The computer will monitor the students’ progress and give the teacher a report. This would be a great tool to use during center time, so students can work at their own pace. If students need assistance the app will read the questions and answer choices for them. It also provides them with an area that students can use for scratch work. Teachers can also assign these standards for homework and it can help with remediation.
Padlet is an easy way for our students to express their thoughts. In my opinion, Padlet reminds me if a large brick wall where our students can come and write all over it. Students can add text, pictures, documents, or videos. This is a great tool to assess student’s prior knowledge, wonderings, predictions, reflections, or even shared projects. Padlet is such an easy tool that it can be accessible from any device, which makes it easy to incorporate into our classrooms. One challenge that I noticed with Padlet is concerning the ability to be able to edit. You can only edit and delete notes that you create, but not those create by others. You can solve this problem by going into the privacy settings and you can moderate the posts. This will require approval before students comments will show up on the Padlet wall. In my opinion, this does take away from the immediate feedback that this resource offers. This tool does encourage collaboration and communication, which are essential for all of our students to learn from one another.
Wordle is a tool that generates word clouds from the text that you provide. It is a really cool tool to share with your students. This is another tool that can be used independently or an enrichment activity. Not only are the designs really eye-catching, but students can take these pictures and analyze the word choices. Wordle can be used for comparing/contrasting, current affairs analysis, Wordle word walls, or even as personal narratives. For my artifact this week I created a Wordle from a current news article. Students can be asked to discuss what the story could have been about, what the headline should be, and where did the story take place. The only challenge that you might encounter is making sure that your Java is installed. Wordle provides our students with an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas in a very creative way.
My favorite part of this assignment was working with screencasting. Jing is such a simple, easy, and free tool to use. With Jing you can easily capture what you see on your screen, either with a screenshot or a video and then you can share these with anyone. I recently decided to use Jing in my Capstone Project. For my project, I am integrating technology into our IB PYP planners in grades K-2. As I’m working with these grade levels, I have been introducing them to new apps and resources to integrate into their planners. The teachers have enjoyed having an extra hand and the opportunity to explore these resources. For me it has been tedious to try and type up all of these directions and have them available for my grade levels. Using Jing will give me a chance to share these resources with some simple clicks and a microphone. It will be so much easier to share these resources because my teachers will have an actual video to look at to help guide them.
I did notice that with Jing that your videos cannot be more than five minutes long. If your videos are going to be longer than five minutes then you may want to try Screencast- O-Matic or Snagit. Another way that I hope to use Jing in my classroom is by providing our parents with videos to help support math instruction. I’m hoping to use either Jing or SnagIt to video from my Smartboard. As I’m teaching the new math concepts I can video my lesson and then share these videos with my parents. I always hear parents and guardians needing math support so they can help their children with the new math standards. This will be the perfect way to include parents in their student’s education. Jing can also be used to record a demonstration that students can watch over and over as needed. For my screencast video I created a video showing how to use the Zeal Tutoring site.