Professional Development Breakout Session: Hapara

For the January 2 in-service, my first breakout presentation was on using Hapara to access and monitor student learning. I really don't know how I would manage a 1:1 Chromebook classroom without Hapara! Students know that I can access their screens, files, email, and even the trash from my Hapara account. Just knowing that I can and do monitor them has curbed most of their off-task behaviors. Check out my Google slides for more information.

First Thanksgiving Digital Breakout!

After learning about Digital Breakout activities at IETC 2018 last week, I tried making my own. It was easier than I anticipated and I only had a few glitches. Although I set the data validation for each question and set up the sections to work properly, I did forget to make the quiz self-grading. My first students to finish needed for me to manually check each of their answers. Not too bad for my first try!

A couple of hints to remember:

1. Put students into groups of no more than 4. I think the groups of 2 and 3 worked more productively than the larger groups of 4.
2. Allow much more time than you expect for it to take. My students were all working on question 2 of 4 when the time limit expired.    Next time, I will allow 45 minutes instead of 30.
3. Double check the data validation carefully. Google does not allow more than one possible data validation option, so plan the questions carefully so that students are not struggling with whether to write a plural form. I used the hints to help with this.
4. Add a Certify em' certificated by using the Certify em' add on for Google Forms. Then your successful students will automatically be mailed a completion certificate.
5. Plan another activity in case the Internet goes down. This has not been a problem all year, UNTIL I started this activity. Ugh!
6. Don't forget to set the answer key, too. Once I put correct answers into the data validation fields, I forgot to add the same responses into the correct fields for self-checking.

I would love to find a timer that would embed into the Google Form or that would automatically countdown. For now, I just used the Google timer found by typing timer into the Google search bar. Displaying this on my Smartboard worked fine.

Here is my First Thanksgiving Breakout using the Scholastic First Thanksgiving website for searching for answers to the questions.