🗑 Teachflix + more video activities

📺 Free Curipod webinar on Wednesday!

Curipod (curipod.com) will create custom, interactive presentation slides for you in seconds.

That’s impressive enough in itself.

But there’s a lot more to Curipod — and the interactive digital lessons you can create for your students are almost endless. (Plus they’re quick to create!)

In this webinar on Wednesday, I’ll join Eirik Hernes Berre, COO and co-founder of Curipod, to tell you all about it — and how much you’re able to do on the free plan! (Spoiler altert: It’s a lot.)

📆 WHEN: Wednesday at 6pm US Eastern / 3pm US Pacific

If you can’t make it live, go ahead and register so you can get the replay link and watch whenever you want!

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🎬 Quick video activities to use in class TODAY

We all know the power a good video can have on student learning. It can spark attention — or make difficult concepts easier to understand.

Teachflix (teachflix.org) is our free collection of hundreds of teacher-approved instructional videos. They’re sorted by grade level and content area — and you can even do a keyword search.

Chances are that you have found your own favorite videos as well.

(By the way, if you have videos — or even full playlists — of videos you love to use in class, would you share them so we can add them to Teachflix?)

So … what activities can we use to support video-based learning in class?

I’m glad you asked …

1. Activities in “Teaching with Teachflix”

On the Teachflix website, we offer an ebook packed full of video-based activities. It’s called “Teaching with Teachflix” You can download the PDF and print out/photocopy the activities if you want.

Or if you make a copy of the Google Slides version of “Teaching with Teachflix”, you can delete out all the other pages and just keep the activity that you want to use. Then assign that activity to your students.

Here are some of the activities you can use …

• Make It Social — Create social media-style posts that recap or react to what students have seen in the video.

• Word Splash — A quick vocabulary-recognition activity for the video.

• Brain Dump — A simple space to recall facts after watching the video (that’s proven by cognitive science to be very effective).

• Send a Postcard — Create a postcard from the location where the video is situated (with details from the video).

2. Use teacher AI tools to create activities

MagicSchool, SchoolAI and Brisk Teaching are AI teacher tools that create quick teacher/student resources. Here are a few that could be helpful with your videos …

• MagicSchool YouTube Video Questions

• MagicSchool YouTube Video Summarizer

• SchoolAI Multiple Choice Quiz Tool

• SchoolAI Worksheet Generator Tool

• Brisk Teaching: With the Chrome extension installed, you can hit “Create” and choose “Inquiry Worksheet,” “Guided Notes,” and more

3. Create a student Brisk Boost video activity

Brisk Teaching’s student-facing chatbot, Boost, lets students watch a video on their own — and then interact with the chatbot to show their understanding. (Brisk Boost is part of the Brisk Educator Free plan!)

Once the Brisk Chrome extension is installed, just go to the YouTube video and click the little circle “B” Brisk button in the bottom right. Choose “Boost Student Activity” and describe what you want students to demonstrate or do.

4. Visual whiteboard activities with FigJam

FigJam (figma.com/education) is a free visual whiteboard tool. Sticky notes … flowcharts with connectors … think: the successor to Google’s Jamboard (RIP) with more and cooler features.

It’s a great collaborative space where small groups (or whole classes) can share and interact. (It’s also great for visual thinking for individual students.)

Bonus: FigJam has tons of pre-made templates — like the jigsaw activity in the image above. Grab a template. Throw it in a FigJam file. Share it with students.

• Click the templates button in the top right of FigJam (it looks like a rectangle web browser) …

• … or go to the Figma Education Creators template library with TONS of fun pre-made templates.

5. Use a visible thinking routine

This one isn’t techy … but it can be if you want.

Harvard’s Graduate School of Education offers Project Zero and this fantastic Thinking Routines Toolbox.

It’s a wonderful library of prompts to get students thinking and talking about new things they’ve learned.

There are dozens and dozens of thinking routines — and free supporting lesson plans — that include some of my favorites …

• Think, Pair, Share (yep, that’s a thinking routine)

• See, Think, Wonder

• I Use to Think … Now I Think …

• Circle of Viewpoints

• What Makes You Say That?

… and that’s just a start!

This only scratches the surface with video-based activities you could do with your students. Other tools and ideas include …

• Edpuzzle: Add questions to student-viewed videos — and check out their Edpuzzle Originals videos (fantastic!)

• Our templates library has tons of Google Slides/PowerPoint templates to make for fun activities

• Review game tools (like Kahoot!, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, Gimkit, Blooket … I call those “The Big Five”)

💻 TECH TIP 💻

🤿 Snorkl’s instant student feedback will blow you away

Providing meaningful feedback to students can be both exhausting and time-intensive.

Snorkl (snorkl.app) provides a unique feedback experience ...

• Students can write and draw -- and even record their voice -- to answer questions.

• Snorkl can see and analyze the student's canvas -- and listen to a transcript of the student's recording.

• It provides immediate feedback, analyzing everything the student provided.

• Students can adjust their work and resubmit to improve their score.

Snorkl offers a fantastic free plan that includes a limited number of activities (you can delete old activities to stay within the limits).

The premium plan, designed for schools and districts, provides unlimited activities, an admin dashboard, the Snorkl Coach—an AI tool that assists students before they submit responses—and much more.

Ready to get started?

Our latest post includes:

• Getting started guide

• Snorkl 101 video

• 10 ideas for using Snorkl in any class

• 10 ready-to-use sample activities to provide students with instant feedback.

💬 Read 10 ways to provide instant feedback to students with Snorkl

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!