Corgi and Hour of Code!

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher, technology and instructional coach from my district.

And I'm our producer and husband, Fuzz Martin. Hey, Shanna. Why do cowboys get corgis?

I don't know. Why?

Because they want to get a long little dogie.

Wow.

Long, little. You know, because they're long and short.

Yeah. And they got cute little legs.

Yeah, they got little legs. They're cute. Yeah. You're prob asking yourself, why, why?

Why is this happening?

Why a Corgi joke on a podcast about technology?

Well, one of our sites today is called Corgi.

It is.

That's Pawtastic.

That's Pawsome.

Wow. Hi. So episode 199, and we're here, and we are charging through December.

Yeah.

And it's a little chaotic. It's great. And we got two fun little tools, and one of them is Corgi. And you gotta love if you.

Despite, like, you can use your tech tool and all the cool things. But also, Corgis are really cute dogs. They are so cute. There's a little dog and a logo. I love a dog and a logo.

Yeah.

They're just so cute.

Agreed.

Anywho, so, yeah. We ready for this?

I think so, yeah.

Okay. This week I get to go to Slate and I get to present at Slate this week, which is fun. What's your topic on AI and udl.

Nice.

And actually, Corgi is a UDL tool, so should we talk about it?

That's a fun little segue.

I try.

Let's. Let's do it.

All right, so the first thing that we're going to talk about this week, it is called Corgi and it comes through the Cast website, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about UDL and we were highlighting some different sites. And the CAST organization has tools that are meant to support UDL Universal Design for Learning. So Corgi is an organizer, a collection.

You can build your own organizers, basically. And it has been created to support the whole student.

And there's lots of cool tools that have been put into the site to help you as an educator, be able to support your students in a variety of ways. So it's called Corgi C O R G I. And the site itself is C O R G I. The number two cast C A S T.org is how you get to it.

Does that mean they have another Corgi somewhere?

Oh my. But you can also get to it through the CAST website.

So if you go to the cast.org and then click on resources, you can get through it that way as well. So there's two ways to get to the site.

Okay.

Once you do, you can create your own account. Everything of course is free, which is great. It does have you go through and have like a Google sign in to make it easy.

You can sign in other ways, but it prompts you to sign in through Google and then from there the whole goal is to help your students, like reach your students and be able to support them in their learning. And it's through a variety of like graphic organizers and. And they're called Corgi guides.

Okay.

So basically everything as you create it, it's a guide to walk your students through a concept or a topic. So like there's a cause and effect guide, there's a question exploration guide, a comparison guide, and then claim evidence and reasoning.

So we love a good cer. What it does then as a teacher is you create the guide.

So it's prompting, so it asks for the topic, it asks for your driving question or like the focus area.

It will then give you vocabulary and then you type in your vocabulary and your definitions and then it walks you through step by step and then you drop it in Google classroom and it guides your students through their note taking process or through their research collection process. So that way it's all there and supporting the needs of the students.

Now with this, it's not just like, oh, here's another, like fill in the blank graphic organizer. Because they're really thoughtful in their approach of making sure all students needs are being met.

So what they do is like, I started a question and exploration to kind of walk through. They want to know what is the essential question. It prompts you as a teacher to fill in that information.

You can also drop in videos, audio, whatever would help support your students. Then it gives you as a teacher the prompt, like, what are the key terms?

You type in the key terms and the definitions so the students have access to it. What are supporting questions? You can like load in supporting questions for your students and then you're like, what is the actual response?

So that way like your guided information is all in there and then you can create and share. What's cool then is once this whole thing is done and put together and they do have examples so you can go into their library.

So if you're like in the little Left hand menu. You can make them editable so you can adjust things. You can drop it directly to your Google Classroom. You can everything saves to your Google Drive.

So it's all loaded into there and then it walks you through all of the information that your students would need so they can plug in the information as they go. Now I went right in and I skipped my top five things.

Yeah. So let's.

But that's because they're like top five things about the site. You have to have a little background before I talk about them. So like, I love that it saves to Google Drive.

It also though in the top part of the bar, like on the top of the screen, you can see it will read aloud to the students. So it will read the directions to them. If you just click the play button, it will give you the audio.

So as a teacher, if you can get to all your kids, your kids need to hear them directions through audio or prompted through the questions, it will audio. It will walk kids through the questions. It also has the button next to. It gives definitions for key terms.

So if students are unclear of the directions you're giving, they can highlight the word in the directions and then it will give them the definition so they can clarify as they are reading through the prompts of the organizer. It also has built in Translate so you can then like, if you have your ML students in your classroom, they can also have access.

So it gives all students access to what they may need while they're walking through the organizer. So read aloud vocabulary, clarity and supporting our ML students.

It's all there in the toolbar built into the directions of the organizer, which is awesome. You can create these interactive Google organizers or these, sorry, these graphic organizers. It supports your students in all different ways.

It does align with the NGSS Science standards, but you can use them in other content areas. You just load your information in. It just is not going to have standards that will drop in. But it's totally fine.

It saves to your library of resources. And so for all those reasons, like, it's a really supportive site to meet the needs of your student, making sure that they are engaged.

There's clarity, there's understanding. It saves automatically, which is super helpful for kids that lose things. And it drops right into Google Classroom and is easy to share.

So if you don't have Google Classroom, you need to share it. It also easily shares with just a link and then students can have access to it, which is really cool.

Agreed.

There's so many things. There's so many things in the site. So and there's so much flexibility with it. So you can use it in any content areas you need to.

Like I use it with social studies, even though it can be signed up, aligned with, you know, science standards and things.

Sure.

And you can see like they have a lesson library that does have science lessons. So if you want to see how to set up a unit plan, it shows you like here's lesson topics on atoms and chemical reactions.

And then you can click on it and it shows you like an already set up question exploration guide. And you can click on it and it shows you like how they have set it up so they have a sample that's set up for you or several samples actually.

So you can see like, oh, like this would be a step by step what I need to load information. So key terms like chemical reaction, chemical bond gives you the definition, essential question gives you the video, gives you the demo.

So those are all in there too.

As a teacher, there's a lot of support in there for you to be able to set up your lessons in this or your activities or the questions or the inquiry that you're setting up for your students. So not only does it support students with their needs when it comes to learning, it also supports teachers with helping how to set things up.

There's video guides of how to use it, all the different ways you can use this in your classroom. And then it even gives you like the print option as well, which I appreciate that.

I know while we are digital most of the times and we have all these things set up, it also will, there's a print option so you can print them for students that may need something physical instead of having to have it on their Chromebook or on a computer. So that also is an option.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So there's just so many things with Corgi that are helpful for learners in all content areas, in organizing their thinking and prompting questions and writing CERs and things like that. But also as a teacher, it walks you through like this is how you use this. Here's some examples and some ways to use it.

So you'll find your little library on the homepage. You'll find your tools across the top and then you will find the lesson library that has the examples in there.

So everybody has support with using the site, which I think is really cool.

Yeah. What are the, what is the play.

Button across the top that will read it to you.

Okay.

So if you click Play, it'll highlight in yellow and then it'll start reading. Instruction organizer. Hit Siddha Burr, Expand Citiber.

Oh, very nice.

It walks through. Yep.

I also. You can click on the microphone in any of the fields and it will. You can dictate your. What you're about to say.

So your essential question or whatever other piece you're putting in there.

Yeah. So as a teacher, it gives you all those tools as well.

Okay. Yeah, I'm in as a teacher, obviously not as a student.

Yep. And as the students, they're able to like, fill in the information. Yeah.

Gotcha. Oh, yeah. Cool.

Yeah, so it's just really cool.

It's a really, like, I feel like, well supported site for both kids and for teachers and to use it so that way, like, it's very clear, like, what your expectations are and supportive for everybody.

My essential question is, did they come up with the name Corgi and then try to fit in the core organizing.

Co organizing your learning to that, or did they come up with co organizing your learning and then say, hey, we'll just call it Corgi because it's cute. It is cute.

They have a really cute logo.

They do. It is. It's a Corgi with one ear up and one ear folded and it's like.

A piece of paper.

Yeah. Smiling at you.

Yeah.

And Corgis, when they smile at you, it's happiness. Yeah. It's just hard to look away.

Yeah. Reminds me slightly of the Trello logo. That's a little husky dog.

Oh, yeah. Yep. Or the snoring Dog media logo, which is our.

Oh, that's ours.

Which is our old puppy, Alina with her headphones on. Yeah.

Anyway, so check out Corgi.corgi2cast.org super helpful organizers. Way to support your students, easy to share, made for teachers and students, and totally free. So thank you to the cast.org people.

Yes.

For their UDL support, which is awesome.

The other thing I want to talk about really quickly this week, but I feel like it needs to be pointed out because this is, you know, a free tech podcast and it's that time of year, if anybody knows. Does anybody know?

I do, because I looked at our.

Plans for the summer. Not you.

Okay. We'll wait for the listeners to think.

Okay, here's your pause. What is pause?

Pause.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

December 9th through December 15th, 2024 is computer science Education Week. And what comes along with Computer Science Education Week is.

Hour of Code.

Hour of code. There I was, like, waiting for my sound effect and it was like a delay. Anyway. Great. Now we're going to overuse it. Awesome. So it is hour of Code week.

I mean it's Hour of Code to celebrate. Yay. So I always have to point this one out because they also have some cool resources always available. Free, easy to use. But it's Hour of Code.

H O U R O F c o d e.com us learn.

If you want to get to the section I'm really talking about, you can go to hour of code but the exploring activities section where it is broken down by all grades. Our pre readers are grades two through five, grades six through eight and grades nine plus.

And it will break it down for you what types of technology you have in your classroom because I know it depends on like school district and all that kind of stuff, but a computer's Android versus iPad versus robotics and circuits. No Internet, those types of things. But anyway you can choose your topic. So language arts, math, science, social studies, computer science only AI.

And then the length, one hour hour and follow up few hours. Let's stick with one hour. Screen reader, text to speech like accessibility options are in there which is super helpful.

And then languages as in computer languages, block blocks, typing, drag and drop, those types of things.

So I know in the past we've kind of given a little shout out to some of the usual ones like Star wars coding, which is always a hit in my classroom or Code Combat. So it's a fun thing with Roblox or I don't know, there's all kinds of Minecraft education, but they also have like Wakanda Forever.

Yeah.

And they have Moana, you know, because clearly we can watch the movie. They have Microsoft Code Carnival. So if you got Microsoft versus Google, things like that in your classrooms.

They've got Scratch, they've got pick code Ad Lab. Make your own little chat bot. There is make your own web resume. They have Codable, which is always cute and fun and they get.

Those are little pre readers for our youngest coders. They have AI rescue, so and they have Python. They have blocks, they have Scratch. They have all the things.

So check out if you want some fun activities this week to build in to your week. 10 minutes each day. Celebrate Hour of Code and check it out with your students. So hour of code.com us learn.

We have chatted about previous episodes but I feel like I need to give it a shout out because it is this week. It is and that would be fun.

Very good.

So there you go. All the things.

Hey, what do you call a chunky corgi?

I don't know.

Low fat.

Oh my goodness.

Oh wow.

Wow. There's so many I can't handle the amount of buttons that you just pushed.

Yeah, sorry.

Cool.

I got so sad when I hit them all. It was like a kid on an elevator.

All the buttons. Well, that we're celebrating episode. Episode 199.

199.

So we have to tell everybody really quick. There's gonna be like 199.5.

Yeah, there'll be like a brief bonus episode.

Like a bonus one coming up because episode 200 will be happening. Wow. I feel like we need a different sound effect for that. Like confetti.

Oh, yeah.

Well, so we'll have to load that up.

You can't just spring sound effects on me.

So anyway, episode 200 will be rolling out with the first of the year because we started our first episode in January 2018. And so because of that, our 200th episode will also be coming out at the start of January. Oh, yeah.

So there'll be a little mini episode coming up here just before the holidays for fun. But also then we will be rolling out episode 200 officially at the start of the year. So there you go.

Very nice.

Yay.

Looking forward to it.

I am excited. So thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast.

If you ever have any questions, you can find me on bluesky, threads, Facebook, Instagram, smartenwi, or on threads or. I already said threads. And if you want to get more information on it's a Rethread the links to the technology discussed in this episode.

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Little one next week, and then the big one in January. In January.

Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.

The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the Smart NWI website are those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations.

This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as we've described, but we hope they do. And we'll talk to you next time right here on the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast.