah, life is, life is going pretty well. So there you go. That's my. That's my quick update from the classroom.

Speaker A The big idea.

Speaker B So for today's big idea, we thought we'd talk about some. Something that I know lots of teachers have tried out and used and loved. There's lots of you, I think, that probably haven't too, but that would be digital escape rooms. If you've ever been to a physical escape room before, you know, those are those places you can go sometimes with a group or family or friends and they lock you in a room that's usually themed and has decorations and stuff, and you have to find clues to be able to unlock the lock to get out. It's Kind of like a. Like a game, like a challenge. And there's so many educators that have used this idea in a digital way to have students engage in content in the class. And that's something that, honestly, that, Carly, you've had an awful lot of experience with and made a lot of these digital escape rooms. So we thought that we'd talk about this as the big idea. And, Carly, I've heard you talk about how you have a little bit of, like, an addiction to making these digital escape rooms. Is that. Is that safe to say?

Speaker C That's. Yeah, definitely safe to say. I. I love making digital escape rooms. I love doing digital escape rooms. I love going to escape rooms. It's. They're just so much fun. And I think the. Why I love them so much is seeing how much the kids love them. And also when I do pds, the adults, it's just. There's. It's just so much fun. I love watching the productive struggle that goes along with them is, you know, they. They try it, and they try it and they fail, and they try it, and then they get it, and they're so excited. And so. Yes, yes. Safe to say. I have an addiction to making them and sharing them and. And doing them, and it's. They're just. They're so much fun.

Speaker B Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody can imagine what a physical escape room looks like, you know, being locked into this room, having to find clues and there's a lock, and you have to try to be able to unloc the clues and everything, and it's themed. If they can imagine kind of what that looks like. Carly, can you paint them kind of a picture of what a digital escape room looks like and how it's kind of similar to that?

Speaker C Yeah. So digital escape rooms actually came about. I started using them because I was doing a lot of breakout edu boxes, and I love doing those with the kids. And you have a box and you have a bunch of physical locks, and the kids are working together, trying to unlock the lock, following clues, unlocking the lock. However, you can only have so many kids working on one box. So a digital escape room students can work together in a team on one computer, or they can work individually, and you don't need those locks. So a digital escape room can be in different. You can use different things to create them. They might be in Google sites, can even make them in Google forms. I tend to use genially to create my escape rooms now, but the students will have. Anyone doing them will have some sort of. There's a theme and then you'll have it could all be in one place, but there's an image or maybe some text where clues are hidden. So just like a physical escape room, the clues are hidden, quote unquote, in plain sight. But sometimes they're pretty hidden. So you might, for example, have a some text that's at the top of an escape room and everything is lowercase except for a few letters that are bold and uppercase. And you'd find the word that's hidden hidden in there. Then there's some way to input the lock combination. It might be a password protected page, it might be a Google form, but there's a way to put in the lock so that you would go to either the next page or maybe you put in that lock so that you are completing the whole Google form. So it's similar to a physical escape room in that you do have the locks, you have the clues, you're putting the locks in, and you have to put them in correctly in order to quote, unquote, escape. So, so very similar. But again, it just makes it more accessible to your students because you can have them all working on the escape room. They could be working in groups or in pairs, but you don't have to have those locks and the actual box. Or take your class to an actual physical escape room to get that same experience.

Speaker B Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if that's kind of what it looks like, if someone's listening to this, they might be thinking, okay, that sounds really cool, but I don't even know how to organize one of these. Like, I don't even know how to plan it out. It seems like there's a lot of moving pieces and everything. If somebody's listening and they kind of feel like that, what's your best advice for them on how to kind of like brainstorm, plan, organize their own digital escape room?

Speaker C So I would say to first go to our digital escape rooms page. So we have ditch that textbook.comdigital-escape-rooms and we'll put that in the show notes and try some out. Try some out with your students. I find that doing escape rooms will kind of get you going and get you excited and you'll understand and your students will understand what it looks like. And so you can start trying them out right away because we have a ton of free escape rooms that you can start using with your class tomorrow. And that page has all the answers as well. So don't give your class, don't give your students the page, but the answers are there. So if you wanted to try it out, you could go there and try an escape room. But if you're looking to create one yourself, there are a few different resources for you. We have a template, Google digital escape room planning template that walks you through some of the steps for creating an escape room. We, we have a course on creating digital escape rooms. And then there we actually have a updated Wakelet collection that has a ton of digital escape room creating resources inside it, including clue creation. Resour a form, a Google form that you can use to create your own escape rooms templates to walk you through it. So anything you need to create the escape room is there. So you just really need the theme and then the ideas for the locks. And that will come to you as you're, like I said, as you're trying out different escape rooms, you'll get ideas from there.

Speaker B Yep, yep. I also did just realize that we have a short link to that site that you just talked about. So probably the quicker, easier version of that is you can just go to Ditch Link Escape. Ditch Link Escape will take you to that same place. So with that in mind, now that we've gotten kind of an idea of how it plans and everything. Carly, can you think of one particular escape room that you could describe to everybody so they could kind of like get a picture of, you know, what it looks like and how the theme fits together and all of that?

Speaker C Yep. Probably our most popular escape room is our Mission School blackout escape room.

Speaker B Yes.

Speaker C And it's a fun one. And so we have two versions of that. There's mission school blackout and then Mission school blackout junior, depending on the grade level you're working with, or if you have students who are new to escape rooms, you might try the junior version. But in this escape room, you open it up and there it says mission school blackout. And the lights flicker and so that you can see that the lights go out. So the idea behind this escape room is that school is about to start, but the year there's no power. So you have to go through the escape room, find all the clues so that you can turn the power back on to the school. And I know this is what our students are all dying to do. So if school, if the power wasn't there, they're all just dying to turn the power back on. But let's pretend that they are. Maybe the teachers are there trying to. The principals, they're trying to turn the power back on. But you'll, you'll get a, you get a letter. So a letter pops up and it says tells you that your mission is to turn the power back on. And then you get the first clue. Then you'll type it in. And the most important thing with these digital escape rooms is that you have to type it in correctly. So that's usually case sensitive. So you'll type it in and then after you get through that letter, go to the next page. Then you're using a flashlight and I created this using just the layering of the page and you have to search for clues using the flashlight. And so you'll take the flashlight and you'll click and drag it around looking for the clues. Click on the clue. Once you open the clue up, then you're in some sort of game. So for example, when you're inside the gym, there's a game where you're going through the different, there's different balls and you have to look at the patterns and go through the patterns and then, and once you finally get it, then you get the next lock combination to the next one to the next page. So then you put in that long lock combination and keep going. And that escape room goes through different parts of the school. The library you're going to go through, I can't remember if it's the junior one or the regular one where you go through an art room, but you're going through the different rooms of the school, getting the clues, getting the lot combinations and then finally you'll get to the power grid and you're going to turn the lights back on at the start school. So that's kind of what a digital escape room would look like. And that's what Mission School Blackout looks like again. That's on that website, Ditch Link Escape and has the, the answers are there for you. I do recommend that you try it out as a teacher. Try it out without knowing the answers first just so you get kind of a feeling for what it looks like and, and that productive struggle is real when you're in those escape rooms. I've found that the kids do sometimes get frustrated, but the ones that I found that get frustrated first are us adults. We get, we get so frustrated when we can't get it the first time. So try it out yourself and see what it looks like and then, then you'll be prepared to share it with your students and walk them through it as well.

Speaker B Yeah. One of the things that I love about these is that whenever you get a clue or like whenever there's, there's a clue to be solved, a lot of times you could, you can even modify the escape room so that the clue asks a question about whatever content it is that your students are studying. So even if you've got like, you know, any, any escape room, if you have the ability to modify it and edit it, you could just go in and change the questions a lot of times. So then that way it becomes like a good, good practice for, for what our students are learning. So anyway, like Carly said, ditch link. Escape has a ton of resources when it comes to digital escape rooms. If you want to go grab one and try it out yourself.

Speaker A Tech tips.

Speaker B So I really think you're going to like this first tech tip that has to do with creating an image in Microsoft Designer. So, Carly, why don't you tell everybody what this is about?

Speaker C This caught my eye on social media, and I think it's catching a lot of people's eye. And this is to create your own Lego minifig or minifigure with Microsoft Designer. And we're not just creating our own Lego minifigure. You're creating like your own little avatar you can create of yourself. I've created it of lots of people. And you're creating your very own and a very realistic Lego minifigure with Microsoft Designer. And so this is another example of using that prompt. So Microsoft Designer allows you to take a prompt and then you can edit it and then share it with others where there's fill in the blanks. So this prompt was shared by Mark Anderson, and this is the prompt. You open up the prompt and we'll again, we'll have the link in the show Notes at digitalink slash podcast, and you can fill in the blanks and create your own minifig, or you can click edit the entire prompt and you can edit it even more. So if you want to change the background, you want to change what the character is holding, you can do all of that inside that prompt. But if you want to just go ahead and fill in the blanks, you will come up with a really cool Lego minifigure. And if you have seen it in our emails, you might have seen that we created one of Matt and he's holding a ditch that text textbook book. And so with AI image generators, they don't always generate text real well. Sometimes the text looks a little different than you want. It might have double T's instead of an X or something like that. So you can kind of app smash it, download that, that image that you create with Microsoft Designer, throw it in a design tool like Canva or Adobe Creative Express, and then edit it a little bit, you can remove things and maybe edit it. So that way you can really create your own minifig that looks just like you, just how you want it.

Speaker B Yeah, this is super fun. And I could even see, you know, of course, your students getting a big kick out of this too. So. So anyway, that's a, that's a really fun tech tip. The one that I wanted to share has to do with Gmail. So if you use Gmail with your school email, this tip is going to be especially helpful. If you find yourself writing the same kinds of emails over and over and over again. If it's similar text or if a, if a sort of a copy paste would work, at least to get you started, then you're going to love this tip. And it has to do with template responses in Gmail. So you can create templates that you can load that already have an email pre created, pre written for you. And then of course you can go edit it and adjust it as necessary and then send it away. So here's where you find it. You've got to enable templates in your Gmail settings. So really all you got to do is hit that little settings gear wheel and go into Settings and Advanced. And then there's an option right there to enable templates. Now once you've enabled the templates, then all you do is you just open up a new email and you write what you want the template to be. So if it's like a common, you know, like a common email that you would write to parents to say, hey, your student is missing some work, here are the assignments that they're missing. If you don't want to have to rewrite that from scratch every time, you just write it once. And then here's what you do. You click the three dots inside of the message, click the three dots, and you go to Templates and you choose Save Draft as a template. And then that's all you got to do. And then whenever, next time you open up a new email, you click the three dots and you go to Templates and you load that template and then it just pops right up there. So if you ever find yourself rewriting the same types of emails over and over and over again, just go into your settings and enable the templates and then write out the template, click the three dots and hit Save Draft as a template. And then it's saved and you can reload it. And that way you don't have to rewrite it again and again.

Speaker A Quick teaching strategies.

Speaker B So with it being a new Calendar year. It's kind of a nice time to start. Kind of like have students think about, you know, what are their goals for the year, what are their dreams, like what, what do they want things to be like in their life. It's kind of a nice time to reset and to, you know, kind of like reflect on where you are and where you're going. And if you're looking for a pre written activity that you can just assign to your students right away, there's this thing called the Hopes and Dreams Hyperdoc. If you're not familiar with hyperdocs, it's this kind of like self contained lesson inside of a document that you can assign to students and it has multiple, multiple steps and they can work their way, work their way through it. It's very student centered, it's very hands on. It has students creating and everything. And so this hyperdoc was actually co created with Carly and Rachel Marker, an educator and friend of ours out in Montana. And so between the two of them they have this hopes and dreams hyperdoc where you can kind of watch a video to get an idea of, you know, kind of like, you know, what are your dreams and what are you going to think about dreams and everything. You can kind of like reflect on your own dreams and then you'd be able to create, you can be able to create kind of like an inspirational quote, write a letter to your future self. There's lots of neat parts of this. If this activity sounds like something that your students would enjoy, we've got a link where you can go make a copy of it and then assign it out to your students. And of course you can find that in the show notes at Ditch Link podcast.

Speaker C Yeah, this one's probably one of our most popular hyperdocs. I've seen a lot of people use this and share it out and there were some few videos because this was created years and years ago. We, we made this a long time ago. So I have updated it so that as far as yesterday, all of the links work. So definitely check that out and please share it with us. If you do use this and your students create those quotes, please share it with us on social media. We'd love it if you'd tag Matt and I and hashtag ditchbook and, and share these, share these creations with us because we love to see it. My quick teaching strategy is a very quick teaching strategy and I've actually done this in a professional development and I've seen it done in classes, but I've never done it myself. But I think it would be really fun is to host a rock paper scissors tournament. So I would say everybody knows how to play rock paper scissors, but maybe not everybody knows how to play rock paper scissors. Most people do, but it's just turning this fun game into an icebreaker brain break, team building activity. You could do it in the middle of the day. Your kids need to get up. But the idea is you have two lines of students, two groups of students, and they're paired up and they're playing rock paper scissors. So if you win, you move on and you play against someone else. If you do not win, then you become part of the cheering squad. So everybody stays in the game. Everybody stays in this tournament. And it keeps going until there's only two people left. One person left, one person wins. But I love the fact that once you lose and once you're not in the game anymore, that you become part of the cheering squad. And it's just a fun way to turn a simple game into a team building activity. So we'll have the links to to everything you need to know on how to host it in the show notes at Ditch Link Podcast.

Speaker A Template of the week.

Speaker B So to wrap the podcast up for this week, we've got a template for you and Carly, this is a pretty cool one again to use at the beginning of the calendar year that students can do on Canva, right?

Speaker C Yeah. This is their 2024 design challenge. So Canva has these design challenges and there's actually some prize you can win if you share this on social media. But this is to create a vision board to showcase your goals for 2024. So just like we were talking about in the hopes and dreams, it could be companion activity that you do with that, with that hyperdoc or just on its own. But they have templates, but you're sharing word or phrase that reflects a goal or Focus for 2024. And they have the. The Canva has frames where you can just take an image and drop it in and then it will be automatically put in that shape so it the numbers 22 024. So they can take images that kind of represent their goals for the year and drop in those images in each of the numbers and it will be inside those frames and they can add elements, change the backgrounds, get creative. But it's a fun, super fun activity from Canva and it is their design challenge. So you can submit your student design challenges for a chance to win a prize. And that contest goes through January 13th, 31st, and we'll have a Link to everything you need to know for the challenge along with the template link inside our show Notes Ditch Link podcast.

Speaker B Yes. And if you don't use Canva in your school, there's actually an entire lesson to help students create a vision board in Google Drawings. So if you are a Google school, there's an applied digital skills lesson. And if you're not familiar with applied digital skills, it's this huge bank of digital lessons, like lesson plans with videos that show students how to do what they're supposed to do. And there happens to be one about creating a vision board which is kind of, you know, a nice fit for this particular type of thing. So if your students have access to Canva, great. Use the one that Carly was just talking about. If not, you can always do this one in Google Drawings. And again, that one also is available in the show Notes. So like we said at the top of the show, if there's any snow in your forecast, in your future, if there's a chance you might have a snow day or a delay or something like that, you've got some things now from the the show today that you can go check out. Maybe you're looking at some digital escape rooms or, you know, trying out that hopes and dreams Hyperdoc or one of those Canva templates or something else. Like Carly, there was some pretty good stuff in this episode, right?

Speaker C I think so. There's, there's some fun stuff. And inside all of these resources, we have, you know, even more. Like if you go to the, the Digital Escape Rooms page, there's tons and tons of resources. And, and we'll have all of these in the show notes. But yeah, there's, there's lots of things you could do. Even if you're, you have a snow day and you're doing some remote activities, a lot of these will work for remote learning. But yeah, lots of stuff. We'd love to hear what you do with it.

Speaker B Yep, absolutely. So that wraps it up for this episode of the podcast. Again, if you want to get the show notes or see previous episodes, you can go to Ditch Link podcast. And of course, if you get a chance to rate and review the show, we would love for you to do that. So for Carly Mora, I'm Matt Miller. This is the Ditch that Textbook podcast. We will catch you on the next episode. Take care.

Speaker A Thanks for listening to the Ditch that Textbook Podcast. Get new teaching ideas in your inbox by subscribing to our email newsletter at Ditch Link. Join. Show notes for this episode are available at Ditch Link podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any episodes. And while you're there, please consider rating and reviewing the show. Thanks for listening, Textbook Ditchers, and we'll catch you on the next episode.

195: Snow days ahead? Ideas you can use in class or remotely

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