18 Digital Tool Musts in the Classroom

This video is from a series I taught for school districts. It is now available for free, here on Ask a Tech Teacher:

Summary

18 essential digital tools for classrooms, emphasizing their impact on modern education.

Highlights

• ✏️ Annotation Tools: Essential for digital note-taking.
• 👤 Avatars: Promote digital citizenship and privacy.
• 💬 Backchannel Devices: Enhance classroom communication.
• 🗓️ Class Calendars: Keep students organized and informed.
• 🌐 Class Websites: Centralize classroom resources and communication.
• 📚 Digital Portfolios: Collect and showcase student work.
• 📊 Online Quizzes: Provide fun and quick assessments.

Key Insights

• 📝 Annotation tools like Notability and Adobe Acrobat empower students to engage with digital texts actively, fostering comprehension and retention.
• 🎨 Using avatars instead of personal images encourages student privacy and encourages creativity in digital representation, reinforcing digital citizenship principles.
• 🌍 Backchannel communication tools like Padlet and Twitter create a collaborative classroom environment where students can ask questions and share ideas in real time.
• 📅 Integrating class calendars keeps students accountable and involved in managing their schedules, enhancing organizational skills from an early age.
• 🖥️ Class websites serve as a hub for resources, helping parents and students stay connected and informed about class activities and expectations.
• 📂 Digital portfolios allow students to curate their work, promoting self-reflection and ownership of their learning journey while simplifying the grading process for teachers.
• 🎉 Online quizzes not only engage students but also provide instant feedback, enabling educators to identify learning gaps and adjust instruction accordingly.

–summarized by NoteGPT

This video is from a series I taught for school districts. It is now available for free to Ask a Tech Teacher subscribers. Videos include (in alphabetic order):

• 15 Webtools in 15 Weeks
• 18 Digital Tools in the Classroom
• A focus on strategies
• Alternative tools
• Assessment isn’t static
• Author doers
• BYOD
• Class warm-ups
• Collaboration
• Curriuculum Maps
• Differentiation–How to teach the hard-to-teach class
• Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When
• Flipping the classroom
• Gamification of education
• How to Teach a Tech Lesson
• Presentation Boards
• Tech-infused classroom
• Tech tools
• The 20% rule
• Using backchannel devices
• Warm-ups

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“The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Here are popular online resources to teach about digital storytelling (click here for updates to list):

1. Adobe Creative Cloud Express–digital stories that blend images and audio into a video
2. Adobe Voice–Show your story; free
3. Bluster–word matching game develops vocabulary and word understanding for school-aged children (app)
4. Book Creator
5. Book Writer--write books on an iPad; view in iBooks (fee) (app)
6. Comic Book!(app)
7. Create a story
8. Draw a Stickman–draw the main character of your story; the site turns it into a choose-your-own-adventure story, asking you to add detail. (app)
9. Newspapers, posters, comics—learn to create
10. Pixton–use their storytelling layout (picture at top, text at bottom)
11. Puppet Pals – Create simple animated stories with puppets and even yourself!
12. Shutterfly Photostory–self-published student books (app)
13. StoryBird—-storytelling with art–beautiful
14. Storyboard That–use their storytelling layout (picture at top, text at bottom)
15. StoryJumper–build a book
16. Sutori–use a variety of multimedia; fee/free accounts
17. VoiceThread (app)
18. Write About This–writing prompts for students (app)

Lesson Plans

1. Digital Quick Writes
2. Digital Quick Stories

Copyright ©2024 askatechteacher.com – All rights reserved.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

“The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

---

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Every year, January 1st is Public Domain Day. This is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain–free for all to use. According to Public Domain Review, here are some of the newly-available artistic works you might like a/o January 1, 2023:

The picture above is interactive. If you click it, you enter Public Domain Review’s website and can then explore each of these new sources of inspiration, free to use.

One that caught my attention is Winnie the Pooh, now in the public domain. Knowing that, I should feel comfortable posting his picture: (more…)

If you’re a history teacher, here’s a reprint of an article I wrote a few years ago. It’s a great tie-in to Hour of Code:

During WWI, the Choctaw language had been used to transmit U.S. military messages. With this thought in mind, Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary grew up on a Navajo reservation and spoke the Diné tongue fluently, brought the suggestion of a similar code to General Clayton Vogel early in 1942. The Diné language has no alphabet, uses no symbols and one sound may hold an entire concept. The idea was tested and proved to be faster and more reliable than the mechanized methods. The language has more verbs than nouns, that helps to move the sentences along and makes it far more difficult for outsiders to learn – making it the most ingenious and successful code in military history.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: What is Digital Literacy?

Category: Pedagogy

‘Digital literacy’ is one of those buzz words floated by experts as being granular to 21^st-century students. It’s everywhere, on everyone’s tongue, but figuring out what it means can be daunting. ‘Literacy’ is simple: the ability to read and write–so ‘digital literacy’ should be achieving those goals digitally.

Sounds simple. The difficult is in the implementation. Here are the sixteen transformative tools, activities, and/or knowledge bases digitally-literate students should be comfortable using:

1. annotation tool
2. backchannel device
3. class internet start page
4. class website or blog
5. cloud computing
6. digital citizenship
7. digital class calendar
8. digital databases
9. digital devices–such as laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, or desktops, for daily use
10. online information
11. sharing digitally to build knowledge
12. social media
13. student digital portfolios–to curate and collect work
14. email–or another method of communicating quickly outside classtime (such as messaging or Twitter)
15. virtual collaboration
16. vocabulary tool–to quickly decode words students don’t understand

For more detail on the tools, activities, and knowledge bases above—as well as the general topic of digital literacy—visit “Digital Literacy—What is it?” on Ask a Tech Teacher.

More on Digital Literacy:

• How to Assess Digital Literacy
• Digital Literacy in Busy Classrooms
• Digital Literacy–Too Important to Skip

Sign up for a new tip each week or buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.

What’s your favorite tech tip in your classroom? Share it in the comments below.

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

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This is a common complaint in my grad school classes. Yes, teachers know students don’t have all of the skills they need for the technology required in education, but who has time to teach it? Newsweek has an interesting article addressing exactly that:

How Schools Can Find the Time To Teach Digital Literacy Skills

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer science jobs are projected to grow 13% between 2020 and 2030. Still, less than half of all K-12 schools in the U.S. teach computer science as part of the curriculum.

Read on

More about tech skills in the classroom

• Digital Literacy–Too Important to Skip
• How to Assess Digital Literacy
• Digital Literacy–What is it?
• Beyond Digital Literacy: How EdTech Fosters Children’s Social-Emotional Development
• 5 Strategies to Assess Student Knowledge

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When testing moved online, it became painfully apparent to teachers how little students knew about using digital devices other than the internet, some apps, and iPads. The focus on online learning, thanks to COVID, has made that even more critical. IT Pro has an interesting article discussing the importance of digital literacy:

Digital literacy is as important as reading and writing, Vodafone claims

A study from the company found that half of 18-24-year olds have limited access to a laptop, tablet or PC

Digital literacy is becoming as important as reading and writing for young people’s future life prospects, a new report from Vodafone has found.

Limited access to an internet-connected device, or a lack of skills to use one, is preventing those entering the job market from attending online lessons or exams, applying for jobs, and gaining the necessary digital skills for many of today’s roles.

Read on…

Ask a Tech Teacher has several articles on this topic that you’ll find interesting:

• How to Assess Digital Literacy
• Digital Literacy–What is it?
• Beyond Digital Literacy: How EdTech Fosters Children’s Social-Emotional Development
• 5 Strategies to Assess Student Knowledge

If you need guidance understanding how to make your students good digital citizens, check out my upcoming online class, Building Digital Citizens. It’s for college credit and starts next Monday!

@ITPro #digcit

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Every year, January 1st, is Public Domain Day. This is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain–free for all to use. According to Public Domain Review, here are some of the newly-available artistic works you might like a/o January 1, 2022:

Click image for interactive content on PublicDomanReview.org

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

http://eepurl.com/chNlYb (more…)

On my blog, Ask a Tech Teacher, I run a column called Dear Otto where I answer teacher questions about how to integrate technology into their classes. Of late, the most common question is, “How to I assess student digital literacy?” with a close cousin, “I am the tech integration specialist. How do I assess faculty digital literacy so I can teach them what they don’t know?”

Happily, both can be accomplished the same way. But before I tell you how, let’s step back and talk about the meaning of “digital literacy”.

What is digital literacy?

The definition of digital literacy is pretty much what you’d expect:

“the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.” –from the American Library Association

In the past, I discussed the eight skills required for students to be considered digitally literate. Today, I want to focus on the need to assess digital literacy and what tools are available to do this.

Why assess it?

Especially today–in a COVID-19 world–this is a good question. Here are the five most common reasons schools feel the need to assess student and faculty digital literacy:

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