Categories
Digital Learning

8 Engaging Ways to use Technology in the Classroom to Create Lessons That Aren’t Boring

Teachers are constantly vying for their students’ attention. A great deal of the trouble teachers face with engaging students in their classrooms is because some of the old ways of teaching no longer work with the digital generations. Kelly Walsh at Emerging EdTech shares with readers wonderful tools and strategies to use with students to boost engagement in the classroom while promoting crucial 21st century skills.

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaa

Original Source

Dozens of free web tools and ideas that can pack a technology integration punch and kick those lessons up a notch

Are you tired of delivering the same old lectures on the same subjects year after year? Are you using the same lesson materials over and over and wishing you could make learning in your classroom more interactive?

While lectures and lessons can be informative and even “edutaining” when delivered with passion and good materials by knowledgeable experts, sadly many traditional lectures and lessons are boring, and even worse often ineffective. The good news is that the Web is loaded with great free tools that can enable teachers to bring a sense of fun and engagement to their lessons.

Of course, you do need devices with Internet access to give these tools a try. Even if you don’t have computers or tablets available in your classroom, the fact that an increasing number of High School and college students have smartphones is making it easier than ever to leverage technology to create engaging, active lessons students enjoy working on. For younger grades, if you don’t have access to devices with Web access, perhaps you can access a computer lab by request, or use devices in your library.

Here’s a whole bunch of ideas for leveraging technology to kick those lessons up a notch!

1. Incorporate Student Input & Gather Feedback

There are many applications that allow students to provide live feedback. A lot of them can be used from smartphones. You can also gather feedback by creating a “back channel” using Twitter.

  • Quick, easy Polling ApplicationsPollDaddy andPollEverywhere are two of many applications that make it quick and easy to create simple polls that can let you gather feedback from students – determine if they are struggling with a topic, if they know the correct answers to questions you ask, and so on. They can often participate in these polls using a smartphone.
  • Take it up a notch with Socrative: Socrative is a powerful free app that lets you go well beyond simple polls to more elaborate quizzes. Learn more here.
  • Plickers: This is a pretty cool lo-tech approach to collecting student responses during class that doesn’t require students to use technology. Learn more here.
  • Twitter: Twitter is a great way to gather input by creating an easy to use ‘backchannel’. This is great for students with smartphones (they will need the Twitter app and an account). Simply create a unique hashtag and have students post feedback to Twitter using that hashtag.

2. Gamify It

Leveraging gaming mechanics can make learning more fun is probably easier than you think. For example, any time you bring competition or levels of achievement to a classroom exercise, you’re gamifying your classroom. For example, in one recent assignment in my classroom, I had students search through an interactive computer history timeline for specific facts. The first student to correctly identify a fact (like “what was the first computer bug?”) that I had them seek out “won” for that question!

Here’s a variety of resources and ideas for using gaming in the classroom:

3. Let Students Create

There are so many fun free tools and apps available today that can let students create all kinds of awesome digital content. Below is diversified set of different article and resources that share different tools and ideas for students (and teachers) to create digital content – presentations, interactive digital posters, eBooks, videos, and more. In the spirit of creating in the classroom, we also included an article introducing the burgeoning Makerspace Movement in education.

4. Get Interactive

Many teachers enjoy using interactive tools with their students. Here’s a few tools and ideas to consider.

  • Online Interactive White Boards: Did you know that there are several good free interactive whiteboards available online? If you have a computer and a projector, you can make them work a lot like a “smart board”. Some of these applications even allow students to log on online and collaboratively edit content. Check out these 6 Online IWBs to explore this idea further.
  • Bounceapp (bounceapp.com): You can review, notate, and share any web page with Bounceapp. Just paste a web page address into the “app” and it turns it into an interactive screenshot where students can jot ideas.
  • Interactive apps that work with Smartphones: Many of the tools in this article work on smartphones!
  • If you happen to have a physical white board in your classroom, get more out of it with these creative ideas.
  • Explore additional tool and ideas in this popular article that we published earlier this year.

5. Have Students Collaborate

Getting students to work together as partners, in small groups, or maybe even as one large group, teaches them about team work. Collaborative work can be fun. It is even possible to collaborate with students across the world thanks to many of today’s technologies.

Here are a number of tools and techniques for classroom collaborations.

  • Share writing and encourage feedback with NewsActivist:NewsActivist is a free tool that lets teachers set up their students with a private area where they can write about selected subjects. You can enables them to share what their write with just their classmates, or with the larger audience of students from across the world using NewsActivist. Students can then provide feedback on other students’ writings. Learn more in this brief article.
  • Collaborative Document Edited with Google Drive(drive.google.com): Google Drive lets you share and collaboratively edit Google Docs with anyone else who has a Google account, for free. This is a powerful capability.
  • Collaborative Mind Mapping with MindMeister(mindmeister.com)This applications lets users easily create mind maps that can be edited collaboratively.
  • Collaborative Research: Working in pairs or small groups to find, assess, summarize, and present content in specific topic areas make for a great learning experience and assignment.

6. Project Based Learning

When students apply what they are learning to projects that they undertake, the topics they are learning about can take on a much deeper meaning. Not only does the activity and the increased sensory exposure of project work help to stimulate the mind, the extended time often required of project work, and the visible, tangible results further reinforce learning.

Here are two excellent, rich resources for further exploration of PBL from TeachThought.com:

7. Simulations

Simulations can be a powerful addition to the classroom. Since they tend to be somewhat complicated, they are typically suited towards high school, college, or post-graduate or professional studies. Here are some examples of simulations being used in education:

  • Economics: This site, Economic-Games.com, offers free online classroom games for teaching economics.
  • Marketing: Have you ever wished you could give your Marketing students the chance to practice different e-marketing skills and techniques? Check out Simbound.
  • Medical: Simulations have been a significant teaching and learning tool in the medical field for many years. Harvard Medical School has even created a web site focused on their use of Simulations.
  • BusinessBusiness Simulation Games are a great way to bring active, applied learning into Business courses.

8. Bring in a Guest or Two

With the power of video conferencing apps like Skype, Google Hangout, Facetime, and others, our ability to connect with people all across the world has never been better or less costly. Teachers have been using Skype and similar tools to being guest lecturers, experts, students, and others into the classroom for years. Nothing breaks up the monotony of “same old thing” like an enthusiastic subject matter expert from another county or a room full of students from another continent!

Check out this great video about Skype in the Classroom. This is a perfect way to wrap up this post about leveraging tech in the classroom to make lessons captivating, fun, and exciting!

Categories
Digital Learning

5 Ways to Collect Digital Exit Tickets

Exit tickets are a quick and flexible assessment method that provides teachers with a better understanding as to if their students understand the content of a lesson. Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers provides 5 wonderful digital tools for teachers to use when providing their students with an exit ticket. These digital tools help collect student responses more efficiently and provides the teacher with valuable insights into their students’ understanding of the lesson. 

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

One of the strategies that I use when creating lesson plans is to reflect on the previous lesson. Part of that reflection includes feedback from students. This can be done by simply asking students to raise their hands in response to a “did you get it?” type of question, but I like to have better record of responses than just a hand count. Here are some tools that can be used for collecting exit information from students.

Google Forms
Almost as soon as my school went 1:1 with netbooks six years ago, I started using Google Forms to collect responses from students. The Form that I created and frequently re-used simply asked students to respond to “what did you learn today?” and “what questions do you have for next class?”

Padlet
I started using Padlet back when it was called WallWisher. Padlet enables me to have students not only share exit responses as text, but to also share exit responses as hyperlinks. For example, if my students have been working on research projects I will ask them to share a link to something they found that day along with an explanation of how it is relevant to their research.

Socrative
I started to use Socrative after using the Google Forms and Padlet methods. Socrative actually has an exit ticket activity pre-made for teachers to distribute to students. The exit ticket in Socrative provides two questions; “how well did you understand today’s material?” and “what did you learn in today’s class?” As the teacher you can add a third question.

Socrative allows you to collect responses from students with or without seeing their names. Students can respond to prompts through any device that has a web-browser.

Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere has been around for a long time and it is still a tool that many teachers love. Poll Everywhere is a service that allows you to collect responses from an audience via text messaging or through the web. The free plan for K-12 educators provides a selection of features and quantity of responses that is adequate for almost any classroom. One of the neat ways to display feedback gathered through Poll Everywhere is in word clouds. The word cloud feature integrates with Wordle, Tagxedo, and Tagul.

Plickers – For the Classroom that isn’t 1:1
If not every student in your classroom has a laptop or tablet to use, then you need to check out Plickers as a student response system. Plickers uses a teacher’s iPad or Android tablet in conjunction with a series of QR codes to create a student response system. Students are given a set of QR codes on large index cards. The codes are assigned to students. Each code card can be turned in four orientations. Each orientation provides a different answer. When the teacher is ready to collect data, he or she uses the Plickers mobile app to scan the cards to see a bar graph of responses. In your teacher account on Plickers you can view and save all of the data that you collected from scanning your students’ Plickers cards.

Categories
Uncategorized

What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship

 

As educators teaching digital citizens, we must take on multiple roles to assist our students. Teachers must be facilitators, role-models, coaches, mentors, and more importantly the authority. Vicki Davis at Edutopia shares her insights on fostering digital citizenship in her classroom and instills her knowledge to teachers to help students traverse the digital landscape and promote proper netiquette while they do so.

 

 

Source: iStock
Source: iStock

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It’s time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge.

Proactive Knowledge

I want my students to know the “9 Key Ps” of digital citizenship. I teach them about these aspects and how to use them. While I go into these Ps in detail in my book Reinventing Writing, here are the basics:

1. Passwords

Do students know how to create a secure password? Do they know that email and online banking should have a higher level of security and never use the same passwords as other sites? Do they have a system likeLastPass for remembering passwords, or a secure app where they store this information? (See 10 Important Password Tips Everyone Should Know.)

2. Privacy

Do students know how to protect their private information like address, email, and phone number? Private information can be used to identify you. (I recommend the Common Sense Media Curriculum on this.)

3. Personal Information

While this information (like the number of brothers and sisters you have or your favorite food) can’t be used to identify you, you need to choose who you will share it with.

4. Photographs

Are students aware that some private things may show up in photographs (license plates or street signs), and that they may not want to post those pictures? Do they know how to turn off a geotagging feature? Do they know that some facial recognition software can find them by inserting their latitude and longitude in the picture — even if they aren’t tagged? (See the Location-Based Safety Guide)

5. Property

Do students understand copyright, Creative Commons, and how to generate a license for their own work? Do they respect property rights of those who create intellectual property? Some students will search Google Images and copy anything they see, assuming they have the rights. Sometimes they’ll even cite “Google Images” as the source. We have to teach them that Google Images compiles content from a variety of sources. Students have to go to the source, see if they have permission to use the graphic, and then cite that source.

6. Permission

Do students know how to get permission for work they use, and do they know how to cite it?

7. Protection

Do students understand what viruses, malware, phishing, ransomware, and identity theft are, and how these things work? (See Experiential Knowledge below for tips on this one.)

8. Professionalism

Do students understand the professionalism of academics versus decisions about how they will interact in their social lives? Do they know about netiquette and online grammar? Are they globally competent? Can they understand cultural taboos and recognize cultural disconnects when they happen, and do they have skills for working out problems?

9. Personal Brand

Have students decided about their voice and how they want to be perceived online? Do they realize they have a “digital tattoo” that is almost impossible to erase? Are they intentional about what they share?

Experiential Knowledge

During the year, I’ll touch on each of these 9 Key Ps with lessons and class discussions, but just talking is not enough. Students need experience to become effective digital citizens. Here’s how I give them that:

Truth or Fiction

To protect us from disease, we are inoculated with dead viruses and germs. To protect students from viruses and scams, I do the same thing. Using current scams and cons from SnopesTruth or Fiction, the Threat Encyclopedia, or the Federal Trade Commission website, I’m always looking for things that sound crazy but are true, or sound true but are false or a scam. I’ll give them to students as they enter class and ask them to be detectives. This opens up conversations of all kinds of scams and tips.

Turn Students into Teachers

Students will create tutorials or presentations exposing common scams and how to protect yourself. By dissecting cons and scams, students become more vigilant themselves. I encourage them to share how a person could detect that something was a scam or con.

Collaborative Learning Communities

For the most powerful learning experiences, students should participate in collaborative learning (like the experiences shared in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds). My students will collaborate with others on projects likeGamifi-ed or the AIC Conflict Simulation (both mentioned in a recent post ongame-based learning).

Students need experience sharing and connecting online with others in a variety of environments. We have a classroom Ning where students blog together, and public blogs and a wiki for sharing our work with the world. You can talk about other countries, but when students connect, that is when they learn. You can talk about how students need to type in proper case and not use IM speak, but when their collaborative partner from Germany says they are struggling to understand what’s being typed in your classroom, then your students understand.

Digital Citizenship or Just Citizens?

There are those like expert Anne Collier who think we should drop the word “digital” because we’re really just teaching citizenship. These are the skills and knowledge that students need to navigate the world today.

We must teach these skills and guide students to experience situations where they apply knowledge. Citizenship is what we do to fulfill our role as a citizen. That role starts as soon as we click on the internet.

VICKI DAVIS @COOLCATTEACHER’S PROFILE

 

Categories
Gaming

How to Choose Learning Games That Don’t Bore Kids

 

What makes a learning game interesting and exciting for kids?  Sophia Dalal, a Common Sense Media intern, recently interviewed her 14-year-old brother about what makes a game great for learning. She also ran focus groups with more than 20 teens to understand how they evaluate learning games. Here’s what some of these savvy kids had to say.

Source: Minecraft Screenshot
Source: Minecraft Screenshot

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

Original Source

Student voices shape the way we rate and review on Graphite. Common Sense Media intern Sophia Dalal recently interviewed her 14-year-old brother, Kavi, about what makes a game great for learning. She also ran focus groups with more than 20 teens to understand how they evaluate learning games. Here’s what some of these savvy kids had to say.

Q. What makes a game great for learning?

Kavi, 9th grade: There are textbooks that try to teach you things like history or algebra just with the facts. There are some games with goals to teach you things like algebra or history the same way. That’s not very exciting. I don’t play games just to input information.

Maya, 7th grade: It’s important to have a balance between learning elements and how fun a game is. It has to have an intriguing plot that makes you want to keep playing. And there have to be objectives so you always have a challenge to work for.

Joby, 8th grade: You need to have some influence over what happens in a game. In real life, are you really going to stand back and watch everything happen around you? You need to have a say in what happens. Otherwise you might as well watch a movie instead of playing a game.

Q. What’s most engaging about games?

Kavi: What’s really engaging for me is the story. All the best games build really good worlds just like a good book creates a fantastic and believable world. There’s no other type of media where you are the first person character and you have to make real-time decisions.

Tess, 8th grade: Creativity is what I love in games because I like to make things. I think Pixton is fun because you get to create comics, and you can personalize them the way you want. You have power and more control over the whole thing.

Katherine, 8th grade: I think humor makes games really engaging. With humor, you can tell that the game maker put a lot of time and thought into it.

Q. Is it important to be challenged?

Lionel, 8th grade: Competition is important. If games have competition, kids want to play them over and over until they beat the other person. They’re motivated to learn without realizing it.

Joby: The goal of a game should change over time. In Minecraft, your very first goal is to build a place to live. After that you have to go mining to get to various levels of achievement. The goal is always moving and that makes you push even harder.

Steven, 8th grade: I like a game that’s not going in a predictable sequence. A good game needs a surprise element. You don’t know if this or that is going to happen next.

Tess: Having a goal is really important. In Sims you’re building things not just to take a screen shot and say, “Yay, I built this.” You’re building for the goal of having someone live in it and have a life there.

Q. What about the look and feel of a game?

Kavi: Beauty is really important. Ugly games are an instant turn off. I’ve played games with no dialogue and no other characters. Journey is incredibly moving because the space is so beautiful. A complex environment that feels real is also important. In my opinion that’s done best when you’re plopped into a realistic 3D world, although I’ve seen it happen other ways, like by creating sound environments. They do that in Sound Shapes — an incredible learning game.

Katherine: Colors are important. If you want people to stay on a game you have to engage them with colorful graphics. When you’re looking for games to play, you’re less likely to click on the ones that are gray and boring.

Joby: The smoothness of the interface is important. If buttons are organized it’s easier to find what you’re looking for than if they’re randomly placed.

Q. Anything else?

Kavi: It’s important to remember that games are another art form, like a book or paintings or music. And I think the most important stuff you get out of a game is the same stuff you get out of art … things like emotions or appreciating beauty.

Maya: I think that a website for teachers to find sources for learning is really helpful because then they can find resources and see if people think they’re good or not and how well they teach things. And if they don’t want to pay a lot of money before they find out what the game is about, they can find out whether they really like it or not. I think that’s really helpful.

Kids’ Ideas Will Affect Graphite

We learned so much from interviewing these teens:

  • Engaging games with style are central to learning and not just a “nice to have.”
  • Personalization features and the ability to create things or make decisions empower kids and help them learn.
  • Worlds, stories, and characters that are stylistically unique draw kids in.
  • Striving to meet a goal — especially if there’s competition — can make kids try harder.

We have a similar take on games. But to hear kids echo what we’ve been thinking about — evaluating games in their own unique way — was affirming.