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Instructional Materials & How-Tos
Photo by Matt Ridley on Unsplash
Many of the applications and tools I chose to carry out my research were selected specifically because of teachers' and students' familiarity with the platforms. I was hoping to maximize my time with learning and activities designed specifically to impact empathy and cultural curiosity. Since my study design did not include measuring the potential impact of different mediums or platforms, I avoided introducing tech tools that would necessitate technical instruction and ramp up time to use. That said, a few tools I did use that I think teachers or researches could benefit from increased familiarity with are listed below.
Slides Carnival
Slides Carnival is a stockpile of templates that are easy to download and use for Google Slides or PowerPoint. In addition to simply providing a broader range of high-quality designs to choose from, the templates provide expanded template pages for a range of uses. For example, most templates offer 20-30 different page templates from introductory slides to graph/data slides, as well as libraries of customizable design elements.
PearDeck
While many teachers are familiar with Pear Deck and its capabilities, especially after being forced to adapt to a distance learning format during the pandemic, I believe we can almost always learn how to make these types of tools work harder for us. In the case of Pear Deck, a few quick ways we can use more of Pear Deck's capabilities to our advantage include:
1. Pop-up Activities Every experience with Pear Deck doesn't have to be a long presentation with multiple slides. There are a ton of pre-design pop-up activities perfect for reflections, brain breaks, deeper learning, and more. |
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2. Student-Paced Learning
Need to break away for some small group time? Have split class activities that call for some asynchronous learning? Utilizing student-paced mode can enable students to pace themselves through a lesson involving multiple means of representation and expression. This also enables students that may have missed a lesson to catch up on their own time.
Need to break away for some small group time? Have split class activities that call for some asynchronous learning? Utilizing student-paced mode can enable students to pace themselves through a lesson involving multiple means of representation and expression. This also enables students that may have missed a lesson to catch up on their own time.
3. Pre-Built Pear Decks
Look, sometimes you just don't want to re-invent the wheel. That's why I like to see if what I need it already built. We all already know about resources like TPT and such, but you can also find pre-build lessons and units on the Pear Deck site in "The Orchard." The Orchard is home to all kinds of pre-built Pear Decks you can easily import and use as-is or edit to suit your needs. For Session 2 of my study, I started with a lesson from the Orchard called Cultivating Compassion: Understanding Empathy, made a few revisions to suit my needs, and we were off!
Look, sometimes you just don't want to re-invent the wheel. That's why I like to see if what I need it already built. We all already know about resources like TPT and such, but you can also find pre-build lessons and units on the Pear Deck site in "The Orchard." The Orchard is home to all kinds of pre-built Pear Decks you can easily import and use as-is or edit to suit your needs. For Session 2 of my study, I started with a lesson from the Orchard called Cultivating Compassion: Understanding Empathy, made a few revisions to suit my needs, and we were off!