Tech Talk

Tech Talk

Shelley Martin-Young

Teaching Digitally (or anywhere): Part 2

As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise and as the push for getting our students back in school happens, many teachers continue to teach remotely. As you struggle through another year of uncertainty, I am sharing ways for you to easily integrate technology into your classroom whether you are teaching remote, in-person, or hybrid. In part two of Teaching Digitally, I share tools that include ways to effortlessly collaborate with students or other teachers, ways that you can share lessons digitally with your students, and a few assessment tools. Most of these tools can be integrated with your Google Classroom.

Interactive Whiteboard Tools

Whether you are teaching face-to-face or online this year, you probably have access to a board of some kind – white board, chalk board, Smart board. Whiteboards are a great way for students to share and collaborate in a face-to-face situation. However, you can also simulate this online. There are several tools to use on whiteboards in the digital realm that will enhance your students’ learning. These tools can be used when you are face-to-face or virtual.

Google Jamboard is a free collaborative whiteboard that is part of the Google platform. It is cloud based and allows visual collaboration between users in real-time. It functions as a whiteboard on each student’s screen. Students can collaborate on projects. Teachers or students can model skills in math, art, or other content areas. Concept maps work great on a Jamboard. It is excellent for brainstorming or notetaking or anything that you typically use a board for in a face-to-face classroom. Jamboard allows users to add images from Google, save work in the cloud, draw with a stylus or erase with your finger. There is also a handwriting and shape recognition tool. This tool makes learning visible and accessible to all collaborators in what Google calls a “jam session.” Jamboard integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom. Check out the following Jamboard resources: Jamboard for beginners tutorial, Using Jamboard in Google Classroom, Using Jamboard in Google Meet, and Annotating Google Slides with Jamboard. Here you will find many ways to use Jamboard in the classroom, and here are 20 free interactive Jamboard activities.

Figure 1: Example of Google Jamboard

SeeSaw is a classroom platform used for meaningful student engagement. SeeSaw is geared more toward elementary-aged students. It allows students to show their work, teachers to gain insights about their students, and parents to be able to easily connect with their students and

the teacher. Students use the digital tools that are built into SeeSaw to create a digital portfolio. Teachers and parents can see all of the steps in the students’ thinking and working processes, and there is a fabulous home-to-school connection. Some of the digital tools available in this platform include draw, record, collage, video, pens, labels, shapes, and more. Watch this video to see how students engage with Seesaw. Seesaw is built for all devices including Chromebooks. Resources include: Getting Started with Seesaw for Prek-2, Using the Whiteboard Feature, and Seesaw Drawing Tool Tutorial. My favorite thing is the Seesaws that are already available. Check out these Earth Day Seesaws, Seesaws that celebrate diversity, Women’s History Month Seesaws, and Seesaws for Spring and the outdoors.

Figure 2: Students choose how they display their work (Screenshot from SeeSaw website)

Explain Everything is an online whiteboard. Students can collaborate in real time from their homes, their classrooms, and all around the world. Students can collaborate with students from your class or classes all over. You can add drawings, images, videos, and documents. Annotation and making presentations are easy with Explain Everything. Students can create and share their own tutorials and animated stories as they become the teacher. Explain Everything is good for notetaking or brainstorming sessions in the digital classroom, but it is a great app to use on technology that you have available in a brick-and-mortar setting. Take a tour of Explain Everything in this video. Learn how to take visual notes here. Explain Everything even has webinars you can attend to learn more.

Drawp is another platform for creation, collaboration, content, and workflow management. It includes design tools, easy sharing, and cloud storage. It is partially funded by the National Science Foundation. You can choose tools such as a language scaffolding tool or text-to-speech to add on to this app which are found in the Chrome Web Store. There is also a repository of educational resources available to teachers. Students can create portfolios with Drawp, and there is Common-Core Aligned content along with easy ways to communicate with parents and students. This app is great for use with kindergarteners all the way through college. Click here for the Drawp for school blog. Here is a demo of this app. Watch this video of getting started with Drawp.

Miro is an online whiteboard available for remote collaboration. It is very easy to use and free forever. Netflix, Spotify, and Twitter all use Miro to collaborate with each other. Miro has a template library that can help teachers and students collaborate more quickly. They have such templates as story maps, prioritization matrix, blueprints, workflow, concept maps, Venn

diagrams, monthly planners and more. Get started with Miro here. Here are some videos to help you get started: Board Basics, 10 tips for getting started, and Miro 101.

Lesson Recording Tools

Lesson recording isn’t just amazing for virtual teaching; it is also helpful for students who are absent or may need directions given more than once. Sometimes it is very helpful for students to be able to “pause” the teacher and work or go back and listen to something again and again. It is also great for the flipped classroom model. The following tools are my favorites.

Flipgrid is my very favorite lesson recording tool. I discussed Flipgrid at length in the last Tech Talk column. You can read that in this issue of The Oklahoma Reader. There has been an update to Flipgrid since my last article. They have added a screen recording feature. Watch this video to learn more about this feature.

Screencastify is a perfect recording tool for both teachers and students. Screencastify is a free Chrome extension that allows you to record, edit, and share videos. It is great for both blended and remote learning. Teachers can create full sized or mini lessons with this recording tool and can also create assignments and give directions. Thinking is made visible with this tool which also helps to make students’ voices audible. Teachers can give real-time verbal feedback to students with Screencastify. This tool integrates easily with Google Drive or Classroom, is safe and secure, and includes a huge list of resources to help you get started and to master the Screencast. There are webinars, certification courses, and tons of suggestions for using Screencastify in your classroom. Watch this tutorial to get started.

Loom is a video messaging app that is used to record video messages of your screen, your camera, or both. It is faster than sending an email and works great for all of those times that you can’t meet face to face. The videos are ready instantly and are easily shareable on any device. This is a great app to use for those students that have a hard time writing or even typing. They can just video what they want to say. Loom for Educators gives teachers the ability to create unlimited videos. They can be up to 45 minutes in length. There is a personal library, a shared library and a team library. Teachers can create folders and it is easy to search. Along with the custom recording tools there are also emoji reactions and drawing tools. Loom is free for teachers and students. One teacher blogs about Loom here. Watch the Loom tutorial video here.

Assessment Tools

Assessment is one of the key activities a teacher carries out in her classroom. We want to make sure that students are understanding the content we are presenting. The tools discussed below are great for both formative assessments (assessments as the lessons are happening) and summative assessments (which happen at the end of a lesson).

Quizizz is a way to create free quizzes and interactive lessons that will engage all students. Students connect from any device and the teacher gets instant feedback. There is no grading required after the teacher creates the quiz. Quizizz also has many premade quizzes on topics ranging from math and social studies to science, creative arts, and career education. Besides quizzes you can create gamified polls and lessons. You can choose between teacher-led or self-paced quizzing. There are also competitions, replays, power-ups, and sounds to keep the students engaged, and you can create flashcards for independent learning. The quizzes and lessons are easy to share through messenger or email. The reports from the student interactions can be saved or downloaded and shared. Start exploring Quizizz here. Read a blog about Quizizz

from a fellow teacher. By watching this video, you can learn how to integrate Quizizz with Google Classroom.

Using Edpuzzle allows you to monitor a student’s participation in video assignments that you give. With Edpuzzle you can pull in videos from YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, TedEd and more. You can also create videos yourself. With Edpuzzle you simply load a video and build in questions for students to answer at various times while they are watching. Here is an example with a video of Walter the French Bulldog. The video was taken straight from YouTube and the teacher simply added the questions. You can easily track whether students are watching the videos you assign, how many times they watch the video, and any areas of concern. The lessons are self-paced and Edpuzzle is free for teachers and students. I love the curriculum already available for elementary, middle, or high school. They are easy to use and simple to assign. Edpuzzle also includes links to many video services that are easily integrated into their platform. Simply search for your topic and choose a video. Lesson examples include an elementary lesson on narrative writing, a middle school lesson on the states of matter, and a high school lesson on poetry by Langston Hughes.

Bulb is a web based (no app to download) portfolio system perfect for those schools that use standards-based grading or portfolios. With Bulb, students can keep a yearlong portfolio where they can post assignments that demonstrate mastery or growth. The portfolios are easy to share with administration and families alike. You can use portfolios to keep student writing throughout the year. You can keep a record of science experiments or blogs about books the students have read. Here are an elementary, middle school, and high school example of Bulb portfolios. Bulb portfolios work with Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Flipgrid, and Notability.

Formative is a great assessment tool to use in the elementary grades. Teachers can see students’ work in real-time, give feedback, and track student progress. You can upload your own content or easily embed content from other websites. There are several different formats of questions that you can choose from including drawing, essay, sequencing, math typing, drag and drop, graphing, or audio recording. There is also a library with thousands of pre-made formatives. You can even edit the pre-made content to make it work for your students. It only takes one click to assign a formative to your students. With Formative, you can easily keep track of all of your students’ assignments and can even tag your state or school’s standards. This assessment also integrates with Google. Watch the video tutorial here. Another video is available here.

There are many digital tools available for assessments. You can also check out Edulastic, Quizalize, Socrative, and Spiral. In part 2 of Teaching Digitally, I have shared some of my favorite tools for interacting with whiteboards, recording lessons and assessment. These tools are ideal for an online classroom, but they are also useful for classrooms that are meeting face to face. Many of the tools shared are easily synced to your Google Classroom and many contain a component that easily allows communication with parents. In the next Tech Talk column, I will be sharing about interactive notebooks with a focus on reading and writing notebooks, Hyperdocs, and Gamification tools.

Shelley Martin-Young is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant at Oklahoma State University. She can be reached at dawn.martinyoung@okstate.edu.