It’s day 7 of #28daysofwriting. A week down, a quarter of the way through. If this were a marathon the lactic acid would be starting to build up. Today I thought I would just share some of the digital tools and apps I have used effectively. I hope you find the list useful.
So here goes, here is a list of some of the best hardware, apps and web tools that I have used over the last few years. They are in no particular order, just a random pile of thoughts and ideas that I can manage in 28 min at 9pm on a Saturday night!
1) Google Docs: The go to simple document write in the GAFE (Google Apps for Education) set of tools. Fantastic for work that doesn't need to look amazing. It has a brilliant commenting system that can be used for students to collaborate on work and as the teacher you can and highlight sections that need review and attach your comment to the particular section of the work.
2) Google Slides: Much more powerful than a slide show creator this is the place where you can create documents as you would in publisher or word with layers and directional text. It takes a bit of getting used to and you have to remember the dimensions for A4 paper for the page setup but if you want to make something pretty in GAFE... use Slides.
3) Google Forms: Great way to survey your class and community. Can also be used to create quizzes. From here all of the data goes to…
4) Google Sheets: This is excel for GAFE. Great for sorting raw information and data and you will need to use it to set up classes and students if you are using Hapara Teacher Dashboard. There are some really cool add ins for Sheets. My favourite is Floobaru an app that allows you to mark and analyse students answers from a Google Forms quiz.
5) Hapara Teacher Dashboard: This is an invaluable tool for any school wanting to use GAFE effectively. It allows you full control over all of you students’ accounts. You can see all of their recent work at a glance and can even see their screens if you have the right set up. You can group students and Smart Copy templates and work into their Google Drives. I would definitely recommend this tool.
6) Storybird: This great little web tool is a place where students can select amazing pieces of art to use as inspiration for their writing. The students loved it and we had some amazing story come from students using this tool. Definitely give it a go!
7) Piktochart: This great online tool is amazing for making class displays. It makes those awesome longform infographics and with very little experience you can make great looking displays. They can also be embedded into websites.
8) Prezi: This is an interesting alternative to the traditional slide show. The slides sweep and zoom in and out around an image or diagram and it is much more visually appealing. Student will enjoy the change and like presenting their learning in an interesting way using this tool.
9) Garageband: The go to music creation tool. If you have access to iPads or Macbooks this is an amazing piece of software. Students can produce professional sounding music in no time at all.
10) iMovie: Really intuitive and easy to use video editing software. I have used it with both junior and senior students and they love it. Great for recording reading too. It has a cool feature call Trailers which come out like … Movie Trailers and its a great way to share learning and what has been happening in the class or school.
11) Scratch & Scatch Jnr: Web and iPad versions allow students to learn how to code computer programs in a simple and visual way. Great way to introduce coding into a class and is a great activity to use in Maker Time.
Well I better stop there have 2 minutes of the 28 left. I hope you enjoyed the list it is far from complete! Maybe I will do a part two… Thanks for reading the post and please comment on any tools you find really useful in your class.
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