21st-century Teaching Tools

Below are summaries and analyses of four 21st-century Teaching and Learning Tools.

Google Drive

The dog ate your homework?  Oh, really?  The ethereal dog that lives in cyberspace?

Google Drive is a tool that gives you cloud storage for your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, and other digital files.  These files are accessible on any computer with an internet connection by logging into your Google account, and if you’re afraid of the internet, you can even download Drive for your computer so that copies of all your files are saved onto your computer.  You can keeps files private, share them with selected others, or make them public.  This allows multiple people to edit and write on a document at the same time.  Did I mention it’s free?

Google Drive is an excellent tool to use for a classroom website.  Rather than uploading documents onto your website, simply save the doc onto your Drive, make the doc public, and provide a link to it on your website.  The other bonus is that students can open the doc without having another program, like MS Word. 

Gone are the days where a long line of students waits at the laptop at the front of the class so that every group can type their answers to a question onto the teacher’s computer, which is connected to a projector.  With Drive, create a public document, have everyone type into it using Smartphones and Tablets at once, and then see the document take shape in real time.

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking site, or more specifically, a micro-blogging site.  Each “tweet” or blog post is composed of 140 characters, in which you can write anything you like.  Favourite things to do with those characters include quoting famous persons and posting links to articles, videos, or other websites.  You can also tweet pictures.  Twitter operates much like a running news feed, where the tweets of the people you “follow” will be listed with the most recent at the top.  Your tweets show up on the news feeds of the people who “follow” you, but can also be searched by anyone.  Everything on Twitter is public.

Twitter is an excellent tool for educators, both in terms of its classroom applications and professional development.  Teachers, principals, superintendents, and other folks are always posting articles, links, pictures, and videos relevant to teaching and learning.  Many great resources to use in your classroom can be found by following educators on Twitter.

Twitter also has the potential to link your students to professionals in the field.  For example, when studying plants, your students can follow a horticulturalist, ask questions, and get answers!  For an example of how twitter can be used in this way, see Kristen Wideen’s article in the Spring 2014 issue of ETFO Voice.

Prezi

Prezi is a presentation tool.  Rather than moving from slide to slide, the focus shifts to different areas of one main design or motif, and the focus zooms in and out.  Many of the motifs mimic a mind-mapping setup.  Simply create a Prezi account, choose a template, and fill in the sections.  You can add an almost limitless number of sections and change their order.  You can log in to Prezi from any computer and have access to your slideshows, or you can download them to your computer.  You also have the option of making the presentation public, so that anyone online can see it.

Prezi is a novel tool.  I've seen it used to create class scrapbooks on particular topics that can then be shared with parents.  Prezi will generate gasps of delight among audience members; however, it is and remains a glorified version of MS Powerpoint, that’s more difficult to use and does less.  It’s really fun to watch, but I fear it may soon fade into obscurity.  I hope they prove me wrong.

  

On the horizon (coming to a school near you!)...

etextbooks in the Classroom and at Home

More and more textbooks are becoming available digitally.  The big, heavy, graffiti-filled, thousand-page tomes of days gone by can now be replaced by their digital equivalents.  Students are given access to the etextbooks by their teacher and can then view the book on a multitude of devices, at home or in the classroom.

The nice thing about etexts is that the possibilities for differentiation and accommodation are seemingly endless.  Students who can’t read small print can change the font size.  Students who process written language slowly can have the book read to them.  The teacher can post (such as the homework questions) within the etext itself, and the teacher can post links within the textbook if there’s a youtube video that illustrates a point particularly well.  In the long run, students’ backs are saved because they aren’t lugging a heavy textbook around.

The downside to etexts is that not every student has access to a tablet, computer, smartphone, or internet access at home.  By using etexts, teacher could inadvertently punish students whose parents or guardians can’t afford this technology.