Instruction: Playlists, Activities, Quizzes, Grouping, Collaborating

Instruction: Playlists, Activities, Quizzes, Grouping, Collaborating

Instruction



A unit, a pathway, a module. A playlist by any other name would still be a set of organized learning experiences in Empower. Playlist can help organize your instruction for your own purposes, for delivery to students and they get pretty fancy when we start using them as courses and to help us manage differentiated learning. Buckle in!





Building Playlists




Playlists are created on the Instruction Tab of Empower.
  1. Instruction Tab
  2. Create Playlist
  3. Create a New Playlist


The first thing to do is give your playlist a title and an image.

Until you give it a title, Empower is not saving it. Once it has a title, it is auto-saving and you will be able to find it again later if you accidentally leave. There is no need to save your playlist as you work on it.

Next, you will want to populate the timeline with some modules. Drag them from the toolbar on the left and drop them where you want them on the timeline.











You can always rearrange tiles by dragging and dropping them. 


To remove them, click the symbol on the tile and then the trash can.





Bubble Types

Let's look briefly at each of the bubble types. If you'd like a more comprehensive look at any of them, look for resources specific to each one.





Big Idea

If the Playlist is a book, the big idea is the jacket. It contains questions to help inform learners and other instructors what the purpose and scope of your playlist is. 


The Big Idea also lets you define specifically which Learning Targets you'll be covering. You can add them by hitting the + button.

Besides being informative, aligning your playlist to Learning Targets also sets this playlist as a Gradebook. Empower will now provide you with a Gradebook of the same name on your scoring tools to match your Playlist.


For admins on the site, it has some other functionality which is discussed in the article on Courses.


Click HERE to play the Big Idea section of the Instruction Tutorial



Activity

Activities may be something students do in Empower, or they may represent work done with other tools or with paper and pencil, etc.

Use them to deliver resources and instructions to students. Each activity will be aligned to one or more learning targets itself, so if you've got a gradebook to match your playlist, the activities you create here will be waiting to be scored on your Evidence Gradebook back on the Scoring Tab.

Click HERE to play the Activities section of the Instruction Tutorial


Quiz

Create assessments that students will take via Empower. There are several question types and lots of other options like when students can access quizzes and for how long. Objective question types (true/false, fill in the blank, etc.) can be scored by Empower and, based on how you set things up, the scores can go right into your gradebook. 


For more information about how quizzes are scored in Empower, see this article.



Sub-Playlist

Create some hierarchy and structure on your playlist. Sub-playlists are basically folders - learners can drill into them and find activities, quizzes, etc in there. 

Click HERE to play the Sub-Playlist section of the Instruction Tutorial

Be careful not to use too many sub-playlists within sub-playlists. It may make sense to you, the creator, but students will find it labyrinthine. Try to avoid anything more than 3 layers deep for sure. 


Voice & Choice


This is a sub-playlist with a twist. Include various activities and set how many learners need to complete the Voice & Choice Module.

Click HERE to play the Voice & Choice section of the Instruction Tutorial

One creative use of this is to create items for different learning styles and let students demonstrate their proficiency in their own way.



Resource

Want to put a video or other resources in front of users, but don't need to score it or break it up into steps, etc.? Then use the resource bubble.


Another way to use resources that you may not want to attach to an activity or a playlist would be to use the Resources section on the roster page. This would allow learners to see these ongoing resources on their homepage as an easy reference. To learn more about this resource, watch the short video below.



Click here to watch the "Class & Group Resources" video.



Culminating Application

This bubble will prompt you to include either an activity or a quiz. Its functionality is the same as whichever of those you choose, but it gives a signal to everyone that this is the final exam or the big project.

Click HERE to play the Voice & Choice section of the Instruction Tutorial









Sharing, Co-Creating & Assigning


Now that the playlist is ready to leave the nest, we turn our attention to the buttons in the upper right-hand corner.



 
Click HERE to play the Sharing & Assigning section of the Instruction Tutorial


Who can access?

In the Share settings you can set who can access this playlist in order to assign it. This will make it findable when they search for resources. Be careful not to clutter the database if your playlist isn't really something anyone else will find valuable. Also, be aware that you don't want students to be able to access things like assessments most of the time.


You can keep it private, share it with only teachers, or share it with anyone including learners and guardians.


These people will not be able to edit your playlist, but they will be able to make a copy of their own to edit.





Who can edit?

If you want to grant a specific user edit rights, you can begin typing their first or last name into the Add people box and then select them from the options that appear.



To remove their rights, simply click the red x next to their name. 





The Assign Button

Assign Original: Keeps you in sync with the original author(s) changes. When changes are made by the author(s), they will immediately show up in your class as well.
Assign a Copy: Will create a copy for you to change as you desire. Your changes will NOT modify the original. If changes are made to the original it will not affect your copy.

Click the group(s) you want to assign...: Here you see a list of all of your classes and groups. Simply click on any of them and this will be assigned to that class/group with the assign and due dates you have selected.

To unassign it from any of them, click the x next to their name.


What do the dates mean?




Those dates will make the assign/due dates of all activities and quizzes in that playlist the same as these dates. (You can also learn about adjusting those assign/due dates on an individual basis here.)

Quick Access ID

A number like this in the upper right corner is this playlists's quick access ID. When users are searching, they have the option to search using this number. This will take them straight to the specific resource so there's no confusion.





Managing Activities

Click HERE to play the Activity Controls section of the Instruction Tutorial

Activity Control Panel

The activity control panel gives a lot of options to adjust settings on activities including
-Lock & Unlock
-Assign & Due Dates
-Assign & Unassign
-Target and Evidence Scores



The Control Panel can be accessed by clicking on the icon on an activity or quiz tile. 



This video will show all about it.



Pinning

Activity tiles can be pinned to student Next Up sections. 

On the teacher side...
  1. click the icon in the lower righthand corner of the tile
  2. select pin



Pinning an activity will pin it for every student in the class/group
On the student side, a pinned activity will appear as the first activity in their Next Up section






My Workspace



My Workspaces is designed as an organizational tool for teachers to put all the activities and playlists they want to (or might want to) use all into one place, so they don't have to continually use the search function.

The My Workspace tile is located on the Instruction tab. Once clicked, teachers will see four tiles: "Assigned Activities", "Assigned Quizzes", "Assigned Playlists", and "My Folders", along with some search fields. These search fields will ONLY search for things in your workspace, and teachers can search by content area, standards, keywords, or activities. The regular search button, located in the top row, will continue to be accessible and will search across the Empower site.

See the short article on the My Workspace button here.




Student View

Click HERE to see the Student View section of the Instruction Tutorial


For more information on what this all looks like to students and parents, please see the article on that topic. 








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