As teachers, we know that our students are more engaged when the work is individualized and interactive. With the technology available today, we are able to create this type of content more than ever before. Google tools such as Docs, Slides, and Forms allow us to get students to: Interact with content

Become self-directed learners

Collaborate with others

Use a combination of tools simultaneously

Follow an individualized learning path

HyperDocs

A HyperDoc is an interactive Google Doc that guides students through innovative and inquiry-based learning lessons using directions, graphic organizers, links, and possible collaboration. The learning can be made to be self directed, and students can work at their own pace.

Think about how you’re using Docs in the classroom. Are you creating a space for students’ self direction? Are you utilizing links or graphic organizers? If so, you’re on the right track, and you might even being using HyperDocs without even knowing it!

HyperDocs are truly versatile. They can be used just about anywhere in the curriculum. Let’s think about a few, specific characteristics of HyperDocs, such as:

• Opportunities for collaboration, student-student and teacher-student
• Directions to guide students through their learning at their own pace
• Graphic organizers to organize information and student work
• Links to additional resources and learning activities
• Powerful, thought-provoking questions

Check out this great HyperDoc resource to learn more about HyperDocs and find a few examples of how they’re used.

U6.L3 - Create a Hyperdoc - Make a copy

With Google Slides

Using color, graphic organizers, shapes, and lines, a teacher can creatively shift the message being shared with a class. Eye-catching headlines and organized chunks of text can greatly increase the readability and help with the comprehension of the content presented.

You can take existing slides and give them an instant makeover using the many graphic art tools in Google Slides. While the content of your slides should always be their most important feature, looks do matter when it comes to designing engaging slides.

Take the Extreme Slide Makeover Challenge!

1. View the following Google Slides and give them a makeover in order to create an engaging presentation.
2. Examine slide #2 and #3 to see a sample. What features make the ‘after’ slide more engaging?
3. Change the color scheme - adding shapes, graphic organizers, and lines to draw attention to the lesson’s main teaching points.
4. Insert images and add arrows, labels, and shapes creating your own infographics for a more engaging slide.
5. Add video and links to content that adds more interactive learning modalities.

Were you successful in giving your Google Slides a makeover? Apply these ideas to your future Google Slide presentations or take a look at some of your current ones and jazz them up a bit to make them more engaging for your students.

Check out this link to see a lesson that has been enhanced using technology for greater student engagement using Google Slides.

Interactive Note-Taking with Google Slides

Building student comprehension using digital tools can be accomplished in meaningful ways using a shared Google Slide deck. Before sharing a slide deck, allow your students to edit your slides by granting them editing rights. To do this, find the URL in the address bar and delete the, “/edit” at the end of the link replacing it with, “/copy”.

Once your deck is editable, here are a few ideas for facilitating learning through note-taking

Slides needing Added information

Suggest students add additional information to the speaker note section at the bottom of each slide

Create activities that lead students to think more deeply by highlighting specific portions of text using the highlighter tool. For example, students could be asked to highlight all passive verbs in green. To do this, they Just select a word or phrase then click on Text color in the toolbar and select Highlight rather than Text.

Encourage students to create additional slides at key points in the deck to apply the new information either collaboratively or independently. They can share their personal slide lesson with you for grading, or with other classmates to collaborate throughout the learning experience.

Student-Created Content Using Google Slides

Students become creators when they are given the opportunity to create their own Google Slides. For example, you could add vocabulary words to slides and ask students to create visual definitions of those words. This not only helps the learning process, but creates an instant, collaboratively-created study guide.

Younger students may need a bit more guidance. You can share a link to a slide deck template with premade instructions on each slide. Younger students can go through the process of creating a collaborative report step by step. It saves you from answering the same question thirty times as well!

You can also use slides as a portfolio for your students’ work. For example, you could include photos of class work, and links to a written reflection about the creative process.

Slides for Publishing

Finally, Slides can be a great tool for digital publishing. Fiction stories, poetry collections, and choose your own adventure stories are all possible with Google Slides. Many students will view each slide as a page in a book, or a card for pre-writing paragraphs, or storyboard frames for planning a graphic novel.

Rather than tell my students specific requirements about what to create for their upcoming Informational reports, I introduced them to Google Slides and asked what they thought it could be used for. My fifth grade students opened my eyes in a way I never imagined, not one of them saw it as a slide presentation tool for giving speeches. They exclaimed that it’s a stack of notecards that can be used for digital flashcard study sessions. They saw the different slides as paragraph cards for pre-writing their essays, with the flexibility to move them around during the editing process. They saw the slides as pages in a book that they could create using any content they wished. And they saw a way to capture their thinking, one slide at a time, like a digital diary. By not telling my students how to use Google Slides, they are left with unrestricted possibilities to explore, create and share for authentic purposes which they have chosen.

Slides for test prep

Preparing students for tests is important in my classroom but traditional study guides and review sessions just weren’t helping them. In the past I had used slide presentations to review concepts, expecting students to take notes as I went through the slides. It wasn’t until I shifted how I was delivering this content that I finally was able to see an improvement. I created a Google Slide deck that had one item for the test on each slide. Students then added what they know about that concept, including text page numbers, images, videos and graphic organizers linked to the slide. I was able to work individually with students who struggled with the content, and add to each slide when I saw a lack of accurate information. Students all had access to the slides to prepare for the test on their own and were motivated to study in order to see how their classmates shared their interpretations of the concepts.

Check for comprehension

I love to engage students with short films for comprehension practice. Typically I would play a video for the entire group and then have whole group discussions. During this time I noticed many students not sharing their thinking and wanted to shift the lesson for greater participation. I created a complete digital lesson using Google Slides including instructions, videos, and either a Google Form or a Google Doc linked to the slides to capture their thinking. I was able to quickly hear from each student, assessing the level of comprehension and adding some revised thinking when many missed the main idea. Sometimes, we would watch the videos together, turn and talk to neighboring students and then complete Google Form responses for increased depths of knowledge. Students shared that they loved being able to see the videos multiple times in order to catch minute details, and that when I shared their classmates responses, it gave them new perspectives on the lesson and also their classmates.

Cooperative slide decks for group building

Building community in my 2nd grade classroom is an important part of all we do and there’s nothing I love better than using technology to connect classmates with one another. I always start by sharing one slide deck for Google Slide Introductions to connect new groups and to provide an opportunity for them to learn how to use this versatile app. While it takes time to start with an activity that does not directly cover my content standards, beginning with a task which requires low cognitive load allows students to focus on the exploration and discovery of the many tools and design capabilities included right in Google Slides rather than the content. Students learn from other classmates as they simultaneously create one slide deck. The next time we use Google Slides for publishing biography reports, I won’t need to factor in time for learning a new tool since my students already know the ‘how tos’, leaving my valuable time for instruction on the content we are exploring.

Publish a digital book

Publishing digital books has never been so easy using Google Slides. The ability to create impressive graphic designs which emphasize fiction and nonfiction text features enables my students to design ‘pages’ that transform their traditional paper versions. Instead of just reading content, they allow the user to experience their messages. By adding video and links, students are able to create interactive publishing experiences ranging from Choose Your Own Adventure books to witnessing videos of actual speeches by famous Americans. Student-created content is powerful and transformational for higher-level learning outcomes. My students update their dilapidated textbooks by taping in QR codes which lead to current, interactive information they’ve created using Google Slides. By sharing links to their published work, all the students in my class can easily view multiple Google Slide Books rather than sitting for hours listening to them being presented one at a time.

Public service announcements

Creating for an authentic purpose has always been a goal I have for my students. As we began a unit encouraging them to be citizens of change, I asked them to select a local charity program that interests them. After learning all about the non-profit organizations, researching the issues they champion, and interviewing the local volunteers and employees, my students were ready to create public service announcements for them, using Google Slides, screencasting tools, and YouTube. Their slides included their own images, and advanced graphic design which they created using Google Draw. Their messaging was emphasized with a few words on each slide and made more impactful through narration as they screencast their completed Google Slide presentation. Once a video of their slides was completed, they uploaded them to YouTube where they were able to add additional edits and music. Armed with links to their completed projects, students created advertisement posters in Google Draw sharing QR codes to their videos. Having a ‘client’, giving authentic purpose for creating, completely changed the quality and level of work my students accomplished.

‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Google Forms

Choose your Own Adventures using Google Forms allow students to answer questions, and then different resources (videos, websites, further questions, etc.) are presented depending on their answer.

Let’s take a look at the steps you would take to create Interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Google Forms:

1. Make a plan for the possible paths Forms users can take (possibly in a Doc).
2. Create and title a new form.
3. Before adding questions, add new pages to your form. Use your plan to know how many pages you’ll need.
4. Be sure to name and describe your pages.
5. Go back to page one, and edit the first multiple choice question. Click the option labeled, “Go to page based on answer.”
6. Use the option to guide Forms users to specific pages based on selected answers.
7. Continue adding this type of question to all pages until your plan is complete.

Learn more about the steps above in this Doc. Utilizing Google Forms in this way can make differentiation possible. Check out how one teacher is using interactive Google Forms to differentiate the learning in her room in this blog post.

Have you thought of a way to use HyperDocs and interactive forms in your curriculum? Take a minute to reflect and connect this information to your students and classroom intentions before moving on to the next activity.

Now’s your chance to try one of the innovative activities above. Take a chance, try something new, and hopefully create an activity that you can take directly back to the classroom. We've outlined two options below for you to try.

U6.L3 - Create an Interactive Form - Make a copy

Interacting with you tube videos

What was the last YouTube video you watched? Did you interact with the video? Chances are it was a passive experience; you just sat there and watched. Most YouTube videos are designed like that. But imagine how your level of engagement would increase if you could interact with the video. Teachers everywhere are realizing that interactive videos can be a fun and engaging way to deliver quality instruction to students.

An interactive video is different than many of the instructional videos out there because the viewers play an active role. For example, they can click on a highlighted part of the video to take them further down the video’s timeline or jump to a different YouTube video entirely. Interactive videos allow viewers to:

• Follow the instructions of a prompt within the video
• Answer critical questions
• Access additional information

Interactive videos create a powerful learning experience in which the viewer actively participates. Educators are able to:

• Create a higher level of engagement with content
• Allow students to have ownership over the learning process
• Provide access to additional content to further their learning

The purpose of this lesson is to get you to rethink instructional videos. We will explore how we can use the YouTube Editor to create annotations and cards to make your videos interactive. In addition to learning how to create interactivity to videos this lesson will look at using these enhanced videos in the classroom.

Let’s take a look at how YouTube Editor can make videos interactive.

Add Annotations to Your Video Annotations allow users to insert interactivity into videos by layering text, links, and hotspots over a video. They help enrich the video experience by adding information and boosting engagement. Once in YouTube, next to the video you wish to edit, click the down arrow to the right of the Edit button and selectAnnotations. Click Add Annotation to select the type of annotation you’d like to add. LEARN HOW

Types and Customization of Annotations There are five different types of annotations to choose from: speech bubble, spotlight, note, title, and label. All annotations besides titles can become links. Once you’ve chosen your annotation, you will have editing options underneath the Add Annotation button. This is where you can change the size, color, or background color of your text. LEARN HOW

Annotation Timing It is important to think carefully about how you time the interactivity in your video. There are two places to set the timing of where annotations appear. You could simply use the Start and End settings on the right side. Or, you can move the annotations around on the timeline underneath the video. LEARN HOW

What is a Card? Cards are an additional option for adding interactivity into your video. Cards are teasers that combine a title, image, and text for a different video or website at a designated time. If viewers click this teaser they are taken to the new video/website. Cards are basically the next level of annotations and they are optimized for tablet and smartphone users. LEARN HOW

Add and Edit Cards To add and edit cards, visit your Video Manager. Click Edit, then Card, and finally Add Cards. Decide the type of card you’d like to add to your video, then click the Create button next to it. Next, enter a valid URL for your card type, edit the title and call to action, and choose or upload an image. Once you click Create Card, you’ll have the option to adjust the teaser timing below. LEARN HOW

Interactive book reading

In reading, interactive YouTube videos are valuable when students are listening to a written passage. To create these videos, capture images of the pages of the book, and then record yourself reading the book aloud. Upload this video to YouTube. At various points in time throughout the clip, use annotations to provide a place for students to predict what they think will happen next in the story. Once they choose, the annotation links them to the next part of the story to see what happens. The static book has now become interactive!

A math video that needs a response

In math, you can insert annotations at the end of an instructional video as critical review questions. Use a title annotation for the question itself, and choose one of the other annotation options as the answer choices. If students click the correct answer, they will be linked to a video on the next topic. If students click an incorrect answer, they will be guided to a review video or tutorial that presents the topic in a different way. This way, the students are guided as they move through their individual learning paths.

Finding the next video of interest with in this one.There are few things more powerful to a teacher than when students choose to further the learning process themselves. Oftentimes, students are moved to do this when they have choice over the direction of their learning. Interactive YouTube video science lessons provide students choice and opportunity to learn more about a topic. You can use linked annotations or cards throughout a video to provide students the opportunity to visit another video and learn more about a topic.

Student created videos interactive.

If you use interactive videos on a regular basis, your students become familiar with the format and you can take it to the next level: student-created interactive videos. Having them become the video creators helps students internalize the content at a higher level. They are presenting it to an audience and it’s their job to get the audience to understand and interact with the material.

Using interactive videos throughout your curriculum can allow students the freedom to access information and progress through the curriculum at their own pace. This gives them ownership over the learning process.