Emaze is a presentation tool that appeals to a basic user base. A user can easily build sophisticated presentations with little effort. Emaze frees up users from having to spend time studying and preparing the presentation tool so that they can spend their time concentrating on the actual content of the presentation letting the system take care of the design and effects. The appearance is impressive. The program is interactive and engaging.
Emaze is intuitive enough to not require a tutorial for people with average experience in web native applications. It's simple to learn, to use, and to share with friends, family, coworkers, clients, and more.
You can quickly put together a presentation with the basics: images, video, and text to share with others. And, there are templates designed specifically for educators and students that will allow them to create a presentation in minutes, and they can enhance their presentations easily with relevant images, live data, audio, and video!
Blendspace is a free web tool for teachers to collect resources in one place to form a bundled, interactive lesson for students or colleagues. Educational consultants can use this same tool to create and curate differentiated professional development for their clients. Any resource you can imagine or that you would pull together to share can be embedded into a Blendspace lesson or module. To get the most out of Blendspace you'll want to create a class, or group, and add the names of the students or clients. This allows the Blendspace owner to create assessments to gauge understanding or to provide opportunities for descriptive feedback throughout the lesson or module.
Some of the best features of Blendspace - assessing and tracking progress - requires users to have an account. This allows them to make comments or ask questions throughout the lesson or module. As a presenter, you'll have data on who accessed your lessons, how participants have performed on assessments or surveys, and who needs assistance or additional information, and how participants feel about your presentations.
As an educational consultant, you can use Blendspace to host handouts, websites, and resources at your next workshop, inservice faculty meeting, or teacher professional development session. Blendspace's organizational structure allows you to place resources in the order in which they will be presented. The tool also allows you to write a description of how each tile in the Blendspace is utilized. One of my favorite Blendspaces in the Gallery is the Problem Based Learning lesson. Check it out!
Symbaloo helps teachers curate content and share their favorite web-based resources with their students and with one another. By organizing and sharing resources in this way, teachers are able to work smarter not harder.
Symbaloo is easy to use. You can add any link you find on the internet to a customized tile and organize your tiles in different categories - called webmixes. Use the Symbaloo User's Guide to begin curating your "Go-To" teaching and learning resources today. Or, you can learn to build your first webmix by simply viewing a Symbaloo Tutorial.
Our school district is in Year 1 of its Digital Learning Plan implementation. Our intermediate school is rapidly becoming a 2:1 digital learning environment. This means that very soon we'll have one Chromebook for every two students. The Digital Learning Plan specifies that each teacher will use vetted instructional technology resources to personalize learning for every single student. Check out the Digital Tools webmix we use to curate a few of our teachers' favorite web-based resources!
Easelly is an engaging, effective tool for learning. Students interact with content in new ways by creating infographics and gaining experience using quick-create presentation technology. The site's variety of resources and examples entice users and encourage creativity. Creating an infographic is empowering to students by allowing them to have greater control over their own learning. Students can have meaningful experiences with the content they produce.
In one of the two inquiry-based learning classes that I teach each day, I intentionally and purposefully planned that students would use easel.ly to transform mathematics content to produce a visual that clearly displayed their thinking. Each collaborative team was assigned an authentic performance task. Upon finding the solution, the team created a model that represented their method(s) to solve. The photos below document students' first foray into digital creation and presentation in our class.
Danielle and Alissa are eager to capture a Google image to use in their infographic. They grapple with the process before discovering the bank of images readily accessible in easelly's suite of tools. The choice of images was dependent upon their ability to synthesize, transfer, and apply their knowledge of fractional algorithms to that of models.
Hailey, Rayshawn, and Dawson quickly demonstrate proficiency in the mathematics content standard as well as in the use of the easelly infographic maker!
Hailey and Rayshawn (foreground) provided descriptive feedback after Danielle shared her team's infographic. Danielle is justifying the mathematics model that she and Alissa created using the infographic maker, easelly. Dawson and Alissa (background) are engaged in rigorous discourse about the algorithms used to solve.
Collaborative learning teams rotated, Gallery Walk style, from Chromebook station to Chromebook station, to analyze and evaluate the easelly infographic created by each team using the self-assessment/peer-assessment rubric provided. Then, teams were asked to return to their own station to use the completed rubrics to tweak their models before submitting them for summative assessment. This is a photo of two collaborative teams debriefing the metacognitive process - solution, creation, self and peer review, descriptive feedback for improvement, and assessment.
An Enthusiastic Thumbs-Up: Student Reviews
Aysha exclaimed, "Easelly is awesome! I love that I have the option to choose an existing template, or I can create my own. In math, for me, it is much easier to visualize and create the fraction models without the distraction a busy template may cause.
Dawson queried, "Will we use easelly in your class everyday, Mrs. Hunter? Designing the models to represent our thinking was much more difficult that I expected it to be, but now that we've had the opportunity to see what the easelly creation tool can do, I can hardly wait to try it again!"
Bailey, my student who rarely speaks aloud in class, tugged on my sleeve before leaving class on this day and whispered, "Will we have the chance to use easelly to share our thinking again?" "Why do you ask?" I responded. I had worried that this create and present process might be too much for him; however, I was surprised and delighted when Bailey quipped, "I am a man of few words, Mrs. Hunter. For me, it is so much better to create a visual to communicate what I'm thinking."
Google Forms is one of Google's online apps suite of tools that allows you to easily gather information for free. It's easy to use and one of the simplest ways to save data directly to a spreadsheet. Google Forms has special features, hidden tools, and add-ons to help you make the forms you need in minutes. Use this Google Forms Infographic to get a quick summary of everything you need to get the most out of Google Forms. Watch the video below to discover how Google Forms can work for you!
Kahoot is, perhaps, the most engaging formative assessment tool!
Step 1 - Create
Kahoot is a fun learning game that you create in just minutes. The games, or kahoots, are made from a series of multiple choice questions. Add videos, images, and diagrams to your questions to amplify engagement. Use this Kahoot Infographic to get a quick summary of everything you need to get the most out of Kahoot!
Step 2 - Play
Kahoots are best played in a group setting, like a classroom. Players answer on their own devices, while games are displayed on a shared screen to unite the lesson - creating a 'campfire moment' - encouraging players to look up.
Step 3 - Share
Social learning promotes discussion and pedagogical impact...whether players are in the same room or on the other side of the globe! After a game, encourage players to create and share their own kahoots to deepen understanding, mastery, and purpose.
Socrative PRO now has a silent hands-raised feature.
Socrative is an easy-to-use tool for building assessments and seeing results in real-time. According to its manufacturers, it's everything you need to improve instruction and help student learning. Click to access the User's Guide to watch the tutorial below to discover the power of Socrative in your classroom today!
Formative is an assessment tool where students can type, draw, or submit images to demonstrate their understanding. This tool is different because you can upload existing pdfs, Word documents, or Google Docs and add interactive pieces to them. Formative allows the teacher to watch from the teacher side of the site affording them the opportunity to provide written comments as real-time feedback. With Formative, much of your best lesson plans an resources can be given new life in a digital format. Watch the video below to see what makes Formative a pretty cool tool!
Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. You can use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills. Plickers gives all students the opportunity to participate and engage in learning. To discover how Plickers can transform assessment in your classroom, watch the video below!
Plickers is a unique online formative assessment
tool, since it requires no student devices.
In the classroom, it's about exploring, experimenting, and discovering!
Instructional technology is the intentional use of technology and new pedagogies to meet teaching goals. It is the purposeful implementation of appropriate tools, techniques, or processes that will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy. Instructional technology enhances teaching practices and improves learning outcomes. It provides a variety of opportunities for students to express understanding through images, sound, and text.
"Good integration of technology with content knowledge changes instruction." ~ Boni Hamilton
Technology integration is when classroom teachers purposefully use technology to introduce, reinforce, extend, enrich, assess, and remediate student mastery of curricular targets. It is an instructional choice that generally includes collaboration and deliberate planning - and always requires a classroom teacher's participation. The teacher takes full responsibility for planning, monitoring, and assessing the lessons. Simply, technology in the classroom allows every student to experience the transformative power of education.
Instructional technology increases student engagement and leads to the development of 21st century skills: critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. It is integrated into the learning experience to promote and extend student learning on a daily basis.
School or district policies to ensure internet safety and digital citizenship
Digital Learning Plan
Teachers plan and teach content-based technology lessons
School has technology staff
Professional development
Setting PDP goals that focus on technology integration
Ample opportunities to learn best practices
Teachers feel safe taking instructional risks
Staff Buy-in
Time and tools for collaboration and planning
Equipment
"Teachers must embrace purposeful technology in their classrooms.
Never use technology for the sake of using technology.
If it doesn't transform your teaching and the learning in your classroom,
then skip it. Don't use it." ~ Kayla Delzer, Second Grade Teacher
Reimagining Classrooms: Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders
In Kayla's Ted Talk, she speaks passionately about her mission to revitalize learning and the classroom environment by purposefully embracing technology to flip the instructional model from one that is teacher-centered to one that is wholly student-centered.
