Pear Deck is a simple presentation tool designed to enhance student learning during a slideshow. Ideally, each student in the class should have their own device, and the fact that Pear Deck works on all platforms makes it a great fit for a 1:1 setting. Students use their devices to follow along with the teacher's slideshow on a classroom screen. Throughout, teachers can pause at points where they've added questions -- a variety of question types are available. Teachers can view students' responses to these questions immediately, as well as post the results on-screen for all students to see. On the setup side of things, teachers will need to take some time preparing presentations and adding the interactive elements that make the platform engaging. Pear Deck has made this process somewhat easier for teachers -- there's a built-in Google search tool to use when adding images and videos into slides. What's more, Pear Deck will helpfully cite any images inserted using this tool!
LearnZillion is an online database of short video lessons that address learning topics aligned to individual Common Core standards. The lessons cover math, close reading, and some writing standards. Experienced teachers create the 3- to 5-minute videos and lesson plans, complete with leveled practice problems, anchor texts, and writing prompts. For kids, the videos feature commentary, extra hints, tricks, and a “try it yourself” segment to help them practice on their own, using pencil and paper to follow the video’s guidance. Multiple-choice quizzes help assess students' learning. When both kids and teachers create accounts, teachers can assign lessons to individual students or to the whole class, see who's completed a lesson, and view students' scores. GoClass is a learning platform that allows teachers to create lessons and deliver them directly to students' mobile devices or computers. With a free account, teachers can create courses and develop lessons, share content, and assess student learning in real time. Lessons follow a specific structure: show (media and videos), explain (notes and examples), and ask (polls and assessments). Teachers can add individual students or upload an entire class with a .csv file. Students receive an email about how to get started with GoClass. To conduct a session, both teachers and students will need devices -- an optional projection screen can allow whole-class viewing. Teachers can then share content to student devices while simultaneously projecting the same or different content to the class. Teachers can scribble on an image or add an explanation to emphasize a concept. They can also time lectures and assessments and see which students are engaged with the presentation at a given time. Expanded features in the paid account include scheduling for flipped-class instruction, student note-taking and annotation, and space for additional student accounts and lesson plans. Geddit is an online student response tool with an extra piece: Students can choose signal bars to reflect their level of confidence with any given question. As with similar tools, teachers set up classes and lessons; students can respond anonymously using a mobile device. Geddit's "Lessons" are intended to last just for one class period. Within a Lesson, teachers can add Topics (used as organizational guides or brief directions), as well as related questions or polls to elicit student responses. When students log in, they'll get a notification when a lesson has commenced. At this point and anytime during a lesson, students can indicate their perceived level of confidence using the "Geddit bars" tool. Students can also send short comments to the teacher (though teachers can't write back), indicating that they'd like help by clicking a hand symbol. Students do get immediate feedback on the multiple choice questions, and -- after a lesson is over -- can view completed lessons as an opportunity to reflect and review. Edulastic is a free site that is used to create formative assessments for students. When creating a quiz, the site will ask teachers to create questions that are linked to a specific CommonCore Standard. However, this site does not include the PA CommonCore, so you will not be able to link it to the standards that you are most familiar with. The main perk about this site is that there are currently 29 different tech enhanced question types (several of which are directed towards math type questions). These question types reflect the ones that are used on the SBAC test (tests currently used in Delaware, California, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington. Do to the different types of questions, it is recommended that this site is first used in class so that the teacher can make sure that students are able to answer the different types of questions. Once the students gain experience, this site really promotes itself as a homework tool. Blendspace is an easy-to-use platform for creating multimedia lessons that kids can access online. Using a drag-and-drop interface, you can organize videos, text, links, images, and quizzes into cubes, then organize them to create lessons, or "canvases, " for your students to complete independently. Content can be pulled from online sources as well as your own computer, Dropbox, or Google Drive. There's also a bookmarking tool that lets you add websites to your Blendspace collection. Students can then move through the content in a linear fashion, responding to prompts in a sidebar comment area or taking quizzes along the way. They can also create their own lessons that can be private or shared, or remix a lesson. With a free teacher account, you can create unlimited classes of up to 35 students. To join a class, students use a join code that you provide. A paid premium account allows students to collaborate with each other on lessons, allows users to record audio, and provides an extra layer of technical support. These canvases that are created can be embedded into a Moodle course or class site. Formative is a free site that can be used to create interactive formative assessments. The site allows teachers to create free accounts and classrooms. Teachers can then give students a log in or have students make an account to view assignments. Question types include drawing (showing work), multiple choice, true and false and short answer. Teachers can create an answer key for true/false and multiple choice questions that will be graded automatically when students submit the assignment. The teacher would then need to go to the assignment page and award points for the drawing questions and short answers. The page displays live results as students submit the assignments. The drawing feature makes this an interesting option for students that have touch screen capabilities. TodaysMeet is a site that can be used in a variety of ways. This digital discussion is a great way to brainstorm ideas, to set up a quick formative assessment, to use as a warm-up with a thought provoking question, or to extend the classroom discussion from home-almost like office hours. Students can log into your "room" without needing to create an account. This can be a great collaboration tool or a way to communicate with each student. Socrative is a simple, dynamic online student response system that can help teachers spark conversation and learning through user-created polls and quizzes. With this free, cloud-based software, teachers direct students to a Web address, where they log in their answers. Via single-response polling, students' answers register immediately on the teacher’s computer as the students submit their responses on most any device. Teachers can display the class's responses to multiple-choice, true/false, or short-answer questions. In addition to polling students on a single question, teachers can also create longer quizzes, which the software grades. Teachers can choose to let students see instantly whether their answer was correct, or they can provide an explanation in response to incorrect answers. Quizlet is a free online database of over 400 million flashcard sets created by students, for students. All the information is user-generated and includes both text-based and visual study materials. The range of topics covered on Quizlet is pretty amazing. Students can browse these sets by category (Arts & Literature), then narrow down by type (Books), then specific subject (The Great Gatsby). For each set of flashcards, Quizlet also auto-populates a few study activities, including matching and fill-in-the-blank games and timed quizzes. In creating flashcards, students can upload their own photos or choose from Quizlet's database to add a visual element. Teachers can share custom sets of created flashcards with their students. Plickers is a rapid-response classroom polling tool that uses paper cards for student responses. To conduct a poll, a teacher creates a question and projects it on-screen. Students hold up their custom response cards (each card is different), turning the cards in different orientations to indicate their answers (one side up for A, another side up for B, and so on). The teacher holds up a device (like an iPad or Android) and scans students’ responses, which are recorded. Responses can be automatically projected on a screen in the classroom, and teachers can track each student's responses over time. Newsela is an online news-as-literacy platform featuring current articles in seven categories: War & Peace, Science, Health, Kids, Money, Law, and Arts. It's updated weekly, and all articles are Common Core-aligned and available in five different Lexile levels, ranging (roughly) from third to 12th grade. Many of the articles are accompanied by a comprehension quiz. Newsela's resources are free to students; all of the site's articles and quizzes, as well as the annotation tool, are available for open online use. For teachers, the paid PRO subscription offers the site's most useful options. These include a dashboard to manage students' assignments and view both individual and class results, tracking progress toward meeting the related Common Core standards. Nearpod is a site and app that is used to create and deliver interactive presentations and assessments. On the site, teachers can create their own multimedia presentations or customize ones that are made public. A variety of things can be built into the presentations including videos, images, slideshows, polls, draw its(students directly write on the slide and submit), and open ended questions. Teachers control what screen the students see and can also share a student submission with each device. This is a very powerful tool but is limited in space for free accounts. Students get to the presentations by going to the site and submitting the class code or by launching the nearpod app on their device if they have it. Kahoot! is a free student response system for creating and administering unique, game-like quizzes. Questions, along with answer choices, are projected onto a screen while students submit responses on their devices. The kids' devices only show color, so they must view the correct answer on the screen in the room. The liveliness of the quiz/game escalates as updated ranks appear on the scoreboard between questions. The site has very bright colors and very suspenseful music. Teachers will need to create an account and set up a "room" for students to join. ClassFlow is a an all-in-one platform that teachers can use to create and deliever interactive, content-rich lessons across a variety of platforms (including Promethean ActivInspire). It is a great tool to use in traditional, blended, or flipped classrooms. After signing up, teachers can get started building lessons, creating assessments, and managing their classes. Lessons are similar to a PowerPoint or Flipchart lesson. However ClassFlow allows you to build in polls and assessments directly into your lessons. Assessment data is collected for teachers to use. This is a very powerful tool but will take some practice when first building it into your classes. |
Categories
All
|