Tech Tools (Part 1)
Teachers will be able to (TWBAT) integrate useful and easy-to-use technology in their classrooms.
There is such an abundance of tech tools out there for teachers, but the real question is, “When do we have time to plow through them all to find something we can use right away and without much effort?” This week I want to share a few busy-teacher-approved (easy to implement) and budget-friendly (a.k.a. free) tech tools that are definitely worth checking out.
Google Slides is great, but when everyone uses the same five themes, it can get a little uneventful. Solution: Slides Carnival is a super easy way to up your presentation game. They have a variety of template themes for Google Slides or PowerPoint including: formal, playful, creative, elegant, startup, simple, and inspirational. All you have to do is “Copy” the template to your drive or download the PPT file onto your computer. Effort to Effect Ratio: Too easy pass up.
2. EdPuzzle
Whether you are attempting to “flip” your classroom, or you simply want a subplan you can ensure student engagement and completion, you should try EdPuzzle! EdPuzzle is a website where you can create or find interactive video lessons. Here’s how it works: You link a video you either found online or screen-casted. Next, you select a few stopping points to insert your required check-in questions. Lastly, you share the link for students to do the lesson. Easy as that! Edpuzzle does provide a gallery of pre-made lessons and a grading feature to monitor your student progress. Less teacher talking, more visual aides and student-paced learning--definitely a win in my book!
3. Socrative
Socrative is one powerful tool that can be used at least four ways. The idea is that you can make a “quiz,” have your students use their phones/ipads/chromebooks to answer one question at a time, and have the correct answer and a bar graph of the student responses displayed. Sure, there are a few websites that do this, but Socrative is especially helpful because of its ability to use the quiz you made in different ways. Once you make a quiz, you can use it as formative assessment, use it later as a review (similar to Kahoot!), slightly modify it for the actual assessments (similar to Google Forms), and finally use it for test review where immediate feedback is provided when students select a response. Talk about getting the biggest bang for your buck--one tool that takes care of the pre-assessment, the review, the actual assessment, and post-assessment review. #timesaver #winning
4. Plickers
Remember in college when your professors used clickers to make sure you were in class/not falling asleep? Plickers is essentially that, but no one needs to spend $100+ on a bright orange clicker. Here’s how it works: Each student is given a paper that has something that looks like a QR code on it. Depending on the answer they want to select (A, B, C, or D), students rotate their paper and hold it up. The teacher uses his/her phone or ipad to quickly scan the class, collecting the responses. Unlike paper exit tickets, which get “lost” on the way out the door, or computer-based exit tickets that require too much time to put away, Plickers is an effective way to hold students accountable for staying engaged. Also, with the record-keeping feature, you can easily monitor student progress and use the feedback to drive your teaching. Now that’s good teaching, done easy.
So those are a few tried and true technology tools I consider helpful and easy to implement. I only listed a few because I did not want to overwhelm you, but I do hope to share more in later technology posts in the future. Until then, stay classy and stay tuned!
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”
