Review of 6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2018
One of my favorite education blogs to follow is called Cult of Pedagogy written by a fellow teacher, Jennifer Gonzalez. She recently blogged about her top 6 Education Tech Tools that all teachers should try in 2018. Let's take a look at my top 3 favorite of the different apps she suggests:
1. Flipgrid
It’s an app where someone, usually a teacher, poses a question or prompt, and students respond to it with short videos. Once they’ve finished their video, they can leave responses to other students’ videos. As face-to-face communication is quickly becoming uncomfortable for many people because of texting and other technology, FlipGrid gives students the opportunity to bring real faces, real voices and less-edited selves back into play.
My only concern would be, what if some students don't have access to a webcam? Would video responses be done at school? It would be interesting to try in the classroom! I'm definitely going to try to use this during my literature circles.
2. InsertLearning
With this tool, you can take any page on the Internet and turn it into a lesson. Suppose you find a great article from the Courier Journal that you'd like your students to read, but you'd also like to ask them a few questions about it, add some commentary, and insert a related video. InsertLearning allows you to do just that.
This seems like an interesting tool to incorporate in the classroom. I would like to use it to supplement my social studies lessons. Definitely, going to test it out!
3. NewseumED
Calling all social studies and history teachers!
Newseum, a news museum in Washington, D.C., created NewseumED which houses an impressive online collection of primary sources, news artifacts, and lessons that help teachers teach media literacy, civics, and all aspects of the First Amendment, allowing you and your students a close look at history.
The site is easy to use and easily shared with your students once you find the most interesting article or image to supplement your history lessons. The site also includes lesson plans with handouts that are readily available for you to use. All lesson plans have been aligned to NCSS, NCHS, NCTE, and Common Core Standards.
This is a great go-to resource for primary source documents and other supplemental materials to make history come to life!
I hope you find at least one of these 3 tools useful in your classroom!
Stay warm!