Personalized Urls

We normally start my classes with a five question quiz where my students can use their notes from their flipped video to answer the questions. It serves a few purposes. First I won't count the quiz grade if the notes aren't good enough as I want the kids to have a repository they can use later (which is easy with the search function in Google Drive). Secondly the questions are the main points for the day so it tells the kids what their exercise is going to be about.

But to the point. I very rarely use the LCD in my classroom other than for when I am giving our opening quiz. But the other day the my LCD lightbulb went kaput. So I had to improvise by taking the url from the Google Drive document into a Tinyurl which I also personalized. For example I am doing the fifth and sixth units in my for AP microeconomics called tinyurl.com/apmicro56. So I wrote the url on the board and didn't worry that we didn't have a LCD. It also is nice when kids want to redo a quiz, I just give them the url and we are all set.

In addition there is bitly.com that allows you to keep a repository or your shortenings as well as Google's shortening.

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Homework Reminders

When I want to quickly contact my online students, I use Remind.com . It allows you to send a text without knowing their phone numbers. Additionally you can set a time for it to be sent. You can add a link and/or upload a document. If you choose, you can also text individual students. All of the texts are recorded and kept as long as you keep the class. Above is a video giving you a great overview and here are several videos explaining how to use different parts of it. If you use Blackboard, the video below shows you how to embed Remind texts into a Blackboard page.

How to Make Your Own Flip & Tutorial Videos

Over the years I have made lots of video tutorial for my blog followers and flip videos for my students . Every single one of them have been made using Screencastomatic . You can purchase your own yearly subscription, but I have not only never paid, but also never even set up a free account. You don't need to since you can make the video and then just upload it onto YouTube. Watch the video above and you will be able to see how to record, add you talking (or not) to the recording and to upload it - all in less than two minutes. Go forth and make your own tutorials and teach lots of others. In a later post I'll show you how to organize your YouTube video library.

Snow Days Online

So we have a potentially major snow storm coming to DC this week. I am thankful that we have the technology to make up for not having school, esp. in classes like AP or IB ones where time can't really be missed and your students are more likely to do the work at home. Of course my online students get to work no matter the weather. So how can you get your brick and mortar students to work on a snow day. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate so I would create a shell for the brick and mortar students as well and set an agreed upon time to meet which I reminded them about a few days before a snow storm. If you don't have something like Blackboard Collaborate you could you a Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture ( here's how ). You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions. You would be able to do this b...

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