Screen Sharing with Your Students

I recently read a question in the LinkedIn group, techinEDU that I thought should be answered in a public platform, so here we go!

How Nearpod works, graphic from the Nearpod website

Here is the question:

Need software recommendation (online)

Looking for software that allows the teacher, from their computer, to pull up group work or group notes quickly.

Say its a group paper brainwork session and groups are working on chromebook independently and then the teacher wants to show off each groups notes to the whole class via a projector. Is there a "whiteboard" or note sharing type program made for this?

(The fall back is Google Apps and each group sharing the document with the teacher, but hoping for a more elegant solution.)

It sounded like this instructor wants to use this technology for a face-to-face learning experience, but you can also use some of these technological options for teaching at a distance. Here was my response:

I don't know much about Chromebooks, but here are a few recommendations for screen sharing. Some cost money and some are free.

1. Screen sharing with Skype.

Have all your students create accounts and then you can "call" them from your computer when it is their turn to share their screens. Read more about screen sharing with Skype.

2. Use Collaborate or another webinar/meeting software.

If your school has a Blackboard Collaborate account, schedule a Collaborate session during your class and you can use the screen sharing feature in Collaborate to project your students' work. You can also use other webinar and/or meeting software.

3. Apple TV with Airplay

If your students have Apple devices or if you school has Apple devices it can lend to your class, you can use Apple TV with Airplay. It's only $99 for Apple TV and I believe Airplay is free. It doesn't matter if the lectern computer is MAC or PC. It's just that your students' devices need to be Apple. You can read more about it in my blogpost, iPad Apps for Education Workshop Report. (This option only works for face-to-face sessions since I believe all students need to be on the same wifi network as the instructor.)

4. Nearpod for Apple or Android

If your students have mobile devices (Apple or Android) you can use Nearpod (a free download). Nearpod has reporting tools, the ability to control student devices (so they don't jump ahead or surf the net) and it works at a distance or for guided in-class learning.

Good luck!

iPad Apps for Education Workshop Report

Right now, I am attending the Online Teaching Conference held at Long Beach City College. Yesterday, I attended a great workshop taught by Sam Gliksman, who among other things is the author of iPad in Education for Dummies. The workshop went over iPad apps that enhance the teaching and learning experience. Here are some of the highlights. If there is expressed interest, I will delve deeper into any of these topics.

Technology does not replace experience but rather it enhances. A great example he showed was a student presenting a poem she wrote. She presented it orally, while a related artwork (created by the student) was being projected on a screen, and music she composed on an iPad using Garage Band was playing in the background.

Apple TV combined with AirPlay is a great resource! If students have Apple devices, the instructor can use Apple TV with AirPlay to share student work on their local device by projecting on the board. The lectern computer can be any device, Mac or PC, laptop, iPad or desktop.

Socrative.com is a free resource that can replace the need for clickers and all you and your students need is Internet access on your device of choice.

Flipboard is an amazing and free curating app for iPhone, iPad and Android; it takes the news, RSS feeds, social media feeds, and any other online resources you choose and puts them into a beautiful streamlined e-magazine so that each day you can get the information that is important to you, in a single digest. Teachers can curate resources for their own research or for sharing with students, and students can use the software for sharing resources with one another and for doing their own online research.

Pocket and Diigo are apps, which allow you to save and categorize online resources so that you can reference and share them online or offline. Pocket has a nicer interface but Diigo is better for collaborative work and highlighting specific text.

Book Creator costs $5 and is the best app available right now for publishing small simple e-books, which instructors can use to make resources for students, but also students can use for creating final projects for class. If your students all publish to a single Dropbox account, you can combine all books into one. For longer books, Sam recommends  iBooks Author, which is a free download for Mac computers and can be used to create books for free distribution or for sale on the apple iBooks store. A benefit of using the iBooks store is that when you publish an update to your book, like apps purchased in the app store, the book is automatically updated for all users who purchased it.

Haiku Deck is a free app that helps students or instructors create stunning image-focused presentations (as opposed to PowerPoint, which emphasizes text).

Explain Everything costs $3 but is well worth the cost. It is a screen capture app that combines audio and interactivity for creating presentations. The creator can talk through a presentation using slides, and while showing the slides, annotate and animate. You can pull in resources, such as Haiku Deck presentations, images and video, and publish to your YouTube channel, Dropbox, LMS, and more. It can also be used for assessment.

I'll have more to report soon!

Using Poll Everywhere for Student Feedback and Engagement

Some of the instructors in my Successful Teaching Online course asked about ways to get formative student feedback. One way that seems to work is through quick polls. Using www.Polleverywhere.com, teachers can create simple one-question polls that update in real-time. They are fun to use in class because students can vote anonymously using their cell phones, computers, or iPads and see the results immediately on the lectern projector. Poll Everywhere polls are used for surveying student opinion and preference, checking comprehension, and as stimulus for dialogue. Try it out.You can see the results populate instantly using this results link.

To enlarge this graph, type Ctrl + and to reduce the size back, type Ctrl -.