Ed Tech in Our Classrooms

  Kahoot: Engaging and Rewarding!  As we near the end of another school year, teachers everywhere are on the hunt for *extra* engaging activities to help capture their students' attention!  Kahoot has your back!  Kahoot can be used to review important information, provide students with extra practice, and can even be used to collect formative assessment data - all while disguised as a super fun game.   Students will love picking a username, getting to use 1:1 technology devices, and won't feel the normal pressures associated with traditional quizzes.  Teachers will love browsing premade games and being able to create their own.  Kahoot is an incredible tool for both students and teachers and should be added to all teachers' toolboxes! 

 Some of my students have questioned how valuable Kahoot! is to learn as a new teacher. Last night, at Heritage Elementary School in Saline, I attended a Literacy Night. The whole school was open to parents to talk about literacy and to share reading experiences with their students.  In one activity, a teacher ran a Kahoot! on Women's History Month. Students were engaged and needed very little by way of instructions to get started. I played along for a while as "Reader Dude" but needed to move on. This is a tool you WILL use.

As educators, I think it is fair to say that there is already a lot of pressure and work on our plates. And adding Twitter into the mix would only escalate that.  For starters, Twitter is a platform with so much content that it is not only overwhelming to look at, but for me, it is too overwhelming to consider how I would make it safe for my students.  My four biggest issues are:  Online Safety Parent consent My responsibilities Relevancy Predators and just bad people online have gotten increasingly sneaky as the internet has continued to develop. And Twitter has little oversight to stop them from creating an online persona that my students would be exposed to. And while I can slightly control what is going on in the classroom, I fear that if they continue to use Twitter in their normal lives, they could be led to a dangerous place either virtually, or in reality.  Secondly, parent consent becomes an issue, sure, I can get their consent for their student to be on Twi...

I think that using games as an assessment or test allows students to be hands-on and not be stressed over the traditional test that most teachers assign. It also allows the teacher to assess what the student is confident in and what the student needs more work in, in real time rather than waiting to grade a test. I remember in middle school for one of my social studies test we played monopoly in a group to understand social class and economic principles. This allowed me to Apply knowledge, even if it was theoretical, on understanding the unit terms better and see the importance of what the lesson was talking about. I think that all types of games being used as assessments can be beneficial for students as a game can be less stressful or intimidating than a standardized test.

So many new AI-driven tools have been released recently that I think I will need to create a new list for us to consider for our Technology Toolboxes. Here are a few:  Genei.io ChatGPT ChatDoc LiquidText Explainpaper Assistant by Scite   PDFGPT   Microsoft Office 365 Copilot   ChatPDF   SciSpace   ResearchRabbit   Scholar AI   Gemini (formerly Bard)   Consensus   H umata   Elicit

 I have been asking Music students to write a little introduction to the course for the last few years. Antonio Byrd stepped up. For images, my students went to ideogram.ai and input the prompt, "Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age." Here is the wonderful result.

 Yesterday, I came across an article about a new tool called a Talk Meter . The idea is that a tutor can use a device like a Fitbit to measure how much time the tutor is talking with a student versus how much time the student is talking.  It seems like a straightforward tool that might help to train the tutor to allow the student more opportunities to speak. The question is whether or not having the student speak more (or less) than the tutor has any inherent instructional value. It is an interesting concept to study in a rigorous academic setting.