An Interview and Demo Interview with Nira Sheleg

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Teachers who want to upload “packets” and make them easy for self grading will find a friend in Wizer.me. Also, those who believe in differentiated instruction, multiple ways of asking (and answering questions) like text, voice, and video, and the ability for teachers to share with each other will love Wizer. In this blog post, I’ll share the 20-minute demo I recorded with CEO of Wizer Nira Sheleg along with a “quick jump” table of contents as I do with my “Cool Cat Teacher Live” demos. I’ll also give you a written overview of what Wizer does.

To call Wizer.me a digital worksheet is almost an insult because I’ve never liked worksheets. I do like that Nira says they are “reinventing worksheets” because I like that better. From discussion questions that LITERALLY let the class discuss to learner profiles that let some kids draw their answers, others record their answers, and still others write with text – the power of Wizer is almost lost in its easy interface.

I’ve kept up with Wizer.me from afar since I met Nira in Moscow about a year and a half a go at Edcrunch. When she demoed it with me in the hotel lobby, it just seemed to simple. But as we dug deeper, I realized the power.

But when we went to distance learning and teachers were struggling to make “packets” easier and to digitize almost everything that Wizer.me came to mind.

One of the features that was needed was the ability to schedule and also to time the whole worksheet (or “test” if you choose to give summative assessments in Wizer.) They implemented that feature last week. Wizer also fully integrates with Google Classroom which is why we purchased school licenses from Wizer for our teachers. (Just contact them directly for that.)

Video Demonstration of Wizer.me with Nira Sheleg

Wizer.me Quick Jump Table of Contents

Table of Contents

0:57 What is Wizer

1:25 Worksheet Design

1:55 How to Upload a PDF

2:40 Automatically Grading PDF’s

3:05 Add Videos and Cropping Videos

3:20 Widgets

3:35 Question Types

3:47 Open Questions and Grading

4:11 Discussion Questions

4:15 Automatic Grading

4:50 Asking questions multiple ways (Audio, Video, Text)

5:10 Reflection Questions (mood questions)

5:43 Questions and Answers in Multiple Modalities

6:07 Learner Profiles

6:55 How to Differentiate Instruction using Wizer

8:35 Google Classroom Integration

8:55 Individualized Worksheets (Unique to Each Student)

10:00 Chat Questions (For collaboration & conversation)

:30 Assign to Google Classroom and Grade Sync

11:45 New Wizer Features (Timers and Scheduling) which make this perfect for summative assessments

14:10 Shout out to a fellow teacher

14:37 Gallery of Teacher Content

15:27 Searching for Content

15:37 Finding teachers with good content on wizer.me

16:25 Copy worksheets from other teachers

17:08 Kindergarten on wizer.me

18:20 Adding a Drawing Question

19:05 Grading in Wizer (with audio feedback)

19:20 A shout out to my book Reinventing Writing and why audio feedback is so important for struggling learners

21:03 Review of how students receive a worksheet

21:10 Summary of What we Discussed in this video

22:10 A Message to teachers from Nira

23:00 A Message to teachers from Vicki

Summary

This tool is perhaps a hidden gem for many of you and one of those things you never knew you needed. I also predict it will be a favorite for the teachers of very young children as well as those working to give the kinds of test and activities they are used to doing in class on pencil and paper but with the added bonus of being able to reach every child.

The post How to Use Wizer to Create Digital Worksheets that Differentiate Instruction appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!