Last week we attended the annual ITEC (Iowa Technology and Education Connection) Conference. It’s one of our favorite days of the year because we get to nerd out about ed. tech. with all of the other ed. tech. nerds in the state. A few things spoke to our nerdy, nerdy hearts, so we decided this would be the perfect place to share them with all of you nerds. All of these are on our website as well.
12. Canva is a tried and true tool for graphic design that students can use to create posters, infographics,and more. Canva is a great tool to introduce to students if you are tired of having them give slides presentations to the class. Have them use Canva to create an advertisement for a concept in your class, to build social media posts for literary characters or historical figures, to construct one-pagers to review class content, or to complete any other creative idea you come up with!
11. Classroom Screen is a nifty tool that puts a dashboard for you to project at the front of the room where you can add a variety of widgets that make your job easier as a teacher. For example, you can add a random name generator, a timer, a sound level monitor, quick QR codes to sites you want to send students to, exit polls, and more.
10. Emojis in Education is a website from educator Tony Vincent that contains a host of ideas for incorporating emojis into your teaching. At first glance, this could seem like fluff, but Vincent has a ton of great ideas for using those ubiquitous little smiley faces and other symbols to do things like conducting exit polls, creating vocabulary games, or even just helping to organize your Google Drive by adding images in the title to make it easier to find the file you’re looking for.
9. Insert Learning allows you to insert instructional content into any web page. You can easily scaffold text with questions and media that help all of your students be more successful learners. Insert Learning is very similar to Actively Learn, except that it allows you to use internet sites for students to read instead of just pdfs or Google docs.
8. Metaverse is the easiest way to make interactive content without requiring programming for students. It lets you build super easy and quick augmented reality (AR) experiences for your students (think Pokemon Go). This could be a fun way to conduct a pre-assessment, have students explore information before a unit, or create a scavenger hunt review. Even better, have your students build the AR environments as an alternative method of presenting information to the class. It gets your whole class up and moving and incorporates elements of coding as students create their Metaverse experiences.
7. Flippity lets you make any Google spreadsheet into a game easily! Flippity has TONS of games such as jeopardy, hangman, random name picker, scavenger hunts, etc. Check out all the options as a list won’t do it justice.
6. Soundtrap is a fun way for students to collaborate and make music anywhere, with anyone, anytime. Students can record their creations directly with any device, explore the collective extension of loops, connect an instrument, or use one from the program. It is an awesome alternative to Garage Band that you could use to have students create podcasts, music for video projects, or even just a quick audio exit ticket.
5. Peardeck Extension allows you to make interactive presentations and formative assessments to engage every student in your room, every day. Peardeck works with your Google suite so that your Google slides become interactive, effortlessly. You can also choose to turn on student-paced mode to allow students to work at their speed in the classroom or at home. Students can also share anonymous answers on the projector screen to spark debate, make every opinion be heard, and discuss common misconceptions.
4. Classkick is a tool for teachers to make presentations and lessons more interactive. Classkick allows you to assign points to slides, gives you tools such as map markers, and has interactive ways to give formative assessments as you are presenting your lesson. It would be an easy way to “flip” your lesson while still getting feedback if you needed to work in small groups.
3. Next Vista for Learning and / or Classhook are two good sites that have videos you can use with your students in class. Next Vista for Learning specializes in student-made content, so if you are looking for inspiration for an upcoming video project or need stellar exemplars to show your students, this is a fantastic resource. Classhook has videos related to a wide variety of school content from pop culture sources. Both databases are searchable by content area and are fun ways to hook students at the beginning of class.
2. Spiral is an easy way to give fast formative assessments to gauge what the whole class is thinking. It allows you to create and share collaborative interactive presentations; it also allows you to turn any public video into a chat. You can use this for student assignment help outside of class or as a student portfolio as well. If you are looking for ways to make lectures more engaging, check out this site.
1. Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons Google has ready-made lessons from their free digital curriculum. Students progress at their own pace so that you as the teacher can give individualized attention. You can track student achievements through the site, and it also allows for group projects to incorporate teamwork. Some topics that have pre-written units include if-then adventure stories, programming, marketing, business, money management, project management, communication, and current events. This can be a great tool for sub plans and / or supplementing your current curriculum.
Teacher Feature: Shannon Lumley
Shannon presented at ITEC this year on how to use 3D pens to aid student learning. She showed conference attendees how the use of 3D pens can help students visualize concepts through a hands-on approach. Over the past few years, Shannon’s students have used the pens to create 3D models of a variety of science concepts. Stop in sometime, and she will show you the creative ways her students have applied this tech. tool in her classes.
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