Engage Learners with Ryan O'Donnell's Bevy of Templates

Whether it is a template to edit of a mock Time cover and article or it is a fake social media profile to doctor, the Templates section of Rocklin, California media-arts teacher Ryan O'Donnell's CreativeEdtech.Weebly.com is sure to hold a number of engaging activities you will find your kids can't enough of editing.

As part of my upcoming "25 Insanely Great Ways to Use Keynote" presentation at next week's MACUL conference, I wanted to include the George Washington Time template Ryan generously shares on his site. He creates them in Google Slides, but they can be downloaded and then used with PowerPoint or Keynote.

The main instructional idea behind the templates is that any content can be used for students to show their knowledge in a way far more creative than the standard typed report. Besides this George Washington one, there are a number of other magazine templates as well as some very clever social media profiles and posts templates.

During the #CreateWtihChrome holiday advent calendar that Ryan, Brian Briggs, Jen Giffin, and I hosted, Ryan created a template challenge. I chose to do a Twitter profile for fictional baseball player Crash Davis, from the marvelous movie Bull Durham. 

It was a lot of fun to go through the exercise and really analyze four characters from what is often correctly heralded as the greatest baseball movie ever made. It made me think about the depth of knowledge this activity would elicit from high schoolers analyzing a novel like To Kill a Mockingbird.

Check out Ryan's templates and lots of other great offerings at his website CreativeEdTech.Weebly.com.

Amaze em with Emaze!

Do you know what's really awesome about having a teenager? No, it's not being encouraged to venture into the world of fancy pocket jeans. Having a personal guide to what's new on Netflix is cool but when it comes to the edtech world, I love when my daughter shows me a new site or app she's using at school.

That's how I discovered Emaze. It's like a mashup of the visual brilliance of Haiku Deck with the functionality of Google Slides all tossed together with the flexibility of Canva. Bottom line: it's a great way for users to create visual content beyond just the slide deck.

If you know me, you know I live by the motto, "if you can't make it in Keynote then you don't need it." In many situations however Keynote isn't always an option or even the best one, like when all kids have access to are Chromebooks. Yes, there's iCloud Keynote but even that can be a challenge with Apple Id's and such. Google Slides is tremendously functional too and I use that a lot. I'm not throwing those out of the digital tool box, I am just excited about what a great compliment emaze is  and that it is intuitive enough for kids in upper elementary to handle.

Here's how you get started.

Logging in is available through existing Google accounts so if your kids already have those, then there is no hassle with having to create a whole set of usernames and passwords. 

Because the site is so visually geared there may be a bit of initial distraction as students find rabbit holes to explore on their first visits. Plan for this ahead and make your introductory session as fun and explore time.

Once you and your kids are ready to get serious about creating content, you will find a variety of support videos for most tasks in Emaze. There is also a ton of inspiration within emaze as the site is full of shared work and templates. So, go check out what you can do. You'll be e-mazed!

Help Your Students Evaluate Credible Sources

Here is a Google Slides deck to guide your students through the evaluation of credible sources. To use it, simply access the slides here and then ask students to make a copy under file.

There seems to be some controversy out there about the value of Wikipedia. The way I approach it and explain it to students on that slide is that needs to be used with other credible sources but typically it can be very valuable. Taking a look at the history of changes in the Charge of the Light Brigade is a true eye opener as to all of the work the nerds who write these articles really put into accuracy and detail. I guarantee whoever wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica's article on the Charge of the Light Brigade did not do this much work.

The rest of the slides are pretty self-explanatory and we have a lot of fun with sites highlighting the plight of the Pacific Tree Octopus and whale watching on the Great Lakes.

Learning Google Slides with The Avengers

With Jon Corippo's "Learn Keynote with Chuck Norris" as inspiration, I present to you "Learning Google Slides with the Avengers"

This slide deck takes users through a number of skills for creating solid presentations and taking advantage of some advanced features. Check out Tinyurl.com/AvengersSlides and make yourself your own copy.