Forward Edge’s Top Digital Tools to Learn for Digital Learning Day!
Created by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), Digital Learning Day allows us to reflect on our usage of digital learning tools in the curriculum and gives us the chance to learn from other educators and industry leaders on the best digital learning tools. According to the and the Digital Learning Day website, the event began in 2012 and has provided a powerful venue for education leaders to highlight great teaching practice and showcase innovative teachers, leaders, and instructional technology programs that are improving classrooms across the nation.
In celebration of #DLDay 2018, the Curriculum and Technology Integration team at Forward Edge has shared their favorite digital tools to help inspire others to use tools like the ones listed below in their classroom and career!
Playposit or Edpuzzle
People are engaging with videos like never before. Today’s children become experts at navigating YouTube before they even reach Kindergarten. Educators would miss out on a great opportunity to engage their students with content if they ignored the power of videos. Playposit and Edpuzzle are two very similar sites that allow the teacher to use videos (or upload their own) and embed questions throughout the video to engage students with the material. Both sites allow you to see students responses in a teacher dashboard. Edpuzzle is completely free, and Playposit is a freemium service where users can pay for more features. For the Schoology users out there, there is an app for Playposit that allows students to access their assigned videos right from your Schoology course. Both sites also have a bank of videos and questions available to help you get started.
PearDeck
PearDeck takes traditional lectures and slides and turns them into interactive discussions in the classroom. You can take your existing PowerPoints or Google Slides presentations and embed multiple types of formative assessment throughout the presentation. There is actually an Add-on for Pear Deck available in Google Slides now, so you don’t even have to go to another website to add your content. A lite version of PearDeck is available for free, or you can pay for the full version (this is one of those tools we recommend the full version!). With the premium version, PearDeck will create a copy of your presentation for each student and put it in a Google Doc, along with all their answers to any questions you’ve embedded. They also recently added a new game (part of the free version!) called PearDeck Vocabulary, which takes our typical passive vocabulary lessons and turns them into a hands-on, engaging experience for students. PearDeck is one of our all-time favorites!
Book Creator
Book Creator can help you turn your classroom into a fully functioning publishing house. In the mid-2nd Century, the development of the printing press is credited with sparking countless changes to society, economics, religion, education. Today’s technology brings to the classroom the ability to write, edit, publish, and distribute our own original works as electronic books. Best of all, Book Creator makes it possible to do this with such a wide variety of devices, you probably have everything you need in your classroom already. Electronic books can include text, graphics, video, and audio, in a rich multimedia experience for your audience. Book Creator makes it a snap to construct all the pages of your eBook, and then download or publish it online for the world to read! The website bookcreator.com allows teachers to set up one collection of up to 40 books (a “library”) for free, with unlimited students contributing their own self-created books to your library! The free iOS app lets you create and edit one eBook, while the full version ($4.99 as of this writing) lets you create and maintain unlimited eBooks on your device. Create your own class textbook. Publish a collection of original poetry and short stories. Make your own photo memory book of a class project, school trip, or even an entire school year! Teachers of any subject, any grade level, and any level of experience can share the amazing work students do with a global audience. Book Creator shatters the barrier of the classroom wall and helps our students make the critical shift from being passive content consumers to active content creators!
Google Forms
Google Forms are the swiss army knife of the instructional technology world. Instant data…check. Simple and intuitive…check. Endless possibilities…check. If you’re not familiar with the Google Forms application, it’s a basic form-creation tool that collects information. Although Google Forms are renowned for their ability to quickly survey a group of people and gather data, that’s not all they can accomplish. With a Google Form, teachers can create a self-grading quiz that instantly gives students feedback for both correct and incorrect answers. And what about all the data generated from students’ quiz responses? It’s automatically analyzed and organized into easy-to-read charts and graphs. Teachers can log student behavior, collect contact information, archive lesson plans, and record professional development hours in a snap. Educators can also use Google Forms to create rubrics that help them assess student growth with ease! No matter the subject area or grade level, Google Forms have applications for everyone. So, if you haven’t tried using Google Forms in your classroom yet, what are you waiting for? They’ll allow you to easily assess student learning, streamline administrative tasks, and open up new ways to connect with students and parents today!
Forward Edge’s Photo/Video Contest
Forward Edge is hosting a contest for #DLDay 2018! Click Here and look for the Other (pencil) graphic on the map in Ohio for more information on how you can enter to win an Amazon gift card!
