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Digital Tools to Enhance Learning
Digital Tools to Enhance Learning
Padlet is my new favorite tech tool. I used Padlet multiple times throughout the school year to facilitate my students' displaying their thinking and work publicly. Padlet is sort of an online bulletin board and, depending on the assignment, I used it to encourage students to propose solutions to policy issues, respond to Essential Qs, create a fake Twitter account, post original protest songs, and identify major points in non-fiction readings. Students were encouraged to display their thinking openly, which prompted students to be particularly thoughtful, as they knew their peers would comment on their posts with feedback.
Google Classroom is my tried and true tool for organizing my class materials and communicating with students. I use Classroom to remind students about assignments, publish materials and instructions for in-class projects, ask them to fill out polls requesting their input on curricular decisions, and lastly, post materials to expand and deepen their learning beyond the required curriculum. Students also post materials they find on their own that are relevant to our learning. Classroom allows me to help students develop their global competency skills because it exposes them to a wealth of materials, perspectives, and resources that in the past were more difficult to attain given restraints on copying and access to tech tools. I can supplement curricular materials more easily through posting links to articles, Podcasts, interactive websites, and documentaries that they can independently access in order to meet and even exceed my expectations for the course.
Biteable is a tech tool that was introduced to me in TGC. While I am still getting used to how to use this effectively in the classroom, what is fun about Biteable is the ability to make short pitches and videos that can quickly and accessibly send a message and communicate a major idea or point. While not the perfect tool for all purposes, Biteable can be used by students to create a marketing campaign, a public service announcement, or a quick explainer about a particular concept. I used it with students to help summarize a major concept we'd been learning about related to religious literacy and its importance in the context of learning about Islam globally and domestically.
Google My Maps is a useful tool for personal and educational purposes. I have used it in professional development courses to create annotated maps and timelines and I have used it with my students to help them navigate through an assignment about news stories coming out of different countries about a singular event. Arranging the links by geographic location allowed students to consider the authors' situatedness when considering the perspectives they were writing from. It allowed them to consider on a deeper level the impact that perspective -- political, economic, racial, geographic, etc. -- may have on the narrative of the story.
New York Times launched a virtual reality (VR) app in 2015 and published a story about the experiences of refugees fleeing global crises. Subscribers got a free pair of glasses in the mail and were able to read and watch the story in 3-D. I know that this is an incredible tool to use with students, but I have yet to do so beyond recommending students check it out. The videos students can access are all about 10 or fewer minutes and touch on a broad range of topics from the refugee crisis, to a tour of holy sites in Mecca, to an interactive film about Pluto. The Times has a website that gives advice for how to use the resource in the classroom. For next school year I would like to order a set of viewers in order to facilitate the use of this technology with my students. These films have the potential to allow students to engage with topics that may seem abstract in more sensory ways, which can help to build empathy and global understanding.
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