Graphic Organizers and Canva

By -

Getting students to keep on task, keeping organized is a hard part of teaching in a middle school. I coach a Robotics team, and I also work with teachers to try to build their capacity for technology skills. 

One way I try to help my kids is to teach teachers to create Graphic Organizers. Canva is a free tool that is great for creating all sorts of publications, videos, and even documents and websites.

Canva design menu

The tool is very flexible and allows you to upload graphics, or borrow from theirs. It has many great features for teachers, including classroom tools for creating alongside of your students.

There are great tutorials for teachers, at: https://www.canva.com/designschool/tutorials/canva-for-teachers/

If you are not already using Canva, teachers can sign up for an upgrade through their verification process, and get it for free. Go to Canva.com/education

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are a way to break down complicated problems into more manageable pieces. The often use colors and iconography to help convey where to focus. They often display facts, concepts, or ideas, and help students to classify and explain relationships.

A couple examples...

I was working with a teacher that is preparing for our yearly Chromebook collection, and wanted to create an organizer for a book plot study that she could print for offline use. This way, she could prepare some materials to keep the kids working after the Chromebooks are put away for the year.  

Simple Parts of Story Plot Graphic Organizer by aschultz

This design was based on another template, and we adapted it for our needs, including more graphics and colors.

I also coach FIRST Lego League. I struggle with my teams not knowing what to do next. I created this version of a graphic organizer that I will be laminating for my teams. This is designed so that my team members can write goal statements for each practice, so that everyone knows what they are working on, and that they can collaborate better to get their Innovation Projects and Robots ready ahead of competition.

As I try to run my FLL teams as student lead, the kids need to keep each other accountable. Group work skills are very low right now, and finding ways to keep the kids moving forward with less prompting from adults is key. The hope here is that I do not have to hear... "what are we doing today?" from as many kids as I have.
Copy of Robotics FLL Astronaut Roles by aschultz

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Mac won't load the Users & Groups preference pane: Fix

By -
Image
I had recently had a Mac on Lion unable to load the Users & Groups Preference Pane.   Like this: My IT support had suggested reimaging the computer.  Reinstalling the Operating System, reloading the applications, and transferring back the User information from Time Machine Backup. Well, after doing all of that, the problem reappeared immediately.  I scoured through Apple Support Communities and found this fix.  For some reason, some transparent users are showing up in your system.  They need to be deleted.  But since you cannot load Users & Groups... it becomes a problem. Here is the solution / procedure. Quit System Preferences.   Launch Terminal.  (Applications/Utilities/Terminal)   Copy & Paste these commands. sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest press enter Terminal may ask for your Administrator Password, enter that. sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest1 press enter Terminal may ask for your Administrator Password, enter that. Rel
Read more

Creating QR codes!

By -
Image
Link to my website... I have been away from my blog for a long time... It’s been a while since creating my last blog post. It’s about time to get back on the horse.  Creating QR Codes. Super simple tool for getting links and information out to people in a passive way.  Got a concert? Why print off a program when you can have people grab a link from the qr code and look at it on their phones. Making stations for your classroom? Why not make the instructions for the station as a QR code... I like goqr.me as a generator for other items such as contacts and email links. This video below shows how to use chrome and goqr.me to make QR codes on a desktop computer.  #artschultzblog #edtech #qrcodes via IFTTT
Read more

Spike Prime Printable Blocks

By -
Image
As I prepare for coaching Middle Schoolers here in Waupaca for FIRST Lego League, I am trying to teach kids to code the SPIKE Prime Lego robots. This has its challenges. Some kids take to coding well, and some need more visuals to guide them. Teams may also want to whiteboard out their coding concepts.  I created this set of printable Word Blocks as a resource for printing, laminating, and maybe adding some magnets to the back. This allows me to put up code in a demonstration, or my teams to talk about how to achieve things after they have done some pseudo-coding of their projects. Having manipulative items are always nice for hands-on coding practice.  Whiteboard Word blocks for Proportional Line follow. Here is my collection of laminated word blocks Below are the files I created for creating these blocks. Feel free to use, but maybe send me a note & follow on twitter. @artschultz13 Direct link to folder shown below.
Read more