Reading to my 2 year old daughter is one of my favourite things to do. In this short post, find out how I used Mote to create this awesome experience for my daughter!
With the busyness of life, I am often preoccupied with preparing dinner or one of the many other life chores, when I find my daughter turning the pages of her books, pretending to read on her own. She loves looking at the pictures and calling out the characters, animals, and colours she sees.
I thought there needed to be a way that my daughter could continue to read by herself and listen to the story being read to her. With the use of Mote, I came up with an idea to record myself reading her favourite stories. I first recorded two of her favourite books;
I Went Walking by Sue Williams
Noni the Pony by Allison Lester
Both these picture story books are quite short, so Mote works perfectly as I could record each story within the one Mote recording. To highlight the turn of the page, I rang some bells to let my daughter know when to turn the page while reading along.
The recordings were then downloaded as a QR Code, printed and added to the front of each book. Now when my daughter wants to read on her own, we are able to scan the QR Code using an old phone and she can listen to the Mote recording and read along on her own.
As this was a great success I will continue to use Mote to record some of her other favourite picture story books.
This idea can be used in the classroom to engage your students. They can listen to the Mote recording of their teacher to reinforce text and articulation within the story. You could also have students recording themselves and have them share their favourite stories with their classmates.
With longer stories, I suggest making several Mote recordings and having several QR Codes printed throughout the pages of the book as required.
There are so many ways you can use this idea in the classroom.
My name is Eleni Kyritsis, I am the Deputy Head of Junior School in Melbourne Australia, and I also work part time for Mote as the Community Leader. I love my job and everything that comes with it. Mote is a tool that I discovered while on maternity leave in 2020. When returning to work during the pandemic I loved how I was able to connect with students and provide meaningful feedback on their learning whilst they were learning from home. Now fast forward to 2022 I still love using Mote daily in the classroom. In this post I am going to share a day in the life of how I use Mote to support me as a working mum finding that work-life balance.
7:30am – Arrive at work
My role as Deputy Head is to inform teachers of any absentees and changes to the daily schedule. Through our school’s Learning Management System (LMS) I can verbally record the daily update using Mote’s MotePad and share and embed this directly into our Staff LMS page.
8:30am – Classes begin
Each morning I walk the corridors to say good morning to the students as they arrive. I have many conversations with students as well as teachers and some parents, so I find the Mote app on my phone so valuable as I can quickly record any reminders and to do items as Mote’s which I follow up with at a later time.
11:30am – Library Book recommendations
Students love reading at our school and love to share what books they have read with each other. In the library we have a loans computer for students to browse the books they can borrow. When students have read a book they can leave a recommendation by recording a Mote in the Library account. Once a week I go and share these using the QR code button and create a Bookmark. With the help of our Library technician we print these and place these inside the book cover for other students to explore and listen to the book recommendations from other students in our school. Student’s use an iPad from the Library to help scan and listen to Mote bookmark book recommendations.
12:30pm – Emails
I was observing a student whilst on yard duty and needed to follow up with their teacher at the end of lunch break. When composing the email in Gmail, I simply hit the Mote button and record my voice message of my observations and then send. This allows me to work efficiently and also the teacher listening to the recording. Mote within Gmail is one of my favourite features.
2:00pm – Year 6 Design Class
In my Design class, students are beginning a new project where they are exploring Sustainable Housing. I researched a range of websites that I would like the students to explore about the topic and shared these in Google Classroom. Using the Mote extension in Chrome I can create Sticky Motes with instructions on each of the websites to support students with their own research on these pages. Within Google Classroom, students can also use the Mote chrome extension to record a verbal comment for me.
3:30pm – Veggie Patch QR Motes
Our Year 5 students have created Mote QR Cards (similar to our Library bookmark recommendations) that we have added to each Veggie Patch with students recording what the plant is and when we should have a harvest. At student pick up at the end of the day, our parent community love scanning and hearing the students explain what the veggie patches are and what we are growing. These have become a great discussion for parents and students. I had
4pm – Administration tasks
In the afternoon I review and listen to the Motes I created throughout the day via the iOS app. I review these on my laptop and keep track of all conversations I had throughout the day or from meetings I attended.
4:30pm – Hometime
I hope you have enjoyed reading and seeing how I use Mote daily to support my productivity both in the classroom and with administration tasks.
I hope you have enjoyed reading how I use Mote throughout my day. Please share any tips or tricks with how you use Mote throughout your day.
Hypermotes are a new feature in Google Docs which allow you to create a clickable Hypermote within your document.
Some ways you can use this feature in the secondary classroom include recording your voice on new words to help students with pronunciation or a definition. This supports all learners in your class by expanding student vocabulary.
Stickymote:
StickyMote allows teachers to leave voice instructions on any website. This is an amazing tool to use to introduce tasks for both in the classroom and home learning. While exploring the chosen website, students can listen to the embed teacher instructions multiple times whilst scrolling the page.
Google Forms Assessment/ Feedback:
Using Mote to design assessments or exit tickets in Google Forms allows for questions to be recorded by teachers and listened to by your students. In self grading Google Forms, teachers can also record a Mote to provide students with instant personalized feedback.
Collaborative Brainstorming:
Collaborative discussions are a great way for students to learn about new topics in the classroom. But how do we capture and document the ideas shared? Using Mote in Google Slides, students can record their thoughts and ideas for others to hear. On the Mote Learning Hub, there are a range of ready to use templates, visit the ‘Class Discussion with Mote’ more information.
STEM Mode:
STEM Mode allows you to record yourself saying mathematical equations that are then transcribed in the voice to text box. This allows teachers to efficiently provide students with both voice and text options to equations. The STEM mode needs to be activated your settings
At the beginning of the school year, teachers and students can use Mote to assist in the classroom with getting to know you activities. Using Mote in Google Slides allows both teachers and students the ability to record themselves sharing various information directly onto the slide. In this video you will see a range of templates that can be downloaded from the Mote Learning Hub These templates allow teachers to share the Slides either individually or collaboratively with their class.
You can set up Digital Books within Google Slides for Foundation/Prep students giving them a space to insert photos and drawing places around the school then recording themselves explaining each of these places within the school. These can then be shared with families to show where they learn and play at school.
Hypermotes – Primary
Hypermotes are a new feature in Google Docs which allow you to create a clickable Hypermote within your document.
Some ways you can use this feature in the primary classroom include recording your voice on new words to help students with pronunciation or a definition. This supports all learners in your class by expanding student vocabulary. When learning or revising for spelling tasks, students can record themselves breaking words into syllables or sounds etc. This allows you as the teacher to hear and listen to students’ pronunciation and knowledge of spelling patterns/rules taught in the classroom.
Maths Assessment in Slides
Designing Maths Assessments in Google Slides with the help of Mote saves time in the classroom, whilst giving students confidence. When assessing students in the junior primary years it is difficult to really grasp an understanding of what they know in Maths due to their limited reading ability. With Mote, teachers can record themselves reading the question aloud allowing students to listen to the instructions and questions and then record their answers back for the teachers to hear. This saves time in the classroom and allows students to become independent learners.
Assessment & Exit Tickets with Google Forms
Using Mote to design assessments or exit tickets in Google Forms allows for questions to be recorded by teachers and listened to by your students. In self grading Google Forms, teachers can also record a Mote to provide students with instant personalized feedback.
Sticky Mote
Sticky motes allows teachers to leave voice instructions on any website. This is an amazing tool to use to introduce tasks for both in the classroom and home learning. While exploring the chosen website, students can listen to the embed teacher instructions multiple times whilst scrolling the page.
