Technology Tools That Enhance Student Learning

Integrating education technology into your classroom is an easy and productive way to differentiate instruction, increase student engagement and motivation, improve outcomes, and add some variety and interactivity to your lessons.

 Flipgrid

Flipgrid has recently taken the EdTech world by storm, and for good reason! Flipgrid’s platform allows teachers to encourage student reflection, collaboration, communication, creation, and critical thinking through their easily accessible platform - which is now FREE for EVERYONE! Teachers can use Flipgrid in a seemingly endless number of ways in their classroom to get a clearer picture of what students know and where they need help. Teachers create a grid in Flipgrid and then post topics for their students to respond to using video. Teachers can determine the length of the student submitted videos and can allow students to comment and react to their classmates’ videos, and can even share grids/topics/student videos through email, link, and QR Code!

 

Padlet

It enables to create a blended learning environment which, through the intentional use of technology, would be a place where all student voices would be heard. Padlet is a great tool to encourage student communication and collaboration, and is used in my classroom at least on a weekly basis. Teachers can use a collaborative tool like Padlet as a bellringer activity, a backchannel for class discussions, a review or research activity, or to introduce themselves to students from around the world!

 

Edpuzzle

I am a huge fan of the flipped classroom model and the use of instructional videos to enhance student learning. As a flipped classroom teacher, Edpuzzle is one of the “must-have” tools. This great FREE tool allows teachers to create interactive video lessons using a variety of existing videos (from YouTube, Khan Academy, etc.) or by uploading a video they create. Teachers can then embed formative assessment questions throughout their videos and provide timely and effective feedback for their students on video content. Teachers can also monitor individual student progress as well as whole-class progress and receive excellent feedback to drive instruction!

 

Quizlet

Many students and teachers may see Quizlet only as a place to access vocabulary information and create flashcards for studying purposes. While Quizlet is a great tool for this activity, it offers a fantastic resource that teachers can use to encourage their students to collaborate with their peers while reviewing/pre-viewing/learning course concepts. What is this, you ask? Quizlet Live, of course!  

Quizlet Live is a great collaborative formative assessment tool that not only requires students to work together to achieve success, but also promotes mastery learning. While participating in a Quizlet Live game, students are randomly placed into teams and are given an animal mascot, sometimes a real animal, and other times a mythical creature. Students on each team see the same question on their device, but each student has a different set of answers. Students have to work together to answer questions in a row - if a group misses a question, they start the game over!