21st Century Tools for the Classroom
Creating
Prezi (which I am using for this blog):
This program on the web is basically an upgrade version of PowerPoint with better interactions. Just from playing around with it, there is a lot of creative outlets as far as themes go for when students want to make a statement with their presentations. The students can tailor the Prezi to their topic of choice and even add videos and images more easily than PowerPoint; where with PowerPoint you must go into the technicalities of formulas. Not only that but this program is very easy to sign up for when the students have a Facebook or LinkedIn account.
The next online program Edmodo is a great resource both for the teacher and the students. I joined one with my fellow CT and her students during their recent reading of To Kill a Mockingbird. Granted I didn't interact with it as much as I should have, but I love the concept of being able to monitor student's responses to what the teacher asks about the reading. It's not only great for reading questions, but also helpful for doing online quizzes, homework assignments, and keeping parents up-to-date about what their child has been keeping up with in the classroom. Glancing over the site, I noticed that the company is trying to make teacher's lives easier with basically doing everything electronically so that paper doesn't need to be wasted. Not only that but there is more accountability on the student’s part to remember when assignments are due, and their parents know when assignments are due. It’s a great way to have parents, teachers, and students involved so that everyone is held accountable for their work.
SlideShare
This is another great program that enables student interactions with other classmate’s work. It's very accessible for those that have, again, a Facebook or LinkedIn account, but you can also easily create your own account specifically for the classroom. In this program, that is compatible with PowerPoint, students can upload and share projects or assignments with each other. This puts on the responsibility of other students to put in the work that they need to succeed in the project or assignment that is given to them.
Organization
Google Docs is a great way to share and edit documents in real time. The students would be able to set up a separate Gmail account for their school, or have an email already set up for school. With this program already enabled in google+, the students will be able to create live comments in each other’s research papers, or have the teacher create the live comments. It's a great way to get immediate, constructive feedback on projects and papers that the teacher has a preview of since part of an ongoing assessment (both summative and formative). Not only that but the documents save automatically which is a live saver for those who may forget to save their final product.
Sharing and Collaborating
Powtoon is a great tool for students who want to bring life to their PowerPoints with some animations. From the general aspect, it's free to sign up and create an account, thought I think it's safer to sign up with your school account and not a public email. There is also an option to pay for more premium content for your slides, but students can use it for free. From playing around with it a little, it's fun and easy to create a new kind of presentation that will keep your students engaged and have fun presenting new information. "Props" can be added from the iCloud and there are various animations, colors, and themes that can enhance the presentation. I might even consider using it for my Unit lesson plans!
Free Content
Probably one of my favorites that I have used so far, that would be excellent for beginning teachers, is Newsela. This is a free to use website, that is very easy to sign up for using either a public or school email, catering to every grade level reading. From customizable reading levels for articles, to finding modern and historical articles written in the 21st century, Newsela makes it easy to find paired texts for lesson plans and Units that are easily accessible for advanced and struggling readers as well as ESL or ELL students. It's also a great tool for students to use as well for research papers, short essays, or group projects.
ReadWriteThinkcomes in as a close second because it's an extremely useful tool for teachers who want to come up with good lesson plans, but also may not have the correct materials to start one. This website also allows you to find lesson, and Unit plan resources catering to specific grade levels depending on the topic. I found that you can adapt these lesson plan templates for ESL, ELL, and other types of students in your classroom. It's a great resource as a reference for teachers who need a little guidance, if they are not too confident in their lesson plan design, to generate one based on ideas from others.
A few other online resources that are useful are TeacherTube, which is the education version of YouTube for teachers to use in the classroom, and Flocabulary that essentially helps students learn and understand vocabulary words better.
With TeacherTube, you can search a topic and have results from other teachers that may have uploaded sketches, PowerPoints, or how-to's for classroom ideas. Trying out the search portion, I typed in "Beowulf" and a few results came up: the first one I clicked on was a reenactment of a scene from Beowulf from a group of students. Granted the video quality was poor, but the effort made is there. However, this is a good resource to find videos made by other teachers and educators to merge in with your lesson plan or unit.
With Flocabulary, I noticed that I could not sign up for free without doing a 14-day free trial of the program. Just from the look of the site, and the description of the plans, it looks like a very valuable resource for those that want to have engaging vocabulary and grammar lessons. I watched a quick video, that only let me see 20-30 seconds of it before it asked me if I liked what I saw, then preceding to ask if I would like to sign up, and it was entertaining and educational. It had animations, great audio and captains. Again, it's a resource you would have to pay for eventually, but it genuinely looks like a valuable resource for grammar lessons in the classroom.
Sources:
(n.d.). (LinkedIn) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from Slide Share:
(n.d.). (Flocabulary) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from Flocabulary:
(n.d.). (Newsela) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from Newsela:
(n.d.). (TEACHER TUBE) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from TeacherTube:
(n.d.). (Google) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from Google Docs:
(2016). (ILA/NCTE) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from ReadWriteThink:
(2016). (Powtoon) Retrieved October 28, 2016, from Powtoon So everyone can animate: