FLIPGRID

With Flipgrid you can bring the back row in class to the FRONT row! Flipgrid, a FREE video discussion platform, gives all students a voice. Flipgrid is a video response platform where educators can have online video discussions with students or other educators. Teachers can provide feedback to students and better yet students can provide feedback to one another.

1. The reading response goes digital.

After your class reads an article, chapter or book have them respond to a question about their reading. Take the conversation further by having students comment on each other’s responses.

2. Celebrate The Global Read Aloud all year long.

The Global Read Aloud is a set 6 week period that spans from early October through mid-November and teachers all over the globe read one book and connect with other classrooms all over the world. With a tool like Flipgrid, you can connect with educators all over the world anytime and share as you read a novel together.

3. Record an ongoing story.

Have one student think of a title then the next record a 30-second beginning the next builds on that and so on and so forth. What a fun way to get the whole class involved in and create a unique story to share!

4. Virtual vocabulary word wall.

When working on a unit have your students record a video describing the meaning of important vocabulary words. They can hold up a card in their selfie video with the word written on it so the words are easily accessed by other students.

5. Speaking skills assessment.

With Flipgrid you can provide written feedback to students and give them a rubric score for performance and ideas. With Flipgrid, you can even customize the rubric. Speaking well is an important and often undertaught skill.

6. Reflect on a lesson or unit.

It seems simple but having your students reflect on a lesson is great feedback for us as teachers. How did it go? What changes would you make? What was your favorite part? Take a look at their responses for planning next year.

I recorded this video from Flipgrid. There is a couple of effects and emoji which you can use.

STORYBIRD

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. It is a fun, collaborative, storytelling website.

Storybird was designed to allow children to work with parents and friends in creating art-inspired stories to share and save. It is also now a very popular tool to for use by teachers with their students around the globe. Users choose from art hosted on the site and build a story around those images that can then be shared with family and friends. Storybird encourages creativity and is a web tool that supports working collaboratively.

The final product can be printed, watched on screen, or shared in an online library with the world. You also have the option to keep it private on the network.

Storybird can help students bring abstract thoughts in their mind to life and adds a dynamic, digital component to traditional storyboards.

Without requiring any artistic ability, students drag and drop characters and images onto a digital storyboard. Students are inspired by the themes and artwork available on Storybird: abstract thoughts and emotions students could not express easily come to the surface.

A concrete visual representation of their abstract thoughts can now be transformed into wonderful writing. Students can use the finished Storybird to write a paper that expands their abstract thoughts into a traditional essay.

MOODLE

Moodle can be invaluable in structuring and sharing your course materials with learners, and also in monitoring and assessing progress.

There’s an assumption from learners (and their parents) that learning will be available online - your Moodle site can be accessed via PC, tablet or other mobile device via a web-browser or there’s a free mobile app for your phone which can give you structured access to the learning that you need at any time.

      Benefits for the educators;

• With Moodle’s rich resource toolkit, files and links to websites can be shared with learners easily. Pages of learning content – combining text, images and embedded video - can also be quickly created within a course.
• Group students into year or class groups to automatically provide access to the appropriate learning materials. You can even control when specific course content becomes available to learners.
• Edit 24/7 via a browser to update and add to course content for learners to access immediately.
• Use a variety of engaging question types in a Quiz to assess the learning. Moodle can mark these and give immediate detailed feedback to the learners
• Learners can submit work and receive feedback and grades from the teacher. Teachers can also mark offline and can also incorporate their mark scheme to promote a consistent approach to marking. Teachers can also construct a comment bank to help supplement personalized feedback with pre-defined statements.
• Moodle’s messaging system allows learners and teachers to communicate easily. Teachers can also communicate with groups of learners via course forums either to provide answers to learners’ questions or to just get involved in discussions.
• Moodle’s stores each learner’s scores from any graded activities. Snapshot reports can be viewed at any time to see how each learner is progressing through the course materials. There is also a full audit trail to monitor when and how regularly your learners are accessing resources.

      Benefits for the learners

• it’s a great place for your learners, whatever their age, to become confident in using the web within a school-controlled environment.
• with a variety of resource and activity types, learning on Moodle can be fun! Moodle supports a range of media to present or link to learning materials, support the learners and to assess their learning.
• Using the course forums, learners can discuss topics, share ideas and even feedback on each other’s work. The chat module in Moodle allows a scheduled online messaging interaction – ideal for guest speakers or “live” discussion accessed from different locations at the same time.
• Learners can customise their own homepage within the site to tailor information and links to their individual needs.
• the Quiz activity can give immediate feedback to the learners related to their answers so learners can regularly test themselves building their knowledge and confidence throughout their learning journey.
• Learning resources are available to the learners whenever they want them. There’s even a Mobile App to make access even easier via smartphone or mobile device!
• Moodle courses provide a personal space for learners to reflect on their learning journey which could include recording feedback and/or setting targets for the future. Moodle’s Badges allow learners to be digitally rewarded for their achievements throughout their learning journey. Learners can stretch and challenge themselves to earn all the badges available to them in a course.

SOCRATIVE

Meet Socrative by mastery connect. Your tool for fun and effective formative assessment. Socrative enables you to engage and assess students on any device and operating system during class. All the activities visualize student answers in real-time and provide detailed reports for afterward. Directly from your teacher dashboard, you can launch all types of assessments: start a quiz, do a quick question or polling activity, play a fun space race game or doing out of the door exit ticket.

 Quick questions are perfect for no-prep activities. As students respond, the teacher can see in real-time what the students are thinking, have a discussion of the result or ask more quick questions. It is your choice. You can create your own assessments or share assessments with your colleagues and other Socrative users around the world. If you like you can tag it with a common core or state standard. As students take the quiz you'll see their graded responses populate your live results table. Each column shows how the whole class is performing on that question. You can see which questions you need to go over with the class or decide how to group students for review based on their results. Run your quiz is an exciting space race to create a fun assessment game that students can play in groups or individually. Students love friendly competition and you'll still receive the graded report at the end. With Socrative Pro you can set a countdown timer or upload your own race icon. You can manage multiple live activities simultaneously in ten different rooms create a room for each period divide the class into smaller groups or even have a homework loop. In addition, you can add rosters and have up to 150 students in each room. With Socrative visualizing students, understanding has never been easier.

AUGMENTED REALİTY

Many of us know how augmented reality (AR) works thanks to mobile games like Pokémon Go and social media apps like Snapchat. But the magic of AR doesn’t end there. Augmented reality is successfully used in other fields, including education.







Augmented reality in education will soon affect the conventional learning process. AR has the potential to change the location and timing of studying, to introduce new and additional ways and methods. Capabilities of Augmented Reality technology may make classes more engaging and information more apprehendable.

Educators know that the learning process should be all about creativity and interaction. While teachers do not necessarily need to recruit all students into science, their goal is to get them interested in a subject. That's where AR could come in handy.

Using augmented reality in the classroom can turn an ordinary class into an engaging experience. AR technology provides virtual examples and adds gaming elements to support textbook materials. As a result, classes become more interactive. AR helps students better remember the information they’ve just learned.

Augmented reality animated content in classroom lessons could catch students' attention in our dynamic day and age, as well as motivate them to study. Adding extra data, e.g. a short bio of a person, fun facts, historical data about sites or events, visual 3D models, would give students a wider understanding of topics.

While doing homework, students may scan certain elements of a book and receive text, audio or video tips from teachers. Or they may find useful information about the course, a teacher or other students which could lead to better communication. 

PIXTON

Pixton is a website that allows teachers and students to construct their own comic strips. There are a variety of comic strip layouts, numerous character and background choices, and a ton of creative options  This is a great learner-centered tool that allows students to construct their own knowledge and display it in a way that is meaningful to them by allowing them to create comics representing their concepts and ideas.

Pixton is accessible through any web browser and can be accessed on phones, tablets, and computers. Pixton offers a free app for smartphone or tablet use. The website does not specify if there is a preferred browser to use.

For teachers, there are a ton of resources. You are able to create your own assignments or borrow from pre-existing ones. There are a variety of layouts to suit your instructional needs including timelines, mind maps, and storyboards. Pixton also allows for a lot of creativity. You can upload your own images for the background, you also have direct access to creative commons images.

Students can make comic strips digitally rather than by hand. Teachers can create a standard comic with blank text and have the students come up with the narration and comments to summarize a particular event. Students can create their own comics with specified characters or events to demonstrate their understanding of a certain event. Students can create their own comics with their own characters, settings, and text to construct their own knowledge about a concept, event, character, or anything else you can think of.  Students can customize backgrounds with their own images and change the color of skin, hair, and eyes of their characters.  The digital aspect of this tool makes it easier for less artistically inclined students to be encouraged and inspired.

VIRTUAL REALITY

Introducing a whole new concept in educational technology: a 'standalone' Virtual Reality headset complete with a unique student-friendly interface, gesture controls, embedded educational resources, and simple-to-use teacher controls. ClassVR is a groundbreaking new technology designed to help raise engagement and increase knowledge retention for students of all ages.

Speaking skills – and in turn writing skills – show a marked improvement in students who have had the opportunity to explore a virtual environment. The immersive, sensory nature of VR improves the quality of students’ language; the immediacy of the experience is particularly beneficial for those students who struggle to think of what to write.

Creating a context for learning is crucial for deepening understanding. Learning about the phases of the moon from a textbook works just fine for some students – but the added contextual information they can access when they are placed on the surface of the moon, looking back at Earth, is invaluable.

Engaging and immersive personal experience simply cannot be matched in terms of information retention. The ability to re-imagine the VR experience in which you learned a new concept is incredibly powerful and is of particular benefit to students who struggle to remain focussed in a traditional classroom environment.

VR and AR open up exciting learning opportunities for students with specific educational needs. Many children with autism find the sensory immersion of a 360 video (complete with audio through headphones) a comforting and safe way to learn new concepts – all while knowing they can easily remove themselves from the situation if necessary. Schools are excited to use a simple portal to quickly send their own content to student headsets. Imagine the power of recording a quick immersive video of your field trip destination ahead of time, giving students with autism or sensory integration challenges the chance to get accustomed to an unfamiliar environment?


Engagement is the key to excellent teaching and truly deep learning. The creativity of teachers is unmatched – just think of all those hours spent preparing launch events, role play areas, and interactive displays – so just think of what can be achieved with VR and AR at your fingertips! Let ClassVR breathe new life into key topics, with technology that inspires and motivates.