Skip to main content

ISTE Top 10 - #10 - ClassFlow







I was very fortunate to attend ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) in Denver this year. Under normal circumstances I don't think I would have been able to go (particularly since I went to the conference in Philadelphia last year) but my proposal to present was picked up and my department approved the trip (Yay!).

Last year, as a way to curate all the ideas I was getting, I blogged about my top 10 take-a-ways from the conference. I thought I would do the same this year. So here it goes...#10 - ClassFlow (the list is in no particular order):

ClassFlow is one of my favorite classroom tools. They are part of the Promethean world but it looks like they are in the process of re-branding using the ClassFlow name instead of Promethean. In 2014 I wrote a blog post about the product and I have pushed it heavily in our district since we have become 1:1. 

At ISTE the ClassFlow folks had a large exhibit hall display that featured Ron Clark and his Academy students using the ClassFlow product. On a side note, I lucked out and flew on a plane out of Atlanta with the whole Ron Clark crew and managed to snag a picture and engage in a conversation with one of his students (#teachergeekoutmoment).  

Prior to arriving in Denver an invitation came through an open email from ClassFlow asking for volunteers for a focus group while at ISTE and I jumped on it (it pays to read emails!). The development folks showed us many cool new features. My favorite was the new Activity Builder feature that has quite a few activities like sorting and matching. They will also have an open market place with the opportunity for teachers to buy and sell lesson (bit like Teachers Pay Teachers). What I didn’t know is that the ClassFlow folks have over 5,000 lesson they have built out (good to know they have that many high quality lessons that can be used for free...I knew they had lesson just not that many). They are also building “ClassFlow Moments”. It is a bit of a one stop shop for teachers where they can use the “Moments” features to communicate with parents (like Remind), assign badges (like ClassDojo), communicate assignments and chat with students (like Edmodo). So instead of going to multiple sites to do these things you can do it all in one site. They also have a new'ish (I downloaded it in February but never used it) ClassFlow desktop feature, that I am excited to explore. It will allow you and your students to engage with content that you have on your desktop. For example, if you pull up a verb activity sheet on the fly you can push it out to students and have them engage with the material from your desktop (instead of building out a lesson). This would be a way to use ClassFlow with our Google Classrooms. Bottom line…there are a lot of cool new features that I clearly need to explore, master, and promote at the beginning of the school year. 

Probably the biggest thing I made a note of is that in August the site www.prometheanplanet.com will be migrating to the ClassFlow website (hence the re-branding comment earlier). This is BIG NEWS that our teachers will need to know since we use that website A LOT. They will have plenty of announcements about the transition on the site and via emails.

I was told that all the new features will be available at the beginning of this school year (they are not available to explore at the moment). 

Comments

jennibell said…
Eve,
Thank you for the information that you so freely give here on this blog! I was our school's K-5 technology teacher last year and referred back to your blog many times. I interviewed for a job last week that brought the technology teacher into the classroom (which sounds like what you do) and I was able to give many ideas, based off ones that you have here.
http://jennisseasons.blogspot.com/2016/06/my-2015-16-school-year.html
Can't wait to try a group Kahoot!
Jenni

Popular posts from this blog

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Rock Cycle Activity

Today I got to spend the day with a 3rd grade science teacher doing a rock cycle activity. She had asked for help a couple of weekends ago to find some engaging rock cycle activities for her students. I quickly did a Pinterest search and came up with a link to a middle school blog where they featured a fun looking rock cycle station activity. That website took me to the originating activity site - Illinois State Museum Geology Online and their Ride the Rock Cycle activity . I read through it and felt it was doable for third graders (although I was a little nervous about the cartooning). I offered my help and we put together the activity. The kids did it WONDERFULLY. It was one of those lesson you wish was observed (but of course never is :) They are on an alternating science schedule so she only had two of the four classes today but it was a good sampling of children. She had one class that had a high portion of struggling learners and the second class had a high