Tech Minute
Assignment Objectives: To share examples of digital technologies (including web sites, free software, and other freely available resources) that teachers can use in their classrooms to promote student access to learning and engagement, and/or for their own professional development.
Expectations:
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Sample of Tools Showcased (see wiki below for detailed description):
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Copy of wiki site created by EDUC 412 students
General Technology Tools
What is Reddit? Reddit is a website made up of user-generated material. While you can find information about virtually anything, there are specific subreddits pertaining particularly to teaching.
How to use Reddit: Go to Reddit.com and make an account. Then go to the tab "my subreddits" to edit which ones you subscribe to and that's it! In order to go directly to a specific subreddit, type in reddit.com/r/ followed by whatever subreddit you want to check out (there are some suggestions for teaching related subreddits below).
Why Reddit is helpful: Reddit is not a tool to use with your students but a tool for your own professional development. You can ask questions regarding teaching and other users will respond. You can also find current news articles, lesson plan ideas, and suggestions for using technology in the classroom. Here are some suggestions for teacher related subreddits: /r/edtech, /r/education,/r/ELAteachers, /r/teachers, /r/teachingresources.
QUIZLET
What is Quizlet? Quizlet is a free website that provides study and learning tools for teachers and students. Students or teachers input what they need to learn and Quizlet creates various tests and games.
How is Quizlet helpful? Quizlet provides students with a powerful study tool they can use in the classroom, at home, or on the go with the app. Quizlet provides students with a interactive tool to help them better learn material. Teachers also can print out tests from the sets they created. Quizlet also has a student tracker so teachers can view how their class is doing and where there may be a need for improvement.
How to use Quizlet?
- Go to www.quizlet.com
- -Create an account (you can also sign up with your Facebook account)
- -Follow steps to register
- -Click “create a set” on the top center of page
- -Create a title
- -Set language
- -inserts questions and answers, or vocabulary words and definitions.
- -Save set at bottom of page
To study/learn: Select set then Select a study set or game (flash cards, learn, speller, scatter game, or space race)
APP To download the app on an iPhone or android device http://quizlet.com/mobile
Use in schools: For more information on using Quizlet in the classroom go to
Class Dojo
(Presented on October 6th by Haley Kint)
- Website Link: https://www.classdojo.com/
- Link to App for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/classdojo/id552602056?mt=8
- Link to App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.classdojo.android&hl=en
What is Class Dojo? Class Dojo is a classroom management tool that lets you easily keep track of individual or class-wide student behaviors, as well as communicate with parents and keep records. There are logins for teachers, students, and parents, so it's an easy way for students and parents to see how they're doing.
Why is Class Dojo helpful? Class Dojo is helpful for teachers, parents, and students alike because of how easy it is to use. (Personally, I find the app to be much easier to use and aesthetically pleasing than the website, but having both options is nice!) Students can create their own avatars, which makes it fun for them, or you can use student ID pictures if you have older students. You can edit student behaviors around what you feel is important in your classroom (for example, you can create a negative behavior of "Late" or a positive behavior of "Prepared" if those are important to you).
Class Dojo allows you to keep track of positive/negative behaviors for the whole class (which I find more appropriate for older grades), so you can create a reward or treat system if they reach a certain number of positive behaviors. This electronically does what many teachers already do with tallies on the board. It also keeps reports, which are again very easy to read and colorful, for each student and class as a whole which you can view by any time frame you want. There is also a feature called "Random" which will randomly pick a student. This feature is great for calling on students and you know it's fair (no more popsicle sticks or index cards necessary!).
The coolest feature is the ability to message parents. It is faster and easier than email. All the parents need to do is sign up for an account with a user ID and password. It allows you to send messages to all parents (useful for due-date reminders that involve parent action) and attach pictures which can be fun for parents to see their students in the classroom.
Remind.com
(presented on October 6th by Jill Dayton)
Link: https://www.remind.com/
What is Remind.com?
Remind.com is a fast, safe, and easy way to contact students and parents. This service allows you to send out mass texts to groups of students or parents without exchanging phone numbers. You can send out reminders about tests, homework, and events or even inspiration and cheerful things to help them through their day.
How does it work?
By setting up an account with Remind.com, you can add classes and extend the service to students. Once a class is added, the site produces a phone number with a unique code. The teacher then gives the phone number to the students, and they text that code to the number, enrolling them in the remind.com class. From there, the site will text back prompts, such as asking for the name to finish the process. The teacher can see who has subscribed on his/her homepage on the site.
Once there are students subscribed to a class, the teacher simply types in a message, hits schedule, and off it goes! Students cannot text back and the teacher does not receive their phone numbers. The students can, with the app, mark the text as "liked" or checkmark it to show that it has been seen. For students who do not have a phone, there is also an email service.
Google Forms
(presented on September 29th by Will Headley)
What is Google forms?
http://forms.google.com
/>Google Forms is an easy to use cloud based program that allows users to create a variety of forms that can be widely distributed, recorded, and analyzed.
How does it work?
Google Forms 2014 Tutorial
Why is it important? For educators, Google Forms is an amazing tool. It can be used to provide assessments, gather qualitative data, present information, or create polls or exits tickets. Results are gathered quickly in an organized spreadsheet that can also provide quantitative data. Additionally, it's completely free and paperless.
Wikispaces
(presented on 9/29/14 by Chris Angeja)
Link: WikiSpaces
What is Wikispaces?
Wikispaces is a social writing platform with a focus on education. It allows for teachers to easily create a classroom workspace where students can work on projects, turn in assignments, and participate in other activities. I personally used Wikispaces while completing my senior project, focusing on technology in the classroom. I was able to create example lesson plans for an 8th grade Math class. Here is that project. Also, here is an example of a wikispace that shows how collaborative and informative a Wiki can be for a classroom.
Why use Wikispaces?
With Wikispaces teachers have great assessment tools at their disposal to measure students participation, monitor discussions, and grade assignments all in one convenient place where student are also able to access their grades and ask any questions they may have. This gives the students a great place to work, connect and share ideas. And the best part is that everything is 100% FREE for teachers!!
For more information: About WikiSpaces
For help creating a wiki: Intro to WikiSpaces
Flubaroo
presented by Jess Engdahl
What is Flubaroo?
Flubaroo is a free Add-on for Google that processes and analyzes Google Form response data. It will sort and assign scores to each multiple choice or fill in the blank response made to your Google Form.
Why is Flubaroo helpful?
Flubaroo saves you hours of time grading student assignments by hand and displays the analyzed information in an easy-to-read, organized format. It alerts you of low student scores as well as low-scoring questions. Additionally, the Add-on has an emailing feature which allows you to email your students their grades.
How to Use Flubaroo:
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Begin at your Google Drive
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Click ‘Create’ → ‘Form’
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Make all your questions, and request people with the link to submit!
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Once you have two or more submissions, you can use Flubaroo to grade them!
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Click ‘View Responses’ on Toolbar
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Click ‘Add-ons’ → ‘Get Add-ons’
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Search Flubaroo and install (for free!)
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Click ‘Add-Ons’ → ‘Flubaroo’
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Click ‘Grade Assignment’
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Step 1
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Assign point values for each question
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Step 2
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Pick a response that you will use to grade the submissions against (ie yours that you submitted with all the correct answers)
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Once it has finished processing, click the ‘Grades’ tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet
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View the grades summary!
A quick and painless way to grade!
Possible:
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Quizzes
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Homework
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Exit tickets
- Collaboration with other professionals
Watch an instructional video!
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STORYBIRD
Storybird is a website, accessible to anyone, that allows you to create chapter books, picture books, or poetry with artwork they provide for you.
It allows students to be creative in their story telling. Students get to respond to art and choose the style that speaks to them. From there, they create a story as the pictures inspire them.
The basic program is free. You can pay for more options and some districts will choose to do so.
~CARLA WEBER
teachingchannel.org
https://www.teachingchannel.org/
teachingchannel.org is a professional development website focused around videos. The site is managed by a group that seeks to answer teacher requests as well as highlight successful teaching strategies by finding teacher's and filming their strategies in practice. The videos cover a range of grade levels, subjects, and all aspects of teaching from planning a lesson to classroom management and collaboration techniques. The website is free to view videos. If you make an account you can comment on videos and engage in the question forums. Finally, you can fill out a survey that highlights your interests and you will be emailed a weekly email that will showcase any new posts that are related to your interests.
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What is Padlet?
Padlet is a virtual wall that allows people to share their ideas with one another. It basically works like a virtual bulletin board where everyone can contribute their ideas. Padlet can be used for a variety of classroom activities like warm up activities, exit tickets or a different way to check for understanding. It is convenient to see all of the students responses at once to see who is participating or who is understanding a concept and who isn't. Padlet can be used across disciplines for all sorts of activities. Padlet is easy to use and is free to use. You do need to sign up for an account but there is no fees involved. It is very easy to use as all of the tools are on the right hand side tool bar and the formatting is very basic. You can create a link for your students to get to the Padlet page and put it on your Google classroom site so they have direct access to it. Padlet is a great tool to use in your classroom so try it out!
The link below is to the homepage of Padlet and an example Padlet page that I made:
http://padlet.com/aleemorales25/example
Google Sites
(Presented by Kevin Meredith)
Google Sites is a Google application similar to Gmail. It allows users to create their own websites for free. Creating a website is easy, and there are many useful functions for teachers. Search engines and YouTube can be excellent resources for troubleshooting or ideas for your website. For teaching purposes, this is a great way to make a teacher website for students to visit to find homework, assignments, and any other pertinent information for their class. As student teachers who will be interviewing for jobs in several months, creating your own Google Site can be a great "leave behind" for the panel of interviewers. Your google site can be customized to reflect colors or mission statements of the schools that interest you.
National Association of Agricultural Educators Forum
(Presented by Gary Potter)
The NAAE community forum is a professional networking site for agricultural educators managed by the National Association of Agricultural Educators. Its purpose is to create a common place for anyone who is interested in agricultural education to share ideas and resources. Other educational disciplines may also use this forum for alternative teaching methods. The forum offers lesson plans and instructional aids, Supervised Agricultural Experience project ideas, FFA ideas, professional development tools, disciplinary tools and ideas. The forum also had ideas on how to integrate STEM into agricultural education and vice versa .
Prezi
(Presented by Scott Love)
Prezi.com
Prezi is an alternative to Powerpoint and other slide based presentation software. Its different because it is not only free but also more fun! In Prezi you can display information in unique ways that will captivate audiences. It caters to creative people, but there are templates available online. Presentations in Prezi are simple to make, but watching Youtube video tutorials are helpful in order to learn the basics. The software is easy to pick up and the applications for it are immense. Young students and older students alike will be interested in Prezi due to the multitudes of ways you can display information. It is an excellent tool to use in all academic fields and can be easily implemented into any classroom.
Scriblink
(presented by Parisa Salehsari)
www.scriblink.com
Scriblink is a free online white board/sketch pad that users can share only in real time. Every time you open scribbling on a browser you create your own personal whiteboard that no one can access without a link or URL that you can provide through email or chat. The creator can not leave the whiteboard until the person you sent the link to uses it to access the whiteboard or else the whiteboard will be destroyed and inaccessible through the link. Each whiteboard can hold up to 6 users and becomes inaccessible if a user is inactive for 20 minutes - this has no effect on the other users of the board. The white board provides advanced math symbols, can upload jpg files, and different tabs for easier explanations. A chat box is provided for the users to utilize. Although a user cannot save their masterpiece to their own personal hard drive, they can screenshot their work or just click the save button in which the user is prompted to enter their email in which scribbling emails a URL to the user in which they can access the whiteboard for later. It is an excellent tool to use for small tutoring purposes - especially for homework when understanding is hard to communicate in words and visuals are needed.
VocabGrabber
(Presented by Bryce Gerhardt)
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/vocabgrabber/
How does Vocabgrabber work?
VocabGrabber analyzes any text you're interested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context. Just copy text from a document and paste it into the box, and then click on the "Grab Vocabulary!" button. VocabGrabber will automatically create a list of vocabulary from your text, which you can then sort, filter, and save.Select any word on the list and you'll see a snapshot of the Visual Thesaurus map and definitions for that word, along with examples of the word in your text. Click on the word map or the highlighted word in the example to see the Visual Thesaurus in action.
How to use VocabGrabber?
- Copy text from any document
- Paste the copied text into the box
- Grab your vocabulary words
Edmodo
(presented by Claire Bush)
Edmodo is an online classroom organizer very similar to Google Classrooms. Teachers, students and parents can sign up for free and use Edmodo. With Edmodo, teachers are able to inform their students about upcoming assignments or other class announcements. Teachers can also create class quizzes or polls for their students. If Edmodo is used school wide, teachers can collaborate and schedule assignments so they do not overlap. In addition, students are able to view a monthly calendar with all of their assignments listed in one location. Edmodo allows students to access classroom information as well as message their teachers privately or ask the entire class questions. Sign up for free at Edmodo.com, then ask your students to do the same. Each class page has a class code which your students will use to add the class. Once all students add, you may lock the class page.
PhET Interactive Simulations
(Presented by Susie Murray)
PhET simulations are interactive models that help students understand difficult concepts in the areas of physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and math. It is a free site and has many teacher resources available. The simulations can be used as examples in a lecture or as a tool for students to experiment with. Each simulation has a standard set of conditions that can be changed in order to see how each factor affects the simulation.
Simulations can be searched by clicking on the button "Play With Sims" or "Simulations." From there you can search by content area or grade level. There is also a teacher section of the site labeled "For Teachers." There you can find tutorials and tips for how to use PhET in your classroom. You can also see which simulations teachers have used in their classroom. Teachers often upload lesson plans and worksheets that can be used alongside the simulations. In addition to being a tool, PhET is also a site for teachers to share materials and ideas.
A great example is the Natural Selection simulation. Students can manipulate the environment, mutations, gene frequency, gene dominance, and limiting factors to see the roles that all these factors have in natural selection. These simulations give students a way to learn material in a visual and interactive way. Not only are PhET simulations interactive, they are fun as well!
LucidChart
(Jennifer Daniels)
When you get to the site:
1. Sign up for a free account
2 You will then have the option to start from a template or create your own chart.
Lucid Chart is a flowchart maker. You can use this as a teacher or have your student's use the program. Click here for lots of examples of how to use this program. Educators can get access to special features for free by applying for access. This can also be added to your Google drive which is helpful is your school uses Google drive or Google classroom. This program is a great visual organizer tool and is very simple to use, especially if you start with a template.
Socrative: www.socrative.com
Taylor Richardson
How to use socrative:
Set up a account (Its free and easy)
Students will be able to access socrative by login in with the room number.
You can create a quiz, quick question, and an exit ticket. Students can use their smart phones to access the site. They will take the quiz and the answers will be sent to the teacher. The teacher will be able to see which questions the students get right or wrong. This will allow the teacher to check for understanding and issue feedback immediately after the quiz. This can be use to check for understanding on readings or topics covered in earlier lessons.
CIA World Factbook(presented by Taylor Furnis-Lawrence)
The world factbook is a great resource for teachers and students. Teachers can use it to enrich a topic they are teaching with current information and photos. The students can use it when they are working on a project or need information. As teachers we can be confident the information the students are obtaining is reliable. It is free to use and no account is needed for use. All countries are profiled on the site so it will be easy to include information about diverse countries to any lesson.
NASA Website
Jamie Boring
What can you do with the NASA website?
NASA’s website is full of resources for teachers, students and researchers to use. There are many pre-designed lessons that can be printed out and are ready to use in the classroom. There are also online activities that your students can use to do research or learn more about concepts discussed in class just as the virtual lab. The website also displays many NASA projects that your students can be a part of. They can design an experiment and enter a contest to have their experiment brought up to the international space station. The site is full of videos, articles and activities for all ages and all content areas.
How to navigate the NASA website.
To find lesson plans:
- Click on for educators
- Click find teaching materials
- Then you can search if you know what you are looking for, or read through lists of participating NASA websites.
- Many of the websites have lesson plans available for download that include worksheets and standards addressed.
National Agriculture in the Classroom
(Breanne Pacheco)
National Agriculture in the Classroom is a great site to search and save lesson plans for your class that incorporate agriculture. The “Teacher Center” tab provides links to curriculum, state specific agriculture in the classroom programs, STEM programs, and various awards and conferences for agriculture teachers. The “Curriculum Matrix” link allows teachers to search lesson plans by grade level and content area standards. Each lesson plan provides grade level, estimated time for the lesson, purpose, materials, vocabulary that students will learn, essential questions, connections to agriculture, the procedure, and any essential files needed to complete activities. Each lesson plan also lists agricultural literacy outcomes, education content standards, and common core connections. Lesson plans can be saved in the “My Binder” link by creating a free profile.
The “Teacher Center” tab also has a link to “AgroWorld”, an electronic magazine with issues published four times a year. Articles can be filtered by issue or subject including integrated science, biology, earth science, technology, social studies (economics and geography), and family and consumer science.
The “Student Center” tab provides links virtual tours, state agricultural facts, the “Teen Scene”, and webquests. The "State Agricultural Facts” link leads to a map of the United States where students can click on any state. Each state takes students to a page with general agricultural facts about that state including such things as climate, soil type, common crops, and more. The “Virtual Tours” are short videos that would be somewhat juvenile for older students but could be incorporated into and intro to agriculture classroom. The “Teen Scene” link leads to a page designed for older students. It includes links for science project ideas, careers in agriculture, and blog posts about current issues in agriculture written by students all across the country.
Finally, the “Student Center” tab has a great source for teachers which is the “WebQuest” link. It provides a list of webquests that can be given to students as in class assignments or to be taken home and completed. Each webquest is broken down by grade level and were created by the Missouri Farm Bureau and Missouri State University.
RUBISTAR - Presented by Jordan Paterson
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
Want to make exemplary rubrics in a short amount of time? Try RubiStar out! Registered users can save and edit rubrics online. You can access them from home, school, or on the road. Registration and use of this tool is free, so click the Register link in the login area to the right to get started now!
Rubistar is an incredible tool for teachers! As we all know, rubrics are how you stay honest as a teacher while grading student work. Rubistar provides an online database for every type of rubric you can possibly think of making! Furthermore, with easy editing tools, you can create rubrics just the way you like them and then simply save them to your online database! Always have access to all sorts of rubrics through the use of Rubistar!
PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/
By Weston Kilbride
The first year of teaching can be the hardest when not presented with appropriate materials to utilize within your classroom. That's where the PBS website can help! On this website you can create a teacher portal where you can connect to your students and to the outside world of content specific resource materials. It is helpful when you are lacking in activities and material to present and is better than similar websites like google classroom that don't necessarily provide the best source of ready-to-use academic material. The site is very user friendly and you can register for free and use the sources provided as well as set up a classroom-like atmosphere for your students.