🔼 Let's upgrade your worksheets

📣 Have you heard? Wakelet acquired digital portfolio platform bulb!

Content curation platform Wakelet announced yesterday that they have acquired bulb - a leading platform for creating, showcasing and sharing digital portfolios reinforcing its commitment to supporting higher education and employment readiness.

Together with bulb, Wakelet is able to offer even more value to schools and districts looking to maximize student outcomes inside and outside the classroom.

🔗 Learn more! Wakelet Acquires bulb, accelerating presence in the digital portfolio space

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

Worksheet to WOW!  Let’s Upgrade Your Worksheet!

Worksheets have been embedded in classrooms for years, but they often suffer from several limitations. In a blog post I wrote awhile back I wrote a post called Worksheet to WOW: 10 ways to upgrade your worksheet. In it I explore several ways to transform traditional worksheets into engaging, creative learning experiences using classroom technology.

Since then I have provided many workshops and sessions on this idea and have added even more in a bonus filing cabinet full of ideas.

This filing cabinets is packed with options for upgrading your worksheets! Click the filing cabinet drawers to open a cabinet. Then, click a folder to pull it out -- and open it

Inside it you’ll find:

• Tools for overhauling your worksheet activities

• A whole drawer of templates to assign students

• Recall activities to make learning permanent

• Visual activities to engage

• No-tech activities that are tactile

Let’s take a look at some ideas you can use right away to turn your worksheet into a WOWsheet!

Vocabulary Matching:

• Traditional Worksheets: Vocabulary matching worksheets help students learn new words, but they can be boring and lack creativity.

• Alternative: Use Wordwall for a vocabulary “match up” activity. Wordwall provides immediate feedback and allows you to use images as keywords or definitions, enhancing verbal and visual connections in students’ brains.

• Get more ideas like these! Check out the tools drawer in the filing cabinet.

Visual Summary Activities:

• Traditional Worksheets: Visuals are often missing from standard worksheets.

• Alternatives: Incorporate visual elements using sketchnotes or icons to create infographics to summarize information. These kinds of activities engage students and enhance learning.

• Get more ideas like these! Check out the visual drawer in the filing cabinet.

Multiple Choice Recall Activities:

• Traditional Worksheets: These worksheets have been staples of classrooms forever. They're fast and easy to grade. They give students repetitions with new material.

• Alternative: Design recall activities that challenge students to actively retrieve information. Try a brain dump either on paper or digitally with our brain dump template. 

• Get more ideas like these! Check out the recall drawer of the filing cabinet.

No-Tech Tactile Exit Ticket:

• Traditional Worksheets: Lack creativity and personality.

• Alternative: Integrate tactile experiences without relying on technology. Hands-on activities like the graffiti wall get students up and moving. Ask students to write something they remember from class -- or something important to them -- on the board before leaving. It’s a great recall activity and a classwide formative assessment.

• Get more ideas like these! Check out the no-tech drawer of the filing cabinet.

Go deeper⬇️

🔗Worksheet to WOW: 10 ways to upgrade your worksheet

💻 Tech Tip

Make your images talk with Book Creator

Did you know you can hide your recordings behind an image or text but make them clickable?

Here’s how to do it:

• 🎙️ Add the audio hotspot

• 🐄 Make sure it is layered in front of the image

• ℹ️ Resize the hotspot then click the Inspector (i)

• 👉 Toggle on Invisible when reading

Learn more about ways to use Book Creator in the classroom

🔗 Growing authors: 15 ways to use Book Creator to publish student writing

👋 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!