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Epic! - the leading digital library for kids, where kids can explore their interests and learn with instant, unlimited access to 25,000 high-quality ebooks, audiobooks, learning videos, and quizzes for kids 12 and under.  Books for ages 4 and up.  One reviewer said, "It's the Netflix for kids books."  I think epic is good for school because every book you read you can take the AR test and they're all books at the library at our school.  This would be useful for novels that we read every year.  Our books are getting really worn down and this would be a more interactive resource for my students.

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Quizlet is a mobile and web-based study application. Quizlet is one of the biggest vocabulary and flashcard learning websites on the net. It has flashcards and vocabulary sets for a wide-range of subjects. At its most basic, Quizlet provides students (and teachers) with the ability to create, use, share and rebuild vocabulary lists and provides various tools for study.  Anyone can use Quizlet to study and learn content created by other users, or to create your own custom study sets. You can also share sets with friends or classmates.

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Skitch is a free app that helps you communicate visually with friends, co-workers, and the world. Annotate images with arrows, shapes, and text. Use Skitch to sketch something new, mark up maps. Skitch allows students to take pictures, write on it, decorate it, direct it to someone else, and even use emoji on it.  With Skitch you can get your point across and make projects your own quickly.  It allows the student to capture, annotate and share what you see on the Web with a screen snap. They can also mark up photos to share their thoughts with classmates and teachers. Users can bring in items straight from your clipboard, or start out with a blank canvas and create a custom image of your own.  This is useful in my science classes where I see four rotations a day.  Thoughts, ideas, and information from one class can be shared with another without ever being in the same classroom.  Available for Android and iOS products for free.
Julie Robertson

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A Kahoot is a collection of questions on specific topics. Created by teachers, students, business-people and social users, they are asked in real-time, to an unlimited number of “players”, creating a social, fun and game-like learning environment.  It's a compelling and oh-so-easy way to engage kids in pre- and formative-assessment activities. The teacher could use it as an Exit Ticket following a lesson or as a unit test.  The handy part of it is that the teacher and students get instant results.  It takes a little time on the front end to enter the questions and answers. It is then saved for future use.  It is interactive and each of my students can access it from their Chromebook in class. You could even have students take over the review process or class discussion by rotating responsibility for making the weekly quiz.
Julie Robertson

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Skype is a useful way to virtually bring experts into the classroom and to help students make real world connections to what they are learning. Skype is a VoIP service, which uses the Internet to allow people to make and receive free voice and video calls online for free or for cheap. In my classroom I have used this for my Project Based Learning (PBL) units.  My students were able to get advice from a master gardener before and during planting.  Skype is software that enables you to make free calls anywhere in the world. Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other users. It offers several features, including SkypeOut calling from Skype to regular and mobile phones worldwide, conference calling, and secure file transferring. You can also now share your screen with other users. Skype calls focus on video and audio quality, and secure the calls with end-to-end encryption.
Julie Robertson

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Twitter's Vine app is a tool that allows users to send six-second looping video clips. These videos capture and share videos in a creative and fun way.  Vine states that Vine creators have helped to shape pop culture. Aside Blog - Innovation Design in Education, has listed 20 ways educators could use this free application in their classrooms.  Vine would be a great tool for teaching the Reusing and Repurposing digital literacy.  This app allows students to take a concept and rework it to serve a new purpose.  Aside Blog (theasideblog.blogspot.com) lists applications and projects educators could choose from using Vine. A few include, Think-Pair-Share in the virtual world, designing a mini-book trailer, recite famous quotations.  See link above for the full list.

Kimberly Cummings

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Common Sense Media is a great resource for teachers. The Sharing and Collaborating digital literacy encompasses social networking on web-based document platforms, e-portfolios, and multiuser virtual environments. Becoming knowledgable in digital citizenship is an important tool for students in grades K-12. Digital Citizenship empowers students to make safe, smart, and ethical decisions online. This resource offers a scope and sequence by grade and subject.  You will find lesson plans, videos, interactive games, and assessments on Internet Safety, Privacy and Security, Relationships and Communication, Cyberbullying and Digital Drama, Digital Footprints and Reputation, Self-Image and Identity, Information Literacy, and Creative Credit and Copyright.  There is even information for families.
Kimberly Cummings

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Readwritethink.org has many great features including some that foster the Locating and Filtering digital literacy.  This website includes resources that allow students to learn how to research topics for informational writing.  There are lessons for the primary grades that teach what quality information is and important non-fiction features.  The Animal Inquiry interactive application is designed to enhance inquiry and research at the elementary level.  It includes follow up writing prompts that can be used to organize questions as well as record student findings.  I really like the feature of this tool that guides students with the critical steps between research and actually writing the report.

Kimberly Cummings

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Trello is a tool that can be used to create an orderly sense of information that would otherwise be fragmented and scattered.  This supports the digital literacy of Organizing and Curating.  This application allows you to work more collaboratively and get more done by enabling you to organize and prioritizing information.  Trello allows you to invite as many people to your board as you need.  Everyone sees the same board and the whole picture all at once.  Trello allows you to search, filter, and label your cards.  A feature included in Trello allows you to have access to sophisticated operators that help you narrow your search and create labels that help you categorize your cards so you can find and filter them for a later use.

Kimberly Cummings

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Seesaw is a digital tool that supports the digital literacy: Sharing and Collaborating. Seesaw is a data collecting application that creates portfolios of student learning. Seesaw is a great tool for students to independently document what they know with photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links.  Seesaw allows this information to be shared with families privately (QR code linked to student's Seesaw journal required).  Seesaw is also a great tool to use at parent-teacher conferences.  Seesaw has a feature that allows students to blog safely.  This option fosters the emergent literacies: Social Literacy (thriving in diverse social context) and Web Literacy (handling content and collaboration safely and productively). Students can use Seesaw to develop these 21st Century Skills by giving them a platform to collaborate with their peers, parents, and even other classrooms around the world. This can help them develop their digital citizenship skills as well.

Kimberly Cummings

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I see many Google products already listed, however classroom is not yet one of them. Google Classroom takes all of Google's offerings (Power Point, Word, Docs, etc) and combines that with the power of education. Google Classroom is free, requiring a Gmail account. I would argue that Google Classroom encompasses a few different digital literacies: Sharing & Collaborating, Organizing & Curating, and Creating & Generating.
Our school mostly uses Edmodo, however I just recently switched to Google Classroom for it's collaboration benefits, the ability to monitor my students work in real time, and the ability to go paperless. The benefits of Google Classroom are the ability to share Google Docs student-student, allowing collaboration and group work to be seamless and effortless. It is also accessible from anywhere with internet, which allows absent students to get ahead on missing work and parents to see what their students are working on.

Erin Enslow

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Storybird is an online tool that fits into organizing and curating. This online platform is free, and aims towards the creativity for young writers. In Storybird, teachers can set up a class and receive a code. students can join that class using the code, begin writing books/stories, and publish them for their peers to view. Storybird has multiple book options to choose from and have optional illustrations to include in the book. In my classroom, we use Storybird as a way to document our writing throughout the year. My students each create a book that is their portfolio of writing. Each time we finish a new writing piece they put it in their book as a "chapter". This works great for students to see their progression, as well as myself and parents.

Erin Enslow

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Explain Everything is an app that fits into the creating and generating digital literacy. Similar to Pixie, Explain Everything is a paid for app that my district provides students with access to. It has a similar feel to Pixie, with the ability to add voice narration to projects, doodles, internet pictures, text and more. This app is geared more towards upper elementary students, with many of my 5th graders preferring this over Pixie. Differentiation for abilities is easily integrated within the app. Students who have difficulty reading/writing can record themselves talking and provide pictures instead of written text. Students who are more visual can create a video of themselves talking/sharing information and post that to a portion of the presentation. In my classroom we use this frequently as a whiteboard. Students can solve math problems on this, circle their answer, and I can monitor on my iPad through Apple Classroom.

Erin Enslow

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Pixie is an app that fits into the creating and generating digital literacy. This app is great for differentiation! Pixie is an app that allows students to share ideas, understanding, and materials through text, voice, video, and images. Students are able to create a presentation (similar to a power point presentation) and record themselves narrating for each page or slide of the presentation. This is great for students who are shy or prefer not to talk in front of the entire class. Students can draw on the presentation or upload pictures, videos, or images from the internet. There are transitions between pages to keep engagement, and freedom to create whatever type of project necessary.

Erin Enslow

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Edmodo fits into the online tool that our school uses for teachers, students, and parents to all collaborate together. The online interface is similar to Facebook where students can post comments, pictures, and replies. As a teacher I can post directions, assignments, links, as well as monitor student access, posting, and comments. Parents can see assignments due, submissions their students have made, and comments/communication between students. Teachers can make multiple classes, for those who teach junior high or multiple subjects in a day. Students can join multiple classes, as well. This comes in handy when students are mainstreamed during the day, or if differentiation is happening. Students can easily navigate the app or website, as well as earn badges and awards.

Erin Enslow

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Wordle is an excellent visual tool, another name would be words cloud. Students simply go to the website; no email or user name is needed. They can type in their brainstorming words with their peers and put into the program. They can also personalize the style of the font, colors or background color. I use Wordle for my discussion or group brainstorm all the time. The more the word been mentioned, the larger the word will be shown in the final Wordle board. My students love to collect the Wordle prints because it helps them identify and review the key vocabulary and themes.

Xinyi (Sara) Liu

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Learning can take place anytime, anywhere. Teacher to student, student to student learning practice becomes no distance anymore with Zoom. My program(Distance Learning Chinese Class) is using Zoom for daily communication with students. Not only I meet my remote students through Zoom, my face to face students collaborate learning and practice through Zoom conference as well. Zoom is a very student-friendly tool. It is easy to use and allows teacher to interact with student not only through simple video calls, but also annotating in the blackboard, big group and small group discussions and collaborations.  Some of my student can join my class live even when they are in the airport waiting for the airplane, or when they are home and absent in school. With Zoom, everybody deserves a chance to learn regardless of your location.

Xinyi (Sara Liu)

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This is one of my favorite classroom tech tools. This tool a free assessment tool that let teachers create questions, monitor students’ progress, leave real-time feedback. It can also allow teachers to add videos, text, or whiteboard in their questions. This tool transforms your traditional worksheets or assignments digital. It also allows students to use multiple ways to show you their comprehension. The most exciting use of this tool is you can even flip your classroom. Formative can help you deliver instructions to students while they are home so you can practice while you and your students are together in the classroom. The real-time feedback not only simplify the teacher-student communication, but also allow teacher to data for parent conferences.

Xinyi (Sara) Liu

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I have been using Quizlet with my students for may years and often been chanllenged with a question: how to motivate students to develop better learning habit more effectively? The Quizlet Live takes the learning into another level. It is engaging, it is live, it is social. Simply clicking” Create Game”, it turns the flashcards set into a sense of excitement. This game allows my student from both face to face classroom and remote classroom to work together as teams. After the game is over, the screen will show vocabulary that students frequently missed and the ones they got right. This provides feedback on terms to review in the next class.

Xinyi (Sara) Liu

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I have been using Flipgrid with my World Language class for the past three years. This App build a community that allow student to share their thoughts, speech, learning moments and beyond. This is also a great formative assessment tool that is engaging student with fun videos. Flipgrid uses student videos to promote discussion and engagement. It allows for an entire class (of any size) to present a 90 second video response to teacher or student generated questions. The learning community can then interact with various postings by sending short messages or 'hearts' to show support of an idea. In this week’s reading, Dustin Summey introduced the Network Litercy. I think Flipgrid is such tool that build a safe network that “not only relevant to student’s personal interests” (D, Summey, 2013, page 9) but also benefit of all members.

Xinyi(Sara) Liu

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In my class we are beginning to use iMovie as a tool to use a story we have read in class and reuse the information to mix it up and recreate our own version. If you have seen “Whose line is it any way?” You will notice the comedians act out a certain idea and then improvise when given another idea. In our class we read chose an author of the month. As a game students act out various stories and have to improvise when we add a little swist to the plot. We have been doing this and realized we are missing an aspect of this opportunity, so we started recording them to create iMovies. Using iMovie we are able to take the original story and resuse it to create a new version through improvisation of changes of main story parts at random. This is a very fun activity that gets students working together and understanding various story parts for reading comprehension, as well as integrate technology. Being able to take an original source and repurpose for learning is a great tool to know and strive for digital literacy in “reusing and repurposing”. IMovie can also allow you to take video clips from other scources and “mash” them together for a presentation on a specific subject matter.

Jamie Secoda

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Creating and Generating is an important digital literacy for classrooms today. There is such a shift to Project Based learning that is geared around students, their needs and their interests, afterall  it is their education that they need to take ownership of. In using Glogster, students can create a multi-media snapshot of learning. Whether it be on a topic of choice or to show what they have learned as a culminating activity, Glogster is a user friendly and a quick way to show understanding. There are pre-made templates for individuals to use as well Glogster has a way to create a multi-media posters from scratch. As a teacher, one can take the various Glogsters received from students to fill the classroom environment with student work or organize them into a presentation or video to share to the whole class to deepen understanding on a topic. Teachers can also create basic Glogsters and have students continue to add to them, such as a definition or pictures to capture the depth of the lessons in the unit.

Jamie Secoda

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Creating and generating is a digital literacy tool that gives opportunities to create and generate content in multiple ways.  With the digital world we are able to express ourselves in more formats.  StoryboardThat is a digital tool that is very engaging for my students.  It gives them opportunities to  create comic strips about whatever topic they want or are assigned.  My students are able to set up scenes, characters and thought bubbles.  Through this tool they can create stories about content we have learned.  They can create prequels or alternate endings to stories they have read.  It is very interactive and they love sharing them.  Instead of always writing an essay they show their understanding through this manner.

Patricia Dias

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Organizing and curating is an important digital literacy to use in the classroom.  Organization is key in my classroom.  In the digital world it is important to be organized as well.  Lumio is a great resource for online research.  Lumio allows students to highlight important text, data, and images. In addition, it retains the source information.  This is an amazing tool because as students do their research, they are able to have all of their notes in an organized area. When they need start their research paper they just need to go to their collection about the specific topic they were researching.  They have all their important notes instantly and it saves the source information.  In addition it allow students to go back directly to the website where they got the information instantly.

Patricia Dias

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Epals is a great resource to collaborate with students around the world.  Besides having collaboration in the classroom, a huge benefit for my class would be to be able to collaborate with students in other countries that speak Spanish.  I teach at a dual immersion school and it would be great for my students to be able to communicate and do projects with students around the world.  It is another excellent opportunity for them to value that they are becoming bilingual and biliterate.  Epals gives opportunities to exciting project-based learning for language learning practice and cultural exchange.

Patricia Dias

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Sharing and collaborating is an essential digital literacy because we are in a time where sharing and collaborating is a great way to learn more from each other.  Not only can we share and collaborate locally but we can interact with people all over the world.  Technology has opened a lot of opportunities. Edublogs is a great resource for students to interact with one another.  Each student can start their own blog and reflect on what they have read.  They can also give opinions on topics and share what they have learned on different units.  I am looking forward to implementing this in my classroom because it gives students more opportunities to interact with each other.

Patricia Dias

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Google Search is the most used search engine on the World Wide Web.  It gives you results based on the priority of what you researched. This digital tool is part of the ¨ locating and filtering¨ digital literacy because it is a tool that helps you search all over the world wide web a specific topic.  There once was a time where we didn't have Google.  Now we have it at our fingertips and we are able to search whatever we want and we get results within seconds.  Google Search is a great resource for our students when doing online research on different topics.  I teach my 4th grade students how to find the best resources online.  We discuss why some sites are more relevant or valid than others.  It is important to teach our students how to get the most effective results.

Patricia Dias

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https://mm.tt/1008452065?t=SmYtd8KCZg The previous link was a example of a “Mind Meister” I created on Motivation. This application allows you to create a mind map on a topic to organize content in one location. “Mind Meister” also allows to take the “information overload” on a topic from locating and filtering and place in one location to reference and add as further inquiry occurs. Pictures, links and videos can be added to each mind map to curate information on the specific topic the map was created for. This a fun and easy way to organize information. I feel that older children would really benefit from having a “Mind Meister” created on specific topics to revert to when studying or recalling previous learning. I am excited to try this application with my Kindergarten students to create a map for addition strategies and link videos for them to access on student iPads during our choice center time.

Jamie Secoda

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I use Brain Pop Jr. as often as possible to present material being taught in class in a different way. My students love “Moby”! He is the robot on each video clip that aides in learning the topic at hand. Students are able to watch these mini clips during choice time activities to enhance their learning. Each video displays great visuals for them to make connections to concepts taught. Brain Pop Jr. is the primary version of Brain Pop that has the same concept, but for upper grade learning content. For example today, we were able to watch the video called “100” to help understand what the number 100 means and represents to enhance our 100th day of school celebration.
Brain Pop Jr. is used in my classroom as a “locating and filtering” digital literacy because students and teachers alike search for and locate specific content in relation to topics being discussed in the classroom.

Jamie Secoda

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At my school each classroom runs a private facebook page to share upcoming events and pictures from class and family projects. Facebook is a platform of social media that connects people. This is a “sharing and collaborating” digital literacy because we use this page to share. Each week selected students take home a “take home” activity, which in our class are the following:
1. Flat “Charlie”
2. Woodstock
3. Unpacking Yourselvles- Family Member Sharing
4. Estimation Jar
Families will upload pictures, videos or write posts to share their adventures. Then we use these posts as tools when the children present to their peers. We often add Facebook polls on our page to take quick surveys for immediate collaborative feedback from parents, or students.

Jamie Secoda

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“Green Screen by Do Ink” allows students to create their own stories through the use of video, photos, and green screen.
I have used this app with my kindergarten students in which they re-enact a popular story, for example, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. They get to use the same characters, but then they get to decide if they want to change the setting or change the story's ending.
Students use a green screen to present their new setting and they can act out the new story scenes themselves or use little puppets on straws to tell their new story.
This digital tool is part of the “reusing and repurposing” digital literacy as it allows students to reuse popular stories and make them their own.
By: Sarai Ayala

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With Google Slides you can create, edit, collaborate, and present wherever you are for free.
In my school district, the Kindergarten grade level throughout the district has agreed to collaborate in the creation of Google Slide Decks, specifically, hyperdocs that highlight our newly adopted language arts/ E.L.D curriculum. HyperDocs are basically online documents that are rich in hyperlinks to other documents, images, websites, texts and videos. They have been described as interactive worksheets.
Teachers throughout the district can edit and add any links or resources to the Google Slides’ HyperDocs and these slide decks are accessible to everyone with our school district’s email address.
This collaboration in creating the slide decks has made the transferring to the new curriculum a lot easier and smoother.

By: Sarai Ayala

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Google Forms is part of the “creating and generating” digital literacy.
Google Forms are primarily used to create online surveys, with responses collected in an online spreadsheet.
As a primary teacher I have created different types of Google Forms. For instance, I have created a “First Day of School” survey to get to know my students. Teachers in my school district have also created formative assessments using the Google Forms' question and response format.
Teachers can also create online homework packets using Google Forms which students can then access from home.
Google Forms can be created independently by one user or in collaboration with a partner or team.
By: Sarai Ayala

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This website is a personal start page that allows you to easily navigate the web and compile your favorite or most used sites all into ONE visual interface. It saves your bookmarks in the "cloud" which allows you to access them from anywhere with any device.
Best of all, It is free!

This digital tool is part of the “organizing and curating” digital literacy. Specifically, Symbaloo.com makes orderly sense of resources and content that is otherwise fragmented and scattered. What is great is that your Symbaloo page can be shared with colleagues.

Personally, I usually use it to organize my most used online resources in my classroom, which are all in one page, with no need to type into web address bar.
Examples of sources that can be linked:

Specific YouTube Videos

ClassDojo

GoNoodle

Aeries log-in (student attendance site)

Pinterest

Anything with a web address!

By: Sarai Ayala

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Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one convenient place, you can search across many disciplines and sources. You can search for:

articles

books

abstracts

academic publishers

This digital tool is part of the “locating and filtering” digital literacy as it involves finding and identifying resources and paring down those resources in order to arrive at exactly the information that is desired.
Within the context of teaching and learning, students engage in "locating and filtering" when they select and use appropriate search engines and databases to perform online research and then evaluate both information and information sources for accuracy, relevance, and validity.
By: Sarai Ayala