Tech Tuesday
Teaching with Technology
There are a lot of tech tools out there, and I mean A LOT! I am highlighting a few of my tried and true favorites. I encourage you to give one of these a try!
Pear Deck
Imagine if you could engage every student in your class, every day. What if you could instantly see who’s confused and who’s ready for more? That’s the power of Pear Deck! Pear Deck is an add-on for Google Slides and makes any slide show interactive. Use Pear Deck to ask both preplanned questions and spot check on the fly. You can ask students to explain thinking, summarize learning, put items in order, label a diagram, etc.
Flashcard Factory is a new Pear Deck feature that allows students and teachers to work together to create flashcards!
Pear Deck for Google Slides
Symbaloo
Symbaloo is great for organizing websites in one place. Want to narrow down the sites students use for research? How about take a virtual field trip? Need to organize sites for professional learning or for a class website? Do students need to create an electronic portfolio? Symbaloo is the answer!
Sample Symbaloo
This is a Symbaloo I created for important FHS links.
Padlet
Padlet is still serving as my favorite digital bulletin board, but they have added lots of features! What can you include in a padlet? Links, files, search for pictures and videos or create your own, voice recordings, screen recordings, drawings, maps, and even link to other padlets. The possibilities are endless!
Ideas for the Classroom:
- EL students and their teachers can use the audio feature to describe an assignment, photo, etc.
- Picture data sets
- Brainstorming
- Live question bank - let students post questions during a lesson
- Online student portfolios
- Exit tickets
- Icebreakers
- Classbuilding - let students give each other compliments
10 Classroom Uses for Padlet
Skitch
Take snapshots of your screen and annotate, highlight, draw arrows, or even pixelate sensitive information to share. I use Skitch a lot to create how-to sheets. Skitch can be downloaded to your computer or iPad. Check out the sample Skitch below. Skitch can add text, arrows, shapes, and block out sensitive information.
Newsela
Newsela is one of my favorite tools for incorporating literacy in any content area. Newsela is a website and app that publishes high-interest current events in areas such as health, the arts, sports, science, etc. Teachers can adjust the Lexile level of texts to differentiate based on student needs. The articles usually have an accompanying quiz!
Newsela offer a paid subscription that includes subject-specific text sets - Spanish, Science, Social Studies, and Literature. From there, teachers can select the grade level, reading standard, and the language (English or Spanish).
Jennifer Butler
Instructional Partner
Florence High School
Email: jcbutler@florencek12.org
Twitter: @jcbutler22