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video editing

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Get help viewing, editing, and sharing movies on your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Learn more about iMovie with these resources.

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Building books

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Storybird - Read, write, discover, and share the books you'll always remember.

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Become a better writer with Storybird's creativity tools. Online courses, challenges, and reader feedback will help you improve your writing.

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interactive white board

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ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard. Download ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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100 Things Students Can Create To Demonstrate What They Know

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100 Things Students Can Create To Demonstrate What They Know

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contributed by Ryan Schaaf, Notre Dame of Maryland University

When I was a high school student, I had the privilege of having a wonderful English teacher.

She was kind, often helped her students, and created a wonderful classroom environment that was rare in my high school experience. To this day, I regard her as a great educator; one of the very best. Due to her help, I improved my writing abilities to the point I moved ahead to an Honors course the very next year.

As I now reflect upon her and my learning experiences fondly, I had only one criticism - I did the same type of work day in and day out. Although repetition is a tried and true method for learning, performing the same academic exercises over and over again really left a great deal to be desired. I wanted to express myself in new and different ways. After all, variety is the spice of life.

Nowadays, many educators use the same methods over and over again in their lessons for students to express themselves and demonstrate their new knowledge. Today's students want to express themselves in a variety of different ways. They want their academic work to be relevant, engaging, and fun.

Below is a diverse list adapted from resources found at fortheteachers.org of potential student products or activities learners can use to demonstrate their mastery of lesson content. The list also offers several digital tools for students to consider using in a technology-enriched learning environment.

100 Things Students Can Create To Demonstrate What They Kno w

1. Audio Recording

2. Advertisement

3. Analogy

4. AnimationAvatar

5. Blog

6. Book Jacket

7. Brochure

8. Bulletin Board

9. Cards (Playing/Task)

10. Caricature

11. Class Book

12. Creative Non-Fiction

13. Collage

14. Comedy Skit

15. Comic Strip

16. Commercial

17. Concept Map

18. Conversation

19. Dance

20. Data/Analytics Visualization

21. Debate

22. Demonstration

23. Diary Entry

24. Digitally-Documented Discussion

25. Diorama

26. Doodle

27. Drawing

28. eBook

29. Essay

30. Experiment

31. Fake Social Media Account

32. Film

33. Freestyle (hip-hop)

34. Flow Chart

35. Game

36. Gif Animation

37. Glossary

38. Google Earth Tour

39. Graph

40. Graphic Organizer

41. Infomercial

42. Interview

43. Kahoot!

44. Learning Log

45. Literature Circle

46. Live Stream

47. Magazine

48. Map

49. Mock-Up/Wireframe

50. Mock Product-Pitch

51. Model

52. Monologue

53. Movie Poster

54. Mural

55. Mash-Up

56. News Report

57. Newsletter/ Newspaper

58. Panel Discussion

59. Photo

60. Prezi

61. Podcast

62. Poem

63. Portfolio

64. Poster

65. Presentation (PowerPoint)

66. Product

67. Puppet Show

68. Reenactment

69. Relevant Visualization

70. Review

71. Role-Play

72. Rules/Framework

73. Scavenger Hunt

74. Scrapbook

75. Sculpture

76. Survey

77. Self-Directed Project

78. Self-Directed Short Video

79. Show & Tell

80. Simulation

81. Slideshow

82. Social Media Branding

83. Socratic Discussion

84. Song

85. Story Map

86. Speech

87. Tag Cloud

88. Team-Building Game

89. Time Capsule

90. Theatrical Play

91. Timeline

92. Tutorial

93. Video game

94. Website

95. Whiteboard Animation

96. Word Splash

97. Word Wall

98. Wiki

99. YouTube Channel

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
100 Things Students Can Create To Demonstrate What They Know

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Students can express themselves and demonstrate knowledge in new ways. Here are 100 things they can create to show what they know.

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Slideshow maker

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Teachers will find many uses for Shadow Puppet Edu, and they don't have to look very hard to find them! About 30 project ideas are included in the Ideas section of the app, organized by topic. Ideas include a family heritage map, an art portfolio, a history recap, a news report, digital storytelling, a science experiment recap, a persuasive ad, and more. Each activity includes Common Core State Standards (CCSS) alignment. More teacher resources are available online, too, including printables for storyboard planning, story maps, and instructions. Teachers could create their own Shadow Puppet Edu videos to introduce topics in class or to post online for flipped learning.

Continue reading Show less

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Shadow Puppet Edu Review for Teachers | Common Sense Education

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Teachers will find many uses for Shadow Puppet Edu, and they don't have to look very hard to find them! About 30 project ideas are included in the Ideas section of the app, organized by topic. Ideas include a family heritage map, an art portfolio, a history recap, a news report, digital storytelling, a science experiment recap, a persuasive ad, and more.

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posters

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PicCollage EDU - Collage Maker on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about PicCollage EDU - Collage Maker. Download PicCollage EDU - Collage Maker and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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interactive image

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ThingLink: Create unique experiences with interactive images, videos & 360° media

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Easily create interactive and immersive visual experiences for online communication and learning. Start a free trial!

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mind mapping

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Creating Products to Show and Share Learning

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Creating Products to Show and Share Learning

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with Tony Vincent

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Nowadays students have a variety of ways to show what they know and to express themselves. Let's take a look at sample projects and some of the hottest apps for showing, explaining, and retelling. These tools can turn students into teachers and are great for sharing their answers to a project's driving question.

This post is the third in a series of posts about project based learning. You may want to read the first two posts, Crafting Questions That Drive Projects and Investigating Authentic Questions.

Audience is Key

As youngster I always loved making things. Whether it was a pretend building made out of a cardboard box, a public service announcement recorded on my Fisher-Price tape recorder, or a short film made with a very large VHS camcorder. As an adult, I continue to enjoy creating things. Maybe you have seen my iPad app and some of my videos, infographics, and resources.

These days my creations are almost always digital. I love the ability to easily make revisions to my digital productions (I'm thankful everyday that most apps have an Undo option). Furthermore, I can share what I have made with the world through my website and social media. Because I know my creations will be seen by others, I take the time to make them as polished and perfected as possible.

Having a genuine audience is a key component in project based learning. A project's driving question is its mission statement. That statement or question may already have a built-in audience. For example, "Convince the principal we should have a party in December," clearly states who the audience is. So does "How can we teach second graders about helpful insects?" Other driving questions may require students to choose an audience. Knowing who a project's spectators are helps students make key decisions about their end products.

When I was a young student the most important audience my school projects had was the teacher. Sometimes she would be the only audience. Sometimes projects would be put on display in the classroom or hallway so students and parents could see them. But, my teacher was ultimately the one I wanted to please because I wanted a good grade.

Rushton Hurley makes the observation, "If students are sharing their work with the world, they want it to be good. It you're just sharing it with you, they just want it to be good enough." With websites and social media, students certainly have the ability to reach a potentially global audience. Knowing they can reach people worldwide with their projects, learners will want to make those productions W.O.W. (Worthy of the World).

Students need to know that the work they do matters. Sharing their brilliance online is one way to do that. In fact, Angela Maiers' You Matter Manifesto lets students know that their contribution is valuable and necessary. It reads:

You are enough.

You have influence.

You are a genius.

You have a contribution to make.

You have a gift others need.

Your actions define your impact.

You are the change.

Samples Really Help

My students produced a lot of media, including podcasts. Before my students scripted and recorded a podcast, they would listen to several sample episodes and critique them. We would make a list of what was really good about the episode and what could be improved. I reminded students of the items on these lists periodically as they worked on their own episodes. Yes, you can tell students what makes a great production. However, having them be the ones to delineate the qualities of a great production is much better. My students really wanted to create something that was better than any of the samples they listened to. They really wanted to avoid the mistakes they heard others make.

Because students might have some harsh criticism of sample projects, I made sure those samples were not by students at our school. I didn't want negative feedback to get back to the samples' authors. Luckily, we can find student-created media online. I like to pick some really good ones and some not-so-good ones, so students can describe what they should and should not do/include/say in their own productions.

Padlet can help capture students' observations about example media. Here's a Padlet wall, What Makes a Quality Podcast?, where teachers in my workshop posted their thoughts after watching and listening to a variety of podcasts. Padlet works on just about any device with a web browser. The teacher can create a wall and share the link or QR code with students. Students simple double-click the background to add a post. The teacher can organize the posts and refer students back to the wall as a reminder of what students wrote about the sample productions.

Padlet Tip: In a wall's Settings, click Privacy and turn on Moderation so that nothing is posted without your approval.

Some questions that help guide a discussion about sample productions:

What did you notice?

What did you really like?

What could have been better?

What is missing?

What could have been left out?

That last question above is a good one for students to ask themselves about their own projects. Oftentimes students think that everything they have written, recorded, or filmed needs to be included. That's just not so. Trimming a production to what is essential may be difficult, but the audience will appreciate it. A concise message is usually more powerful than a longer one. French author Antione de Saint-Exupery has a great quote: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

What's better than samples from the web? Samples made by the teacher! Doing a project yourself is one of the best ways to know if the project is doable. You might discover hurdles that students will encounter when they do their projects. Best of all, doing the project conveys the importance of the work. I like what Will Richardson said in this article: "Schools and classrooms should support a deep culture of 'doing work that matters,' where the adults in the building serve as models for the type of creating and learning we might expect from kids."

Seventh grade teacher Pernille Ripp has a great take on doing your own projects. She says, "Before you ask students to do something, ask yourself if you would do it willingly. If the answer is no, then don't expect you students to do it either." I would add, "If the answer is yes, then do it!" Don't worry. Your model project doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, students enjoy critiquing their teacher's work. They like finding flaws and telling you about them. Challenge your student to produce something better than you did.

See These Samples

I've collected some end productions generated from project based learning. Many of these examples are superb. Others could be better, but teachers and students can still learn from them.

A good production should do two things. It should show evidence that the creators learned something. It should also somehow make a dent in the universe. That dent could be made by doing things like educators others, documenting a learning experience, solving a problem, calling people to action, or inspiring others.

I have so say that finding products made through project based learning is difficult. I know that not all projects are posted online. I realize that many projects have a discrete audience and don't need to be publicly available. Unfortunately, some terrific projects that were public have disappeared. It's shame that a project's life on the web expires when the school year does. If you have a great project to share, please let me know. I'd love to make my list of sample end products better!

I found several projects through Twitter. If you search for the hashtags #pbl and #pblchat, chances are you'll see photos from classrooms that are currently involved in project based learning. It's inspiring to get a glance at what's going on in other classrooms!

Cool Tools

These tools are cool because they make slick products and are fairly simple to use. You probably don't want to have to teach students how to use an app or website. It's best when students can figure out how to use it themselves. If students get stuck, they can refer to the website's help section or Google their issue. This means that the teacher doesn't have to be an expert in the apps students use. Being somewhat familiar with what's available is helpful, but you don't have to be a know-it-all in order for students to use a digital production tool. Most of the tools below are free and run on a variety of devices. It's by no means an all-inclusive list. I know I've left out loads of great tools, but I want to let you know about some possibilities.

Google Slides
Google Slides is part of Google Drive and can be used to make slideshows that can be shared online. It's available for Web, Android, and iOS.

Pic Collage
Combine text and images to make stylish posters. It's available for Android, Kindle, and iOS. For Web, there;s PicMonkey.com or Pizap.com.

ThingLink
Make an image interactive by adding clickable targets that can open notes, links, or videos. It's available for Web, Android, and iOS.

Explain Everything
Use an interactive whiteboard to annotate, animate, narrate, and export instructional videos. It's available for Android, iOS, and Windows 8 & 10. Other screencasting options include Screencastify (Chrome extension), Office Mix (PowerPoint extension), Pixiclip.com (Web), and Educreations (iOS).

WeVideo
Edit together movies, photo stories, and slideshows. It's available for Web, Android, Kindle, and iOS.

Comic Creator
Create simple comics by adding speech bubbles, pre-drawn images, and your own pictures. It's available for Android and Kindle. A similar app is available for iOS.

I maintain an infographic called Show What You Know Using Web and Mobile Apps. It has dozens of tools students could use to make their final productions. The apps are organized into the products they create, like collages, comics, slideshows, animations, and screencasts.

The Show What You Know infographic's mobile apps are for iPads. Some of those same apps are available from the Google Play Store for Android. You may want to check out a list I've made of iPad Apps that are also on Android.

It's great that there are so many fantastic apps and websites for creating digital productions. It's important for students to have a choice in how they show their learning. As the teacher, you get to decide if the world is their oyster or if they choose from a menu of options. Either way, having choice is an effective way to motivate students. Harvard Business Review wrote about a study that concludes that "when we chose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome-by a factor of five to one."

Another reason to give choices is that tools disappear. Companies may be sold, close down, or change business models. This has certainly happened to popular apps and sites like Posterous, Vizify, Ask3, Xtranormal, and Fotopedia. Having a selection of tools means that when one goes missing, you can choose to use a different one.

Make It Sticky

Have you read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath? I have, and I think the the Heath brothers' research on what makes a sticky idea can help improve student productions. A sticky idea is one that an audience can understand, remember, and retell. Those sound like traits we want to see in our students' products!

The authors have identified six traits for stickiness. The more traits used in a production, the stickier that communication will be. Chip and Dan Heath's SUCCES model does not successfully spell the word success, but it can help students make their project more successful. I explain the SUCCES model in this infographic.

Productions can also be made stickier by having compelling illustrations. I've produced a video for teachers and students about using free images. The video demonstrates three websites for finding images that you can legally use in your media without having to ask permission. A transcript with web links is available.

So Refined

There's always a way to make a production even better. With peer, teacher, and maybe even expert input, students can revise their project to make their ideas concise and more meaningful to their audience. Because of time restraints, we often do not build in time for students to iterate on their projects. They turn it in for a grade and the class is on to their next unit of study. However, scheduling time for revision can make productions really shine. Getting the details just right and upping the level of craftsmanship makes for a product that students are very proud to show off and a product that is appreciated by its audience.

Because time is a huge constraint, be proactive by setting students up for success. When my students produced videos, I required them to meet with me before filming began. We'd review their scripts and storyboards to be sure that the content was just right. Also, I could give them tips for producing their videos. If I gave them these tips after filming, they would have to redo a lot of video, which would be a massive time eater. For other projects, it might make sense for students to run their drafts by their peers. Additionally, students may be able to Skype/Hangout/FaceTime with an expert and get their feedback before proceeding with their productions. Charity Allen and John Larmer have written about using Gallery Walks to improve student work. They quote Ron Berger who says we want feedback to be "kind, specific, and helpful."

A14: After sharing projects with the class, students KNOW how they did compared to peers. Often will want to refine it themselves #BYOTchat
- Ashley Cross (@Ashly2499) March 1, 2013

Since there is always a way to make a production better, students could spend weeks and weeks revising. There's certainly not time for that. So at some point the project does need to be finished. It may not be absolutely polished, and that's a-ok. Kevin Honeycutt and I recently had a conversation about the time it takes for perfection. "Perfect is the enemy of done," he declared succinctly.

Assessing It

A project's rubric or checklist is not only a method for determining a grade for a project, but it can be a guide to help refine the project.

I once knew a teacher who had a pile of student projects sitting on her desk. After I saw that the pile had not moved in a couple weeks, I asked her about it. She said her students were bugging her about their grades for the project. I asked what was the hold up in grading. She said she was slow at developing the rubric, which was keeping her from assessing the projects. Yikes! That means her students were blindly doing their projects, not knowing how they were going to be evaluated. They were without clear guidelines on how to refine a project to meet its goals and standards.

You don't have to start from scratch to develop your assessment, but you really should have your assessment ready at the start of the project. You can create rubrics and checklists with help from:

Incorporating student input into a project's criteria is a great way to get them involved. And, they might have some really good ideas to add after they have critiqued sample productions.

I hear so often "the process is more important than the product." However, the product is the manifestation of the process. And in the real world, the product matters more than the process. Take my iPad app, Stick Around. People who pay $2.99 for the product really don't care about the development process we went through and the 1.5 years it took to author it. They care about the product they have installed on their iPads, not about everything we did to get it into the App Store. End products do matter. So I think that a project's assessment should certainly evaluate the end product. Students are also learning and practicing valuable skills (the "process"), so those can also be assessed, too.

And remember, frequent feedback is best. I already mentioned why early feedback can save time and make for better projects. If you are assessing collaboration skills, then you can't wait for the conclusion of the project to assess those. You might have daily self-assessments, make periodic observations, and conduct peer reviews.

Truthfully, my fifth graders' usually earned As on their projects. That's because they knew exactly how I was going to grade the projects before they ever began working on them. I constantly checked in with them to make sure they were on the right track. If their end product wasn't the best it could be, I gave students opportunities to revise before their final assessment.

Watch the video from Edutopia about embedding assessment through the project.

Getting the Word Out

Today we have many avenues for sharing student work. There are blogs, websites, eBooks, YouTube, and social media. Alan November believes, "Teachers need to stop saying 'Hand it in,' and start saying, 'Publish it,' instead."

If you have a class website, that's probably a great place to publish. Or, consider using sites like KidsBlog, Blogger, Weebly, or Google Sites. Keep in mind that the tool that students use might already have its own method of publishing. For example, Shadow Puppet Edu can upload right to get-puppet.co You can paste that URL into another site or use the provided embed code to insert it right into another webpage.

Publishing is just the first step for getting an audience. The intended audience needs to know that the production exists. You might even include the promotion of the end product as part of the project. Some ways to get the word out about the production include:

Pasting the link to the product into a QR code: Post that QR code around school, and put it brochures, postcards, and newsletters.

Posting the link on Twitter Facebook, Pinterest, and/or Google Plus: Figure out what hashtags your intended audience might use and include those. Using hashtags like #comments4kids, #pbl, and #pblchat can get projects in front of other educators' eyeballs.

Collating all projects into one page: ThingLink is handy for doing this in a visual way. Here's an example.

Scheduling a red carpet premiere of videos: Invite parents and the community to see what students have created. Don't forget the popcorn.

Having a TED Talk night: Students deliver short, well rehearsed presentations to an audience.

Reflect on It

John Dewey knew that reflection is essential to learning. He asserted, "We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."

You might reserve time for students to reflect daily on their progress and collect those reflections in a journal or as an exit ticket. You for sure want to have time for students to reflect at the end of the project. By reviewing their process and their product, they can really consider what went well and what to do better next time.

Edutopia has a list of 40 reflection questions that look back, inward, and outward. I used many of these questions to make my random reflection question link. Clicking this link will take you to one of 30 reflection questions I've programmed into the HTML. Students in small groups can call up a question and explain their answers to their peers. For even more fun, take a look at the dice I made as a way for students to express their response to the reflection questions.

Don't forget that you as the teacher should also reflect on the project. Write down your thoughts and things you want to remember for the next project.

You Know Better Than Anyone

The productions your students make depend on their abilities and interests and the availability of resources and time. As the teacher, you get to juggle all the variables to guide students toward quality end products that serve as evidence of learning. Yes, it takes a lot of class time to do project based learning. And, you probably can't teach everything through a project. But a project may be an excellent instructional strategy for some of the content and skills your students need to learn.

When I taught fifth grade, my students were often actively involved in projects. So much so that a fourth grade teacher down the hall confronted me in the teachers lounge one day. She looked at me over her glasses, slowly shook her head, and said, "Tony, it seems every time I pass by your classroom, you aren't teaching."

She and I obviously have different definitions of teaching. I believe a teacher is much more than a dispenser of information-it's a teacher's job to create learning experiences. Chances are those experiences do not involve quiet classrooms with all eyes on the teacher. In project based learning, the teachers does less standing in front of the room and more coaching, modeling, and mentoring with individuals and small groups. Formulating a project and guiding students through inquiry, sharing, and reflecting is a lot of work. Outsiders don't see all that work by just glancing into a classroom.

Krissy Venosdale observes, "A good chapter in a textbook prepares kids for a test. A great authentic learning experience prepares students for life." Put simply, time and energy for project based learning is well worth it!

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Creating Products to Show and Share Learning

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Nowadays students have a variety of ways to show what they know and to express themselves. Let's take a look at sample projects and some of the hottest apps for showing, explaining, and retelling. These tools can turn students into teachers and are great for sharing their answers to a project's driving question.

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make anything talk

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Create ChatterPix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. And best of all, it's FREE! AGES: 5-12.

NOTE: For adults, check out our "ChatterPix" app for more fun and sharing via email and social media.

CATEGORY: Creative Expression

TOOLS: 22 stickers, 10 frames and 11 photo filters

ABOUT DUCK DUCK MOOSE
(A subsidiary of Khan Academy)
Duck Duck Moose, an award-winning creator of educational mobile apps for families, is a passionate team of engineers, artists, designers, and educators. Founded in 2008, the company has created 21 top-selling titles and has received 21 Parents' Choice Awards, 18 Children's Technology Review Awards, 12 Tech with Kids' Best Pick App Awards, and a KAPi award for "Best Children's App" at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Duck Duck Moose is now part of the Khan Academy family. Like all Khan Academy offerings, all Duck Duck Moose apps are now 100% free, without ads or subscriptions.

For kids ages 2-6, don't miss Khan Academy Kids, our new early learning app to help young children with reading, writing, math and social-emotional development!

We'd love to hear from you! Visit us at www.duckduckmoose.com or drop us a line at support@duckduckmoose.com.

Version 1.3.7

Thanks for learning with us! We have some big news!

We've launched a new learning app for kids 2-7 called Khan Academy Kids. It's 100% FREE with no ads or subscriptions needed.

This new version of ChatterPix Kids includes some small bug fixes. Please update today!

Many Ways To Use

There are many ways to use this fun app for education. I would give it the fifth star if there was a way to turn off the Duck, Duck, Moose intro that plays every time the app is opened. Try hearing that times twenty in a class of kids!!!

Love it

Just finished downloading this App and I already love it! It's incredibly easy to use and lots of fun! With this App you can have anyone or anything say what you want it to! You have 3 options to choose from, take a picture, download one from your phone or use one that is already on the App. Then you draw a smile, record what ever you want! You can also add decorations, words or frames to make your pic a one of a kind! There are endless possibilities with this App so you won't get bored. Best of all it comes from a division of Khan Academy so you know it's safe and educational for everyone! P.S. it's also free to download but don't let the App writers know how great this App is or they may start charging! LOL

AMAZING APP

I think this app is amazing. I am using it for class it makes things a lot more enjoyable. Also it helps teachers and students. It helps my class because we are doing a writing on animals and we are using the app to share are reports on our animals. It is also fun to play with friends on the app. But, one thing I'd change though would be to I have more time to say what you want to say.

The developer, Duck Duck Moose LLC, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

No Details Provided

The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.

Information

Seller

Duck Duck Moose LLC

Compatibility

Requires iOS 9.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Copyright

© Duck Duck Moose, LLC

Family Sharing

With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.

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‎Create ChatterPix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. And best of all, it's FREE! AGES: 5-12. NOTE: For adults, check out our "ChatterPix" app for more fun and sharing via email and social media. CATEGORY: Creative Expression T...

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animated avatars

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teach anything to anyone anywhere

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Educreations is a community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't. Our software turns any iPad or web browser into a recordable, interactive whiteboard, making it easy for teachers and experts to create engaging video lessons and share them on the web.

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student portfolio

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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Modern educators know they work better when they work together. In fact, if you ask a teacher how they most prefer to learn they will say from other teachers. We use Word Online as we collaborate to create our grade level calendars, reports, and events flyers.

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polished presentations

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Polished Presentations with PowerPoint Online

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With Office Online, there are a host of applications to help students to be ready to give polished presentations. In this video, you will see how PowerPoint Online can help students collaborate and create professional presentations for an authentic audience. Visit https://education.microsoft.com to find out more about online courses for educators.

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how can students create quizzes for each other

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When it comes to preparing students for success, we can't leave out the flexibility and mobility of Office Forms with its ability to personalize learning. Discover how you can use Office Forms for more than assessment with this video. Visit eduction.microsoft.com to find out more about online courses for educators.

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story telling on a comic strip

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Ways to Use Technology for Teaching and Learning

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Ways to Use Technology for Teaching and Learning

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A Cavalcade of Inspiring Ideas for Kicking up Learning and Enhancing Engagement in Your Classroom!

There are enough ideas, resources, and (mostly) free tools here to keep you exploring and learning all year long. Have at it!

1. Get Your Students Creating

There is just no limit to the way that students can use the endless free resources available on the Web to create! You probably also have other creative applications on the computers or devices in your classroom, library, or computer lab. For lots of creative of ideas, check out this list of " 60 Things Students Can Create To Demonstrate What They Know " from our friends at TeachThought.com.

2. Get Real Time Feedback

If there are devices at your student's disposal, using them to let students provide real time feedback has never been easier. In fact, your students don't even need devices (have you heard about Plickers?)! Check out these " Top 5 Student Response Systems that Work on Multiple Platforms" to learn more about the excellent free tools that teachers are using every day to gather feedback or give brief quizzes, etc. If your students don't have devices at their disposal, check out how you can use free Plickers instead!

3. Collaborate

Collaboration is a vital 21st century skill, and collaborating via the web with your students can be free and easy! Here's a nice set of tools and ideas for using them, to help get you started: " 8 EdTech Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Interactive Classroom Collaboration ".

4. Augment Reality

2015 was an awesome year for Augmented Reality tools for the classroom. Here are " 9 Amazing Augmented Reality Apps for Teaching and Learning". This article offers videos showing how some teachers and students are using these types of apps. Then find even more AR apps for the classroom here!

5. Gamify It

We've all heard the buzz about "gamification". How can you take advantage of this concept with your students? One fun way is to create a PowerPoint Jeopardy game relevant to the content you teach. Here are some templates and ideas for using them. Another popular game that is taking the classroom by storm is Minecraft - they even have an education-dedicated site and resources over at MinecraftEDU.com.

6. Meet Your Maker

The Maker Movement and Maker Spaces got a lot of attention over the last year, and deservedly so ... when students create, they learn! Here's a fun way to give maker education a try in your classroom, from Jackie Gerstein. Learn more in her article, " Reflecting on the Making Process ".

7. Make it ... in 3D!

If you have a 3D printer in your school, or maybe one in a nearby library, you can consider printing something in 3D - your students will probably be amazed (mine were)! What can you print that can help fit into what you are teaching? This list of 21 Cool Things Teachers and Students Have Built With 3D Printers will probably give you some ideas. Just keep in mind that if you are not already familiar with 3D printing, you're going to need some help from someone who is.

8. Create Collaboratively

One of the funnest ways to use collaborative tools in the classroom is to create with them! Google Drive is a hugely popular free solution that allows you and your students to collaborate on the creation of documents, worksheets, presentations, and more. Or try a collaborative interactive whiteboard like Twiddla or one of the many other IWBs in this article (be sure to check the comments for lots of additional suggestions from readers). These are just a few of the possibilities for creative collaboration in the classroom!

9. Let Them Choose

Giving students choices can be a significant motivator (check out Larry Ferlazzo's, " The Power of Choice ", to learn more about this vital aspect of student engagement). When you are selecting tools and ways to utilize them, but sure to offer choices. Offer a selection of topics, approaches, apps, and techniques when creating assignments and projects, and students are sure to feel more involved and take more ownership of their learning.

10. Enhance Their Writing Skills

The Web is full of tools, resources, and ideas that can give your students opportunities to develop their writing skills. One of my favorite techniques is Crystal Kirch's WSQ technique, which is a great way to help ensure that students engage with learning content, and it also gets them writing. Here are some additional student writing tools, apps, and techniques for further exploration.

11. Video It

Creating video can be so much fun for students, it incorporates an array of skills, and it has never been easier! I love the Student Showcase we do each fall at the Teaching and Learning with the iPad Conference in Raleigh, NC, where young students are always demonstrating the awesome movies they've made with iMovie. I vividly recall the first time I saw some of these back in 2013, from Fuquay Varina Elementary School school students. Here is one of these movies, from students Sekou, Camren, and Colin. I also watched professional quality newscasts, and short movies, created by Franklin Academy high school students. Several of these well-spoken students demonstrated some of the equipment and tools that they used to create this content in this presentation.

12. Go Global

We can now bring the world into our classroom with such ease! Try a virtual field trip, like these from the Nature Conservatory, or explore the world with EarthCam. Bring remote guests into your classroom with Skype, or participate in a Google Hangout with Connected Classrooms. The possibilities are limitless!

13. Go Mobile

Students can now learn via mobile devices in ways never before possible. They can also use those mobile devices to do so many fun educational things in and out of the classroom! Consider trying a geocaching assignment, for example. The article, " R U Engaging Your Students? Strategies and Tools for the Texting Generation ", offers a broad set of additional ideas for putting those mobile devices to use.

14. Animate it

Applications like GoAnimate, Voki, and Tellagami can be used by teachers and by students to create fun animated presentations. Students can have a blast using tools like these for assignments and projects without even realizing that they are developing writing skills and digital literacy. These platforms can also enable students to "present" without having to stand up on in front of a group, which can help younger students in particular gain skills and confidence without being overwhelmed by public speaking.

15. Get Your Groups On

Group activities help to build the vital 21st century collaboration, communication, and teamwork skills increasingly sought in today's schools and work places. Create group projects that let students use different talents and assume different rules. Split up responsibility for researching, designing, creating, documenting, and presenting. Partner students to create and critique each others' work. Try some of these " 7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects " to teach students how to coordinate group efforts. Group work can take many forms, and tech tools can play a role in many of those activities.

16. Flip It

The Flipped Classroom is a powerful teaching and learning construct that has been made possible largely by digital technologies. Create a digital lesson, or use some of the amazing content that is already available online, and give the flip a try (just be sure to plan for how you will use the class time that you free up, which is what it is ultimately all about)! Check out this three part series of articles to get a good overview of the flipped classroom from published experts.

17. Improve Student Reading Comprehension

Tools like Newsela are brilliant examples of the powerful role education technology can play in facilitating reading comprehension (which is more of a challenge than ever, given today's students' love for video). Check out this article, " Literacy in the Digital Age: Five Sites With High-Quality Informational Text ", to learn about a handful of tools similar to Newsela.

18. Make it a Project

Project Based Learning does not have to incorporate technology, but tech can readily play a role in PBL. Of course, it is also important to understand the difference between projects, per se, and true PBL. This quote from the TeachThought article, " The Difference Between Projects And Project-Based Learning ", says it well: "While project-based learning (PBL) also features projects, in PBL the focus is more on the process of learning and learner-peer-content interaction that the end-product itself."

19. Present it

Developing and delivering presentations is a common element in many of today's Higher Education classrooms, and they are finding their way into high schools and even lower grades, as K-12 schools further embrace 21st century skills. While Powerpoint remains widely popular, there are a growing number of alternative tools finding a place in both academia and the business world. One of those is PowToon (I'm a fan!), and they have shared 9 other alternatives in their article, " 10 Best Powerpoint Alternatives" (if you get a pop up encouraging you to try a free account, just look for the "x" to click on to return to the article).

20. Try a Webquest!

Have you tried a Webquest yet? Webquest.org explains, "A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web." Zunal.com is a site that has a bunch of WebQuests, perfect for exploring and learning more! I have to admit, this is pretty new to me. When I write an article like this, I am always looking to learn new things too, and while most of these ideas are off the top of my head based on things I am already aware of, this was a new one! Can't wait to give it a shot.

21. Comics and Cartooning

I came away from the 2014 Teaching and Learning with the iPad conference with two huge takeways ... the power of Digital Storytelling (thank you Kathy Schrock ... more on this below), and an appreciation and awareness of the existence of good free comics and cartoon apps (thank you Emily Wierszewski!). Check out " Dozens of Ways to Use Comics and Cartoons in the Classroom" and " 20 Free Tools for Making Comics and Cartoons for Teaching and Learning" for everything you ever needed to know about the topic but were afraid to ask! (After you look those over, check out the video for my original song, Lotto Dust, to see how I had a blast creating a video using Pixton and some other tools!).

22. Code it

Yes, we're fans of coding as a learning tool. Unfortunately, many teachers may be functioning under a few misconceptions about what coding entails. The fact is, coding constructs can be fun and probably a lot simpler than you might have imagined. One of the most popular uses of coding in the classroom these days is coding small robotic devices, and it is very popular in young grades because it is not very hard and it's fun! This article from Vicki Davis's Cool Cat Teacher site, " Top Tips for Teaching With Robots (Using Spero) ", provides a good introduction to using one of these products in the classroom.

23. Set up a 'Back Channel'

Ever had a student who was totally reluctant to participate in classroom conversations? Of course you have (you've probably had dozens or even hundreds of them). One fun way to leverage tech in the classroom is to create a "back channel" where all of your students, even those reluctant to speak up in class, can participate in the dialogue around a subject. Twitter is a very popular tool for doing this. "MaggieV" explains how in this post on her "School 2.0 in South Africa" blog.

24. Tell a Story

Kathy Schrock is an original. She was one of the first edtech bloggers to rise to popularity, and it's no surprise since she really knows her stuff! I thoroughly enjoyed her Keynote presentation at TLIPAD 2014, and wrote this article about it: " The Power of Digital Storytelling, With Kathy Schrock (plus a Zillion Resources!)". I often reach back to these resources for inspiration for lesson content, and as a reference when I am writing articles for the site here. There are a wealth of insights in that article, and Kathy's Digital Storytelling web page provides many tools and resources that both students and teachers can use to incorporate digital story telling into classroom work.

25. Reinforce it with an Exit Ticket Activity

The "Exit Ticket" is a great opportunity to help students begin to reinforce learning. There are many tech tools that are great for creating Exit Ticket activities. TeachThought offers these " 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips ".

26. Sharing is Caring

As long as you have their permission, sharing student work can be very exciting for students, parents, and teachers! Just think of the artwork hanging in the halls of K-12 schools all over the world. The digital equivalent of this can be accomplished through school web sites, teacher web pages, and other online means. One related tool that is gaining increased exposure in both K-12 and higher ed is the Digital Portfolio. In 2015, K-12 eportofilio app SeeSaw earned a lot of notice. To my way of thinking, in higher education it should be a requirement for students to share their best work and use it to bolster their employment opportunities.

27. App Smash it!

Have you App Smashed yet? You probably have and may not even have realized it! For example, if you create content in one app and then modify or distribute it in another, this is a form of App Smashing. And you know it sounds like fun - you can just envision student's eyes lighting up when you say the phrase right?! "App Smashing!". Here are " 6 Amazing Apps Smash Examples to Inspire Creativity ", from ThingLink.

Well, there you have it - 27 powerful ideas for integrating technology into lessons, assignments, projects, etc., in fun, meaningful ways. And if these tools and ideas aren't enough to keep you busy exploring and having fun with your students throughout the year, be sure to stop back regularly for more great ideas, tools, and resources!

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27 Meaningful (and Fun) Ways to Use Technology for Teaching and Learning

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There are enough ideas, resources, and (mostly) free tools here to keep you exploring and learning all year long. Have at it! There is just no limit to the way that students can use the endless free resources available on the Web to create!