Elementary: I Got You Covered!

     When you hear about blended learning, often times people just assume its for high school and college.  But if we think about the goals of blended learning, to personalize learning using data to
provide flexibility in pace, place, path and time, then we realize that blended learning is good for all students including elementary students.  One thing that can help make blended learning successful at the younger grade levels even down to kindergarten is having the right tools to make your students successful.  Today I want to take a look at what I would rank as my top 3 tools for an elementary teacher to make blended learning successful in their classroom.

Home Base

     I want to start out with what I consider to be the most important tool: A home base.  If you don't have one consistent home base where kids and parents know that they can find everything posted, then things will just become a confusing mess. 

There are so many different choices out there when it comes to a home base so it was pretty difficult to choose one, but I did settle on one because I believe it is the easiest to use for elementary students and has a lot of cool perks built in.  My choice for a home base is Seesaw.  You may not agree, but let me explain my choice and maybe you'll change your mind.
     First, I love the sign in choices that Seesaw offers for students.  Students as young as kindergarten can easily get logged in using a class code or a QR code.  As students get older, the teacher can utilize the log in through an email address and password to get students used to logging in the traditional way.  I think this is a great option and I'm sold just based on the log in options, but Seesaw didn't stop there.

     One of the greatest and most popular features in Seesaw is the ability to assign activities to your students.  You can create your own activities, but there is also a gigantic library of amazing activities that you can just grab and assign to your students.  You can also edit pre-made activities to fit the needs of your students as well as create your own from scratch.  When I've shown this feature to elementary teachers, it was a complete game changer for them. 

     Although activities are amazing, students also have the capability to create using the add to journal feature.  Through this feature, students can take a photo or video, upload a file, add a link, draw, record audio, or type a note.  These features in this easy to use format are an amazing addition for elementary students.  In one click, students can take a photo and add it to their journal where they can annotate over it, type a caption and/or record audio.  What's amazing is it took something that might otherwise require a bunch of app smashing and uploading and combined it all into one easy step that young students can easily master.  Now teachers can have their students not just consume, but also create.
     I could really go on and on, but let me just mention a couple more things that make Seesaw a great choice for elementary students.  Most importantly, this tool is free which is always amazing.  You also have the ability to add families so that parents can view their child's work.  How awesome would that be to have them view student activities and creations and even hear their child's voice explaining their thinking.  Another reason Seesaw is a great choice is their safety.  They are complaint with both FERPA and COPPA.  So you can rest assured knowing their your students are safe on Seesaw.  For more information about Seesaw safety, check out their Privacy Center.

Data

     You know from reading previous blogs and looking at our blended learning image above that data is super important to the blended learning process.  Teachers must continually be collecting data from their students in order to guide their instruction so that they can personalize the learning to meet

student needs.  There are many traditional ways to collect data such as exit tickets, activities, conferring with students, observation, quizzes and tests and many more.  I think it is important to also have a digital tool that teachers can use to quickly gather data and provide analytics to guide their instruction.  As I'm sure you all know, there are many, many tools out there that can quiz students and collect data.  I've chosen one tool to recommend for elementary for its ease of use, visual appeal, available features and compliance with COPPA.  For my data tool, I chose Quizizz.

     Quizizz is a great choice for elementary students because it is very easy to get logged in.  The students can simply go to the Quizizz site and use the teacher's code to join the game.  Alternately, if the students have Google accounts, the teacher can set up a class and invite his/her students to join the class using a link and their Google login.  Either way, the teacher is able to give quizzes and collect analytics.  

     Speaking of analytics, Quizizz has great analytics.  You can look at the class analytics as a whole class which are also color coded for easy viewing.  You can also view them by question and by student.  If you have a class set up, you can also email the scores to parents once students complete a quiz.  One other feature that I really like is that you can attach state standards to each question so that you also have analytics per standard.

     I know that the biggest concern is about getting quizzes into your account.  Rest easy.  There are many ways to get your quizzes going.  Before you do anything else, I would browse the library of quizzes that have been shared by other teachers and see if you can find something already created.  Even if the quiz isn't exactly how you want it, you can make a copy and edit it to add your own questions or delete questions you don't like.  This is by far the easiest and biggest time saver.  If on the other hand, you want to create your own quiz from scratch, you can certainly do that too.  When adding quiz questions, you can add text and/or images and there is even an equation editor built in.  One last way that you can upload questions is by uploading a spreadsheet that contains your questions and answer choices.  Once you have your quiz ready to go, you can either play the game live or give it to students as homework that can be completed in a station, at home or any time of day.

Sharing

     When trying to decide what I would include as my third recommendation, I decided that having a universal way to share is important.  My third tool is QRstuff.com.  QRstuff.com is a super easy website that takes URLs and converts them to QR codes.  I'm always surprised that when I share this tool how many people never knew how to create a QR code before.  Not only is this tool easy to use, but it's free and you can even customize the color of your QR code.  This is also a very reliable

website.  It's been around for many, many years and it is the only one I use nowadays.

     I guess you might be wondering why making QR codes would make my top 3 list.  First, I just love QR codes!  QR codes are such a great way to quickly share links with a variety of devices and people without having to have a home base or type in long URLs.  All someone needs to scan your QR code is a camera app or QR reader app on their phone or tablet.  If you use Chromebooks or laptops in your classroom, you can still use QR codes by installing a QR Code Reader Extension in the Chrome Browser.  Once this extension is activated, students can use the built in webcam to read the QR codes.  You can post QR codes in the hallway, send them to parents through email, post them at stations for students to use with iPads, and the list goes on and on.  

Not It's Your Turn

     It was hard to whittle down my tool choices to just 3 with the vast amount of tools available today, so let me know what other tools do you consider must haves in blended learning.  Post a comment below to share your top choices.