Friday, September 29, 2017

You are now...all the "Wizer"!

The ability to create, assign, and review digital worksheets is a function that can save time, energy...and paper. But, in plenty of cases it seems to be much more practical to go the traditional route of using a paper-based option. Whether it involved too much time to create the worksheet, involved too many steps for the students to access and answer questions, or the functionality just didn’t meet the needs of the teacher or students, many times it was just easier to stick with paper.

I have come across a tool that looks to eliminate a good deal of those obstacles and drawbacks. The product is called wizer.me. Teachers can create amazing online interactive worksheets with variety of question types and multimedia resources. Some of the types of questions that can be created include: open questions, matching, drawing, multiple choice and fill in the blanks, just to name a few. Some of the most valuable features in my opinion are the ability to create those interactive question types like matching, drawing, and the labeling of images. But, what I like best is with the open question, students can also orally record their answer. Giving students that ability to explain themselves simply by talking can sometimes make all the difference in the world. In addition to the ease with which these questions can be created, the visual presentation of the worksheets is fantastic and just as easy to create.

Once you have created your engaging worksheet, assigning it to students is a simple process as well because it is integrated with Google Classroom. Click the assign link tab and a small button appears allowing you to choose Classroom, and in a couple presses of a button you can choose and assign it to any of your Google Classrooms. Students receive the link to the assignment in their Stream, can proceed directly to the wizer.me worksheet, sign in with Google and they are off and running. Once students have completed the worksheet, the teacher has the ability to go to their wizer.me dashboard and view all student responses for any particular assignment.

A feature that is always good to see is an active community of educators that utilize the tool. Any user can go to their wizer.me dashboard and click on “Community” to be able to search, view, and use any worksheet already created by teachers around the world. Worksheets can be searched by grade level and topic. Once you find a worksheet that you like, a quick click will copy that worksheet to your own dashboard where you can assign it just the way it is or edit it to suit your needs.

Here is a video that you can view to see all that wizer.me has to offer.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

The Beauty of Chrome Bookmarks

One benefit of using the Chrome browser is the ability to have your bookmarks synced across any device. Wherever and whenever you use chrome you can have direct and quick access to those sites and documents that you bookmarked and use most.

To begin with, you always want to make sure that you are signed into chrome. If you are using a chromebook this is automatic. When using a PC or Mac, after opening Chrome, go to the chrome menu button (3 vertical dots at top right) and choose to sign into chrome.
Once signed in, make sure that within the same menu, Show Bookmarks bar is checked off from within the Bookmarks menu.

Once the settings above are taken care of you will be able to easily create, organize and see all of your bookmarks. In order to create a bookmark of any page or document, simply click the star icon at the far right of the omnibox. You will be presented with options to name this particular bookmark, add it to the bookmarks bar or an existing bookmark folder, or create a new bookmark folder to place it into. Remember, even Google docs, sheets, slides, etc. are able to be bookmarked in this fashion. Try this tool out now. Here is a great document to bookmark.