Jonathan Eckert explores 10 of the best tech tools for primary to intermediate grades!
10. Parlay: For those of us who like to discuss rich texts with students, Parlay lets us connect with students remotely, facilitate discussion, and track how the dialogue builds. As students respond, Parlay shows who is contributing and where the conversation is moving as the software visually tracks student responses in a discussion web. Teachers can use built-in tools to assess the frequency of students' answers in real time even when students are not in the same room. Teachers can then spend their time on deeper level assessment of the depth of student responses, which can also be recorded.
9. Flipgrid: One of the most popular tech tools in schools, Flipgrid won praise from teachers across the country because of the flexibility it gives students to submit digital projects and how it effectively supports peer and teacher feedback.
8. Edpuzzle: Teachers use Edpuzzle to make video clips interactive by requiring student responses, which are easy to collect and assess.
7. Pear Deck: Pear Deck does to Google Slides what Edpuzzle does to videos. Slides become interactive, and teachers are able to collect feedback immediately.
6. Prezi: A virtual presentation software that allows users to be on the same screen with the graphics, creating a more engaging presentation. Prezi offers teachers another tool to capture short lectures, explanations, or other content in a more visually appealing and personal way than as a disembodied voice or thumbnail in the bottom corner of a screen.
5. Screencastify: This tool was first recommended by a teacher in Kenya, who explained how Screencastify transformed her math assessments by allowing students to show what they're thinking from wherever they happen to be working. Screencastify is also valuable for reducing cheating as teachers can observe students working and explaining problems instead of just recording answers.
4. Mural: This has been a lifesaver for virtual collaboration. Mural allows teachers, students, and other contributors to write on virtual sticky notes and then organize and reorganize them in real time. The best in-person meetings are always the ones where the collective expertise of the room can be captured visually, and if we can't be in the same room with students—or colleagues—Mural is the next best thing. Even better, there's no need to go back and summarize or clean up evidence from the meeting. The Mural is the artifact. Many teachers are now using Jamboard in a similar way.
3. Gimkit: Created by a high school student who thought he could improve upon Kahoot!, Gimkit allows teachers to create question sets that students can answer over and over again while competing against each other, which is great for surface learning and review. Because Gimkit allows for repetition of answers and has a variety of ways for students to earn points, students remain engaged as they work at their own pace.
2. Mentimeter and Slido: These are both excellent for collecting feedback from groups. Slido allows participants to ask questions and then upvote others. There are many similar tools, but Slido is easy and free. Mentimeter allows students and teachers to collect real-time data on questions they have, in the form of word clouds, rankings, and various scales. These are great discussion starters that allow everyone to contribute to the collective wisdom of the group.
1. Learning Management System: A good LMS is key to reducing stress for teachers, students, and parents. A list like this one would be counterproductive if it left your educational delivery fragmented among disparate tools, and a good LMS helps you organize everything into a one-stop shop. Our LMS for Niagara University is Canvas.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/10-teacher-picks-best-tech-tools
Regards,
Kerry@NU
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