Teaching101: Incorporating Technology in the Classroom

We, as teachers of the 21st century, have access to SO MANY awesome and useful technological applications that can better the learning environment of our classrooms. In fact, technology is so ubiquitous, incorporating it into the classroom will aid to give students the skills they need to survive in a highly, technological-based world. But not only that, within the classroom, technology can create other modes of learning for children, and even assist the teacher in communication with families. SO, two core reasons why technology needs to be incorporated into classrooms: (1) technology is pushing our world's innovation, and the more our students grow in familiarity with it, the easier they will adapt and be successful, and (2) technology has a plethora of ways it can used in the classroom.

Take a look at all of the possibilities!!!

www.getkahoot.com
www.kahoot.com

Kahoot! is a great tool to use when wanting to assess the students. A teacher creates a multiple choice assessment on www.getkahoot.com, and upon creation, Kahoot gives the teacher a pin number. The pin number is then given to the students, whom type in www.kahoot.com, so that they can log into the assessment. On the teacher's screen, he or she can see data from the class after each timed question. Data is used by the teacher to guide their planning of upcoming lessons. Kahoot! is super engaging for the students because it assigns points and first, second, third and so on placements. Answers from the students are only visible to the teacher and there are options to create other types of questions as well.

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www.classtools.net

Just as it sounds, Fakebook is a mock website of Facebook, but instead was created only to be used for education purposes within the classroom. One way a teacher can go about using this site is to use it as a way to connect students, families, and the teacher to one another so that they may all share in the experiences occurring in the classroom and the school. Everything on this website is created by the students, but they do not have their own profiles. All people affiliated make comments and posts under one profile. There is a save feature and a share feature as well! Another way the teacher can use this site is by creating a biography in whole group of an important person in history. This site, in this way, can become apart of a lesson!

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www.activelylearn.com

Actively Learn is a technological tool like no other (I've ever heard about.), honestly. On this website/app, the teacher is able to take an already leveled text on the website or upload text from a different URL and add sidebars, questions, polls, videos, photos, and other text features. In this way, a teacher is able to scaffold the text to make it easier to read and/or focus students' on key parts of the text by asking text dependent questions. The students are even able to add comments to any of the added sidebars, questions, polls, or other text features.

There is a teacher prompt in the top box outlined in black.
It is at the beginning of the reading to set the purpose for the reader.

There are text dependent questions in the grayish, green boxes.
They can be placed after any part of the text.

I have attached a video to the last sentence of the text.

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www.newsela.com

A push in reading right now is to have students read more nonfiction texts, especially for the younger grades. Research has shown that as students go up in grade level, the percentage of total fiction texts read decreases and nonfiction increases. By having a more balanced amount of fiction and nonfiction texts for young readers, we are preparing them for the nonfiction texts of core content areas (such as math, science and social studies) in the future. So, NEWSELA is a wonderful technology resource that offers nonfiction texts for students. Even further, they are up-to-date articles written about current events in the world! Now, ready for the cherry on top? For each article, Newsela creates 5 different levels of that same article so that any student can find their "just right" text.

Notice the difference between these two screenshots of the same article.

There are less words in this article, hence the lower, selected level on the right hand side.

There is also a writing prompt available for students to respond to!

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https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com

QR codes can be used for so many reasons. Within the classroom, they can be at a station, on a worksheet, on a poster, on the students' desk, ANYWHERE! And attached to those QR codes can be any of these technology applications in this article or SO MANY other things; such as videos, journals, documents, etc.! Instead of taking the time to make many copies of one thing or wasting time repeating directions, free up more time to teach in the school day by creating engaging QR codes so that students develop more independency!

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www.popplet.com

I see Popplet as a great way to brainstorm ideas before organizing and composing a writing piece. The website/app is high quality and allows students to incorporate audio, video, pictures and text into their "popples". Students can also connect one "popple" to another so that they can remember how one of their thoughts led to another! Try this one out for sure! It allows for a new way of brainstorming rather than just using pencil and paper. Students will find this engaging and the process is authentic for each student!

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http://edu.glogster.com

On Glogster, students can take ownership of their learning and create a multimedia poster of what ever topic is given as criteria by the teacher. With moving photos, video, audio, stickers, backgrounds, music, etc., possibilities are endless to create a poster that is interactive and easy to create for students. A teacher creates the account and all of the students are added under him or her. At anytime, the teacher can observe the progress of the students whom are making a "glogster". Through new experiences, students have another mode for the brain to access information.

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www.voki.com

Voki is a website where teachers can create avatars for students to listen to. Whether that be instructions for a station or directions to an assignment, the teacher is spending less time giving those instructions and directions and is instead having more time to teach and talk about content. What makes Voki even more useful is attaching a QR code to the avatar and placing that QR code at different places in the room where instructions are needed. Also, a teacher can create a class list and put assignments online to be completed by the students as well.

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www.padlet.com

Padlet is an interactive blog! And what is SO cool about it is that the teacher can add all of his or her students onto the interactive blog as contributors! In this way, all of the students can post onto it. Video, pictures, audio and file attachments can be attached to any post, and the teacher has the capability to turn on being able to review every post before being posted. Privacy settings ensure the safety of the children and this is also a great way for parents to view what different activities are going on in the classroom. So useful in so many ways! It is exciting!

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www.edpuzzle.com

Here again is a new technological tool like no other I have ever heard of before :)... With this tool the teacher is able to upload any video that pertains to what he or she wants to teach, and then attach text (video) dependent questions to different parts of the video. When the video reaches that point while playing, it will stop and bring up the question the teacher set up there. After the students have watched the video and answered all of the questions, the teacher is able to see a complete set of data, and this data helps teachers understand what her or her students are strong in and struggling with.