Wednesday, December 3, 2014

4th Grade Ingenuity with Google Slides

There are so many places on the web that help to spark new ideas for teachers.  It’s great to get inspired by parts of a personal learning network, but you know what’s even better?  When your students create the change and innovation in your classroom.  Mrs. Mai has created a great environment in her 4th grade classroom that encourages student voice in her classroom.

When I visited, students were sharing out book projects they created.  Students were not confined to one way to share what they had learned.  Some students shared brochures using the Mimeo in the room and some used Google Slides.  There was one innovation that I was inspired by was from students who created Google Slide presentations.  On their last presentation slide, students created a quiz about their presentation by typing in questions and answers. Their unique twist on it was that they formatted the answers to be covered in a black highlight, so answer could not be seen by the audience.  



The students then took the Slides out of presentation mode and asked the class the question.  They would “reveal it” to the class by taking the cursor and highlighting the darkened text to make the answer visible to the class.  It is so simple, yet genius!


I asked Mrs. Mai if this was something she taught them, and she said one group of students created a hidden quiz words on their own and it shared it with the rest of the class. They explained the difference between presentation mode and editing mode in Google Slides to make the trick work. Students teaching and learning from each other. It just goes to show that student ingenuity is contagious to other students, because now Mrs. Mai has multiple presentations with hidden answer quizzes at the end.  

Sure, Mrs. Mai could have shared a pre-made presentation she found online with her students loaded with bells and whistles, but it would have taken away from the student creativity. And it has happened because she has built relationships with her students so they know it’s okay to try new things and be inventive. It's just another great example of #solonstrong classrooms.

- Contribution from Amber Bridge, Grant Wood AEA Technology Consultant. Want to share what is going on in your class or collaborate on a technology project?  Feel to to contact me