So instead I decided to try out some of the things I have been wanting to use in my high school classroom in the graduate class on assessment that I teach for a local university. Today's weather gave me my first reason to try out some of these new things--in case you didn't know, we are currently encased in all this white stuff that keeps pouring from the sky, which forced me to cancel tonight's class. But I didn't have to cancel the learning, thanks to some great online technology tools.
Because my class only meets 8 times, I didn't want to just cancel class and try to cram two times the learning into a later session. So I decided to make a MentorMob learning playlist for my students to work through until I see them at next week (barring any more March snowstorms, that is). Below is an example I made for my high school Physical Science class last year for your perusal (this was before I started trying to phase out multiple choice questions as much as I could):
Create your own Playlist on MentorMob! I have extolled the virtues of MentorMob as a useful tool for flipping your classroom before; however, they have added some great features since last I visited that make it even more useful (or, at least they are new to me!). For example:
- Better Google Docs/Drive Integration. You can insert a lot of different types of media in a MentorMob playlist; however, when I first started putting in links to Google Docs, you couldn't view the document directly and MentorMob provided a button to open the document in a new window. Now documents can be viewed directly within the playlist.
- Challenge questions. Now you can insert what they call a "Challenge" question that will appear after a step. I like this as a quick check for understanding between each step (but they are multiple choice). The questions are optional, it looks like--when I just clicked the "X" button when a question popped up, it let me move on to the next step.
- Articles. Now you can write articles, or HTML documents, as steps, with the ability to upload images and insert links. I have used these to write directions for activities that I want students to do. To me, this is a nice feature because that means I don't have to go to my Google Drive, create a document, write in it, adjust the sharing settings....you get the idea. Most of the time I am in "have to get this done NOW" mode, and being able to write up an activity or directions from within a tool is a time-saving feature for me. (The only drawback is that, if the web tool you're using goes under or disappears, your activities might be gone with it unless you have them somewhere else.)
- Comments can be left for each step in the playlist--so discussions can be had. If I were using this in class, I would hijack the comments area as sneaky means of formative assessment, assigning topics for discussion at each step and peeking in at how well they can articulate concepts in their own words and defend their own positions and ideas.
There are other great features that MentorMob has released in the past year; for a great overview of all of MentorMob's great new features (plus a good how-to about making learning playlists), you can check out this article.
Now, I have to be honest--MentorMob wasn't my first choice this time around; this is only because I had used it before and wanted to try something new. Specifically, I wanted to try out Edcanvas, which looks like a great tool that could also be used for flipping your classroom. However, on the Linux machine where I was trying to create my first Edcanvas, I was unable to drag any media onto the canvas (not sure if this was because of Linux or because my computer was just being ornery). And, since I was in that "must get this done NOW" mode as per usual, I switched to MentorMob because it could get the job done when I needed it to get done. And I'm glad I did, because I became aware of their great new features.
But I still wanted to give Edcanvas a try so, when I managed to get in front of a Windows machine, I checked it out from top to bottom. Below is a sample one that I made for my grad students that I would have given to them if it had worked on my Linux machine:
Here's what I enjoyed about Edcanvas:
- Easy to use interface. It is literally "drag and drop;" the 30 second video you watch when you first sign up is literally all you really need to know. You just choose your type of media and drop it into whatever box you'd like it to go.
- You can insert a lot of stuff. YouTube videos, web links, files from your computer, photos from Flickr...you name it, you can insert it. It also can grab files from your Google Drive and Dropbox.
- You can just type text in a box, if that's what you need to do. That's what I did for step #8 in the canvas I made above; this is a useful feature akin to the "Article" feature in Mentormob to me. However, this isn't an HTML page; there's no inserting links or images. It's just straight-up text (although there is speech-to-text capability).
- You can type in instructions for each step. Below the title is a description you can edit; I think it's useful to put some brief instructions in there.
- Viewers can leave comments for each step, promoting discussion. If you select "Play Canvas," each step is then rotated through much like MentorMob's learning playlist. Again, just like MentorMob, I would put this feature to use as a formative assessment tool.
- You can embed the canvas in a website, or share just the link with your students. Just like a MentorMob playlist, they make it easy to share and distribute the learning. You can even adjust the privacy settings to let anyone view or only those with the link.
Obviously, there's a lot to love about Edcanvas. The one obvious feature Edcanvas is lacking that MentorMob has is any sort of built-in assessment feature, but I'm sure that you can easily insert links to quizzes, progress checks, or whatever other type of assessment you prefer in one of the steps if your assessments have links that are easily obtained. One other fun fact I discovered is that you can insert a link to an Edcanvas into a MentorMob playlist--and you can insert a link to a MentorMob playlist into an Edcanvas. I love it when two playlist tools play nicely with each other.
Each of these tools has a lot going for it; which one you choose depends on what features you prefer in your online learning playlist tools. Either one has great potential to be useful in the flipped classroom or any classroom where you want students to shoulder more of the burden of learning.
They are also very useful on days when the graduate class you teach gets cancelled due to copious amounts of white stuff and you still want the learning to happen.
Have you used either of these tools in your classroom? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.
