Tech Tips

GreyEd_techGreyED Solutions is pleased to partner with SmartBrief to provide busy K-12 education technology innovators with “Tech Tips Tuesdays.” Published every Tuesday in the SmartBrief on EdTech newsletter, Tech Tips are written by educators for educators to boost their know-how and expand their skill set. Read Tech Tips here on our site or subscribe to SmartBrief on EdTech to get them delivered directly to your inbox.

 If you’re an educator and would like to contribute to Tech Tips, let us know!

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How to choose apps and games for personalized learning

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Source: SmartBrief on EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

Personalized learning is a process; it’s an input. It can be any implementation that has the intention of customizing learning to an individual student. Here are three features you should look for when selecting apps and games for personalized learning in your classroom:

  1. Feedback. Feedback is information that a learner receives about performance. Feedback is “among the most powerful influences on achievement,” according to education researcher John Hattie.
  2. Adapting levels of difficulty. Every student response in an app can be used for formative assessment purposes. The program can then make adjustments to the curriculum path, introducing remediation to clear up difficulties the individual student may have with the content, speeding up the pace of the content or slowing it down.
  3. Deliberate practice. The app or game provides many opportunities for active responding, not just a few. It is not simply “drill and practice.” Instead, it relies on feedback and established performance criteria and leads to long term retention.

How to use “web walls” for collaborative learning

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A web-based wall like Padlet can be used for posting student work, in-process brainstorming, responding to important questions, posting web links and much more. Students get to the wall via any device with a browser. Some web-based walls now also offer mobile versions.

Tools like Padlet quickly get students collaborating and communicating. I’ve uses a web wall many times as a ‘section summarizer’ in middle-school social studies. Here’s how to start:

  1. Create an account and set up a blank wall.
  2. Share URL with students.
  3. Assign a small reading chunk (print or digital) to small groups.
  4. Students identify important facts/causes/effects or other focus.
  5. Students add content to the web wall via the link (no sign in!).

And that’s how to create a wall with important learning information for in-class student review. Review the completed wall with your students, add relevant info and discuss the most important points to ensure understanding. For instance, when I used a wall to support a lesson on ancient civilization, it truly strengthened students’ understanding of my intended outcomes. Students can also refer to the wall later as a study guide.

This easy-to-use technique works for grades three and up, across a range of subjects including social studies, foreign language, English and more. So remember, start small, and give the web-based wall a try!

Gene Tognetti is the director of professional development and educational technology coach at Presentation High School in San Jose, Calif. Gene works with ed-tech startups as a board member and mentor. He speaks at conferences on a wide variety of topics, including digital citizenship, effective technology integration into the classroom, and administration’s role in technology planning. He also provides ed-tech training to K-12 schools. Previously, Gene was a junior high-school social studies and language-arts teacher, and K-8 vice principal. He recently concluded his term as vice president of the Silicon Valley Computer Using Educators. More info can be found about Gene at about.me/genetognetti.

Use twitter to share great moments of learning

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Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

We’ve all been there. You have a few minutes left until lunch and instruct your students to quietly read or work on homework until the bell rings. It never fails—that’s when when your principal shows up to do his daily walk-through. Where was he earlier when your students were working collaboratively on an integrated science – language arts PBL project? How can you share these great moments of student learning with your principal, parents and the school community as they’re happening?

How to evaluate digital learning environments

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Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

Today’s learning spaces are evolving to meet the needs of contemporary learners. More and more classrooms include desks and walls with writable spaces, hands-on learning tools, flexible seating options and responsive learning technologies.

But how effective are these spaces? School stakeholders want assurances that these digital environments are meeting students’ learning needs. My district, Ithaca City School District (ICSD), uses qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure the effectiveness of these spaces and ensure that they support instructional goals.

ICSD’s mission is to “Engage, Educate, and Empower.” The data we gather is aligned to this mission and used to inform continuous improvement efforts. Our instruction focuses not on technology tools but on the instructional strategies used by educators to engineer learning. Accountability metrics follow suit, representing the student achievement results we seek and not the tools used to meet that end.

Modeling digital leadership

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 Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

Education leaders have the responsibility to model, for our students, teachers and communities, what real digital leadership looks like. We should not ignore, or be afraid, of digital tools. Indeed, we should be the ones opening the doors for the digital resources and applications that can enhance learning and instruction.

Here are two platforms that provide opportunity for education leaders to pave a digital pathway:

7 ways technology can support education equity solutions

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Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

 

How can technology help drive equity in our schools? Here are seven ideas to get you started:

  1. Tools for citizenship. Shaping students into responsible citizens is central to the role of education. As more and more of our lives are lived in digital spaces, it is essential for educators to use the technology tools available to support this work.
  1. Amplify student voice. When students don’t have voice at school they often have ill-prepared voice in the streets. Technology tools coupled with a culture of create, make and design can support this work.

Mobile learning outside the classroom

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Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

Learning outside the classroom is a great experience—and easy to do. It doesn’t matter if your classroom includes one-to-one tablets, mobile device carts or student-owned smartphones. Your students can move out of the classroom to local events, historic sites and ecosystems with their mobile devices in hand. In three steps, your students can go mobile with their learning:

Using Nearpod for math instruction

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Source: SmartBrief EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

As a middle school math teacher embarking on year four of teaching in a one-to-one iPad classroom, I have settled into a handful of apps and digital tools that meet many classroom needs for instruction, assessment, content creation, communication and all-around math learning. Of all the tools at my disposal, my favorite is Nearpod.

Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool. Teachers can use the platform to create presentations that include interactive elements – video, graphics and drawing boards – as well as assessment exercises, such as quizzes and polls. Nearpod provides a number of ways for you to let students participate in activities and demonstrate what they know. Here are a few best practices to help you and your students get the most from this tool:

Personalize email communications with YAMM

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Source: SmartBrief on EdTech in partnership with GreyED Solutions

Need a quick, easy-to-understand way to personalize email communications to your students? Google has you covered.

Check out Yet Another Mail Merge or YAMM, a Google Sheets add-on that allows users to send personalized email messages through Gmail. The add-on merges a spreadsheet of data with a Gmail message template, similar to the way Mail Merge works with Excel and Word. Here’s how it works: