What's In The Toolbox?

@LisaBerghoff

*image above was created with Canva's text to image AI tool

I was shopping for school supplies with my kids last week. Maybe it's just me but there is something exciting about bringing home new notebooks, folders, and pens. Yes, they are the same supplies we bought last year, but when they are brand new it's like there are endless possibilities.

I feel the same way about our digital tools. Many are the same we had last year, many also have added new features, but it's the idea of the endless possibilities of how we will use them with our students this year that gets me excited. 

Here is a list of some of the items available to you in your digital toolbox. Many of these can be utilized in lots of different ways. I would love to explore these with you so if you want to work together please reach out.

Here are the top 5 (in no particular order) that we pay for click here to see the whole list:

Pear Deck gives you the ability to create interactive slides. You can create a prompt on the fly or in advance and your students can work along with you as you lead them or you can set the activity to student-paced. Within the Pear Deck suite lives Flashcard Factory, which is a partner activity that can be tailored to any lesson, and Giant Steps, which is a game-like activity where you can create questions and your students can play with you in person or on their own. There are lots of Pear Deck posts in this blog, feel free to search the archives or reach out to me for help. I am a proud certified Pear Deck coach.

Read&Write for Google Chrome is a chrome extension and the premium version is available to ALL students and staff. This is your one stop shop for everything reading and writing online. It has text to speech, a highlighting tool, a screen mask, a vocabulary builder, voice notes, and so much more. This is an extension that many adults in the business world are using and it would only make sense for us to teach our students about this tool now. There are also many blog posts about Read&Write in the archives so feel free to check them out. I'm happy to work with you and your students to get you up and running.

Screencastify is your go-to tool for screen recording and basic video editing. Yes, the students have access to it too! This is a fantastic tool for students to give presentations and voice over their slides. You can also now give assignments right on the Screencastify dashboard. Just look for the orange arrow in your chrome extension bar and try out the various tools you and your students can use to create videos. 

Want to assign videos for your students to watch? EdPuzzle is a great way to make those videos interactive. You can add questions and notes and it integrates with Schoology. EdPuzzle now also has a great content library with their own videos in addition to all of those found on YouTube and elsewhere. If you set it up with multiple choice questions it will also auto-grade!

Did you know that we have a building license for Padlet? That means that you and your students can make unlimited padlets and you can set them to only be visible within our dist113 environment. Padlet is a digital bulletin board. But really it's so much more than that. You can create timelines, maps, use it as a backchannel, a review guide, a hub for resources, a way for students to display work and give and get feedback and more. 

Want to know what else we have? Check it out here.

These are free and amazing:

Canva- Do I need to tell you what Canva is?  Probably not. 

Flip- Students can interact with you and each other via short videos. Great mobile app! Easy to use. So easy my niece's 2nd grade class used it. Try it. You won't be disappointed. 

I am so excited to see what you and your students create with these tools! Don't forget to reach out for help or just to bounce ideas.