WEB 2.0 TOOLS FOR THE CLASSROOM

STUDENT VOICE & COLLABORATION

V O I C E T H R E A D

WHAT IT IS..."A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam)." VoiceThread Tutorial PDF

HOW IT CAN BE USED... K-12 Teachers can use VoiceThread to provide students the opportunity to express and share ideas through a variety of media. Students can create threads including audio recordings, still pictures, and videos. Each thread can be completed by one student or contain slides from several students allowing for optimal digital collaboration. This is a creative way to assess comprehension and application of standards.

M I C R O S O F T P O W E R P O I N T (O F F I C E 3 6 5 )

WHAT IT IS... "Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based service that is designed to help meet your organization's needs for robust security, reliability, and user productivity. The topics in this library provide detailed descriptions of the services and features that are available with Office 365." - Office 365 Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs

HOW IT CAN BE USED... With the PowerPoint application being cloud-based, K-12 teachers can use this tool within the 365 suite of tools to help student groups collaborate on a single product either independently (with tracking for changes) or simultaneously. Accessibility is increased in that assignments can readily be accessed from home or during classes -- picking up right where last leaving off. This can be a great tool for monitoring and assessing student interaction and introducing peer review.

C L A S S F L O W

WHAT IT IS... With ClassFlow, teachers can build and access interactive lessons from any web browser, share lessons with other peers and collaborate using the latest mobile and student response technology. Not only will ClassFlow help you save time at the planning and setup stages of lesson development, but it can also facilitate a more connected classroom. In simple terms, ClassFlow is cloud-based teaching software designed to make lesson preparation easier and lesson delivery more dynamic. - Promethean World

HOW IT CAN BE USED... One of the tools within Classflow is the 'Instant Whiteboard'. This function allows the teacher to pose any number of interactive questions or posts that immediately appear on student devices. Students can then respond (several options exist from a simple True/False to actual digital drawings) and all responses instantly post to whatever projection of the teacher's screen is available (usually a smartboard). Teachers have control of keeping all the student replies anonomous or showing student names. These "whiteboards" are then saved in that class's feed and can be referred back to as needed or when useful.

A N S W E R G A R D E N

WHAT IT IS... AnswerGarden is a minimalistic feedback tool. Use it in the classroom as an educational tool or at work as a creative brainstorming tool. Use the link to visit the 'About AnswerGarden' site page.

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Similar to the Instant Whiteboard feature in Classflow, teachers "plant" questions with which students "grow" answers. This site is free and great for warm-ups or lesson ice- breakers. In the elementary classroom it's a fun way to unpack new terms within the lesson objective statement. When a teacher poses a question, it appears on student devices. Students are usually limited to single word answers -- perhaps asking for a synonym. As students answer the garden fills on the smartboard. If more than one student answers the same thing, that answer actually grows larger and bolder in the garden (very similar to a wordle). Answer gardens are not lengthy and often spark genuine conversation in the classroom.

CONTENT CURATION

P A R T I C I P A T E !

WHAT IT IS... Participate! allows you to increase engagement through real-time community discussions, learning prompts and challenges. You can design courses specific to instructional specializations, content interests, state standards, district initiatives, organizational goals and easily manage and share resources inside and outside of communities. - What We Do | Participate.com

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Participate! is an incredible way to curate information for students in a short, focused research project. It really allows educators to funnel sources and media for students. An example might be the background exploration prior to reading an assigned novel. One advantage of Participate! over other content curating web tools, is that you have complete power over the media you choose to post. It's not limited to only websites or documents. You can upload website links, videos, documents, images, etc. This is a great way to teach students to use a wider variety of resources during research-based/exploratory learning tasks.

P O W T O O N

WHAT IT IS... Powtoon is Web-based animation software that allows users to create animated presentations by manipulating pre-created objects, imported images, provided music and user-created voice-overs. Powtoon is also available on the Google Chrome Store and has an application on Edmodo.com. - Powtoon| Wikipedia

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Powtoon can be so much fun to use for introducing topics and content to students. Depending on your level of perfectionism, it can also become a time-consumer. One easy way to try out Powtoon is to take a simple, definable term or concept and make a quick Powtoon about it. In math, it's great to take a concept like multiplication and make a Powtoon to illustrate 2x3 as being 2 groups of 3. Or a step-by-step process like notetaking and using Powtoon as a fun way to set up a success criteria for each step in the process. It's easier than you think!

S Y M B A L O O

WHAT IT IS... Symbaloo is a visual bookmarking tool that makes it simple and fun to organize the best of the web. You have all your favorite websites at your fingertips. With an account you can access your bookmarks from everywhere with any device and share your online resources with others. - Help Center | Symbaloo

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Symbaloo is fantastic for curating or compiling websites for a short, focused research assignment. This can be very helpful when you want to help focus the direction in which your students look for information/sources. In Language Arts, it can be quite useful in setting up categories of links for students to research background information for an upcoming novel or even researching the various aspects of a foreign culture for social studies. Symbaloo is a great, quick go-to for organizing websites and resources for your students.

ASSESSABLE STUDENT PRODUCTS

S E E S A W

WHAT IT IS... Seesaw is a platform for student engagement. Teachers can empower students to create, reflect, share, and collaborate. Students “show what they know” using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links. It’s simple to get student work in one place and share with families, and nothing is shared without teacher approval. - Seesaw.com | Help Center

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Seesaw makes it easy to set up a class and immediately have them start blogging or journaling based on discussion prompts. Educators have a great deal of options with regard to privacy settings -- from keeping student work for teacher's eyes only to sharing with the greater community. On-going student input allows for assessment of continual growth and development in the content area such as tracking connections between characters in a novel or developing and expressing opinions in order to persuade.

B R A I N P O P 'Make-a-Map'

WHAT IT IS... BrainPop (styled BrainPOP) is a group of educational websites with over 1,000 short animated movies for students in grades K-12 (ages 6 to 17), together with quizzes and related materials, covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, mathematics, engineering and technology, health, and arts and music. - BrainPop Wikipedia

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Many teachers believe that BrainPOP is a site/tool that can be used to convey information during instruction using the site's short, entertaining cartoon videos. However, when accessing a video page, there is a great web tool called Make-a-Map. This is very much like a mind mapping function that allows students to insert statements of their own comprehension as well as importing video snips and images to support their learning. *Note: An educator wanting to explore, but without an account, should scroll down to "Today's Free BrainPOP Topic" on the main website page and explore this and other tools there.

M I N D O M O

WHAT IT IS... Mindomo is an online collaborative mind mapping, concept mapping and outlining software for visualizing and organizing information. As a freemium software, Mindomo offers its basic services for free, while charging for premium features. - Mindomo Wikipedia

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Mindomo is a great way for an educator to generate assignments that require students to create visually enhanced representations of their comprehension and the organization of their thoughts. Teachers can have students use templates or work from scratch to create idea boards, mind maps, and outlines. Objectives when using Mindomo can vary, but one primary application is to have students categorize with this tool. This could apply to categorizing and explaining a variety of algebraic processes, or something as simple as basic physical character traits in a story book. One project example was an assignment asking students to record and categorize the text traits of different genres as they explored them throughout a Language Arts unit.

D I S C O V E R Y E D U C A T I O N B O A R D B U I L D E R

WHAT IT IS... Board Builder is a tool, exclusive to Discovery Education, that allows users to create digital bulletin boards with a variety of media, including sourced and self-created resources. The tool can be used in a variety of ways: for topic delivery and engagement, for assessment, and to determine student
understanding. - Board Builder Education Network PDF

HOW IT CAN BE USED... With its relatively simple tools and intuitive interface, students can be tasked with exploring/creating new boards right away. One fun way to introduce Discovery Board builder is as a "get to know me" activity during the first few days of school. Students can practice compiling autobiographical information in order to build a board about themselves which is able to be shared with their new classmates.

M I C R O S F T W O R D (O F F I C E 3 6 5)

WHAT IT IS... "Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based service that is designed to help meet your organization's needs for robust security, reliability, and user productivity. The topics in this library provide detailed descriptions of the services and features that are available with Office 365." - Office 365 Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs

HOW IT CAN BE USED... Taking a standard tool used frequently by students for completing assignments, such as MS Word, and engaging students in its online functionality through the Office 365 Suite is very empowering for students. One assessment continually made by educators is the monitoring of student ability to plan and organize time. High School students, in particular, with their busy lives often benefit from the "pick up where you left off" features of MS Word in 365. It can readily be likened to Google Docs. Though the assignment format is traditional this interface is innovative.