Plickers Update

If you haven't dusted off your Plickers cards this year there are some updates that you should be aware before you do. Plickers has upgraded the user interface (the website is prettier) and improved your ability to organize your library and export student information. When scanning for answers, text and student names are larger and you can do more from your phone such as flip to stats and reveal correct answers.

Most importantly, Plickers has made it easier to queue multiple items at once! This makes me soooooo happy!
     • To use multi-select, hold your shift key and click on the questions in your Library to queue. 

Side note: If you are not using Plickers -- start using Plickers! If you need help getting started let me know.

Closed Captioning Made Easy

Did you know that Google recently added closed captioning to Google Slides? Yeah, me neither.

I just stumbled across this the other day when I opened a Google Slide on the Harlem Renaissance (man, the kids really dig the Harlem Renaissance) upon "presenting" the slide I was asked if I wanted closed captioning. Of course, the answer was yes; I don't know why, but I really felt like I needed it at the time. I don't know if you have ever used the closed caption option for YouTube, but, in my experience, it is usually trash. I expected this to be trash as well. So, I asked the kids to buckle up and I enabled my microphone (an automatic feature) and we took the closed captioning feature for a spin.

Low and behold it worked and I mean it really worked! Check out this sample video.

Closed Captioning Instructions

Youtube Video Length

I don't know who this guy is, but
he encapsulates how I felt playing Choplifter.

There are a few fond memories I have from my childhood: riding my bike to the local Hills Department Store to play Choplifter on the arcade cabinet in the lobby, grandma's freshly baked ginger snaps, summer trips to Geauga Lake, and the squeeky-thump of wheels coming down the hall.  See, our video cart had a strand of carpet wrapped around one of the wheels and it made a weird squeeky-thump as it came down the hall. Will it be Bill Nye? Will it be The Magic School Bus? Will it be some random Coronet film focused on emotional maturity (yes, we were still watching those when I was in school)? Who really cares just get that cart in the room so I can stare into space for the next hour!

We all have that memory of "video days".  It doesn't really matter what was being shown because it was pretty much a free day.

The problem with slapping a DVD of The Magic School Bus: Human Body into your DVD player and letting it play for 50 minutes is that "shorter videos are much more engaging" and should be "shorter than 6 minutes" (Guo, Phillip, et al.). I know this is bad news for some of you, but all is not lost. One easy strategy to implement is to segment your videos into chunks and have an activity every 6-ish minutes. This would be similar to how many Edpuzzle's are crafted -- every 6 minutes stop the video and have a short guiding question or activity.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Works Cited

Guo, Phillip, et al. “How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos.” Quality Matters, MIT, 2018, www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/research-video-length.