How do you get students to reflect deeply, draw meaningful connections, and improve their understanding of assigned readings?  How do you create a learning environment in which students actively participate in class discussions? How do you curate those experiences for future reflection?

One solution is using Google Slides to create summaries of your reading assignments.  As ed tech tools, Google Slides, Sheets, and Docs were created in 2012.  Here’s how I employ them in the classroom to energize assigned readings.  

I love the first day of class and a new semester!  It represents a time to connect with new students, experiment with new ways to teach material, implement/refine active teaching strategies, and start a new Workspace in Slack.  Wait, what?  

For those who don’t know Slack, it is my pleasure to introduce you.  Slack is a self-contained communication tool that is ideal for managing messages, files, and almost all other forms of digital shareables.  If you are familiar with and enjoy GroupMe, then you already understand the basic functionality of Slack.  They both allow for streamlined communication among groups; however, Slack is a more business-friendly tool due to its advanced document capabilities, search functionality, professional user interface, and multitude of app integrations.

I teach a yearly Professional Development class, in which I often implore students to put their phones to work for them.  I warn students that smart phones can be a terrible master if they allow it.  I am not alone with this claim.  Recent research from the University of Texas found:

​“It didn’t matter whether a person’s smartphone was turned on or off, or whether it was lying face up or face down on a desk. Having a smartphone within sight or within easy reach reduces a person’s ability to focus and perform tasks because part of their brain is actively working to not pick up or use the phone.