Tech Talk : January

Monthly blog hop all about Technology! That’s right, cool time saving tips, and tools that Great Minds need to know about! Got a interactive whiteboard and you don’t know what to do with it or 1 iPad in the classroom. This is the place to be to stay in the know on technology.  Have a cool app, website or tech idea to share please link up below.  Please read my instruction sheet before joining, you will find the graphics and all you need to know here.

This month I have two interactive websites that your students will love. Both sites are very collaborative and require students to have access to their own device to use.  Both sites are also very user friendly and easy to navigate.  Oh yea, and completely free!

  The first site I am going to share is padlet.com  This is a on-line forum where students can post comments, pictures, videos or links and responses to whatever prompt or question you post. The beauty of this is that you get to create a personalized space you can customize for your students.  Think of it as a digital bulletin board that all your students get to interact with.  You can make your paddle public or completely private by generating your personal link.  I have only used the the free version but they have created a version specifically for classroom use called Padlet Backpack.

The skies the limit for activities you can do with site. In the photo above students had to find images of regular polygons and post it to this padlet their teacher created.  Students can access this site from pretty much any device.  Here is a video tutorial on how to create your own padlets for your classroom.  Don’t worry they are super easy to make and even easier for your students to post to. My 4th graders figured it out with ease.

The next site is my new favorite it’s called Kahoot. It is a game based student response system. It’s super fun and very interactive! Your students will love this.  Basically you create a Kahoot which is a series of questions with multiple choice answers. Now these can be your basic questions or you can go deeper by inserting videos or images based your content.  The type of questions are completely up to you. You pull up your Kahoot on your smart board and it will generate a custom code that allows your student to link up to the quiz on their device. It’s like a whole class game show complete with fun game show music.  Did I mention that you can search ready-made kahoots  and download them to use.  I’m sure most are made by other educators!  Thats right you could possibly find one that fits perfectly with your curriculum. Your students will be highly engaged in this activity and love the interaction. It really feels like a game it also displayed your students activity whithin the Kahoot.  I encourage you to just give it a try! I even found a Pokemon Kahoot!  This site is also very easy to navigate but I did find a tutorial for all you visual learners out there.

Thanks for reading and I hope you and your students enjoy using these sites in your classroom!  Please drop me a comment below and come back for more Tech Talk every 3rd Sunday!

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