Polleverywhere: The Fastest Way of Geting Your Students' Responses

Poll Everywhere is a polling based website that allows teachers to ask several question and have students response in just a short period of time. The tool replaces polling hardware with web technology. Responses can give their response through works texting, web, or Twitter. Its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews. Take a look at this video below on how to use the tool.

What does it do?

Making a poll: Teachers can choose types of question poll.

 

Integrating to other apps: This tool might be used to end your presentation, so learners can participate in giving reflection/feedback and even assessment of the lesson.

Flexible access: To give response, students can do it anywhere around the world. As long as they put the correct code or number.

 

What are the benefits to your teaching?

Assessments: The tool can be an effective way for teachers to give assessments, this will certainly give students new experience in class participation. 

Reflection: Most reflection activity are done in paper, this tool can be an alternative to give students chance of giving a direct way of reflecting as well as getting a live responses for teachers.

Mobile device: Since this tool allows respondents to give their answer anywhere. It might also be a way of integrating mobile phones to classroom activity. However, teachers must consider few things before implementing this kind of idea. 
 

What are the limitations?

Pricing: Although they allow users to have limited responses (40). It still acceptable for teachers who have smaller classroom size. However,  if you are up to larger class or audience for you response, you can simply check out the pricing table offered by the site.

Storyboardthat: Bringing Digital Storytelling to Your Classroom

Storyboard That is a website that offers users to create digital storyboard using various graphics.  It helps teachers to visually share ideas and concepts in the form of story. It has templates where stories can be created where scenes, characters, text boxes, shapes, and other images to choose from, and users can easily drag and drop them. Watch this tutorial video below on how to use Storyboardthat.

How does it work? 

Go to Storyboardthat.com. Create a new storyboard, and you can choose to create your new account by linking it to your email address or other social media. Once you set up, you can easily make a new project or story.

What does it do?

In the free version, users can create a story board by adding cells and then input scenes, characters, text, shapes, and upload other images available in the website. It is really easy to navigate by dragging and dropping each items in the square cells. Users can also upload and add pictures to the cells. The layout and characters are set based on categories so users can easily adjust based on their needs. The characters can also be adjust their arms and leg positions as well as their facial expressions.

In the premiun version, user can also upload their own version. However, they can also add audio and advanced layouts.

What are the benefits for your classroom?

• Story telling: Storyboardthat will make a fantastic way of telling a narrative.
• Presentation tool Alternatives: It might not as complex as powerpoint, but if you want to surprise your students, Storyboardthat have options for slide shows and auto created powerpoint
• Diversity character: If you want to teach students culture or story, Storyboardthat has many available character representing different colours.
• Lesson plan bank: This website allow teachers to access various kind of lesson plans, thus if you  finding it hard to integrate this tool to your lesson, you might want to check out examples of lesson plans available.
• Writing skill: It is possible to create writing activity since Storyboardthat provides bubble speeches where for example, students can be assigned to create a story about their experience. 
• Simple interface: Although it may sound complicated to have students create a story, the design of this website is very simple. Thus, it can accommodates different context of story. 

What are the limitations? 

Pricing: Although the free version is good enough for a classroom activity, the premium version offers more features and it is considerably affordable for $9.95/month.

 

Wordle: Making Colourful Vocabulary Clouds

Wordle is a world cloud website that allows user to generate a word cloud from a specific text. The clouds display words within the text and adjust its size based on the frequency of the word in the source text. The more frequent the word is in the text, the bigger the display of the word would be. Wordle allows us to costumize our world clouds with different layouts, fonts and color.  Watch tutorial video about wordle below.

What does it do?

As it has mentioned before, teachers can use Wordle to set a visual display of  of how often a word appears in an assigned text.

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Teaching vocabulary: Wordle can be use to be display in front of the class for guessing the topic of the lesson, pre-task activity or simply for introducing new words.

Engaging : This tool is visually engaging, students will enjoy making diagrams and see which words appear most in a text. It allows users to format layout, and font as well as adjusting color even removing particular words

Easy and Free: Wordle is a free and very simple website where users can easy navigate thus most group of learners will find this website user-friendly.

Accommodating learning styles: With the use of different colours and size. Students especially with visual intelligence can make use the most of wordle through their eye-catching illustrations especially when learning about vocabulary. 

 

What are the limitations?

Support: The site is no longer supported, thus we might expect no update and assistant for anyone who uses it. 

Information: The site does not provide information relating on how to use the website, such as to make diagrams.

Nearpod: Moving Your Teaching to Mobile Devices

Nearpod is a platform that allows teachers to create a mobile based activity. It integrates various activity such as adding multimedia content, collaborative activities and assessment. Teachers can use Nearpod to share digital content with their students and manage the flow of the classroom activity. Check out the website here and watch this video below to know how to use the app.

 

 

What does it do?

 

 Add content

This feature allows teachers to create a multimedia activity such as presentation along with interactive features such as adding video, audio, and pdf files. There are also other new activities that are still in beta version; slide, Nearpod 3D and sway.

Add web content

Teachers can add web content to Neapod, but unfortunately to have access to this feature, users need to upgrade to the premium version of this app.

 

 

Add activity

Nearpod offers various activities such as open ended questions, polling, quiz, draw it, and fill in the blanks. Teachers can provide activity and gather students' answer in real time.

 

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

 

Engaging: Nearpod has interactive features that can keep students engaged in the topic. 

Innovative: This tool offers a new experience of learning using mobile devices. Therefore, learning can be done outside the class. Nearpod also facilitates teachers to present a typical Powerpoint presentation with additional features such as poll, drawing, embedding images and survey.

Assessment: Nearpod integrates of a variety of tools to assess whether or not the students are truly understanding the concepts being taught to them. Moreover, the tool also collects responses so teachers can analyze data and provide feedback.

What are the limitations?

• Students might need more time to understand how Nearpod works, therefore it can be quite overwhelming for slower-paced students.

•  Some features are not free.

  

   

 

Kahoot!: Bring Games to Your Classroom

Kahoot! is a free game-based tool that can be used in classroom. It gives a refreshing way for classroom activities which includes quizzes, discussion and survey. Kahoot! is great for collaboration since it can be played in a group setting. In additional to its free service, students can join a Kahoot! activity from any devices as long as it is connected to the internet and use a pin of game that Kahoot! provides to start the game. Teachers who wants to create a Kahoot! activity can go to getkahoot.com and students can join a Kahoot! competition by visiting kahoot.it.Take a look at this video below on how to use Kahoot!

 

What does it do?

Quiz

Through quiz, teachers can ask questions and add images to it. It can be used to introduce a new topic to the classroom and have students take the quiz to review their understanding of the topic. The quiz will raise students' competitiveness, as it will show the class the score of each players.

Discussion

Discussion can be use to initiate a debate or class discussion. Teachers can come up with a question about the topic and embedded a video. In the later stage, teachers can put up a question and have students to choose the answer based on their stance to the topic. 

 

Jumble

Jumble is a brand new game from Kahoot! It allows teachers to create a set of questions and have the students arranged the answers accordingly.

 

Survey 

 Have students choose their preferences in a fun way.

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Collaborating: Kahoot! is best played using a shared screen such as projector or interactive whiteboard. It liven up the classroom group activities as students can directly answer questions, earn points, and get feedback instantly.

Engaging: Kahoot! allows students to be involved in a game where its activity has suspenseful music and a quick pace. Such activity stimulates and entertains students keeping them engaged in a topic. The way Kahoot! presents ranking after each activity will make students feel challenged and encouraged them to put more effort to their answers.

A new way of assessment: Kahoot! can be an alternative way of gathering a formative assessment or even to review lesson content with your classroom. The real time results of the game and also be downloaded for further use.

Easy to use: To create an activity in Kahoot! it only took users a simple set up process to easily set up an activity.

What are the limitations?

Styles and Formatting: Kahoot! does not allow users to mofidy the fonts or colours. It only offers true or false and multiple choice options.

 Tips

• The games in Kahoot! can be display on a shared screen such as projector or interactive whiteboards.
• You can also use Kahoot! during a screensharing activity, such as Google Hangouts.
•  Students do not need to have Kahoot! account to join the activity.
  

 

 

Screencast O Matic: Capture Everything!

Screencast-O-Matic is a free video recording tool that allows you to record your screen and share them. It is a great tool for making tutorials and giving feedback to your students. It can be downloaded and install for free to your laptop or PC. Screencast-O-Matic is currently one of the top free fast recording app that is easy to use, share and upload.

How do we start?

Download Screencast-O-Matic to your device.
 


What does it do?

Adjust the screen size that you would like to record.  

Click the black frame to set up your recording preferences. You can adjust whether to share your screen only, webcam or both. Size and time of the recording can also be set as you wish. The narration with the microphone icon has a green bar that shows recording levels.

What are the benefits to your teaching?

Feedback: Teachers can give oral feedback to students' work. This way, teachers can give detailed comments and students can easily refer back/access the feedback anytime they want. This kind of feedback can develop more personal closeness since students will feel the presence of their teachers through the video. The way this tool allows to record video and voice can help learners to save more time and understand teachers' message instead of reading it in paper.  

Tutorial: Teachers can make video to give tutorial or brief information and have students watch before going to the lesson. Teachers with distance learning students can use this tool as main source of creating lectures or talk.

Reflection: Teachers can assign students to do some reflection by recording themselves using this tool. From this activity students can benefit in developing their speaking skill. 

What are the limitations?

Pricing: Although this tool offers the free version. It still has limted access such as the duration of the recording. Overall if you want to make use of this tool, upgrading them to premium version is still considerably affordable.

Timing: For teachers, integrating this tool to your classroom by making videos can be a bit frustrating. It will definitely take time to get use of this tool, how to manage yourself in the process of making a video as well as the time you spend.

Triptico: Creating Engaging Interactive Learning

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Triptico is a tool that provides bunch number of options to create an engaging interactive activities. It can be access through tripticoplus.com.  Teachers will benefit abundantly from this tool since it provides several activities which are free and help bringing creativity to  classroom as well as engaging students.

 

What does it do?




There are several interactive tabs that you can choose to bring new experiences of learning to your classroom. As you can see there are five different categories of selection:

quizzes, selectors, timers, tools and legacy resources. Each section of quizzes, selectors, timers, and tools has interactive apps that you can use and adapt to your class. Take a look at this video below for instruction on how to create triptico account and how one of its feature Find Ten works.

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Simple: Triptico is easy to use, it requires no specific training for teachers to use. The features of this tool can be adapted according to classroom needs. It has sharing options so teachers can reuse materials thus enables advance preparation.




Engaging: Resources available in Triptico are interactive therefore it can promote collaborative group work in your classroom. This tool can facilitate visual and kinesthetic learners, especially when using whiteboard interactive.




Motivating: Triptico enables students to learn in a fun way since it provides game-like activities. Its competitiveness can give fresh air to classroom.










What are the limitations?

 

Online connection: This tool needs online connection to run therefore it may restrict teachers' use in internet limited area.

Upgrade: You need the upgraded version to access all of its feature. If you use the free version, you still have limited access to its features.

 
 

Voki: Personalised Speaking Avatar

If you like the idea of using technology in classroom to boost students' motivation, using a tool called Voki might be a good idea. Voki is a fun and engaging web application that allows users to create their own talking avatar and customized them by adding voices and other features. Take a look at this video below to know more about Voki.

 

How do we start?

To start using Voki, you can directly to voki.com and create your own character along with its voice. To edit and save your avatar you need to login or make an account using your email address.

 

What does it do?

When you go to Voki.com without logging in, you can make your avatar. However, you will need to logged in once you want to save your project. So, it is better for you to sign up for Voki before making your avatar.

 

Customize your character:  You can easily change your head and features of your face as well as clothing, and accessories. 

Give it a voice: You can record yourself, type a text and let the tool convert it into speech or upload your own recording files.

You can easily customized the color of your avatar.

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Authenticity: Voki enhances students' speaking ability while promoting communication between learners with real audiences. 

Engaging: Engage your students in creative expressions by using technology in a fun way. 

Motivating: It is also makes classroom activity interesting but it does not replace teacher and student communication.  

Autonomy:  Voki allows students to explore on their own using their creativity to make avatars and then collaborate and share the creation with their friends.

Shy students: This tool provides opportunity for shy learners to perform oral task in a less pressured way without feeling intimidated.

Drilling: Students can repeat and practice pronunciation with their avatar at their own time and space 

Sharing: Incorporate your avatar into a variety of topics, activities in the classroom, web page or blog.

What are the limitations?

Text limitations : Text limitations restrict from giving in-depth response.  

Accents : The accents provided by the tools are not always native-like accents.

Variety : The experience that Voki provide does not change much, teachers might need to provide additional tasks.