Melanie Fessler

When I began using the Station Rotation Model with students, I made a habit of printing directions for offline stations and typing directions for my online stations. I used Google Docs for my online directions because it was easy to mix text and images then share that document directly with students. My goal was to create instructions that were so detailed and clear that my students would not need to interrupt my teacher-led station to ask questions.

Over time my online directions morphed into multimedia and multilayered “experiences” that engaged students in a range of activities. I did not realize it then, but I was creating hyperdocs. “Hyperdocs” (interactive Google Doc) is a word coined by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis, who joined forces to write The HyperDoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps.

As I read through their handbook, I began thinking about the value of using hyperdocs not just for stations but for all kinds of lessons to allow my students more opportunities to control the pace of their learning. When teachers march lockstep through a series of activities, many students end up feeling out of step. By contrast, when teachers use an interactive Google Document with the lesson outline, directions, and links to online resources and videos, they allow students to move at their own pace through the lesson. The teacher is then free to circulate around the room providing support as needed.

For teachers interested in exploring hyperdocs, the authors of The HyperDoc Handbook: Digital Lesson Design Using Google Apps created a companion website with samples and templates. They want teachers to share the hyperdocs they’ve created and, ultimately, build a community of shared resources. Below is a hyperdoc titled “Fables, Folktales, and Myths” created by Laura Moore that is shared on the site.

Both the book and the website are fantastic resources for any teaching using Google Apps with students!

One of the benefits of the Station Rotation Model is how easy it is to design activities at different levels to meet the diverse needs of a group of students. I spend a lot of time tailoring activities to support students who need additional scaffolds, but it’s important to challenge the strong students in our classrooms as well. 

One strategy I use to capitalize on my students’ strengths is to have them design and lead stations. I have some students who are extremely strong readers or gifted writers and other students who are incredibly tech savvy. These students are valuable resources in the class community, so I will ask them to design and run a station to share their expertise with their peers. I try not to overburden my strong students, but I do want to challenge them to think about how they can present concepts and engage their peers to help support the class in developing particular skills.

Even though some of my students have strong skills, they do not necessarily know how to design a dynamic lesson or activity, so I’ve created the template above to support them as they think about how to construct their lessons.

Students have a week to lesson plan and during that time, we collaborate on their Station Rotation Lesson Design document. This gives me a chance to provide them with support and feedback as well as connect them with resources that will help them to improve their lessons.

Letting strong students lead the learning and challenging them to design lessons that are interesting, engaging, and effective is a fantastic way to empower them. I’m consistently impressed by the creativity and commitment my students put into these lessons. They know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a poorly designed lesson, and they want their lessons to be fun for their peers!

They do need support during the design process, which is why having a template is helpful. The lesson design document can then be shared with the students moving through the station and serve as a resource during the station. This creates a clear path for the learning.

If you want to set some new year’s resolutions, try doing it the SMART way. Write down your goals and tweak them so that they are:

• Specific: Clear & well-defined.
• Measureable: Able to determine successful.
• Agreed Upon: Agreed upon with all stakeholders.
• Realistic: Within available resources, abilities, and time.
• Timed-Based: A set deadline.

SMART goals are easier to achieve and measure. Give it a try!

Someone who was reading “The Innovator’s Mindset“, approached me and talked about the impact it had on their teaching and learning.  I was honoured by their kind words, but this statement that she made has stuck in my head:

“The more innovative I have become, the less classroom management I have to deal with.”

Simple yet mind blowing.

Is this not true? Giving student ownership of their learning and thinking about the question, “Would I want to be a learner in my own classroom?”, would create an environment where students are more likely to be a part of their learning, as to separate themselves from the classroom.  This question has never meant to be a “yes or no” answer, but something to have educators reflect on their work every single day.  Thinking about this question daily would only lead to more success in our profession.

In another conversation, an educator talked about their school trying to figure out what to do with student absences in their classrooms. While a group was looking at types of consequences to “deter” absences, this principal was wondering why students didn’t want to come to school in the first place?  We often want to fix others, as opposed to explore our own actions and try to understand what those are leading to.  We should always look first at changing the environment, not the student.

Sheila Vick recently wrote a blog exploring this statement, and providing, “4 Ways in Which Innovative Education Simplifies Classroom Management“. They are the following:

1. Innovative education naturally gives students more choice and autonomy. They take ownership of their learning. This inevitably means that students are more excited and interested in their learning and thus, more engaged and focused on their work. Students are too immersed in their learning to have time for misbehavior.
2. Innovative education is a naturally inclusive approach that respects diversity within the classroom. It is a collaborative approach that allows for varying abilities, strengths and intelligences (think Howard Gardner). A good teacher will work to unearth and develop every student’s strengths and passions and help them to find their purpose within the group. No student is left out. This is also all an important part of their social and emotional learning and it creates a sense of community within the classroom – a community that values everyone.
3. When we give students a voice, choice and autonomy, it also gives the message to our students that we trust them, which helps build the teacher-student relationship. What I have learned about attachment theory over the years, is that people (including students) obey out of a function of attachment. Essentially, we want to do good by those we like and feel connected to. A strong teacher-student connection, therefore usually leads to more positive student behaviour.
4. In an innovative classroom, the teacher becomes a leader and facilitator (versus boss of the classroom and feeder of content). The teacher learns alongside the students. They guide their students in identifying problems and in solving them, including as it pertains to classroom management issues. This more level playing field of sorts, has students less interested in “bucking the system, ” if you will, and more interested in working in collaboration with the teacher on the classroom climate and culture.

Vick goes on to make this important connection:

To summarize, an innovative approach to education results in all students being more included and engaged in their learning. Relationships between the teacher and students, as well as between students are strengthened, which results in the classroom community naturally working better together. Classroom management becomes a whole group endeavour and not just the teacher’s job.

This is not to say that student’s shouldn’t have any responsibility on their own behaviour in the classroom.  I believe that we need to teach students that ultimately they create their own future and that there are some times in school, work, and learning, where things will be boring and we have to plow through.  But this applies to ourselves as educators as well.  We create our own realities. A teacher’s job isn’t to “entertain”, but showing value and meaning in learning, can often help connect the seemingly most menial tasks to a larger purpose.  When we focus on what we control and constantly work towards creating deeper and more meaningful learning opportunities for our students, the impact on our students will be that much more profound.

MoocNote is a free tool for taking notes while watching a YouTube or Vimeo video. All of your notes are timestamped and all of your notes can be shared with other MoocNote users. In the short video embedded below I demonstrate how to take notes while watching videos through MoocNote.



Applications for Education
MoocNote can be a good tool to use to create informal flipped video lessons. You can create a group that your students join then share a video with them that they take notes on while watching it. You might consider making multiple groups within a class then have each group watch a similar, but different video on a topic. Then have your students compare notes on that topic.

Text2VoiceOver is a service that will let you type the words that you want to hear spoken over a video. You can use Text2VoiceOver to create a voice over for a video that you have found on YouTube. Text2VoiceOver can also be used to create a voice over for a video that you have stored on your computer.

The process of creating a voice over on Text2VoiceOver is fairly straight-forward. You start by either linking to a YouTube video or uploading a video that you have stored on your computer. Then you set the beginning point for your voice over and start typing the words that you want to hear spoken over the video. You can choose from a variety of languages and voices to use in your voice over track. Learn more about the Text2VoiceOver process in the video embedded below.


Applications for Education
Text2VoiceOver could be a good tool for students who want to create videos, but don't want to use their own voices in their videos.

Google's My Maps platform lets anyone who has a Google Account create their own multimedia maps. One of my favorite features within the My Maps platform is the option to create a slideshow of images and videos within a placemark. By using that feature you can tell a story within a story.

In My Maps you can create maps that contain placemarks to identify landmarks, to indicate the locations of a series of events, and to show the start and end points of journey. Within all of those placemarks you can include text descriptions, images, and videos. Students can include pictures they've taken and videos they have made. Students can also use the search tools integrated into My Maps to find images and videos to use within their placemarks.

Applications for Education
You can apply this concept of using My Maps to tell a story to a variety of subject areas. You might have students create placemarks about the locations mentioned in a favorite story. Students could map the locations and tell the story of events within a political revolution. Or you might have students map the locations of interesting geological formations then explain within those placemarks how those formations were made.

I'll be covering this idea and many others in more detail during To Geography and Beyond With Google Maps. 

Jeff Hoffman created his first company as a student at Yale University. It was a software company called Competitive Technologies, and it was eventually acquired by American Express. He went on to create a company that helps consumers book travel with airlines, hotels and rental cars at a discount. You may have heard of it. [...]

Creativity is an Android app that is designed to help you develop ideas and solve problems through a variety of methods. When you open the app you will see a menu of ten techniques for developing ideas and or solving problems. Those techniques include everything from a basic brainstorming of a list to more advanced methods like “Six Thinking Hats” and SCAMPER. All of the ideas, problems, and solutions that you develop in the app can be saved as individual files. You can maintain as many files as you need. You can share the ideas, problems, and solutions that you develop in the app with your friends and colleagues through email and social media. I was even able to share to my Google Keep account.

Creativity could be a good app for students to use when they need to generate ideas for solving complex problems.

Would You Rather? is a website maintained by John Stevens for the purpose of sharing quick and fun math challenges for students.  Would You Rather? presents a picture with a mathematics problem that asks "would you rather?" Most of the questions have a financial aspect to them. One of my favorite examples is this challenge that asks "would you rather go on a 5 minute shopping spree in the store of your choice or get a $2,000 gift card to the store of your choice?"

Would You Rather? offers a simple worksheet that your students can use to analyze the choices presented to them in the challenges.

Applications for Education
In my email to Jamie I mentioned that Would You Rather? is a resource that I could see myself using in an Intro to Personal Finances course. Would You Rather? provides a great context for math lessons that students can relate to.

The next SAT testing date is a just a few days away. PrepFactory has free tools that can help you help your students review test-taking strategies. PrepFactory provides students with strategy tips before each section of review exercises. The strategy tips are available to students in video and text formats. Then throughout the review exercises students are given a rotating variety of question formats so that they aren't just trying to plow through a string a multiple choice questions. Each set of PrepFactory review exercises includes a mix of multiple choice, sorting, and fill-in-the-blank activities.

The latest update to PrepFactory gives teachers tools to keep track of the progress that their students are making. Teachers can create classrooms within their free PrepFactory accounts. Within their PrepFactory classrooms teachers can see where each of their students are in the progression of review activities. For example, a teacher can log-in to see how many students have completed a strategy session and which students have completed practice question sets.

Another recent update to PrepFactory provides students with a road map to improving their SAT and ACT test-taking skills. Now when students first sign into their accounts they are prompted to complete a short diagnostic exercise. The results of that diagnostic exercise will provide students with a road map of the next steps that they should take to improve their knowledge and test-taking skills.

Disclosure: PrepFactory is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

I don’t typically make “pie in the sky” New Year’s resolutions, but

this year I am bound and determined to move ALL assessment into the classroom!Click To Tweet This may sound like a crazy resolution given that most teachers spend hours of time outside of school assessing their students’ work. However, there are three reasons I’d argue we should NOT spend our time outside of class grading:

1. Our prep time is better spent designing creative and engaging lessons.
2. Real-time feedback and assessment are way more effective.
3. We don’t get paid for the time we spend grading outside of class.

The main reason most teachers spend hours grading outside of their school day is because of lack of time. I believe this lack of time stems from our approach to teaching. If teachers spend the majority of their class lecturing or transferring information, there isn’t time for consistent, real-time feedback.

As I’ve embraced technology and blended learning models, I’ve found it much easier to create time and space to provide feedback as students are working. Below are three blended learning models. I’ll explain how I plan to use each specifically to create the time needed to move assessment back into the classroom.

The Station Rotation Model does just what the name suggests–students rotate through a series of online and offline stations. One of those stations is the teacher-led station. As students move through this teacher-led station, I can use this time to provide feedback on my students’ work. If we are focused on how to cite online resources or how to generate a hypothesis, this station gives me a chance to actually read and edit my students work.

Typically, my students will come to this station with Chromebooks that way I can open up each of their Google documents in Google Classroom and leave comments, ask questions, and suggest improvements directly on their work.

The Flipped Classroom Model is a wonderful inversion that can also be used to free the teacher from living at the front of the classroom. Whenever I am tempted to talk at my students or explain something, I make a video instead. Recording a video does take preparation outside of class (just because I’m not grading doesn’t mean I won’t be working outside of school hours!), but the advantage is that students can self-pace through that information (pausing and rewinding) and they have access to it anytime online if they need to watch it again. Plus, I can incorporate these video lessons into my station rotation lessons with an in-class flip!

So, for those teachers who are using their teacher-led station exclusively to teach concepts or model a process, it’s helpful to consider moving some of that online with the flipped classroom where students either engage with the information at home prior to class or in the classroom with the in-class flip. Then the teacher-led station can be used for assessment and feedback.

Last, but not least, is the Whole Group Rotation–a modern spin on the Lab Rotation. In this model, the class rotates between online and offline activities as a whole group. When the entire class is online working with adaptive software, digital curriculum, or online tools, I have time to work individually with students. This time is great for one-on-one coaching, formative and summative assessments, goal setting, and conversations about final grades.

My goal is to use a mix of blended learning models and technology to create the time I need in the classroom to assess my students’ work and provide them with the individual real-time feedback they need to grow as learners.

Wish me luck in manifesting my New Year’s resolution! I’ll make sure to post updates about the challenges and successes I encounter on my journey to move all assessment into my classroom.

As I usually do during this week, I'm taking some time off to relax, ski, and work on some long-term projects for the next year. This week I will be re-publishing the most popular posts of 2016.

Next Vista for Learning is a unique video sharing website because it focuses on sharing videos made by students to help other students (you will also find some videos made by teachers). One good example of this can be found in Emailing Your Teacher, With Captain Communicator. The short video features two students demonstrating how to write an email to a teacher. It's cute and well worth 90 seconds of your time.


On a related note, the following video produced by a teacher and shared on YouTube outlines five email etiquette tips for students.

Students are immersed in a culture of video. Youtube attracts more eyeballs than ANY cable station. Watching educational videos is one way to deliver content, but having students create videos on your class content "deepens thinking" and engages them much more than consuming video. But then what?



Getting videos to the teacher is relatively easy in Google Classroom. However, at times we want all the videos in one easy place for teachers and students to comment on. The simple answer for this is to use your G Suite for Education account to post on Youtube. Students can place their videos in a playlist that the teacher creates and the class shares.  Here is how:

It’s here! This year I’ve shared some of the reasons I love Adobe Spark. I’m so excited that they’ve just released a new video feature for Spark Video. Now, users can add videos to their Spark creation instead of just still images, icons and text. When you open up Spark Video there is now the choice to…

The post 5 Classroom Activities for the NEW Video Feature in Spark appeared first on Class Tech Tips.

A couple of days ago Tony Vincent Tweeted my list of tools for creating videos on Chromebooks. That list was last updated in November. Tony's Tweet prompted me to update the list again. The notable differences between this list and the last one is that I've removed Wideo because that service no longer offers any free options for teachers or students. I've also added three new tools in Sharalike, CaptureCast, and Magisto.

Adobe Spark is a suite of free tools for creating images, videos, and simple web pages. Key features of Adobe Spark's web app include an integrated Creative Commons image search tool, the option to download images as JPEGs, and the option to download your videos as MP4 files. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create images, web pages, and videos with Adobe Spark in your web browser.


Sharalike is a good option to consider when you want to create an audio slideshow. To create an audio slideshow on Sharalike simply import some images from your computer, your Android device or from your iPad, drag them into the sequence in which you want them to appear, and then add some music. Sharalike offers a small collection of stock music that you can use or you can upload your own music.



PowToon is a popular tool for creating animated videos online. PowToon provides a drag-and-drop editor for creating animated videos. The videos that you create feature digital paper cut-outs on a colorful background. Think of PowToon as an online tool for creating videos in the style made popular by Common Craft. PowToon provides drawings of people and objects that you can arrange on blank canvas. After adding your narration to the arrangement you can publish your video.

Magisto is a video creation tool that allows you to quickly drag videos and images from your desktop and or Google Drive account to your Magisto account. After you've uploaded the media that you want mixed, select a theme and music for your video.From the video clips and images that you upload, Magisto will select the best portions to remix and blend together. Magisto creates your video after you've completed the steps of uploading media, selecting a theme, and choosing music. The final video is emailed to you. In addition to the web-based service Magisto offers a Chrome app, an Android app, and an iPad app.


WeVideo offers the most features of any of the tools in this list. It is an online video creation tool that I have written about many times over the last few years. WeVideo offers templates that new users can follow to create their first videos. Advanced WeVideo users can skip the templates, use the full editor, and apply themes to their videos by choosing them from the themes menu in the editor. In the video editor you can upload your own media clips or use stock media clips to produce your video. WeVideo's Google Drive app allows you to save all of your video projects in your Google Drive account. WeVideo also offers an Android app and an iPhone app that students can use to capture images and video footage to add to their projects.

Nimbus Screenshot is my favorite tool for creating screencast videos on Chromebooks. It is easy to install, includes customizable countdown timer, and offers multiple ways to save and share your videos. Screencasts recorded with Nimbus Screenshot can be saved to your local drive or to an online Nimbus account. I chose to save to my local drive then upload to my YouTube channel. You could also save to your local drive then share to Google Drive or another online storage service.

Recording a video with the webcam on your Chromebook can be accomplished through the use of a free Chrome app called CaptureCast. CaptureCast, produced by Cattura Video, allows you to record the screen on your Chromebook as well as input from your webcam. To record a video with the webcam on your Chromebook open CaptureCast in your browser then allow it to access your webcam and microphone. You can specify how high of a resolution you would like to use to capture your video. You can also choose your audio quality. If you have an external microphone connected to your Chromebook, make sure that you have it enabled before you start recording. When you have finished recording in CaptureCast you can save your video on your Chromebook or upload it to YouTube, to Vimeo, or to Google Drive.

Finally, YouTube offers some good video creation and editing tools that most people overlook. One of those tools allows you to combine video clips to make one longer video. You can combine your own videos and or use video clips from YouTube's gallery of Creative Commons licensed videos. So while your students aren't limited to just their videos, they also just can't grab any old video from YouTube, like this chart-topper, to include in their projects.

You can learn more about how to use YouTube's overlooked features tomorrow in YouTube, It's Not Just Cats & Khan Academy. 

Recording a video with the webcam on your Chromebook can be accomplished through the use of a free Chrome app called CaptureCast. CaptureCast, produced by Cattura Video, allows you to record the screen on your Chromebook as well as input from your webcam.

To record a video with the webcam on your Chromebook open CaptureCast in your browser then allow it to access your webcam and microphone. You can specify how high of a resolution you would like to use to capture your video. You can also choose your audio quality. If you have an external microphone connected to your Chromebook, make sure that you have it enabled before you start recording.

When you have finished recording in CaptureCast you can save your video on your Chromebook or upload it to YouTube, to Vimeo, or to Google Drive.

Applications for Education
CaptureCast could be a great tool for students to use to create video entries for classroom blogs. Rather than having students write blog posts, they can record short videos to talk about what they learned in class that week or to share their thoughts on a topic that you've posted for discussion on your classroom blog.

As I explain in Winning Blog Strategies, including video in blog posts is a good way to increase engagement on your classroom blog.

Are you looking for a K-8 curriculum? MobyMax offers a personalized learning curriculum for elementary and middle school students. Designed for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, MobyMax provides students with personalized and blended learning resources. MobyMax includes curriculum support in different subject areas including math, writing, science, social studies, reading and state test preparation. MobyMax also offers curriculum…

The post MobyMax Personalized Learning Curriculum for K-8 Students appeared first on Class Tech Tips.

Infographics are visually stimulating and force us to summarize well. These brain-friendly student creations can be a great change of pace for essays and research papers.  Infographics are everywhere. I first started noticing them on the front page of USA Today as a journalism major in college. As Pinterest became more popular, the long, tall […]

The post Creating eye-popping infographics with Google Drawings appeared first on Ditch That Textbook.

Girls start out with a love of science and technology, but lose it somewhere along the way. Let’s help encourage that passion in teen girls.

Made w/Code by Google

I love this first statement on the About page of the Made with Code website. It’s true and pretty clearly focuses the purpose of the website.

If you’re looking for a tool to help promote coding for teen girls, be sure to add Made with Code by Google to your toolbox.

Here are some great tools included on this website:

• Code an Emoji
• Code an LED Dress
• Use selfies and code accessories on your photos
• Code a Kaleidoscope
• and many more!

It also has a great section of resources should your students be ready for more beyond what is offered on the website.

This, in combination with Code.org, is a great set of tools to help promote learning of code to all kids.

This afternoon I received an email from a reader who wondered what happened to Wiki Summarize. I don't know other than it is no longer online. It was a nice tool that helped students see long Wikipedia entries in chunks. It also included a web of related terms to help students see how topics were connected. While I haven't found anything that is exactly like Wiki Summarizer, I do have a few alternatives to suggest trying.

SummarizeThis is a free tool that summarizes the main point(s) of long articles that you find on the web. To use SummarizeThis you just copy and paste text into the summary box and click "summarize." A summary of the text then appears above the original text that you copied.

instaGrok can be used by students to read summaries of topics that they are researching.  You can use instaGrok to search a topic and quickly get lists of facts on that topic, links to information on that topic, videos, images, and quizzes on the topic. If you want to refine or alter your search, just click on another term in the web of search terms. instaGrok offers some bookmarking tools and tools for creating journals of notes.

Wolfram Alpha offers a free Google Docs Add-on that students can use to conduct research without leaving the documents they're viewing. Wolfram Alpha can help students quickly locate information about famous people in history, locate socioeconomic data, find science data, and even help students find information about music theory. Unlike on Google or Bing, when students search on Wolfram Alpha they won't be shown a list of links. When students search Wolfram Alpha they will be shown organized collections of information. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to install and use the Wolfram Alpha Google Docs Add-on.

A couple of nights ago in my G Suite for Education class I shared the following quick tip about sending Google Docs to parents who don't have Google Accounts. Rather than downloading your document as a Word file or as a PDF then sending it as an attachment from your email client, you can simply select "file," "send as attachment" to email directly from Google Docs. Doing that makes it quick and easy to send things like permission slips to parents from your Google Docs account. Watch the following short video to see how this works.

In a world where information and ideas are everywhere, I’m fascinated when people have a healthy obsession with something and go into great detail to analyze and deconstruct a topic or idea.

Sometimes it’s the topic itself but more often than not, it’s the person’s enthusiasm for the most minute details that keeps me interested.

As a sports fan, you may be familiar with the term “inside baseball” a broad term now used to refer to any behind the scenes insights or knowledge. Speaking of baseball, love him or hate him, I love listening to someone like Pete Rose talk about hitting. As arguably the greatest hitter in baseball, his breakdown of his craft is fascinating.

Sports analysts can often be annoying and yet can add new insights into their game. Here’s an example of two “experts” debating one of the most over analyzed topics in golf: Tiger Woods’ golf swing.

Unless you’re a golf fan, you didn’t watch that but what fascinates me is the detail and the passion they display as they argue this very unimportant topic. It reminds me of some of most memorable moments as a kid when we used to argue over the … Read the rest

On Friday I shared three tools that you and your students can use to host online tutoring sessions. One of my suggestions was to try using Google+ Hangouts with a whiteboard app called Web Whiteboard. Web Whiteboard makes it easy to include a whiteboard in your Google+ Hangout. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how easy it is to use Web Whiteboard in a Google+ Hangout.

Buncee is a fantastic tool for creating digital content. This web-based creation and presentation tool is ideal for students, grades K-12, to create visuals for a wide variety of lessons. Some of the best ways I’ve seen Buncee used is for English Language Arts activities and ELA projects. Buncee’s vast creation tool library allows students…

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