When the Cat's Away...

It's hard to be out sick or at a workshop and know that your kids are staying on task and meeting their learning goals for the day. There are a few tech tools that can help you prepare a lesson ahead of time, essentially "flipping" your classroom so they are receiving content instruction without you being there.

Voki is a site where you can create an avatar and program it to speak to your class. You can even record your own voice and have your avatar tell your class what their goals are for the day! There is a classroom management feature to this site as well, but I haven't checked it out yet.

Another idea is to leave a worksheet behind with QR codes on it. Your codes can link to websites that you want students to visit, or to instructions for an assignment. Make your QR assignments pop with QRVoice.net, a site that produces an audio version of the text that you input in the QR code making process.

Consider pointing a QR code to a lesson made in EduCreations, a free interactive whiteboard app. You can develop your whole lesson, and point a QR code to it. Then students scan the code and watch the lesson, pausing and replaying as necessary.

I hope these ideas help you out the next time you're away and the mice are tempted to play. :)