Hapara + Powtoon: Cool things I've learned this week (so far)

I learned two cool new things in the last week that I wanted to share:

1. Hapara has a really cool feature within its "Interact" function (where I would normally go to see what tabs students have open, to make sure everyone is on task - but I hate being the internet police! - a necessary evil...) that allows me to send a pop-up message in the lower right-hand corner of everyone's Chromebook in the class.

I've been using it as a time-management device to remind students of how much working time is left, and it gives yet another mode (visual, via text) of communication besides the usual "teacher announcements" that can sometimes get automatically tuned out by students. Yay!

2. I taught myself how to use Powtoon! It's a really cool presentation/animation web tool that we're going to use (hopefully, if time allows!) in 8th grade to tell some modernized children's stories/fairy tales/nursery rhymes!

So, I made a Powtoon about the Powtoon project! If you're interested, check out the guidelines I created here:

I get really excited when I learn new stuff like this, and I want to make sure that I keep posting them here so that I can look back and remember how much I've done in my first year teaching computers in middle school.

- Mrs. L.