Happy April! Spring is in full bloom, and boy howdy is it already shaping up to be a busy on. Let’s jump right in!
Teaching Tech Tip: Use Flipgrid to make short informational videos
If you’ve followed me at all, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I use Flipgrid a lot in my classes. Since I teach language learners, there’s good reason for that: Flipgrid is just a useful tool to get them to practice their speaking skills that they might otherwise be too shy or afraid to attempt.
But! Did you know that you, as the teacher, can also use Flipgrid to make videos?
If you’re big into video editing, Flipgrid won’t necessarily offer anything new to you – it’s tools are limited. But Flipgrid’s Shorts feature (which you can find at the top of the admin screen) allows you to make your own short videos.
Need to show students a process? Share your screen!
Want to have a video with directions on a day when you’re out with a substitute? Make a quick video!
There’s a lot of useful ways to utilize Flipgrid’s Shorts feature to enhance the learning for your students, and just to make your life a little bit easier!
Visual learner? Here’s a tutorial video I made awhile ago explaining the process!
Happiness in the Classroom
During times like these, it is so imperative to share stories of positive things happening in the classroom. Since this is the first time around, I’ll go ahead and share!
An Unexpected Gift
A rule to teaching: never expect gifts. I’ve known some teachers who just expect to get little gifts every Christmas from their students, or think that students will give them candy around Halloween, and it…doesn’t go well. Especially at the high school level.
Most of the time, if your students do give you gifts, it’s random fun things like drawings or poems – in previous years, my walls and cupboards have been plastered with all the various doodles and musings my kiddos have left me.
This year was, well…this year. With so few students actually showing up – and all classwork being done online – there hasn’t been any of that. It’s not surprising.
What was surprising, however, was when I came back from a recent day off to find that the few students who HAD shown up had left me a bunch of positive messages on my board. Apparently they thought I had gotten COVID 😂 (when instead I was getting my second vaccine dose!).
Have a story you want posted? Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at writr@nevets.net to have it added to a future post! I only ask that you not spam messages, and that you censor out names and such for privacy reasons.
This section is meant to be a little more personal to me: writing data, published stories, that sort of thing. For example:
Stories Published Last Month
March has been a surprisingly productive month! Even though there’s been a lot of stuff going on work-wise, I’ve still managed to set aside a good amount of time for my various writing projects. I think it helps that I took a step back and decided to write fewer blog posts – this way I’m not spread quite as thin.
Leticia Lunetti and the Burning Egg – COMPLETE! Sitting at 24 chapters and approximately 86,000 words, the first ‘book’ of the Letti Lunetti series is done! I am actually super proud of how this all turned out, and excited to jump into the next story.
Bad Guys Never Learn, Do They? – In addition to writing about character development, I shared a short story I wrote using the main character of Legend of Samantha Torres. It was a ton of fun!
Death of the Wild – I mentioned in last month’s newsletter that I’ve been playing a bunch of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And here’s partly why! I decided after completing Letti Lunetti that I wanted to try my hand at some different genre of fanfiction, in this case, shifting towards a video game! It’s an interesting foray into a more YA-style story, and I’m excited to see where it leads.
The Perils of Querying
✉️ Queries Sent (just in March): 8
📫 Total Queries: 42
✅ Requests: 1!
🔴 Rejections (total): 23
I GOT A PARTIAL REQUEST, Y’ALL!
I was unbelievably excited to actually get something that wasn’t a full-on rejection. Even though it isn’t a full request or an offer of representation, I’ll take the win! It’s helped renew my efforts in querying after feeling a little burnt-out of the whole process.
I also received a SUPER helpful rejection that pointed out an area I could improve on, and so I’ve been going full-steam ahead with making some big edits in order to improve my craft.
What I’m Reading
I haven’t done as much gaming as the previous month, which is not such a bad thing for my productivity. Still, there’s been plenty of it!
Doom Eternal
Rip and tear until it is done.
Honestly, Doom Eternal is just such a well-made game. It’s a ton of fun, it’s fast-paced, and it’s actually clever and intelligent!…while also allowing you to rip demons in half and blow things up. It’s delightful.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
A year ago, Animal Crossing on the Switch came when we needed it most. My wife and I binge-played it hard, building up our islands, expanding our houses, and selling our turnips. Honestly, with the pandemic just in its infancy, it felt like everyone was playing it at the time. Since May, I’ve been in an on-again-off-again relationship with this game, and this last month just happens to be an ‘on-again’ time once more.
Minecraft
While I’ve taken a little bit of a step back from the intensity I played back in February, I still have moments where (instead of writing, of course) I hop in and get to building. It’s like comfort food; a place where I know I can just enjoy building and having some fun.
Instead of a picture like last month, here’s a link to a Reddit post I made of a particular build in the Nether. Notice any familiar logos?
And that’s a wrap! I’m really happy with how this turned out overall, but feel free to leave me feedback and let me know what I can improve or what you want to see more of.
Have a wonderful day, stay safe out there, and (as always) don’t get arrested!
Jacob Ryckman 