Quality CPD you can access anywhere

CPD - Continuing Professional Development - is an essential part of our profession. Being a teacher requires a lot of time and effort to go beyond any initial training. It often happens that schools may lack funding for CPD. To overcome this, I have been using FutureLearn website to find relevant for me courses:

FutureLearn is a convenient way of learning, regardless of your location. While on a course, you are able to work collaboratively with people from around the world. You are also supported by educators and professionals from universities and institutions. The courses are full of articles, videos and quizzes which make them engaging and interesting.

The courses are free but you also have an option to upgrade. This gives you an unlimited access to the course as well as a certificate of achievement (digital, printed and transcript).

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Royal Society of Chemistry - Periodic Table

It goes without saying that the periodic table is one of the most recognizable tools used by scientists. Every science student is going to use it in their lessons. A great tool that can be used across all ages is the Periodic Table from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

This versatile tool is available on the website as well as an app. It´s engaging and interactive and contains many useful features: data trends across the periodic table (electronegativity, density, melting point etc.), history, podcasts and many more. Most importantly, it´s easy to use so all students will be able to access it.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina   

What is Kahoot!?

Kahoot! gives you an option to engage your students in highly addictive quizzes and learn at the same time. Students absolutely love the competitive aspect of those quizzes. As a teacher, I really like the fact that I can either create my own quiz or browse through the database of thousands of quizzes created by others. Another interesting feature is the option of creating a report which shows you in detail how well your students performed and what are the areas that still need work.

Click here to access my easy Kahoot! quiz on components in electrical circuits.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Student engagement through SeeSaw

Student engagement plays a huge role in teaching. As teachers we think about it every single time while planning our lessons. EdTech brings a lot of interesting options which help us further engage the pupils. One of the apps that really worked for me is SeeSaw. Here are some of the ways I used them in my practice.

1. Digital portfolio for the form class

I first came across SeeSaw when I started teaching in an international school in Shanghai. I soon learnt that in that environment students often leave in the middle of the school year. As a form tutor I decided to start building a digital portfolio of all the activities my pupils were involved in. This allowed me to have a place where both myself and students were able to share interesting activities they were doing and give those who left a chance to stay in touch. It also allowed me to increase parental engagement as I easily generated on my account letters which informed parents how to join.

An important aspect of this digital portfolio is that once you leave the job, the person who takes over can continue the work easily.

2. Portfolio of experimental results

This was by far my favourite way of using SeeSaw. I often asked my students to post the results of the experiments we were doing. Students would always be asked to comment on their findings and I would frequently tell them to think about and write the way/s they could improve the practical.

My KS4 students enjoyed collecting photographs on how core experiments are set up which they later used for revision.


3. Exit ticket

This is perfect for a quick plenary. SeeSaw allows you to create "an exit ticket" - a short task to check any aspect of the learning. Here's one I've done at the end of a revision lesson and some of my students' answers.

SeeSaw is constantly growing and introduces new features and improvements. There are plenty of other ways you can use it in your practice.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina 

Zip Grade - the marking app to make your life easier

Marking takes a lot of time. It's something we all teachers have a love-hate relationship with as we know how important it is for the students' progress but at the same time it can be extremely time consuming. There are tools, however, that can save us a lot of time and provide quick feedback for our students. One of the marking apps that has been working extremely well for me is Zip Grade. It's perfect for marking multiple choice tests.

Once you download the app on your phone or tablet you are given free 100 scans each month. You can, of course, purchase unlimited number of scans. The yearly subscription costs $6.99.

You start by creating the answer key for your test:

Your students answer the test questions on special answer sheets which you can download from the website. It offers grids for 20, 50 and 100 questions. However, you can also create customized answer sheets on your profile and have the exact number of answers your test has.

Scanning a test takes a second. I like to use a highlighter to mark the questions my students got wrong. You can also print out the screen shots of individual review sheets (but that's just being extra :)

I found the app to be extremely useful to mark paper 1 of the IB Chemistry course. After some time of using the app you can easily create a nice bank of tests ready for marking. To find what you need easily simply add a tag while creating the answer key and you can later use it to filter your test bank:

An extremely useful feature is item analysis which allows you to see how your class did as a whole and identify the questions that you need to revisit:

You can also create individual learners' profiles and monitor the progress throughout the year. It also gives you useful data for parents' evening conversations.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina