Technology Tools That Enhance Student’s Learning in PBL

 

Technology Tools That Enhance Student’s Learning in PBL

Hello everyone! This is my fourth blog post! Today we’re going to discuss about two important questions:

1.What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use?

2.What technology tools will best enhance your students project work and presentation of the results?

But, before that, I would like to emphasize the importance of technology in education and why should we teach our students to use these new technological tools?

As we all know, nowadays, the learning environment is more dynamic than ever before, and as a result, today’s learners are very different from those that our educational system was designed for. The students of this generation are considered technological learners. They learn best by being more interactive, and technology is what helps them do that. Students often struggle to stay on task or interested, and with resources to help the teacher, they can better stay focused and learn faster. I know that most students have a hate-like feeling when it comes to using technology. But, whether we like it or not, technology is an essential concept to learn. Because it changes so quickly, students are better off learning about it sooner. It is a primary part of every industry, and there is no way around it. These days, technology means more than just learning basic computing skills. Technology has made itself part of every aspect of our lives today, and the students who understand it are the ones who succeed in the business world. So, we as teacher have to do our best to help them succeed, and one way is by teaching them some useful technology tools that will enhance their learning and keep them up to date with the latest online gadgets available and accessible for them.     

1.What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use?

Google Classroom - is a free web service developed by Google for schools that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students. It is estimated between 40 to 100 million people use Google Classroom.

Google Classroom integrates Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, and Calendar into a cohesive platform to manage student and teacher communication. Students can be invited to join a class through a private code, or automatically imported from a school domain. Teachers can create, distribute and mark assignments all within the Google ecosystem. Each class creates a separate folder in the respective user's Drive, where the student can submit work to be graded by a teacher. Assignments and due dates are added to Google calendar, each assignment can belong to a category (or topic). Teachers can monitor the progress for each student by reviewing revision history of a document, and after being graded, teachers can return work along with comments.

OneNote - is a free note-taking app by Microsoft. OneNote acts as your digital notebook, allowing students to keep all their information organized digitally. You can create multiple notebooks and add notes inside of them for every subject or topic. Need faster note-taking? Quickly click a picture of your whiteboard or slide and OneNote will enhance its quality to make it easier to read. OneNote supports both handwriting and stylus support so users never have to compromise on their note-taking style. Students can also record lectures and sync notes with audio to provide a quick context. Students can also lock their notes with passwords, add sticky notes for reminders, collaborate with fellow students and edit in real-time, and auto-sync their notes across various devices.

Some cool features of OneNote include:

• Annotate slides and documents
• Write on top of images, printouts, or add sticky notes
• Multiple organization options
• Digital highlighter and digitization of notes

Pricing:

• Free

Blogging - A blog is an easy Web 2.0 tool that allows multiple students or classrooms to publish multimedia content online. Blogs can take the form of a personal diary, a collection of data, or series of opinion pieces from different sources. There are several free sites where students and classes can publish an online journal including Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr.

Website Design - Websites are ideal spaces for displaying static content such as project overviews, links to blogs, photo slideshows, project reports from previous years, or classroom materials. It is also a great way to quickly share what your class is working on. Designing and managing a website has become much easier with some online tools that require no previous experience. Check out SiteBuilder and Google Sites for free and easy ways to design and share webpages.

Wikis - A wiki is similar to a webpage except that it allows readers to collaborate in its construction by adding, editing and changing the page’s content at any time. It is an easy space for collaborative authoring or e-portfolios because it tracks all changes so that teachers can see the successive versions of documents. Check out wiki spaces to create public or private online pages.

Class Dojo - This is a fun tool to gamify the classroom. Students make their own avatars, gain and lose points based on classroom behavior, discussion approaches, and other soft skills agreed upon by the teacher and the class. Teachers can also use Class Dojo to take attendance and create graphs that breakdown the information for teachers. Not only will this tool encourage students to uphold class values, but it will also provide key metrics to help teachers adjust their teaching tactics accordingly.

SelfCAD - is a free, cloud-based 3D CAD software package for students. It is incredibly easy to use, yet provides an authentic, ‘real world’ 3D design experience. Another notable feature— SelfCAD has teamed up with MyMiniFactory, to provide a database of already completed 3D printable designs, making thousands of 3D objects available for immediate 3D printing. All round, it is a very powerful and effective tool for learning in STEM, and a number of schools are getting on board.

Explain Everything (suitable for educators and upper-class students) - is all about interaction in a virtual environment. This digital tool allows students and teachers to collaborate on an interactive whiteboard thus encouraging group activities. This software can also be integrated with Schoolwork, Dropbox, Evernote, GDrive, OneDrive and more useful apps. With the drag-and-drop options, Explain Everything is super easy and intuitive to work with.

Quizlet (suitable for students of all ages) - A great app that can come in very handy for students of all ages. By using flashcards, games and more fun activities, Quizlet allows students to learn a subject and assess themselves. Everyone can create their own study set or choose an already existing study set. Quizlet even lets you study on the go, so students can learn and test their knowledge from literally everywhere.

2.What technology tools will best enhance your students project work and presentation of the results?

Some project work and presentation technology tools that I would suggest to my students are:

Prezi - I personally really like this tool, although I haven’t got much experience with it, but I’ve seen many presentations with Prezi and I’ve always been amazed by it, so I would definitely recommend it to my students. According to Prezi, “creating, giving, and tracking beautiful interactive presentations is as easy as 1,2,3” with their cloud-based presentation software. Prezi presentations are nothing like your traditional presentations; zooming in and out and moving side to side across one single, very attractive and modern canvas, focusing in on images and videos inputted by the user. Prezi is very popular, it’s suitable for students of all ages, and leads to more effective, and more engaging presentations compared to presentations made with PowerPoint.

Pixton - For students who love comic books, Pixton makes it possible to convert school projects into professional-quality comics. Ideal for language arts, art, social studies, and science projects, Pixton allows students to collaborate on projects using simple templates.

Glogster - Graphics and visual aids can help seemingly dull concepts spring to life. Glogster makes it easy for students to create elegant, high-quality digital posters.

Animoto - is a creative storytelling tool that allows students to create slideshows, digital animations, and more. Turn a recent field trip into a slideshow, or help students illustrate a recent project with a video that includes text. This excellent tool is student-friendly, and even the youngest learners can master it with a little help.

Kahoot! - is a handy tool that students can use to create in-class questionnaires and quizzes. This is handy for obtaining data for graphing assignments, data for research essays, and feedback from their classmates. Kahoot! is compatible with multiple devices and has a game-like feel that will help keep students interested.

Haiku Deck  - A digital tool with whose help you can easily make presentations on your iPad, iPhone, and on the web. The tool works online and offers a huge database of stock photos with which you can create image-based slides. Haiku Deck makes it easy to create presentations on the go and literally carry them in your pocket. Haiku Deck can be also integrated into Google Classroom which has been very popular lately.

Padlet (suitable for the whole class to use) - is a digital pinboard that allows participants (students and teachers) contribute by pinning different images, videos, text files, links, and more. Digital tools for classroom like Padlet motivate students to work together and brainstorm like a team. You can customize the background to a corkboard, blackboard, wood, sand, and many more options, the layout to a grid, stream, or freeform, as well as control who has access to the board.

VoiceThread (suitable for K-12 students) - is a great digital tool which can be used in the classroom in many ways, especially to practice the students’ oral language. VoiceThread is basically an app for presentations and storytelling which actually records the student talking. This way, the students can practice their speaking skills while building confidence and allows teachers to assess their work. Here is a demonstration video made by a teacher who uses VoiceThread for educational purposes. She also gives ideas of how other teachers can use VoiceThread with their class.

To conclude: These were some of the tech tools that I think would really help my students enhance their learning and see it from a different perspective. Of course, these are not the only ones as technology evolves every day, but I hope it will come in handy to them and incite and motivate them to become better leaders in the future, to notice that learning can also be fun using tech tools.