Guest post from Mote Ambassador Leader - Alex Isaacs, EdTech Specialist in the Long Branch Public Schools District.
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As I reflect on my years of teaching math and STEM in diverse, multilingual classrooms, I remember vividly how my ability to engage and include every learner impacted their growth and the overall success of a lesson or class period. Engagement and accessibility were of great importance during the hybrid and remote learning days of education but remain especially critical now, with classrooms worldwide becoming increasingly diverse. Boosting engagement and accessibility for all learners while offering activities where creativity can shine remain cornerstones of my teaching philosophies – from my time in elementary and middle school classrooms to the present, in my role as an Educational Technology Coach.

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Among the ever-growing list of edtech tools and apps available to teachers, Mote remains one of my top choices, especially because of its seamless integration with Google Classroom. Best of all, Mote players automatically embed within Google Classroom, offering listeners translatable text and speed playback options. This combination enhances feedback to engage students while allowing them to share their voices in a simple, low-stakes way while navigating Google’s LMS. In this blog post, I’ll share some of my favorite use cases for Mote within Google Classroom that will make learning more memorable for students in and out of school.

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Mote Welcomes & Wrap-Ups

One of the first ways I started using Mote was to share fun and creative weekly messages with my students and their families within Google Classroom. At the beginning of each week, I posted an audio message on my Google Classroom stream, briefly describing what we would learn in math class and explaining the newest virtual classroom. At the week’s conclusion, I’d provide a summary highlighting student achievements and upcoming events to keep my diverse, multilingual learners and their guardians in the loop. Did I once post a spooky Halloween week Mote message to everyone in my Math 8 Google Classroom with Phantom of the Opera blaring in the background? The answer is a resounding yes, and you can even listen to it within this landing page (hover over the Mote pumpkin icon and click play). Adding timely, fun Mote messages within Google Classroom is a simple way to expand your impact beyond the four walls of a classroom and into the homes of your learners.

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Elevating Feedback on Assignments
Sharing accessible Mote messages for elevated feedback on my students’ assignments on Google Classroom remains one of the biggest game-changers I found while selecting the edtech tools I incorporated into my teaching practices. Mote’s ability to save teachers time and make feedback more meaningful to all students within Google Classroom and beyond causes this appsmash to remain relevant and highly impactful within any classroom, regardless of grade level or demographic. Are trends or misconceptions occurring within your students’ assignment submissions? Use the Motebook to name, save, and reuse your audio motes to help gain back time and boost engagement with your feedback!

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Mote Discussion Prompts
Foster meaningful class discussions by posing thought-provoking content or SEL-themed questions and discussion prompts within Google Classroom. Some of the best launches in my grade 8 math classrooms started with a “Mote Message of the Day” prompt for my students to respond to. Mote made emotional check-ins, audio gratitude messages, and celebrating positivity with affirmations more manageable and interactive. Adding in choice for how students responded with voice or text helped boost participation to start class and led to more profound reflections on the questions I posed on my Google Classroom stream or topic. Indeed, Mote had my learners typing less and talking more.

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Boosting Collaboration & Communication with Mote
Help facilitate collaborative learning opportunities where learners take more agency by having a peer-to-peer feedback system within Google Classroom. Students can easily record and share Mote audio messages at multiple parts of the creative process, especially during the brainstorming, planning, creation, and reflection portions. Peer evaluation with Mote also took place in my math classes, allowing my learners to gain a more holistic view of their work while learning how to provide others with effective and actionable feedback. By incorporating Mote and Google Classroom into collaborative projects, educators can establish a more dynamic learning environment where students more actively engage with posted course content.

For all of the above reasons and more, Mote is a fantastic edtech tool that can help teachers build engagement and accessibility within their classrooms, especially when the platform is appsmashed with Google Classroom. From creating fun and interactive welcome messages to providing better feedback on assignments and facilitating collaborative learning opportunities, Mote has proven to be a versatile and dynamic tool for educators. Infusing Mote and other helpful tools into teaching practices can help educators better prepare their students to be impactful communicators in the future and equipped with the 21st-century learning skills necessary to succeed in an increasingly digital world. It’s time to get out of the doldrums of the “same-old” text Google Classroom post, and check out Mote’s Google Classroom integration today!

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