Adobe Spark Post

In the spring of 2018, Adobe launched Adobe for Education, committing to creating student accounts in compliance with data privacy laws (COPPA and CIPA). Utilizing Adobe for Education ids, students are able to log in and create stunning visuals for any purpose. Publish poetry, create a fun exit ticket, or share an announcement in an aesthetically pleasing way. Posts are easy to use and endlessly fun!

Bonus: Adobe Spark can also be used to create a Page or a Video. Spark Page is an excellent way to publish student authored writing. Spark Video is a simple publishing tool. Both generate an easy-to-use link that can be embedded into a Google Site, Padlet, or countless other ways.

Extra Bonus: Consider creating your own Spark Posts from scratch to share ideas on Twitter. This is a fun way to build your PLN and add your own voice to the web!

Clips

Clips is Apple's newest creation app for iPad and iPhone (not Macbooks). Clips lets you create videos in real time with simple controls — no timeline, tracks, or complicated editing tools. With a few taps you can create and tell a quick story with artistic filters, animated text, music, emoji, and fun stickers featuring characters from Star Wars, Disney, Pixar and more. More user-friendly and straightforward than iMovie, Clips is a perfect tool for students of all ages to record live video, upload prerecorded video and photos, and add narration to tell their learning story.

Bonus: Posters have built-in animation features to add depth and themes to your Clips. Customize the text on Posters to tell your story. There is no limit to the amount of Posters you can add to your project.

Extra Bonus: When you record audio with the Live Titles feature, you create open captions that scroll across the screen when your Clips plays. To activate Live Titles, click the speech bubble to the left of the red Record button. Select the Live Titles style, hold down the red button to record audio, and press Play to watch the open captions scroll across your screen. To edit the text, simply click on the frame you've just recorded and click the Live Titles speech bubble.

Flipgrid

Flipgrid's goal is to amplify every student voice in the classroom. They've recently partnered with Microsoft and promise to be free forever. Using Flipgrid, teachers can share a Topic with students. Each Topic provides an opportunity for the teacher to share a video of instructions, or link in resources of multiple formats. Students then reply to the Topic by recording a video of up to 5 minutes. Once they've recorded their video, they can take a selfie and decorate it with stickers and drawings. Their selfie will land on the Topic with a link to their video. Students will then be able to see and respond to each others videos!

On the teacher end, we're able to see student videos and leave written or video feedback immediately. Create multiple Grids to stay organized and interact with your students, families, and other educators in various ways. Flipgrid also allows you to "spark" a video by taking one student response and creating a new Topic. Follow #FlipgridFever and @Flipgrid on Twitter, and tag them in your tweets as a fun way to interact online.

Bonus: Some educators are finding Flipgrid provides a fun opportunity to share STUDENT work by embedding screencasts, videos, and other media. Check out Flipgrid's main page for more info.

Extra Bonus: Check out Grid Pals for a fun way to connect with other classrooms around the world!

(Go)Formative

The people at Formative (sometimes called GoFormative because of the site's URL) have developed a platform that lets teachers see the responses of a whole class at one time—even open-response and hand-drawn responses. Teachers create assessments from scratch right in the Formative platform, or upload an existing PDF or Word document and build a quiz from there. Students access the assessments by entering a class code or entering through their Formative class on their own devices. To score assessments, teachers can set up auto-grading for multiple-choice questions, then manually grade short answer or hand-drawn responses. Written feedback can also be given to any question.

Bonus: Keep an eye on Formative’s growing library of video tutorials and how-to guides to learn how to perform all important tasks and discover new features.

Google Docs

We already utilize Google Docs extensively in schools, but consider ways this tool can enhance your classroom workflow.

• Use Google Classroom to share out assignments. The Make a Copy for Each Student feature will virtually eliminate your time at the copy machine.
• Organize your Google Drive by using folders and standardizing naming features.
• Use the Keep Notepad feature to store frequently used comments and personalized stickers (created using the Bitmoji for Chrome extension from the Chrome App Store).
• Easily embed Docs into a (new) Google Site to develop student-friendly visual supports.

Google Forms

Google Forms is a great tool from G Suite for Education. Initially created to gather data in survey form, teachers quickly adopted this tool as an integral part of their classroom workflow.

Use Google Forms to:

• Quickly gather data from parents, students, or colleagues
• Analyze and view data in Google Sheets
• Autograde assignments using the Quizzes option in the Settings wheel
• Personalize color choices or add live backgrounds using the Color Palette
• Create your own lessons by embedding videos and questions into one form
• Use the Responses tab to view and print summary and individual responses

Bonus: Create a Google Form of classroom observations and save it as a bookmark to replace the traditional checklist. A timestamp will automatically be added, and you'll be able to quickly analyze student progress over the long term.

Extra Bonus: Create a Do Now to start out every day and check in with students, creating an outlet for them and opening doors for you. Check out this blog post for more info.

Google Sheets

Another beloved tool from G Suite is Google Sheets. Use Sheets to efficiently analyze results compiled from a Google Form, or on it's own as a checklist.

To learn more about how to organize data collected in Sheets, click here.

Bonus: Create a color-coded system to indicate levels of proficiency in relation to learning targets during a lesson or conferring session. Quickly see which students are ready for enrichment and who need additional instruction to meet the target.

Extra Bonus: Utilize Sheets' full features by creating an in-cell drop down list, using conditional formatting and other functions, and adding and using checkboxes. Check out Google's tutorials to learn more.

Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a popular game-based learning platform where teachers display questions on a screen, then students log into the system with their own devices (or in teams) and answer them. Kahoot!'s most popular format is the multiple-choice quiz, although there are also options to create a jumble (click and drag answers in the correct order), discussion, and survey.

In a quiz, once a question appears on the screen, music plays along with a retro-sounding tick-tock as the clock counts down (each question is automatically set at 20 seconds, but teachers can adjust this). After all students have answered, the results appear on the screen. If the "Award Points" feature is turned on, students who respond faster get more points, and a leaderboard keeps track of which students have the top scores.

To utilize Kahoot! as a #FormativeTech tool that can provide meaningful, actionable, student learning evidence, we suggest adjusting the time allowed to answer each question, and to carefully consider using the Award Points feature.

Bonus: Kahoot has recently partnered with the American Museum of Natural History. Check out their collaborative efforts here.

Padlet

Already a known and loved tool for teachers, Padlet recently announced storage difficulties due to a constant flow of new Padlets being created (and too much data abandoned on Padlets used only once). Instead, reuse the Padlets in your account purposefully. Some ideas:

• Warehouse students' digital artifacts in one place.
• Curate resources for a research project.
• Host a backchannel discussion during a lesson.
• Develop templates for students to compile evidence of learning.
• Share professional learning resources with colleagues.
• Organize and plan events personally or professionally.

Bonus: Padlet is proud of it's recent updates that now allow drawings, audio, video, and maps to be easily embedded.

Extra Bonus: Padlet partners with G Suite for Education so students don't need accounts and can sign in with the Google button. Teachers can use the Settings options to control student use of class padlets.

Plickers

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students to independently document their learning. With Seesaw, even the youngest of learners are empowered to take ownership of their learning and to reflect on their progress over time. When students upload evidence of learning with Seesaw, they can add a Photo, Video, Drawing, File from Google Drive or their device, a Note, or Link to an external website. But that's not it! Post options like Photo and Drawing have the option to add a voice recording and annotations.

On the teacher end, we can create a meaningful home-school connections by inviting families to view student journals so they can better support their child's learning.

Bonus: Browse the Activity Library for pre-made activities specific to grade and content level created by other educators.

Extra Bonus: Check out Seesaw's blogging feature to create a public website on the Internet to showcase student work. After students add work to Seesaw journals, you can publish a selection of their posts to a class blog to share with classrooms around the world.

Post-it Plus

Post-it Notes have been around a long time, and they make regular appearances in brainstorming sessions and as exit tickets. The Post-it Plus app for iOS allows users to take a photo of the notes and capture them as individual digital images. Once the notes are captured, they can be rearranged, deleted, or amended with new digital notes. A finished board can then be shared or exported. Post-it Plus is a tool that allows you the freedom of taking your Post-it notes anywhere! We recommend this as an organizational and workflow app for teachers.

Seesaw

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students to independently document their learning. With Seesaw, even the youngest of learners are empowered to take ownership of their learning and to reflect on their progress over time. When students upload evidence of learning with Seesaw, they can add a Photo, Video, Drawing, File from Google Drive or their device, a Note, or Link to an external website. But that's not it! Post options like Photo and Drawing have the option to add a voice recording and annotations.

On the teacher end, we can create a meaningful home-school connections by inviting families to view student journals so they can better support their child's learning.

Bonus: Browse the Activity Library for pre-made activities specific to grade and content level created by other educators.

Extra Bonus: Check out Seesaw's blogging feature to create a public website on the Internet to showcase student work. After students add work to Seesaw journals, you can publish a selection of their posts to a class blog to share with classrooms around the world.