EZWrite: Lessons That Move With You

[00:00:00] Narrator: This is Teach Your Way with BenQ, where educators find ideas that work. Let's get started. [00:00:08] Lauren McMillian: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of Teach Your Way with BenQ. I am your host today, Lauren McMillian. I am one of the customer success specialists with BenQ, and my co-host today is Crystal Yao. [00:00:20] She is also a customer success specialist as well. Today, we're gonna be talking about our lesson elements of the BenQ board. One of the things that teachers ask us about all the time is lesson creation and what our lesson software looks like. So our main lesson software is utilizing EZWrite 6. This software can be downloaded on your device, so if you're joining us today and watching, um, be sure to go ahead and grab your computer or grab your iPad, whatever device you have EZWrite on, because Crystal's gonna be walking us through how you can easily create lessons on your own device and then access them from the board. [00:00:56] So those of you that are listening, this might be a good episode to wait and do [00:01:00] when you have your computer or can be at your board, so you can kind of run through all of the things and follow along with us. So Crystal, talk to us a little bit about what that lesson creation looks like, and what does that process look like for you? [00:01:14] Crystal Yao: Yeah. So I'd love to show you guys the process of how to get things from, like, any device onto the board, but then I also first wanted to talk about, you know, our teachers, they h- don't have a lot of time during the day to prep. You know, prep times are usually very, very short, but if you ever need to prep from home or from anywhere else, we have a lot of different options for you to do that. [00:01:33] I'm, I'm gonna start by tapping on EZWrite 6, and I'm gonna open up a lesson that I've already created. So I'm gonna go to my import tool right here and tap on the EZ file right here, and I have my Google Drive already linked in the background through AMS, and so I'm gonna go into my Google Drive and tap until I get to my lesson. [00:01:50] And you can see here, I can choose which pages that I wanna pull in. If I wanna pull in both, I, I can, or I can just pull in one. So I'll tap Okay to bring those in. And so here, I've already [00:02:00] preloaded a few things in my lesson. I have my anchor chart, but then on the second page, I have some pieces that I can move around here. [00:02:06] Let me move this. Oh, wait. So I can move some of these pieces around. They are interactive pieces. To get here, um, I actually made this on my laptop, and then I loaded it into my Google Drive. So I'm gonna show you what that looks like from the computer, and then how I actually brought it into here. All right. [00:02:25] So I first wanted to talk about some of the options that we have for EZWrite 6. So you have the option to download it if you have a Mac or if you have a Windows laptop or a desktop, you can do that. Um, or you can download that. You also have the option to use our, uh, web-based version of EZWrite, so you can sign in and use it that way. [00:02:44] But for now, I'm gonna go ahead and show you what it looks like in the EZWrite Windows software, since that's what I'm running right now. So- I have part of my, I have part of my lesson already built out. I'm just missing a few pieces, so I just wanted to show [00:03:00] you what that looks like. So I'm missing right now one of my thousands blocks, and so I'm going to go ahead and use my import tool and click on image files right here. [00:03:10] And I'm gonna pull in my little cube for, to represent my thousands block. And so now I just need to wait for it to bring it in, but I'm gonna make it a little bit smaller so it's a little bit easier to manipulate. Since I actually wanna also incorporate an anchor chart, I can add a page to it by clicking the little plus sign at the bottom right, and I can pull in a PDF of something that I already have here. [00:03:35] So I'm gonna click on my import tool, then the little PDF icon, and then I'm gonna pull something in from my computer. So let me go here real quick and pull that in. It's right here. All right, so here I have my anchor chart that's pulling in or loading. And just so you're aware, when you pull PDFs in, you're able to choose which pages that you want, just like we [00:04:00] did earlier with our Easy Write file. [00:04:02] Uh, and now you can see here, when I click on the bottom right, I can see my pages are a little out of order. I wanna start with my anchor chart, and then I wanna move into, uh, manipulating the blocks and showing my students how to represent different place values or, um, represent different numbers. So what I can do is I can tap and hold, click and hold, I mean, and then I can go over or pull it up, and now I've rearranged my page numbers. [00:04:27] So something that you might wanna keep in mind whenever you're creating your lessons on your desktop or your, whatever device you're using, whenever you shift it to the board, it might look slightly different because each one is optimized for that device. So it might look a little bit different. Some pieces might shift, um, but just some things to keep in mind. [00:04:47] Now, something else, whenever you're creating something on your device with an Easy Write, there are some, like, font differences. And so, um, in the show notes, we'll put a list of those fonts that are going to [00:05:00] be consistent across the board, and you don't have to worry about putting one font on your, um, in your lesson on your desktop, but then not having it show up the same on the board. [00:05:10] So just some things to keep in mind. Now, what I'm gonna do here, I've already got my lesson created. I've got my anchor chart. I've got my second page with the blocks. Now I'm gonna go ahead and save this to my computer. So I'm gonna go to the little hamburger menu on the top bottom left, and then I'll click export. [00:05:27] I'm going to save it as an Easy Write file because I want it, um, to stay as an Easy Write file so I can easily pull that in onto my board. So I'm just gonna save this on my desktop. Okay, save So with our boards, remember, you have the option to link your Google Drive or your Dropbox or your SharePoint or OneDrive, whatever cloud drive that you use. [00:05:51] You can, you can link that within our AMS, but I have a Google Drive, so I'm gonna go ahead and pull it into there, and that way it's gonna make it really easy for me to pull it [00:06:00] onto my board. Let me pull this in, and it's gonna go ahead and upload. And so now I'm actually gonna switch back to my board over here. [00:06:09] All right, so I've uploaded my EasyWrite lesson that I just created into my cloud drive, into my Google Drive. Um, but- [00:06:15] Lauren McMillian: Yeah ... do you have [00:06:15] Crystal Yao: any questions so far? [00:06:16] Lauren McMillian: Yeah. That seems really simple for, you know, a lot of, um, teachers already have those images or maybe, like, with manipulatives in the classroom. I know sometimes when I taught, I, I really wanted certain color tiles and, you know, trying to find something that matches. [00:06:31] So I feel like it's so easy. You can just Google something, save it to your, um, computer, and then easily just populate that information into EasyWrite. And so now that it's in your cloud drive, you've created it on your computer, you manipulated your resources, um, so now where... how do we get to it from here? [00:06:48] Crystal Yao: Yeah. So I'm gonna go back into EasyWrite 6. So I'll tap on that icon, and then I'm gonna go back and do the same thing I did before. So I'll tap on my import tool, then EasyWrite, or the EasyWrite files. I'm gonna go [00:07:00] into my cloud drive and go to where I just uploaded my lesson. And so now I can see that my lesson was, is in there, and it's ready to be uploaded. [00:07:09] And so now I have my anchor chart, and I have my pieces here. Now, if you notice, this comma is a little bit out of place. So- Like I mentioned earlier, each software, uh, uh, is optimized for that device. So each of the Easy Write six softwares are optimized. So sometimes some things will shift very, very slightly, and so it might be good to just, like, keep things unlocked so that you can move them around easily. [00:07:36] Lauren McMillian: So what is the main benefit of being able to create something in Easy Write? Like, what if they already have something like this as a graphic organizer? [00:07:44] Crystal Yao: Okay. Um, so the benefit of having this, like, on the board is you can actually just manipulate the objects. Like, with a graphic organizer, all you can do is write on it, but if I have something built out in Easy Write, I can easily move these objects around, and not only that, I can actually... [00:07:58] Like, if I wanted to have [00:08:00] infinite, uh, versions of this, I can tap on those three dots and then tap on the little infinity symbol, and now I can use Easy Copy and have as many pieces of this as I need. [00:08:10] Lauren McMillian: I feel like this takes kind of the learning environment to a whole new level because, you know, a lot of students have examples of these. [00:08:17] They have worksheets. They have Google Slides. You know, they have all these, but, you know, when you want that hands-on experience, if students have these pieces in front of them or even now, this really encourages them. You know, if, if I can come in here and move these pieces, I know students are gonna wanna come up and do it. [00:08:32] So I feel like this also really enhances that engagement level as well. [00:08:35] Crystal Yao: Absolutely, yeah. So this makes a, it really easy to get your kids involved and get them, get them engaged in your lesson. [00:08:43] Lauren McMillian: So then even though you made this on your computer, you had two pages here. Can I still add more to this once it's on the board? [00:08:50] Crystal Yao: Yeah, absolutely. So if I figure that, like, if I have an example up here and I want my students to do more examples, I can always come here on the bottom right, tap on the pages, [00:09:00] and I can tap on the three dots, and I can duplicate pages if I want to so they have more examples, or I can even just add a new page and maybe, like, I can show them a little bit of, like, how to draw their own place value chart or how to, how would they draw their own place value blocks. [00:09:15] Lauren McMillian: So if you wanted to, let's say you're teaching a class and you, maybe you teach three of the same thing over and over again, and you wanna manipulate this lesson multiple times, what's kind of the best workflow you feel like in order to not adjust my original one, 'cause my original one lives on my computer. [00:09:30] It's in my Google Drive, right? Mm-hmm. [00:09:32] Crystal Yao: Yeah. That's a really good question. So earlier, when I pulled in my lesson from Google Drive, that was just a copy of it, so I don't have to worry about e- editing my original. It st- my original stays in Google Drive, and it, it's not gonna be changed. But I also have the option right here, if I want to share, um, and save it as some, a different file, I can- Um, right here, if I click save as EZWrite, I can name it, like, block one, and then, [00:10:00] um, name it whatever I want to. [00:10:01] Tap OK, and then I have the option to save it directly to my board, or save it to my AMS files, which I can select my board, or I can save it to my Google Drive, um, which will save me a lot of time, instead of having to dig through everything else. [00:10:13] Lauren McMillian: Yeah. That is so nice because, you know, having that original one in the Google Drive and teachers not having to go and recreate or even duplicate, that one lives there, and then when they bring them in, and then, you know, I know when I taught sixth grade and I taught the same thing three times in a row- Mm-hmm [00:10:26] sometimes my three classes weren't in their same spot every day. Okay. So when I end the lesson, by having an easy way to save it and identify that, because now tomorrow I can come in and do the import that you already showed us and be able to continue right where I left off with each class. [00:10:41] Crystal Yao: Yeah. [00:10:41] Lauren McMillian: That's awesome. [00:10:41] Exactly. So this was a great example of creating an EZWrite lesson on your device- Mm-hmm ... and then opening it directly from the board. For those of you that if you already have a BenQ board, if you have this, we're working on our RP05 right now, you know, these boards are Google certified, so it's super easy [00:11:00] to quickly access, um, Google Drive directly from the panel. [00:11:03] But also, like Crystal mentioned, having that cloud drive linked on the back end through AMS with whether it's OneDrive or, um, Google Drive, it's really easy to access all of those things directly from the board. But is there another method that teachers could go ahead and work with EZWrite? Maybe they created something on their computer, and is there another way that they can pull this up? [00:11:24] Crystal Yao: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really great question. So our teachers can actually utilize InstaShare 2. Um, and, like, let's say that they created a great lesson, but they don't have time to upload it to their Google Drive and pull it in and everything. So I'm actually gonna go over to my computer here. So I'm gonna open up InstaShare 2 on my computer, and I'm gonna cast my device to the board. [00:11:44] And so now, thank you, Lauren, you can see I have my lesson that I created on my computer, and I can still manipulate it the same way that I would if I had it directly on the board. So it's just another way. It skips that step of [00:12:00] having to upload it to my cloud drive and pull it in. Now I can just use it directly from my computer. [00:12:04] Lauren McMillian: I love that. And you still have access to your floating tools, so if you wanted students to come up, and even if they needed to come up and make a note about something, they could do that without actually altering the original file. [00:12:15] Crystal Yao: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, something else that you could do, if you have two EZWrite lessons that actually work together, you can always take this and tur- turn it into a floating window, and I can have another EZWrite lesson going on behind it, and this remember still has full touchback. [00:12:28] Mm. So just another extra tip that you can use. [00:12:31] Lauren McMillian: That, I feel like that takes multitasking to the next level. [00:12:34] Crystal Yao: Absolutely, yeah. [00:12:35] Lauren McMillian: So you are working with teachers kind of all the time. So have you seen that these kinds of things really improve and enhance the classroom workflow? [00:12:43] Crystal Yao: Oh, absolutely. So our teachers- The one thing that teachers always ask more of is time. [00:12:48] Mm-hmm. And so, this really cuts down the amount of time that you need to get your lessons really from one place to another. And, like, especially with InstaShare too, if you're able to just cast to the board, you don't have to worry about that extra step, you know? Um, and [00:13:00] so it just, it also gives our teachers a lot of flexibility. [00:13:02] They can work on their lessons from home. They can work on it in another teacher's room, wherever they need to, and then they can easily just get it to their board. [00:13:09] Lauren McMillian: Mm-hmm. I feel like that also makes it really easy for teachers that might travel from board to board. Absolutely. If they, if all they have with them is their computer and they don't even want to have to worry about casting or logging in, maybe they don't have time, they're quickly covering. [00:13:22] I mean, the fact that you can just plug in your computer and do all the same thing- Yeah ... or cast while you're in guest mode just makes it super easy- Yeah, it does ... um, for traveling teachers and accessing it literally everywhere. [00:13:32] Crystal Yao: Mm-hmm. [00:13:32] Lauren McMillian: Well, Krystal, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about how our software really, um, streamlines the teachers being able to prep lessons anywhere and be, uh, being able to access them everywhere. [00:13:45] Um, thank you guys all for joining in and listening, and like we said at the beginning, if you listened to this, maybe you were on the road traveling somewhere, um, be sure to download EZWrite 6, uh, from our website. It is free software, um, so you can download it to your [00:14:00] Windows, your MacBook, iPad, tablet, whatever you have. [00:14:02] And be sure to follow along and, and try out one of these new, um, steps and one of these new options that maybe you didn't know before. Be sure to follow, like, and subscribe, and we will be having another episode drop in a few weeks. So, um, definitely leave us some comments, and we'll have links to the resources for today linked in the show notes. [00:14:21] Narrator: Thanks for joining us on Teach Your Way with BenQ. For more resources and teaching inspiration, visit us online at benqboard.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.