Teachers have it drilled into their heads how important it is keep students engaged and moving throughout the day. We’re told that the practice of lecture, notes, and worksheet is outdated and that students need to have more hands-on experience with material instead in order to keep their attention and help them retain information. With the Coronavirus at play now, everything we’ve been told and taught about how to teach our students can’t be done. Group work, using shared manipulative objects, gallery walks, and class games can’t be done as some students are learning from home and the students who are at school have been told to stay seated and face forward.
If you’re anything like me, this ruins three fourths of your lessons and go to teaching tactics. Part of my teaching philosophy is to keep students engaged by using new techniques and making every day different than the last in my classroom. The stipulations that the Coronavirus has put on teachers and their classrooms makes this an even bigger challenge than it already was before. After a few days of panicking, I thought about how blessed I am to be a business teacher that is used to using technology and finding ways to incorporate it in my lessons. I compiled a list of resources that I use in my classroom which can be helpful in making your lessons engaging and fun for students while still complying with the distance learning regulations you have to follow.
These items are in no particular order and can be used across multiple subject areas. They are all free, but some may require students to create a login. These are not just random websites that I found, these are things that I use in my classroom on a regular basis and love!
(Click on the name of each item to go to its website.)
1. Canva
Canva is getting more well known (and for good reason). There are tons of free images, fonts, and features to use. Best of all, you can download your creation when you’re done in multiple formats. With thousands of templates provided for different areas, there’s something for everyone. Resumes, infographic, social media posts, posters, etc. It’s great to use for choice boards as well. Let your students have the option to make something on paper or create it on Canva. Using this site will get you the professional look that you always hope your students will come up with.
2. Nearpod
Nearpod is something I found my first year of teaching. My students loved it and were so much more involved in the lessons. Since then, they have taken away some of the features that used to be free. You can pay for a premium account to get access to the rest of the features, though. Essentially, you take your PowerPoint that you would regularly present to your class and upload it to Nearpod. From there, you can add in questions and activities for your students to in the middle of the PowerPoint. When you’re ready to present to the class, they’ll go to the website and enter in a code you give them. From there, you can be in control of the pacing and make them stay with you, or let them go at their own pace. They’ll have to complete the activities as you go through the presentation. You can even see their responses in real time! If your school is NOT a Google school, this is for you! If you are a Google school, stay tuned, another option is coming up for you!
3. Kahoot
Kahoot is well known by almost every teacher. It went through a phase where it was a little overdone, but that has ended and my students are back to loving it. We all know that if it’s a competition, students will be into it. Kahoot makes a simple review a competition. You can enter in a question, add answer options, and play with your class. It’s simple!
Kahoot is a great option when you have those extra 5 minutes at the end of class that you weren’t expecting. Use the search bar to search for a random fun Kahoot to play. They have options made for random trivia, candy bars, or even topics you’ve already covered in class!
4. Quizlet
Another tried and true website used by a lot of teachers is Quizlet. Students love this because it’s an interactive review that they can access at any time. Rather than provide a typed answer key to your students, put it in a Quizlet and there’s a much better chance that it will get used. When you put information in a Quizlet, it basically makes a flash card. You can do term/definition or question/answer entries. Once you put in the information, you add it to a class and have your students join the class. When they’re in the class, they can go through the Quizlet that you created. They love it because there’s an app on their phone so they can access it anywhere and the website automatically makes different games using your information. Students have options as to how they want to review.
5. Deck.Toys (Google Extension)
Deck.Toys take a lot of work to do at first. Once you’ve done a few, it does get easier and faster to make. Honestly, the time is worth it! I’ve done this multiple times and it’s a hit every time – seriously my students play it for days after I finish the lesson with them. Similar to Nearpod, you are making a PowerPoint interactive. The difference is that this is set up in a “board game” type format that you create. They must complete a task before moving on to the next. You can insert a slide then have them answer questions about that slide, or play a short game on that material.
Note: As of now, you can only make a few for free. If you want unlimited access to make lots of these, you need the paid version. However in a time of distance learning, it may be worth it!
6. Pear Deck (Google Slide Add On)
Pear Deck is a Google Slide add on. You need to add on the extension before you can use it. If you’re a google school & have all of your presentations in Google Slides already, I would use Pear Deck. Once again, you’re taking your regular PowerPoint and making it interactive with games and questions for students to answer as you go along the presentation. Add in checking points or even a short quiz at the end as well. It will save the results and inputs from your class so you can review them. Something great that Pear Deck has done is that you can now add audio to any slide. As your students may be distance learning, it will be like you’re presenting the information to them in class rather than them just needing to read it themselves.
7. EdPuzzle
If you love to use supplemental videos in your teaching practice, EdPuzzle is for you! A lot of videos that you may commonly use may already be made into an EdPuzzle. If it is, you are able to use the video and questions that someone else made. If not, you can upload a video or search YouTube to find a video that’s already on the internet and make your own EdPuzzle to go with it. As the video plays, you have the power to insert questions for students to answer at different points in the video. The responses will get saved for you to review. Students will be able to see their percentages as to how far they are in the video and even what their percentage of correct answers are.
8. ThingLink
Everytime I see a Bitmoji classroom, it makes me think of ThingLink. ThingLink lets you take an image and make it interactive. You can upload a photo of a Photoshop workspace or Periodic Table, for example and add links to different parts of an image. Your links can be text that you put in, a different photo that pops up, a link to a website you want students to visit, etc. But if you have a lot of links or information to share at once, this is a great way to get it to students.
9. Weebly
Weebly is a free website creation tool. Let’s start by saying that I love Wix. If I’m doing something web related for myself, I’ll use Wix. Many schools, however, want you to use Weebly because Weebly lets teachers have access to their student’s websites without needing their login. Which is awesome! It gives you the protection you want when students have access to post whatever they want to the world with the school’s name on it.
If you have students create a Google Slides, they can create a website over the same thing. Weebly provides templates so your students don’t have to start from scratch which makes it easy for them to learn and use the platform. It’s not something that I would use for little projects, but if you have a big end of semester project or you’re looking to add an option to a choice board, this is a great thing!
10. PowToon
While there are other video making platforms out there, my students like PowToon best. It works a lot like Google Slides, so they catch on quickly. Once again, this is great to add to a choice board or to use instead of having students make a poster or slide set to show their knowledge. Using PowToon, your class will have the opportunity to make a short, animated video. There are tons of options and themes they can use to create this video making it fun and simple.
Drawbacks to PowToon are that it’s not good for group work. Use it for an individual assignment. Another drawback is that videos can’t be downloaded with the free version, but they can be exported to a sharable link that students can submit to you for review. I love to throw in PowToon as an option or mandatory assignment at least once or twice in a class each semester to add variety.
11. Padlet
Padlet is a tool that’s hard to explain all the ways that it can be used until you use it yourself. It’s similar to a Facebook wall. There can be “posts” that are made and your class can comment and add their own photos and ideas to each “post”. There are even different ways to display the items on screen. Examples they give are on a map or as a timeline. For example, an idea for how to use Padlet would be to set up a board in a timeline format when you’re discussing a specific decade. You can make an original post with the year and your students can comment on each post in the timeline telling something major that happened in each specific year.
12. FlipGrid
FlipGrid gets compared to Padlet a lot, but I feel like they’re pretty different in what I personally would use each for. Where as I would use Padlet to share ideas, I would use FlipGrid to have a discussion. The website let’s students share and comment on video recordings they create. In a time of digital learning, FlipGrid can be a great tool for a get to know you activity! You could introduce yourself and tell students to record their own video introducing themselves. Once their video is posted, other classmates can watch it and comment on it to say hello! If you’re wanting to have a debate virtually, you could use FlipGrid to accomplish that task.
Like I said, I know these websites and have used them throughout my years of teaching so far. I hope they can help you in your effort to keep your lessons in distance learn fun and engaging.
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