Tools for plugging ICT into any lesson
ICT shouldn't be
confined to ICT lessons. Mike Britland shares his top tech tools to bring class quizzes, discussions
and presentations alive
ICT can be used to teach across the
curriuculm. Here's Mike Britlands top five tools. Photograph: www.alamy.com
ICT shouldn't just be
utilised within ICT lessons. There are many applications out there that allow
teachers to dazzle their students with their ICT skills. There are so many, in
fact, that its very difficult to know where to start. Furthermore, you don't
want to be using your time and effort investigating something which might not
be of any use to you. So here's a list of my top five, free, ICT applications.
What is it? Edmodo has been a game
changer for me. It describes itself as a educational social network and it does
much of what a expensive VLE does. As a teacher you are able to set up groups
for your classes and invite students in. These groups work much like groups in
Facebook, teachers and students can share information and links with each
other. Teachers are also able to set assignments with their groups, collect
work and mark it digitally. Resources can be uploaded and shared with whichever
groups you want. You can even sync your resources with Google Docs. As well as
setting assignments teachers can also create self-marking quizzes which are
great. Each assignment and quiz grade are then saved in your Edmodo mark book
and available to download. This is just a small part of what it can do. All in
all a fantastic website.
Where can it be used? Throughout the lesson and the Edmodo app allows access from
anywhere if you have a WiFi connection.
Cost: Free
What is it? This is one of the
best resources that I discovered last year. We are all aware that purchasing
student response equipment can be extremely expensive, factoring in the
maintenance costs can almost make buying the equipment prohibitive. Socrative
places the response system right where you want it, into the hands of students
either through the desktop or their mobile phone. The system can be used to
deliver quizzes or simply to gauge the understanding of the class. There is a
separate teacher and student portal with allocated group specific code. Simply
set up your quiz, share the code, launch the quiz, Socrative does the rest.
What's more is Socrative will even allow you to save and download the results,
allowing you to analyse and plan your future lessons accordingly.
Where can it be used? Almost anywhere within a lesson - starter, plenary or right in the middle.
Where can it be used? Almost anywhere within a lesson - starter, plenary or right in the middle.
Cost: Free
What is it? Wow your students with
this alternative presentation application. In most cases using PowerPoint in
your classroom does exactly the job you need. However, if you want to really
dazzle your audience, then look no further than Prezi. Prezi offers you an endless
scroll of digital paper, offering a non-linear environment to present ideas in
a different way. Prezi has changed a great deal in two years, so if you haven't
tried it recently then I would urge you to revisit the site. Prezi now offers
you the option to customise your presentations in a more bespoke way, so
creating your own theme is now possible. One of my frustrations with Prezi in
the past was its clunky editing tools. Where matching up text sizes was very
difficult, the improvements now make copying and pasting significantly easier.
Furthermore, they have improved the navigation options which means setting up
your Prezi is now very simple to create and edit.
Where can it be used? As your main class presentation
Cost: Education
Enjoy licence is free and is the one I have always used, there is the Education
Pro licence and that is $5 a month.
What is it? One of the main issues
I have found when asking students to respond to a stimulus or discussion point,
is collating their responses on the board in an effective way. One way around
bits of paper floating about or the dreaded flip chart is a free website called
Wallwisher. The site allows you to create custom digital notice boards, which
have individual URLs, so students can create digital Post-it notes. Notes can
be arranged as you wish on the board, allowing for the grouping of ideas and
themes. Students can insert their names on each post or they can be left
anonymous. Furthermore, each post can have multimedia rich content added to
them, an image or a even a YouTube video. As each board has its own URL, it
should always be available to view and refer back to for future revision
sessions.
Where can it be used? Mainly for starters or plenaries.
Cost: Free
What is it? This is sort of a
hybrid application which mixes similar features of both Prezi and Wallwisher.
You can use Popplet as a way of presenting information to your class in a
non-linear way or it can be used simply as an elegant brainstorm tool. In a
similar fashion to Prezi you are presented with a never-ending sheet of digital
paper. This canvas can then be used to place individual Popplets, which can be
customised to contain links, images or YouTube clips. Your Popplets link
directly to YouTube so you can search for the video you need without opening a
separate tab. Each Popplet can be linked together and then a motion path
recorded, thus turning your brainstorm into a visually enticing presentation.
Where can it be used? Once again this can fit into almost any aspect of a lesson.
Cost: The basic five Popplet
subscription is free. However, Popplet has recently announced an
education/school
http://blog.popplet.com/school-and-class-group-subscriptions-now-available/
based subscription. Prices are based on a sliding scale, 50 subscriptions start
at $2 then up to 500+ at $0.75.
Mike Britland is head of ICT at a comprehensive school in
Bournemouth. He has been teaching for eight years.
Follow him on Twitter@mikematthewscdn.
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