Tech Tuesday

 Short post today, but a handy dandy trick nonetheless!  Store your videos on a Google Slides presentation.  This does three things:

1. Makes it easy to find your favorite video clips from semester to semester.

2. Gets rid of annoying ads!  When you embed a video into a Slides presentation, it does not play the ad at the front nor does it interrupt the video with ads in the middle.

3. By using the video format tools, you can choose where to start and stop the video as is most befitting for your lesson.

I usually try to put notes in the speaker notes section to remind me when to use the video (I forget what I was thinking sometimes!) and information to help me find it again should the link no longer work or it was taken down by YouTube.  

Mind boggling?  No, but if you aren't using this technique, try it!  It makes things so much easier.

Indoctrinate Your Students! (With Brave New World and 1984 Propaganda)

 I like to make my classroom as literary immersive as possible.  When we read Brave New World, the seating chart changes by height.  My tall row are my Alphas, and so on down to Epsilons (though I make sure my Epsilon row can handle the joke).  I always praise whatever answer my Alphas give (even I have to do crazy maneuvering to bring them to the actual correct answer and I cut the corners off the papers handed out the Epsilons (so they don't hurt themselves, of course)).  When we read 1984, we paper the school with Big Brother Is Watching You posters and we have a secret police in the class to report on other students who aren't loving Big Brother as often as they want to (punishment, wipe down the desks or turn in other classmates).  

All the while this is going on, I have a slideshow of propaganda constantly flashing on the TV screen.  I'll share them with you. Some of the slides I created and some I just found online (more online for 1984 than Brave New World).  In order to play it automatically, I put the tab in its own window, hit SLIDESHOW and then in the bottom left corner, select AUTOPLAY then LOOP then 30 SECS then PLAY.  I cast it to the TV and go about my day.  

Here is the Brave New World one: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1c1Xd0Z0VF9w6BVA71WJsnyRBiO5aqnwQEbiSQ4_mIr0/edit#slide=id.g7f9262ee2f_0_26269

 Here is the 1984 one: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2196350756928860595/1634928911302079891

I haven't taught 1984 in a few years, so it could probably stand to be updated a bit.

What about you?  Do you have any cool immersive activities?  Leave a comment!

Tech Thursday: How to Space Out Animations in Your Google Presentation

 I have something I want to do in Google Slides, but Google Slides doesn't allow me to do it.  So what do we do when something like that happens?  We're EXTREME ENGLISH TEACHERS, so we do it anyway!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I give my AP students a Spotlight Reading.  This is where they get a small bit of text (or art) and use it to do a quick literary analysis of it.  I got the idea from the guy who led an AP training course and thought it was brilliant, so I started making my own.  It's worked well so far. They come into the classroom with this image on the screen:

That tells them to get out their journals they have especially for this activity. Once class starts and they have their pens at the ready, I click to move to the actual lesson slide.

The issue came up with this particular slide:

I always lead off with their thoughts.  I want them to feel confident in reacting off of what comes to mind.  The second question is more directed.  In this case, I really didn't want them to be influenced by the second question before they interpreted the quote themselves.  A good portion have not read Ellison's work, so the title for them would not be a give away.

So how do I hold off on the appearance of the second question?  Well, Google lets me do the following:

1. set the second quote to appear when I click the button.  How pedestrian!  I want automation!  So, the option Google gives for that is:

2. animate it to appear after the previous.  I can slow it down and it gives me 5 seconds.  Not enough time.

If you were to access the slide (here) and put it in slideshow, you will see that it takes a minute and a half before the second question appears on its own.  How?  Because of this thing below:

Don't see it?  That's because it is a transparent square.  You can click it and save it for your own purposes.  If I animate it and put it as AFTER PREVIOUS and move the SPEED BAR to SLOW, then that gives me five seconds.  So just keep animating it at slow speed for the amount of time I want.  Then, I clicked the text box I created for the second question and animated to appear AFTER PREVIOUS.  

Viola!  One minute and a half after the slide debuts, the second question appears.  By this time, my kids are busy writing and when they look up again, the question will be waiting for them.

I would love to hear either thoughts on how you have hacked your way around the classroom or what sort of passages I should add to my Spotlight Reading presentation.

The Cover Letter and Resume - New Resource at Extreme English Teacher!

 

I've posted a new resource on the Extreme English Teacher store - a lesson on how to write a cover letter and resume!

I teach seniors and many of them do not know how to write either one of these.  Writing and communication falls under the purview of the English curriculum and it is a lesson that many of them can use right away.

It is a short lesson (will take about a class period).  The lesson has bonus slides to include if teaching it asynchronously and it has an assignment should you wish to take it from an introduction lesson to an activity.

As an added bonus, there is a slide with interview tips!  I have sat on enough hiring boards to know that people NEED these tips!

I also have it as a bundle so that you can save some money by buying both this lesson and Writing Formal Emails lesson.

If you try it out, let me know what you think and leave a rating on the store.  I try to keep all of my products highly affordable (we're all in this teaching game together, you know) and the ratings help me get noticed!

Visit the store at: Extreme English Teacher