Snow Day Ideas: Google Drive App, Documents by Readdle and Socrative

As school was called off last night, I invited the neighborhood girls over for a crafting morning. I love getting the girls together in the summer, but at the dining room table is an entirely different story. This morning just reminds me all too much how much I respect elementary teachers and everything you do everyday. Wow! Elementary teachers are amazing! The noise.... my goodness.

Here are some snow day ideas:
1) Did you know you can Skype with a Yellowstone Ranger? https://education.skype.com/projects/2237-yellowstone-national-park-rangers-can-skype-with-classrooms I can help you set Skype up on your iPad or your computer if you are interested in having your students chat with a Yellowstone Park Ranger or explore the Skype in Education page to check out the other chatting opportunities that you may want to use.

2) Padlet/ Wallwisher is a blank page for upper elementary, middle school or high school students that allows you to collaborate and compose. Students could create a bulletin board for a presentation, share ideas with other students, project for a presentation or have an online question and answer session during literature circles or a reading activity.

3) Socrative online and the Socrative App for iDevices or Android Devices (Kindles, too)  has made me feel incredibly guilty. This has been on my iPad for over a year and until last weekend when I saw the Instructors at STI using them, I always thought it looked not very user-friendly. Was I ever wrong! As a teacher, you sign up and are given a room number.

Step a) You can create short answer or multiple choice quizzes using the online program or Excel/ Sheets templates.
Step b) The students tap the app or go to Socrative.com and type in the teacher's room number.
Step c) Teacher is online with teacher app or Socrative.com teacher login using computer and assigns quiz.
Step d) Students take quiz.

There are so many options with this program! Teachers can let students go at their own pace or only let them go question by question (so you can review as you progress through lesson). Teachers can also combine quizzes as a review and have students separated into teams (as assigned by Socrative) to see which team can get the most questions correct the fastest! Tomorrow morning I'm putting this on the iPads and I'm very excited to use it! I am guilty as charged though, I downloaded it last year and never realized how great this is!

4) If you like Google Drive and you like your iPad, here is the tutorial for you. You can download this to your iPad and save in iBooks or Documents by Readdle App. The new Google Drive App has impressed me. And, for all iPad users, if you haven't downloaded the Documents by Readdle App yet, do it soon! There is no way this one will stay free forever. It is just a great document reading application.

5) TypingWeb is a free place for students to work on their typing abilities. There are games and tutorials for the home row. It reminds me a lot of the typing exercises I did in my typing class once upon a time... and it is free! I don't think it is something you would want to spend a lot of class time on, but maybe something to integrate or show students that want to learn to type quicker.

I hope you have a great day in the snow! Remember, we are so tough in South Dakota we don't name our storms we call them "Winter."

Also, this and all Tech Integration Idea emails are archived at teachertechweekly.blogspot.com