On April 29, 2011, I uploaded a student-created video on the Renaissance.  Today is  April 30, 2012 and that video has 14,034 views.  I have not even shown it in my class until today.  That means this student-made video on the Renaissance has received, on average, 1200 views a month by people from all over the world.  That speaks for itself on the idea of students leaving digital footprints worth following and creating a Legacy.  

On a side note, I showed it today six times, to 140 students.
Check out this 13 year old students work........

A few weeks ago, one of my grad students Crystal, showed me a website that was "great". I checked it out and moved on.   I did not really check it out in detail.  Last week, I went deeper into the site and found something I have been looking for, for years.  It is a free online quiz service (it also offers much more, but the quiz service is what I was interested in).  Now, I am not a huge test kinda teacher.  I like more authentic assessment, but I have always wanted a way to ask multiple choice questions and have it graded for me for fact recall on my content.  Mike and I had used google docs, but it will not easily grade for you (it can, but a long process).  So any ways, I thought I would give this service a try. 

-Next, you pick the right answer and click add more questions. Till you are done.
-You can upload images, maps, and more.  I used a few maps and artwork (see image above)
-When you are done, you click make it active and assign to your classes.  It has time limits, settings for retakes, and more.  I just used the basic version, they take the quiz once and it shows them their score.  
-Student then take the quiz, hit submit and they get a screen with their score, the whole quiz opens showing them what they missed and got right (if you provide feedback it will show here).  
-In my account, I get a report with average, each students score, link to their quiz, and a break down of the quiz.  This provides me with really quick feedback of what students have misconceptions about.  You can see some of the break down in the PP above.   


So, I owe Crystal an apology.  She was right, this is a great site.  You have a great find here and my students loved the instant feedback and it made my job more efficient.  Thanks again Crystal,  Let us know how it works for you. 

The link to quiz star is  http://quizstar.4teachers.org/ 

Cheers, Garth

I am proud to say that Chardon Middle School, lead by Tim Bowens (among others) has been a supporter and one of the leading school donators to the Flight 93 memorial fund.  Over the past several years our 6th graders have visited the crash site, listened to guest speakers at school, and created beautiful pieces of art in remembrance of all the heroes of September 11, 2001.  As a person with firefighters in my family and a vivid personal memory of that day, I just wanted to take a moment to tell everyone about this years fundraiser dinner.  The flyer is attached below.  If you are anywhere in the Ohio area and would like to stop by for dinner, we would love to have you as our guest.  One school, one community, one heartbeat.  Several Chardon Middle School teachers are extremely committed to giving our students a deep sense of not only personal/local/national history, but a sense of community involvement and enrichment.  The Flight 93 and 9/11 activities are one of several ways in which our teachers are connecting students with something greater than themselves.  This year students at the middle school will also be participating in a day of service.  I do not normally advertise events in this blog, but the amazing work of the teachers I am lucky enough to call friends here in Chardon needs to be shared with the world.  If you know any first responders, military personal, or hereos in any sense of the word please shake their hand and thank them for their continued selflessness.

I was sitting in my grad class, teaching a lesson when a twitter message caught my eye.  It said, " instagrok.com just might be what we have been searchin 4,a legit research tool for the 21st century".  I clicked and what I saw blew me away.  We switched lessons and explored this powerful site.  Here are some keys: 
1.  It has a built in journal and history of what you read and links to where you visited.  The journal allows you to take notes and save them for use on any computer anywhere.  
2.  It is visual: it builds a web on the topic you searched. 
3.  It has web resources for each topic to the right of the web: Key facts, Links, Images, video, quizes, and concepts. 
4.  Click any bubble in the web and all the resources change...every time you pick a new bubble. 
5.  It is fun!!!
Here is a google doc to a PDF brochure on Instagrok.com 

Check it out and tell me how you find to use this with your students and what they think.  I look forward to hearing from you.