Teacher- Student- Lifelong Learner
A place for learning, reflecting and growing as an educator and a student.
Gimkit
Gimkit is an interactive quiz game that serves as a way to informally assess student understanding. I like to use this as a quick check-in after a lesson or to informally quiz students on a topic. It is also a great way to assess student background knowledge before a unit begins.
Affordances:
You can create a free educator account and keep track of student progress.
A good way to informally assess student knowledge
Interactive and highly motivating for students
You can create your own question set or use a pre-made question set
Constraints:
The free version only allows 5 students to join the game at each time
Blooket
Blooket is an interactive game that is a great tool to assess student knowledge/ understanding. Blooket has different game modes that the moderator can choose for the participants to play. I often use this to assess math concepts in an informal context. Students are not timed on answering questions so often use a white board/ notebook to do their work. We also use this when identifying themes or applying grammar concepts. Additionally, my students love making their own blookets as an extension of a research project, book club, presentation or just as an enrichment early finisher activity.
Affordances:
Educators and students can create free accounts
Students are given their score out of the total number of questions at the end to give insight into their learning and provide teachers with some additional feedback and data.
Students can pick characters and as they continue to play and answer questions correctly they get points to unlock new characters​
Constraints:
answers are limited to multiple choice
Canva
Canva is one of my favorite tools I discovered as an educator. You can create graphics for posters, learning management systems, lesson plans, assignments, videos and much more. You can design blank spaces with any creative design you want, you are in complete creative control of the designs you create. After creating your graphic, you can download it and upload it to whatever platform you desire.
Affordances:
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Canva Pro is free for educators, which is wonderful. This unlocks pro features that help you take your designs to the next level.
Constraints:
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Students only have free access to Canva, but they can still create graphics and download and upload to different platforms.
Book Creator
Book Creator is a website that allows you to create and customize virtual books. It has many choices of templates, styles, images and more.
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Affordances:
View books in your teachers’ library
Collaborate with other on your book
Use text, pictures, drawings, uploads, media and icons
Can use recordings or text to scaffold/ differentiate
Change backgrounds and page types
Change type and size of books
Share your book with the world
Constraints:
Only available on tablets, laptops and desktops: not phones
Takes time to add detail
Free version only allows you to have 1 library with 40 books
Hour of Code
Hour of Code is an introduction to coding that makes it interactive and relevant to elementary aged students. There are different games and challenges that students can choose from. Code has student-guided tutorials, pre-made lesson plans and extensions to the lessons as well!
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Affordances:
Free
A great, interactive way to introduce students to coding
Provides information in a game-style format which makes it interactive and fun
Low-risk environment to practice coding and expand STEAM knowledge
A great way to teach something at a context appropriate level
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Constraints:
The website's interface often freezes or gets overwhelmed and stops working
Isn't the friendliest format for a beginner, takes some time to get the hang of it
Google Jamboard
Google Jamboard is a digital interactive whiteboard. You can add sticky notes, images, text boxes and more. It is a collaborative tool that allows for many people to be on the same whiteboard at once. You can also import templates into jamboard to customize it to your context!
Affordances:
collaborative and sharable within a google workspace
ability to use a whiteboard and save the board for reference
movable sticky notes, text boxes and drawing makes for a great way to share ideas & sketch out thoughts
Constraints:
not entirely customizable, there aren't a ton of creative choices within jamboard itself
limited color choices
it automatically puts new sticky notes on top of each other so you have to move them to an open space on the board
EdPuzzle
EdPuzzle is a resource that allows educators to take any youtube video and turn it into an interactive lesson for students. This is helpful as a formative activity to get feedback on student understanding and knowledge. You can integrate these videos right into your LMS for easy access and information.
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Affordances:
Students interact with a video and answer questions
Teachers get data quickly and are able to assess student knowledge
You can use any youtube video
There are pre-made EdPuzzle videos that you can use or add onto
Great quick formative assessment
Constraints:
Can only do multiple choice or open-ended questions
Can be time consuming if creating an assignment from scratch
Play-Doh
Play-doh is one of my favorite resources to use in the classroom. You can use it across disciplines in many subjects. I like to use it to model math concepts, manipulate vocabulary words, recreate science concepts and more! Play-doh can be a way for students to visualize their learning and apply it in a multimodal setting.
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Affordances:
Can be manipulated into shapes and then goes back to its original shape in the container
Can be used across disciplines
Different colors can represent different objects/ knowledge areas
Easy to make mistakes and learn from them
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Constraints:
It might not be the best option for students with sensory needs
Dries out after a while, especially if not taken care of by the user
Students may get distracted since it can be a toy- may be a good idea to give students a few minutes to play before giving an assignment to help with this!