Tech Tools on the Web
Janet Corder
GoNoodle
GoNoodle is a free website that gives teachers a library of brain break and activity videos to use in their classrooms. The short videos are two to ten minutes in length. They are geared towards students in kindergarten through sixth grade, however, many teachers of older students have found that their students love the dance videos.
Favorite Videos:
· Roller Coaster
· I Like to Move It, Move It
· How to Dab!
· Pop See Ko
· DinoStomp
· AirTime
· Milkshake
Nearpod
Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool that can be used to convert your PowerPoint or Google Slides presentations into engaging lessons for your students.
Open www.nearpod.com.
Click on the Join Session button.
Type in the Pin Number the teacher gives you.
Wait for the teacher to begin.
AutoDraw by Google
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a video response tool that is used to create discussions between all students within your classroom. Teachers post a topic or question via text or video and the students respond to the prompt. Flipgrid also gives students to ability to comment on their classmates' responses.
Key Features:
- All of your videos are located in one location.
- You can Freeze a Topic to continue sharing the videos but prevent new recordings.
- Student comments can be turned on or off.
Flipgrid Tutorials/Blog Posts:
- Tony Vincent's Review of Flipgrid - with helpful tips
- Flipgrid Unplugged #2: AppSmashing with Jornea Erwin
- Using @Flipgrid in Online #APCalculus to Allow Students to Verbalize Their Thinking Process
Pricing options:
- Flipgrid One (Free) - 1 grid, unlimited students, unlimited topics, unlimited responses
- Flipgrid Classroom ($65 per year) - unlimited grids, unlimited students, unlimited topics, unlimited responses
- Classroom 10-pack ($400) - 10 Classroom subscriptions
Symbaloo EDU
- Easy method for curating digital content
- Webmixes (curated sites) are saved in the cloud, so they are accessible anywhere
- Visually engaging for students and educators
Collaborating with Google Slides
Google Slides is an easy way to collect information from your students in a collaborative format. Once you have created the presentation, give the students access to the slides. The scribe for the group will go to the slide that matches their group number. The group discusses the question you have posed and the scribe fills out the slide for their group. This can also be used with individual students.
- Open Google Drive (drive.google.com).
- Click New, select Google Slides and choose Blank presentation.
- Create your title page just like you would create a title page in PowerPoint.
- Click Slide and select New Slide.
- In the Click to Add Title textbox, type in Group 1 (or Table 1 or the group name).
- Click Slide and select Duplicate Slide.
- Change the number 1 to 2.
- Continue duplicating slides and changing the group numbers until you have all that you need.
- Click the blue Share button in the top right corner of the window.
- Give your slideshow a title.
- Click Save.
- Click Get Shareable Link in the top right corner of the popup box.
- Under Link Sharing, make certain that you change the drop-down menu to Anyone with link can edit.
- Click Copy Link.
- Click Done.
Hint: The link to the Google Slides presentation is very long. It is advisable to use a URL shortener or make the link a QR Code so that your students can easily access the presentation.
Kahoot!
Kahoot! is a game-based website that allows teachers to create games with multiple choice questions for the students to answer. The session is played as a quiz with game show music and points awarded to students based on speed and accuracy. After each question is answered, a graph displays how the group did as a whole. The top five places are also shown after each question.
Are you ready to have some fun?
- On your device or laptop, open kahoot.it.
- Enter the Pin number projected on the screen and click Enter.
- Type in your name and click Join Game.
- Wait for the teacher to begin the game.
Good Luck!
Click here to download a Kahoot! tutorial.
Kahoot! recently announced the upcoming release of a new mobile app (IOS and Android) that allows the students to view the questions and answer choices on their device.
The first item to note in the mobile app is that your students will now see the questions and answer choices on the same screen. This provides the ability to give your students a “play at home” option. This new option is called Challenge.
Quizizz
Quizizz is very similar to Kahoot, except the questions appear on the students' devices.
Let's try it out!
- On your device or laptop, open quizizz.com.
- Click Join a Game.
- Enter the Game Code the teacher provides and click Go.
- Type in your name and click Join Game.
- Wait for the teacher to begin the game.
Good Luck!
Take a look at some of my favorite Quizizz features:
- Easily create a quiz by using questions from multiple public quizzes
- Math symbols
- Highlight key words with red, green or blue text
- Make your own Memes
Vocaroo
Vocaroo allows you to create voice recordings and send them through email. No need to install any software!!
- Click to record.
- Click to stop recording.
- Record again or listen to the recording.
- Students can email their recording to parents or the teacher. Click QR Code to create a code that links to your recording!
Great Idea
Record the class singing Jingle Bells or other Christmas carol. Students color a Christmas ornament (click here for some templates). Create a QR code from Vocaroo and glue on each ornament. Send the ornament home to the parents along with directions on how to download a QR code reader. The students can show their parents how to scan QR codes!
Other Ideas:
- Students record their original story or poetry and email to the parents.
- ELL/ESL students enhance reading/listening skills by listening or emailing their video to the teacher or their parents.
- Students in foreign language classes record themselves and listen or email to the teacher.
- Speech students record their speeches and email to the teacher instead of having every student give their speech in class.
Flipquiz
Let's test our knowledge on the 1950's!
Trading Cards by Read Write Think
Trading Cards by Read Write Think allows students to share their understanding of various topics. Available on the Web and as an app for IOS and Android.
Create trading cards for any number of categories, including:
- Fictional person
- Real person
- Fictional place
- Real place
- Object
- Event
- Vocabulary word
The Read Write Think website includes over 50 student interactives to be used on computers. Here are a few favorites:
Cube Creator - helps students to learn the skill of summarizing
Timeline - create a graphical representation of an event or process by displaying items sequentially along a lineLetter Generator - use the template to write a friendly or business letter
Newsela
Newsela is an online news-as-literacy platform that includes current articles in seven categories: War & Peace, Science, Health, Kids, Money, Law, and Arts. The articles are Common Core-aligned and available in five Lexile levels. Each leveled text includes a quiz and a writing prompt about the article.
Quick Start Guide for Teachers
Newsela Worksheet
Quizlet
You can create your own Quizlet flashcard sets or search Quizlet's database of over 15 million flashcard sets to find content already created.
Features:
- Use Flashcards, Speller, Learn, Test to study the set.
- Play study games with Scatter and Space Race.
- Print out a copy to take home
Quizlet Live
Let's give it try!
- Open quizlet.live.
- Type in the code the teacher gives you.
- Type in your name.
- Quizlet Live will assign you a team. Find your teammates and get together.
- Wait for the teacher to begin the game.
Bingo Baker
ABCya
ABCya includes some of the best educational learning games available today, and they are free!
These two activities allow students to be creative!
· Talkify - make an image come to life by adding a moving mouth and your recorded voice
· Animate - create a multi-slide animation
Kiddle
Visuwords
Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus lets users look up words to find their relationships to other words. The website creates diagrams in a mind-map design so that students can see the relationships.
Great Tools to Simplify Your Life!
Photos for Class
Safe Share TV
YouTube videos without ads and clutter
- Copy the URL (web address) of the YouTube video.
- Open Safeshare.tv and paste the URL into blank and click Generate Safe Link.
- The new link contains the YouTube video without ads.
*Viewpure.com is another site that allows you to remove the ads from YouTube videos. You can also search for videos from the home page.
Creating a Shortened URL
- Copy the URL (address) of the website you want to direct the students to.
- Open tinyurl.com.
- Paste the URL into the Enter a long URL to make tiny: field.
- You can click Make TinyURL field and the site will create a shortened URL for you or you can make a custom URL by adding your own title in the Custom Alias field.
- Click Make TinyURL. If you are making a custom alias and the alias you chose has already been taken, the site will inform you that your alias is not available.