Powtoon Potential

Are you looking for presentation options for you or your students that go beyond the Google Slides presentation? If so, PowToon might be of interest to you. With this tool, you and/or your students can create animated video presentations to share a message and grab attention. Using audio/video rather than standard presentation tools moves students away from over-reliance on text to convey ideas leading to a more engaging experience for the audience. They provide templates to speed up the design or you can start from scratch.

Example uses:

Instructional Videos (Flip your Classroom)

Demonstrate understanding of a topic. Biology Example.

   -show math processes, explanations of complex concepts, review new learning

Summarize main idea. Drama Example.

Commercial (have to know it to sell it): Book, Product, Idea

Storytelling: Informational or Creative Writing
Reflect on learning -Example: Where I was, Where I am, Where I'm going...

Present research findings

I'm sure you have more!

An elementary teacher from Virginia said of her experience with PowToon:

 "Getting my students to write has always been a struggle, especially at such a young age. After implementing PowToon into my instruction, my students now enjoy writing and beg to write and create stories. They enjoy writing because they are able to see the results of their final product. PowToon has truly made a huge impact in my classroom."

PowToon has a free version, but right now PowToon is giving way Classroom Basic plans (usually $96/year). You get 60 student accounts through this plan. Interested? Claim yours for free here!

Reach out to a building technology lead or Jody Kelley if you would like to kick around ideas or if you would like some assistance with implementing and using PowToon.

From Power Up: Making the Shift to 1:1 Teaching and Learning by Diana Neebe and Jen Roberts, "...many assignments and projects involving 1:1 technology take a little longer than their paper counterparts. Often this is because students are doing more work to complete higher-quality products. The difference in the outcome seems worth an extra couple of days" (p. 33). 

Are you already using PowToon? Please comment with an example or a description of how you/your students are using it!

Flipgrid @ Ballard

Flipgrid is loaded with possibilities, but first, we must ask why? Why learn about it, why spend precious class time having students use it? 

My favorite reason is that every student is given the opportunity to have a voice. Additionally, here are some ideas brainstormed by our instructional coach, Mrs. Auffert:

In ACTION:

In the Spring of 2017, through a collaboration between Economics teacher, Mrs. Baumgardner, Instructional Coach, Mrs. Auffert, and Teacher Librarian/Tech Lead, Mrs. Dovre, the senior Economics students engaged with Flipgrid, a video discussion platform. The seniors had been reading The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman. As a follow-up to the reading and their individual work on an outline of the reading, students chose a subtopic (Local Communities, Competition, Suppliers, Employees, etc.) and shared their views about the impact of Walmart on that subtopic.

Twitter post from April 28.

 What we saw: nervous students, excited students, students redrafting their outline responses, students tucked away in corners of the library and commons, students reviewing their videos and doing retakes, students watching and listening to their peers' videos, and of course, students taking their selfies. There was energy.

More recently, Mrs. Dovre has created a Flipgrid for the Ballard HS Book Club. Students are busy and they can't always attend the meetings, so we are opening up Book Club to Flipgrid in addition to our face-to-face meetings. She shared the link to the Flipgrid via our Google Classroom stream.

Here's a Google Classroom post used to share a Flipgrid topic.

This is what the Flipgrid topic looks like for this month's book:

No videos yet, but it won't be long, hopefully.

Want to jump on board?

Getting started is simple, and your technology lead or instructional coach will gladly assist you with the setup and the rollout to your students. Just ask!

If you want to get started on your own:

     1. Login via the email directions. (We can send them again if you need them.)

     2. Create a Grid.

     3. Add a topic to the grid. Students will respond within the topic framework. 

     4. Share the topic with students.

     5. Don't forget to add this to the Pineapple Chart in the PD room so others can visit.

Resources:

     Intro Presentation used last year to introduce Flipgrid to students.
     Student Guide - Links will need to be adjusted
     15 Ideas for Ways to Use Flipgrid
     Updates to Flipgrid since last year
     Video Tutorial and Tips from Flipgrid