Graphite is a great website that helps teachers to find the most appropriate apps, websites, and programs for educational use. Through the magic of Twitter, I came across their Teacher Toolkit. The list is awesome. If you're looking for ways to appropriately incorporate more technology into your classroom, try out one of these apps and websites.
Here are my favorites:
1. Today's Meet: Today's Meet is a website that creates a backchannel for your classroom. Essentially, kids log-in, and while you're teaching or discussing, they can post comments or questions about the concept. It's a great way for kids to ask questions without interrupting the flow. My students would answer each other's questions while I was teaching, so it was a great formative assessment. Do kids get it? Are they able to help other students understand the concepts? Today's Meet is a great way to find out.
2. Educanon: Educanon is like YouTube multiplied by amazing. You take any YouTube video, and educanon allows you to splice in questions or comments for students to interact with. Because you've created a class on educanon, you get all their responses. So let's say you assign a video for the students to watch for homework, and you want them to be accountable for actually watching and understanding the information. Educanon lets you do that. #awesomesauce
3. Notability: Notability is an awesome note-taking collaboration app that allows your classroom to go paperless. I could spend an hour telling you about all the awesome features, so the best thing for you to do is click on the link and let Ginger Labs tell you how awesome Notability is.
4. Thinglink: Thinglink allows you to make interactive images. So let's say you're teaching about the Battle of Centralia, and you have an image of the battle site. Thinglink lets you add YouTube videos of reenactments, links to historical documents, your own text, other images like soldiers who fought in the battle, maps of other battles fought in Missouri, etc, to that image. You then share the link with your students, and they now have an interactive Battle of Centralia that helps bring the history alive for them.
5. Explain Everything: I use Explain Everything to create presentation videos. Darin used Explain Everything for his back to school presentation. It's awesome because you can use it to explain anything you want. It's as if you took your SMARTBoard, projector, internal computer camera, markerboard, worksheets, and you and combined them all together. You can then upload your video to your YouTube channel for your students or your students can share links to videos that they've created.
6. Remind 101: Remind 101 is a text messaging service. It creates a proxy phone number for you so that you can text your students reminders, like important dates, changes to homework, etc. The students subscribe to your messages, but they never have your actual phone number, and they can never text you back. My students loved Remind 101 and preferred it to email. You can also schedule texts, so if you set your calendar and know you have a test in 3 weeks, you can schedule a text now to be sent in three weeks to remind students to study.
I also love Google Drive and Twitter for the great collaboration and communication that it fosters among staff and students. Try one these in your classroom, and you'll be as hooked as I am!
Here are my favorites:
1. Today's Meet: Today's Meet is a website that creates a backchannel for your classroom. Essentially, kids log-in, and while you're teaching or discussing, they can post comments or questions about the concept. It's a great way for kids to ask questions without interrupting the flow. My students would answer each other's questions while I was teaching, so it was a great formative assessment. Do kids get it? Are they able to help other students understand the concepts? Today's Meet is a great way to find out.
2. Educanon: Educanon is like YouTube multiplied by amazing. You take any YouTube video, and educanon allows you to splice in questions or comments for students to interact with. Because you've created a class on educanon, you get all their responses. So let's say you assign a video for the students to watch for homework, and you want them to be accountable for actually watching and understanding the information. Educanon lets you do that. #awesomesauce
3. Notability: Notability is an awesome note-taking collaboration app that allows your classroom to go paperless. I could spend an hour telling you about all the awesome features, so the best thing for you to do is click on the link and let Ginger Labs tell you how awesome Notability is.
4. Thinglink: Thinglink allows you to make interactive images. So let's say you're teaching about the Battle of Centralia, and you have an image of the battle site. Thinglink lets you add YouTube videos of reenactments, links to historical documents, your own text, other images like soldiers who fought in the battle, maps of other battles fought in Missouri, etc, to that image. You then share the link with your students, and they now have an interactive Battle of Centralia that helps bring the history alive for them.
5. Explain Everything: I use Explain Everything to create presentation videos. Darin used Explain Everything for his back to school presentation. It's awesome because you can use it to explain anything you want. It's as if you took your SMARTBoard, projector, internal computer camera, markerboard, worksheets, and you and combined them all together. You can then upload your video to your YouTube channel for your students or your students can share links to videos that they've created.
6. Remind 101: Remind 101 is a text messaging service. It creates a proxy phone number for you so that you can text your students reminders, like important dates, changes to homework, etc. The students subscribe to your messages, but they never have your actual phone number, and they can never text you back. My students loved Remind 101 and preferred it to email. You can also schedule texts, so if you set your calendar and know you have a test in 3 weeks, you can schedule a text now to be sent in three weeks to remind students to study.
I also love Google Drive and Twitter for the great collaboration and communication that it fosters among staff and students. Try one these in your classroom, and you'll be as hooked as I am!