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TeachThought – A Critical Thinking Classroom

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TeachThought promotes critical thinking and innovation in K-12 classrooms

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

The benefits of movement in the classroom aren't limited to younger students. Pairing new words and concepts with gestures or dance moves locks in understanding-and active brain breaks prime students to learn even more.

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A free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education.

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How To Use Canva For BEGINNERS! (Canva Tutorial 2020)

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YouTube Channel

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"pocketful of primary" "teacher vlogger" "edtech made easy" "michelle ferre" pocketfulofprimary "michelle emerson" "teacher vlog"

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TEACHER | VLOGGER | TPTER | ORGANIZER I'm an actual Capella student compensated for posting about my experience at Capella. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Find me on my other social media platforms: INSTAGRAM: @pocketfulofprimary FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/PocketfulofP... PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/pocketfulof... BLOG: www.pocketfulofprimary.com

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A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

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The exact skills you need

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IXL | Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Spanish

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IXL is the world's most popular subscription-based learning site for K-12. Used by over 15 million students, IXL provides personalized learning in more than 10,000 topics, covering math, language arts, science, social studies, and Spanish. Interactive questions, awards, and certificates keep kids motivated as they master skills.

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Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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The most engaging technology tools take learning to the next level. They give our students the opportunity to be creative and actively participate in their learning. What makes these tools so engaging is that they are interactive, and we all know that when students are in the driver's seat, they take the wheel. If they are sitting in the backseat, they zone out. We picked the 10 best tech tools for student engagement, keeping these goals in mind.

Goal: I want to make note-taking more exciting and collaborative for my students.

If your students complain that taking notes is boring and tedious, the Logitech Pen (for Chromebook) and Logitech Crayon (for iPad) are some of the best tech tools for student engagement. Kids can write, draw, sketch, and annotate digitally without losing the retention benefit that handwritten note-taking provides. They also encourage student collaboration since they pair automatically and can be used with multiple devices at once.

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Goal: I want my students to have fun and move during class.

Brain breaks and mindfulness are so effective in helping our students take a break and refocus. Go Noodle is hands down the best tool for this. We love using these videos as warm-ups and closers too. Indoor recess? No problem, Go Noodle!

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Goal: I want my students to have fun while I find out what they know.

It's been around since 2013, and the reason is that Kahoot! is so much fun and students love it. You create (or choose from existing) games, and students play together on their own devices.

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Goal: I want to create a classroom community for my students and their families.

When our students feel like they belong, they are engaged in learning. To create a community online, Class Dojo is the best tool. There are so many features we love, like the morning meet app, think/pair/share app, the class storyboard that you can fill with posts and videos and share with parents, and the positive points you can give students.

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Goal: I want to make reviewing for quizzes and tests more engaging.

I don't know a student who doesn't love playing Jeopardy. It's so much more fun than flipping through flashcards or completing a study guide on paper. This tool is so quick and easy to use. You can create a Jeopardy-style quiz board in just a few minutes.

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Goal: I want my students to get creative in telling their stories.

Some of the most magical classroom moments are when students create and tell a story and then celebrate it by sharing it with each other. These publishing parties were some of my favorite teaching memories. If you do the writer's workshop model and are looking for a tool to help bring your students' creations to life, this is it. Students select artwork from professional artists and create a book. Plus, there are over 700 creative challenges students all over the world participate in.

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Goal: I want my students to see themselves as writers and get excited about writing.

So often, our students feel like writing is a talent they have or lack. They don't realize that it is a muscle that they can develop through practice. When we call our students writers, and introduce them to the same practices that professional writers use, it's engaging. Kidblog is such a great tool because it's a platform for students to consistently publish their writing. Best part, it's safe, and there are opportunities for students to share their writing with classmates and students all over the world.

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Goal: I want to make my lessons more interactive and fun.

There's a reason why Nearpod is so popular; it works. I've never met a teacher who didn't like using it because it takes what you already have (Google Slides, Powerpoint, YouTube Video) and makes it interactive. From polls to game-based quizzes, virtual reality, and simulations, there are so many ways to bring your students from passive recipients to active learners.

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Goal: I want to use gamification and incentives to engage my students.

There's a reason why games engage students. They choose to play them on their own time. Whenever we can integrate how our kids like to play and have fun with their learning, engagement takes place. We love this tool because high schoolers created it. It's a classroom game-show platform where students own virtual currency they can "invest" during the game to boost their score.

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Goal: I want to help my students get to know each other and bond.

We love this app for icebreakers and interactive team building. You can use it to set up scavenger hunts where you put students on teams, and they work together to find different objects you assign. They take a photo of the objects and post them on the app. Best part: the app does the hard work for you and keeps track of points, so you can declare a winner at the end.

What are your favorite tech tools for student engagement? Share in the comments below!

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The 10 Best Tech Tools For Student Engagement

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The most engaging technology tools take learning to the next level. They give our students the opportunity to be creative and actively participate in their learning. What makes these tools so engaging is that they are interactive, and we all know that when students are in the driver's seat, they take the wheel.

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Research

6 Key Technologies Moving Teaching and Learning Forward in 2021

Educause's latest Horizon Report outlines the biggest trends shaping teaching and learning this year. In particular, the report identified six technologies and practices that are key to higher education institutions' future planning, whether those topics are newly emerging or evolving from previous years. They are topics that can come, go and return to Horizon Reports from year to year "more organically, reflecting the most current issues," the report explained. In this year's list of key technologies, the categories of artificial intelligence, open educational resources, and learning analytics have made a repeat appearance in the report. They are joined by three new categories: blended and hybrid course models, quality online learning, and microcredentialing. Here are the top six technologies and practices to watch for 2021.

Artificial intelligence. AI is appearing throughout higher education teaching and learning, the report said, touching areas such as learning management systems, proctoring, assessment, student information systems, office productivity, library services, admissions, disability support, mobile apps and more. In most cases, it is used to "address standing or current challenges in teaching, learning, and learner success." Problems of bias in AI technology and the ethics of data capture persist, however, making it essential for higher education not only to be a careful and ethical user of AI, but also to reimagine the teaching mission to better serve students "in a world in which AI is well on its way to becoming commonplace."

Open educational resources. "The global pandemic threw in to stark relief the growing importance of open educational resources," the report asserted. As courses rapidly shifted online, faculty and students turned to digital materials that are free or low-cost and accessible from anywhere, on any device. Still, "it remains to be seen if the pandemic will have any lasting impact on awareness and adoption once students begin returning to face-to-face instruction."

Learning analytics. The report pointed out that learning analytics can be used by many different areas and roles within higher ed institutions. "In addition to instructors, it's common for academic advisors, department chairs, offices of access or disability services, and other areas of academic support to use learning analytics to better understand and interpret the needs and challenges of learner populations." At the same time, with the broad availability and use of data comes ethical issues, including "transparency, data ownership and control, accessibility of data, validity and reliability of data, institutional responsibility and obligation to act, communications, cultural values, inclusion, consent, and student agency and responsibility."

Blended and hybrid course models. The pandemic accelerated the evolution of online and blended learning models, "forcing higher education to become inventive and create an array of new course models to cope with a truly unique situation," the report said. Both students and faculty have had to adapt their practices, and even classroom spaces themselves have needed retrofitting to accommodate new hybrid models. The questions is, post-pandemic will institutions retain these new models, return to more traditional in-person education or pursue some kind of middle ground? The opportunity, the report said, is for higher education to "find the right balance point to best serve its teaching and learning mission."

Quality online learning. Institutions have employed a variety of strategies to help faculty design quality courses and teach effectively online: templates, self-directed courses, consultation, resource hubs of curated materials and more. "Many faculty discovered that teaching online meant more than simply replicating the face-to-face experience through Zoom," the report said, noting that adhering to quality standards is key to improving the online learning experience. After going through the initial move to emergency online instruction, institutions have needed to renew their focus on quality and begin a "more deliberate transformational process that ensures the instructional content is student centered, aligned with programmatic learning outcomes, accessible to all learners, and effectively designed and delivered."

Microcredentialing. Quickly becoming a "mainstay of the higher education landscape, microcredentials are defined as programs of study that "verify, validate, and attest that specific skills and/or competencies have been achieved," the report explained. They are "generally offered in shorter or more flexible timespans and tend to be more narrowly focused" than traditional degrees or certificates. In particular, microcredentials will play a key role in workforce training, as "workforce needs continue to evolve due to changes in technology infrastructure and the resulting upskilling and re-skilling of the workforce." Institutions will need to "rethink their curriculum development processes, the relationships between their credit and noncredit programs, and the ways in which they are serving an increasingly diverse audience of learners," as they "map the trajectory of their response to workforce needs."

The full report and additional materials can be accessed on the 2021 Horizon Project research hub.

About the Author

About the author: Rhea Kelly is executive editor for Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected] .

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6 Key Technologies Moving Teaching and Learning Forward in 2021 -- Campus Technology

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Educause's latest Horizon Report outlines the biggest trends shaping teaching and learning this year. In particular, the report identified six technologies and practices that are key to higher education institutions' future planning, whether those topics are newly emerging or evolving from previous years.

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