As you may have noticed on the schedule for the Appvent calendar, a few slots have been added in for guest teachers to make their recommendations. Today, I have the pleasure of passing over the mantle for day six of the Appvent calendar to Olly Lewis.
Olly is someone who I first met 4 years ago and have known as part of my PLN since long before then. He has become a good friend too. Professionally, he’s someone who is ambitious and innovative with his use of technology in the classroom but always grounded in either impactful approaches to learning or innovative ways to reduce workload. He always puts the students first. He is currently AHT T&L at the British International School in Abu Dhabi and HOD Science. He has a long list of letters after his name from both academic and edtech institutions as his Twitter profile will testify and he was listed in the first Edtech 50. He takes students on field trips to MIT and has an MEd. He blogs at https://ollylewislearning.com/ and you can follow Olly on Twitter here.
Hi everyone, I’m Olly Lewis. I know the importance and impact that clearly defined routines can have in the classroom and that technology can help to streamline the effectiveness and efficiency in the classroom. Throughout my career, I’ve used an array of different web-based tools to aid these activities with my classroom routines but over the last year, I’ve stuck with one as it has everything you need in one place.
Enter classroomscreen.com
The features, functionality and various components within Classroomscreen are immense. To name a few of the options within the platform there are; exit polls, a timer, workflow symbols, drawing, sound level monitor, random name generator and more! The fact that you can customise features such as the background, workflow symbols, exit polls and random name generator improve effectiveness and efficiency.
My favourite feature initially was the random name generator, however in recent months I’ve found that I’ve been using the workflow symbols to reinforce how I want students to complete a particular task; in silence, whisper, ask your neighbour and work together.
I shared this with other teachers at school back in September and they too report that they enjoy its versatility and how it helps to reinforce routines in their classrooms.
Another facet that’s really important to me is that it is web-based, so it can be used on any device connected to the internet and then displayed to a class via a projector/IWB. It’s so good too to have all of these great features in just one easy to use platform – and it’s free!
Thanks to Laurens Koppers for making something so useful and then sharing it the way he has too. Thank you!
Thanks so much to Olly for sharing ‘classroom screen’ with us today. I can echo his words, it’s a great tool to use whether you’re on a fixed PC or mirroring wirelessly and in Safari. Definitely worth checking out.
More tomorrow!
