Today on the educational duct tape podcast. I've got five ed tech updates that might impact your classroom and one educational strategy. That's new to me. I'll start with the bad news first, which is bitly adding ads to short-links, not cool bitly. And then I'll get into the good news, like a new educator -made alternative to bitly and an AI teaching assistant coming to us from Padlet. Plus handy updates from Pear assessment and Quizizz that could save you some serious prep time.
And then that educational strategy I mentioned, which is called talking chips. Are you curious yet? Well, let's get into it. Welcome. Welcome in friends. Welcome in educators. Welcome in duct tapers. I'm so glad that you're here. If you're new to the show, my name is Jake. This is the educational duct tape podcast, a show where we talk mostly about educational technology and talk about it from the educational duct tape metaphor, which says that educational technology is a lot like duct tape.
It's just a tool that we use to solve problems, even though it's the focus of the show. It's not the focus of the way we think about things in our classroom. We think about what we're trying to achieve for our learners, what goals we're trying to meet, what problems we're trying to solve. And we often, not always, but often, use educational technology as a tool, like duct tape. To solve those problems, the show has been on the air since December of 2018, which means a long time.
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Today, I've just got some ed tech and education updates. I've got six total things and let's go ahead and dive into them. When I was teaching science a few years ago, Edulastic was my go to for summative assessments. I use it for all of my summative assessments. Nowadays, Edulastic is known as Pear Assessment, it's the same company as Pear Deck, and it just got an upgrade. If you've been hoarding years worth of tests in PDF form or Word docs or even images of tests. You're going to love this.
So Pear Assessment just rolled out a new feature that lets you import those directly into their system. No more manually copying and pasting questions like I did just a few short years ago, here's how it works. You upload your test and Pear Assessment automatically extracts the questions for you. That means less time formatting and more time.
Actually using the assessment data to support your learners because that's what assessments should be for is data that you take action on to support your learners. So now you could focus on that because you don't have to spend so much time formatting the questions. This comes alongside Pear Assessment's new dashboard, which is designed to let you create, import or assign tests even faster.
So it's a whole new dashboard, redesign a user interface overhaul if you are nostalgic for the older dashboard. No worries. There's a toggle to switch back to it. If you'd like some vintage ed tech, I guess I actually have not used Pear Assessment since before the name change. So it's been a couple of years and that means I have not tried out this new import feature yet, so I would love to hear from you if you've tried it. How well does it work? Does it handle math equations well?
What about images that are within your tests? Does it do these things effectively? Is it really saving the time that it sets forth to do? Hit me up on Bluesky or on x at #EduDuctTape and let me know or at speakpipe.com/eduducttape. You can leave a voice message about it. Next up, if you are a Quizizz user like me, here's some good news for you. There is a brand new accommodations feature that makes differentiation way easier.
easier in Quizizz. So what I used to have to do was create one version of the quiz for most of the class and then copy it and make a different version of the quiz for the rest of the class. So say, for example, if I had a learner who I needed to reduce the number of multiple choice options, I take the original one and just manually eliminate some of those options. But now you can actually assign accommodations kind of like automatically automatically.
Two individual students within the same activity. So you make one activity and different students can have different accommodations in there. So you might choose to give some students extra time per question or enable a read aloud feature for others, uh, or reduce the number of answer choices for a few more. And the nice thing is that everyone's playing at the same time within the same game.
And unless students are being super nosy, which, they're students, so they might be, but unless they're being super nosy, they won't know who has what accommodations. And you see all of those scores all in one place. Now I do have some mixed feelings here. I will say, so first I'm a big believer in UDL (universal design for learning), which says that if something like read aloud, for example, is essential for some, but beneficial for all, why not make it available universally?
So. I'd say in my classroom, I would turn that feature on for the whole class. And the kids who don't want to use read aloud don't have to, but it's there for everybody to be able to access the kids who absolutely need it and the kids who might just benefit from it, even though it's on a requirement for them. But something like fewer answer choices. Yeah, I could see why that should be individualized.
So I think I would probably just be going to this with that UDL mindset, sometimes putting in place accommodations just for certain students. Other times I'd be turning things on for everybody. The second thing I have some mixed feelings about here is the way that the features lock in. So it's nice that you could set an accommodation for a certain student for all activities. So if one student needs reduced answer choices every time, you could turn that on once. And set it and forget it.
And it'll always be on. And that is nice. That is convenient. That saves you some time, but some students may need additional scaffolds in certain situations, like maybe science class, for example, but not in others, like maybe social studies class, for example. So if these accommodations are set to stay in place every time a student uses Quizizz, that's handy for you, but make sure you're reflecting regularly and adjusting based on what that learner needs in that moment.
So I'm a big Quizizz fan, but I have not tested these accommodations features just yet. If you have, I'd love to know, can students easily tell what accommodations their peers have? Is it convenient to turn them on and off? Does it work well for you? Does the read aloud feature sound natural? Let me know what you think. Again, you can interact with the show on Bluesky or on X at #EduDuctTape, or leave me a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduducttape.
Next up, our third piece is a non techie update, even though I typically podcast almost exclusively about ed tech stuff. I also do a lot of learning and thinking and working with teachers on really just pedagogy and teaching strategies. So one thing that's completely non tech related that I recently learned about was a recommendation from Dr. Catlin Tucker. And if you know her work and Catlin's been on the show before, so hopefully you've heard her episodes on the show.
But if you know her work, you know that anything she posts is going to be good. So this post was a little over a year old, but it was new to me and it related to one of the biggest challenges with student led discussions. So that is making sure.
Everyone actually participates in a discussion, not just the most talkative students and in Catlin's post, she shared a simple but powerful strategy called talking chips that helps balance participation while encouraging student led conversations that are engaging and doing it in a station rotation model. So that means with the teacher not actually present, this strategy helps make these discussions more effective with just the students managing it themselves. So here's how it works.
Uh, you give each student a set number of chips. They could be like poker chips or paper slips that are different colored, whatever you have on hand. And every time they contribute to the discussion, they place a chip in the center, just to model deliberately saying I shared in the discussion. And then once they run out of tokens, They can't speak again until everyone else has had a chance to use theirs. This keeps the conversation moving, ensuring equity, and builds key communication skills.
So, the icing on the cake here, to me, uh, is the built in reflection piece that she suggests in the post, where students assess their contributions and set goals for the next discussion. I think this is one of the most important things in our classrooms, is building kids, uh, reflective muscles, that metacognitive muscle of thinking about how they're showing up in class, so that they Can work on getting better. Self assessment and reflection are so important.
So she suggests building reflection in here. This strategy appears to be a super easy to implement strategy. It doesn't require teacher oversight constantly, which is the power of it, and it looks like it still leads to meaningful conversation. So I'm curious, have you tried it? Will you try it? If you do try it, I'd love to hear about it. Or if you have another method, uh, that you use to encourage balanced discussions without constant teacher oversight, uh, please let us know.
Uh, again, you could share at #eduductape or on speakpipe. Link is in the show notes. Okay. Back to some techie stuff. So this one's the bad news of the show. Um, here is a heads up from Bitly, which is my favorite short link service, um, or URL shortener service, um, or should I say my ex- favorite short link service. So Bitly has been my favorite for years because you could, uh, pick, you know, type in what you want the end of the link to be. You can make QR codes.
It has a really useful Chrome extension. It has good statistics on how many times your links have been clicked on. I find it really easy to use. Uh, but recently they made a change to the platform that's created a bit of a stir in education circles. So now any links created with Bitly's free version, will first send users to a preview page, which because it's the internet and it's 2025, that preview page includes Ads.
So I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan of displaying ads to students, especially ones I can't vet first to make sure they're appropriate. Plus let's face it, having an extra click just to get to a resource is pretty inconvenient. So bottom line, if you use bitly links in your class it's probably time to either stop using bitly altogether and switch to a different one or upgrade to a paid plan. So have you seen this happen yet? Have you actually seen these preview plans?
I have not seen a preview page yet. Uh, it must be coming soon. Um, so I'm curious if you've seen it, did it throw you off or worse? Did it mess with your students? Did they see a preview page? What were the ads like? Uh, let me know, again: #EduDuctTape on Bluesky or X or over on the show's speak pipe. Next, if that bitly news has you scrambling for an alternative, I've got your back or actually educator and podcaster Brent Warner has your back.
So Brent just launched a brand new, totally free URL shortener called edushare.ing edushare.ing, which is specifically designed for educators. So here's what you get with edushare.ing. There's no ads. Because seriously, we do not need more ads. Uh, there's no login or registration required. Uh, and he's offering unlimited use, totally free. And Brent says that he's not even accepting donations. I asked about it.
I said, can we donate and support you, you know, owning this, um, domain that's allowing you to do this? He said, Nope, no donations. He just wants to pay it forward for other educators. So one quick note though, before you start using. EduShare. ing with students. Double check that your district hasn't blocked it yet, or that it's not automatically blocked as a new website.
Uh, I tried to use it in a presentation the other day at a high school and found that it was blocked on the school's network. So I had to switch and use Bitly for the day anyhow, because it was still blocked. So, uh, you might need to talk to a district, uh, tech person to have that unblocked. So if you've tried it though, I'd love to hear about it.
Is it a, good tool, a good option, or have you found another good alternative, or do you prefer something else other than Bitly because of these changes? Uh, I'd love to hear your recommendations. So hit me up with that favorite short link tool. All right, let's switch gears slightly with our last one. So we've talked URL shorteners, but here's something that does way more than just shorten links. Padlet recently introduced Padlet TA or TA like teaching assistant.
It's a new AI powered assistant that helps streamline lesson prep and other classroom tasks. So here's the deal with Padlet TA, which is currently in beta, by the way. So just be aware that it's in beta. It generates lesson plans. It generates presentations, worksheets. Rubrics and activity ideas all on demand. It also provides handy tools like a short link creator and a QR code generator, which for now, at least don't include any landing pages or ads.
And this is great news for those of you reeling from the change in Bitly where the free links now are having a landing page that has ads on them. Uh, this Padlet TA also has an AI image generator, a text leveler, a smart group maker, a name picker, and a multiple choice question generator. So lots of tools in there. And the best part is it's totally free. Though, if you look at the site, it says it is currently totally free.
So that word currently, uh, makes me a little nervous that it won't always stay that way. At least for now, though, it is totally free. One more important reminder. Anytime you're using AI tools, always vet those AI generated resources carefully before using them with your students. We want it to save you time. We don't want it to make the output worse than what you would have created, though. So, AI can create some great stuff, but it still requires a teacher's eye for quality control.
Curious though, have you used Padlet TA? If you have, what did you think of it? Does it save you real prep time? Is it creating good resources or is it just a shiny new thing that actually isn't doing really that great of a job? So let me know your thoughts. #EduDuctTape or over on SpeakPipe. All right. That's all I've got for today's ed tech update roundup and some education news. I really want to hear from you though.
Which of these tools or items are you excited about, or which ones do you have some hesitations on? What are you thinking about? This kind of stuff? What's, what's percolating in your brain about this stuff? You know the drill. Reach out on Bluesky or X using #EduDuctTape or record a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape. That does it for today. Uh, thanks for tuning in. Please make sure you subscribe. So that when we come back next week with a guest, you will be ready.
As soon as that episode drops in your podcast app. Thank you. Have a great day.