New Tool - EdPuzzle!

Hello! I'm back after my year-long hiatus, refreshed, engaged, calm and ready to roll.

I've just been checking through the first Year 9 unit called "Third Rock From the Sun" and found that one of my favourite tools (Zaption) doesn't exist any more.

A quick Google search later and I've discovered a replacement with even more features and useful tools.

Meet EdPuzzle :) It's a tool to help you to help student engage with information on videos by including questions, notes or voice-overs throughout.

First you import any video from youtube.

You can trim the clip down.

You can set due dates.

You can add questions throughout the video, as well as voice-overs and notes.

You can block and prevent 'skipping' through the video or skipping questions.

When presented with a question, students can submit their answers or choose to 'rewatch' the segment it relates to.

You can share it to your class when you're done, or embed it with an iframe.

You can see how many/which students have engaged with your activity and what they've scored (I am guessing the score only applies to multi-choice questions, though you can read their answers on open-ended ones).

You can see how individual questions were answered. 

And if you are interested in seeing the one that I made as a model, you can click here to engage with it (and maybe learn a few things about the Layers of the Earth as well!)

9KMn Blogs about Alfred Wegener and Continental Drift!

9KMn's blogs are finally up and running, and their first post is about continental drift!

We started the Third Rock From The Sun topic by learning about the layers of the Earth, how the crust is divided up into plates, and how convection currents in the mantle cause sea floor spreading which leads to continental drift.

Students absolutely loved watching the video below at the start of the unit. They convinced me to play it about four times in one lesson!

 After a few days 9KMn was able to understand who all the characters were and what they were talking about when rapping "cut em' out the book notice their shape, they're fitting pretty well there I dare say" and "hey it's Harry Hess and it's after the war, I'm using sonar to map the sea floor."

After a few activities in class such as the classic jigsaw and evidence cut-out for Pangaea, as well as looking at whether certain things count as scientific evidence or not, and looking at Pangaea break-up simulations here and here, students were ready to create and share their new understanding.

They chose what style of creation they would prefer to do. These included a piktochart newspaper article, filming an interview, different styles of writing, creating and performing a rap, or using GOanimate, or Prezi! These links will take you to the criteria students were working off while making their creations.

Some students have finished their creation and included them in their first blog post, while others are still editing and will add them soon! 

Click on their names to see completed blog posts from superstars Talita, Antonio, Anamanu,  Phoenix, and PJ.