Worth a Read 

Collaborative groups arent always comfortable learning spaces for all students. The article “Why the ‘extroverted’ classroom doesn’t work for introverted students” shares ideas on how educators cab be mindful of the learning needs of all students. 

Worth a Watch/Listen 

Chromebook keyboard shortcuts are time-saving key combos you can use to launch specific commands. In this week’s Tech This Out! I outline 15 keyboard shortcuts students can use on their devices. You can share the video with your students and print out the chormebook keyboard shortcuts guide to display in your classroom. 

Click to download Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts poster

Tech Tool to Try 

Make Your Own Wordle allows you to create a Wordle and then get a link to share with your students. No registration or login is required and it’s absolutely free.

If you aren’t familiar with how Wordle is played, here are the rules.

• You are trying to guess a five-letter word.
• You have six tries to guess the word.
• After each guess, the color of the tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the word. Green is a correct letter in the correct location. Gold is a correct letter in the wrong location. Gray is an incorrect letter.

Some suggestions for how you might use your customized Wordle game include

• using it as a warm-up either with a random word or a word from the day’s lesson.
• posting a Wordle each day with a new vocabulary word for students. Once they’ve solved the Wordle, have them look up the definition and then try to use it the rest of the class period.
• having students create a Wordle for their classmates.
• creating themed Wordles on topics like seasons, holidays, sporting events, “this day in history,” etc.

For all you math teachers out there be sure to check out Nerdle. It’s like wordle, but for math.  

How to play: Guess the NERDLE in 6 tries. After each guess, the color of the tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the solution.

• There are 8 “letters”
• A “letter” is one of “0123456789+-*/=”
• And a word must be a calculation that is mathematically correct. So it must have one “=”
• Also, the number on the right of the “=” is just a number (not another calculation)
• Standard order of operations applies, so calculate * and / before + and –
• Order matters in nerdle. If the answer we’re looking for is 10+20=30, then 20+10=30 isn’t close enough.

Have your mathmicatians give it a try! 

Free Technology Resource 

There are so many tech tools out there. How do you know which one to use and for what purpose? The RCS Educator’s Guide to Instructional Technology helps educators select RCS approved instructional technology tools to integrate into their teaching and learning. 

Video directions on how to use the guide