Classroom Screen and Lo-Fi tunes
Today I finally used something that I had heard about back in August: Classroom Screen, a website that allows teachers to create a display to project to help keep students on track and motivated. I was very intrigued when I first heard about it at one of our school’s PD days, but somehow I never ended up incorporating it into my daily routine. Old habits die hard!
I ALWAYS have my document camera, laptop, and projector set up and turned on. Typically, when I’m not actively projecting something that I’m writing live under my document camera, I project an image of the problem they should be currently working on (using the ‘freeze’ option on my projector), or I’ll just project an image of blank notebook paper that’s under the document camera. Boring, I know!
Today in Calculus, we were doing several timed free response questions, a challenging warm-up that can tend to drag on, and a reading excerpt from Infinite Powers. I decided to try creating a quick Classroom Screen to project, and honestly I only put up a background photo and a countdown timer. Just having that beautiful photo displayed with a color-coded timer (green and then red when 10% of time left) somehow made the whole presentation feel more polished and focused.
Classroom Screen is great because you can create a FREE account and access all of their widgets. You just can’t save your screens. You need a Pro account for that. I’m using the free account, and since I really only see myself using a handful of the widgets, I can create a new screen in about 15 seconds.
Here are the widgets currently offered:
When you go to the Classroom Screen website, you can log in with your school email and then immediately play around with their background choices (or upload your own photo) and widgets.
I really like the backgrounds included; they’re all very beautiful and inspirational:
I don’t see myself ever getting the Pro account, but here are the details on the three types of accounts offered currently:
On another note, I just heard the term ‘Lo-Fi music” for the first time last month, and when I looked it up on Spotify, it turns out I love it and it’s the perfect thing to play during class. I know I am VERY late to the game here.
When students are working on a task, I hate when the classroom is silent. In my opinion, students should ALWAYS be talking (about math) and discussing what they’re doing with their groups, like a running commentary. That way they can catch each other’s mistakes. Well, in reality, some days students are just quiet and hesitant to talk because everyone else is quiet. Or, in today’s case, some of my chattier students were having trouble staying focused and kept trying to outdo each other making random noises to make each other laugh. SO, I did something I never normally do and I put on random lo-fi no-lyric music and it helped everyone settle down and get focused. It also prevents any awkward silences where NO ONE is talking or even asking me or anyone else for help if they need it.
I think I’ll keep finding new no-lyric playlists to play since they all enjoyed the music. When my sophomores came in, they begged me to keep the music playing, even through their quick factor quiz. I got so used to the background noise that when it stopped after my laptop fell asleep, it felt weird to have no music.
I really liked THIS playlist:
