Traditional Teaching Strategy: Slide Decks
Gateway Technology Tool: Pear Deck
Especially at the secondary level, teachers have relied on slide decks to structure lesson instructions and content delivery for decades. Remember when Power Point was the latest in EdTech? Power Point has come a long way, but direct instruction is on it's way out. The tool that is helping some slide deck traditionalists make the shift to hands-on instruction is Pear Deck. Using the Pear Deck platform in a BYOD or 1-to-1 classroom, each student connects to the teacher presentation, answers interactive questions or challenges, and then learns from the resulting data from the peers in the classroom with them. A few teachers who have invested a lot of time in designing their slide decks over the years have started experimenting with Pear Deck and their students are the beneficiaries.
Traditional Teaching Strategy: Video Clips
Gateway Technology Tool: PlayPosit
Pulling quick but effective video clips from YouTube, Khan Academy, Vimeo, and other sites is a long-standing practice of teachers everywhere. Many have gone farther and have started using the simple cameras on their phones to create and share their own instructional videos. While having students watch a video is a good first step, it is not interactive or hands-on. PlayPosit allows teachers to import videos from any of the platforms I just mentioned (and more) and then add interactive elements like questions, reflective pauses, and hyperlinks to enrichment resources online.
Traditional Teaching Strategy: Writing Assignments
Gateway Technology Tool: Blogs
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Alan November has been encouraging teachers to help students publish their work for years. Image source. |
For G Suite schools with well-established digital citizenship programs that have prepared students for online publishing etiquette/responsibility, Blogger is a good solution. It integrates well with the programs that students and teachers are already using and the dashboard is consistent with other online publishing tools.
If your technology administrators want more control over hosting, safety, and security then it is worth considering CampusPress, from the same company that brought us EduBlogs and WordPress. Another option is GoEnnounce. It combines the ability to share student work with a digital citizenship curriculum to help students and teachers understand why online sharing is important.
The great thing about starting with blogs for publishing student writing is that blogs have the potential to help students publish so much more. They can embed photos, videos, simulations, and even the code they write themselves as they advance in their academic careers. Soon, their blog will be more than a record of their writing. It will be a full-on digital portfolio of their creations.
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