12 Tech Resources for Teaching English

Matt Miller (@JMattMiller), author of the Ditch that . . . series wrote in his book Don’t Ditch That Tech (Burgess, 2020), “Technology can super charge learning.” Technology provides active learning, student centered, differentiated opportunities for students to showcase learning and understanding. Before you integrate any technology, consider the goals for the unit, lesson, and individual students. Then think about how technology might integrate to support those goals and provide opportunities to transcend learning.

As we get closer to the start of another school year and many of us do not know what that will look like in the midst of COVID-19 – in person teaching, hybrid models, blended learning, or 100% remote learning. Here are twelve tech resources for teaching English (and other content areas) to super-charge learning whether we are in the classroom or working from a distance.

Reading Platforms:

Actively Learn – My favorite reading platform by far because of its customizable aspects. Students are able to read digital, print and videos within the platform and answer reading comprehension questions. Standards aligned and tons of free content or you can upload and design your own. Many differentiated aspects to support ENLs. struggling readers and high fliers. Syncs with Google Classroom.

Newsela – Similar to Actively Learn but now is a paid platform with tons of nonfiction articles. Differentiates by changing the lexile scores of reading passages to make information accessible to everyone.

Insert Learning – This Chrome Extension allows you to insert instructional content to any page! Create your own differentiated assignments that are customized to individual students. It’s free!

Edpuzzle – Yes, this is a video platform that allows a teacher to insert a video and include comprehension questions throughout the video to check for understanding. We live in a visually saturated culture and students need to be able to “read close” visual texts.

Creative Communicators:

TeleStory is an App that allows students to create and broadcast your own TV show! Record a music video, teleport to an alien planet, film a high-speed-chase, or perform on a reality TV show. This is a great way for students to get creative in how they showcase their ideas, learning, and knowledge.

Flipgrid is a free platform that Syncs with Google Classroom for students to amplify their voice by sharing and showcasing ideas, reflections, and information verbally.

Storybird is a creative writing platform for students and provides a writing curriculum for teachers.  This paid platform supports Google Classroom and has more than 600 writing challenges and art from around the world to inspire and support students authors.

Buncee is a great tool to create, present, and share multimedia. Teachers can use it for lessons to share content and students can create their own engaging presentations or portfolios.  Nearpod and Peardeck are similar to Buncee for sharing information for classroom presentations or a flipped lessons.

Showcase Learning & Assessment:

I have already mentioned Flipgrid and Buncee which students can utilize to document, communicate, and visualize their learning. Here are a few others that allow students to be creative and show learning and understanding.

Powtoons is a comic creation tool where students can create their own storyboard, comic book, or graphic novel.

Padlet collects responses from students in text or visual format. I have also utilized padlets for book reviews, sharing poetry and reading responses.

StoryMap.KnightLab.com is like Google Lit Trips  where a map is utilized to tell a story. You can tell stories with photographs, works of art, historic maps, or a narrative.

I work in a Google School and I use Google Suite daily. GSuite offers lots of different tools that can help students showcase their learning from Google Jamboards for collaboration and brainstorms, longer writing on Google Docs, presentations in Google Slides or think outside of the box with Google Drawings to create infographics, graphic organizers or illustrations.

 

Supporting Diverse Readers in Virtual Spaces and Remote Learning #EdTechTeam Virtual Summit

#EdTechTeam is hosting three Virtual Summits this spring. The first is Saturday, April 18, 2020. The objective of the Summits is to support teachers and district leaders as schools move to implement remote learning, improve practice, implement new tools, design better online learning experiences, and continue to build relationships with students and families.

The learning begins at 10 AM EST with a key note speaker, then participants can access  presentations throughout the four session times,  and at the conclusion, a demo slam. I will be presenting at 2 PM EST on Supporting Diverse Readers in Virtual Spaces and Remote Learning.” I have shared the slide deck below.

My goal as an English Language Arts teacher is to promote a rich literacy experience for ALL the learners in my classroom. Shifting to remote learning has allowed me to refine the reading units I create with my students and make texts accessible to all my students. All of the assignments provide scaffolds to help students reach higher levels of comprehension.

These scaffolds include

models

graphic organizers

frontload vocabulary

using lots of visuals

dividing texts into manageable chunks

It is important to remember when teaching and planning lessons that every students is unique and valuable. I don’t want students to fall off my radar and it is important that students have a voice and choice throughout their learning. Providing multiple pathways to learning will help all students reach excellence.

 

 

5 Chrome Extensions to Boost & Empower Writers

What is the intention for writing: to learn, deepen our understanding, emphasize skills and strategies, to deepen thinking, look for clarity of ideas, and a tool box for our thinking. Writing is utilized to focus our investigations of what I think I know, what I want to know, to state a hypothesis, accumulate evidence, and help us prepare for conversations and discussions. Writing connects new understanding to larger issues in the world and reflect on how it changes our understanding.

All teachers are responsible for being teachers of reading and writing. Here are five Google Chrome extensions that support and transform writing to increase student engagement and communication skills.

Form Publisher – When my colleague, Jules Csillag (@julesteaches) showed me how she uses Form Publisher to scaffold writing for her special ed students I immediately began adding it to my Google Forms. Some students may need scaffolds during the writing process to support their thinking. These scaffolds may include graphic organizers, revising and editing checklists, sentence starters, lists of transition words and phrases, and vocabulary lists. With Form Publisher you can convert a graphic organizer into a Google Form scaffolding the elements of the writing task. Then, the Form Publisher lets you generate files to present your data in a more suitable way i.e. a paragraph or constructed response. Using this add on breaks down the writing process for struggling writers into a manageable and less daunting task.

Citthisforme – Writing a research paper or including testimony and evidence from other sources, this citation generator is easy to use and offers APA and MLA citations for a footnote or bibliography. Whenever you are on a page you wish to use as a source, simply click the Cite This For Me extension button to generate a citation for it. It’s quick, easy, and free.

Grammarly and NoRedInk– When it come to grammar, these Chrome extensions use artificial intelligence to help students compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing. NoRedInk helps students improve their grammar and writing by adapting to their abilities with instant feedback and actionable performance data. Students can edit their work before they submit it for evaluation. Think of these extensions as a virtual peer editor.

Speakit  and Announcify– I always tell my students to read aloud their writing before submitting it for evaluation. When we read aloud our writing we are able to hear our mistakes. Both these extensions will read back your writing and help students catch any errors during the editing and revision process.  Announcify will read aloud any webpage in your browser with a single click.

WriQ – A new product from Texthelp, WriQ boasts, “WriQ is an extension for Google Docs that automatically grades papers digitally. It’s faster, more accurate and consistent then traditional manual and subjective grading.” Now, for any ELA teacher with a mountain of essays to grade, this sounds like a dream. Actually, the teacher is not off the hook to completely leave grading to a computer algorithm. What WriQ actually does is help students meet learning targets and offer guidance where they can improve with their writing before a final submission. WriQ will assess for students their vocabulary, spelling, sentence length, grammar and punctuation correctness. Students can see when they overuse a word or if their word choice is below grade level. Students have the option of revising their writing for a stronger outcome. WriQ provides rubrics alongside of the student writing to help students improve their writing in real time. These rubrics are based on the student’s grade level and the genre of writing, measuring everything from plot, narrative techniques, language and more. In turn, this extension can accelerate writing proficiency and provide a consistent benchmark for fair grading.

Pathways to the Standards #CECACASL18

On Monday, October 22nd I attended and presented the CECA/CASL 2018 Annual Conference. There were more than 50 presentation from educators, authors, and administrators addressing topics that intersect literacy and technology.

One of the key strands of the conference was differentiation and ways to differentiate in a student centered classroom. By differentiation I mean including EVERY learner in the classroom (not just the ones who are struggling). The key is that there are multiple ways for students to demonstrate understanding and instruction needs to change when evidence of learning has not occurred.

Steven W. Anderson of web20classroom.org shared 10 great tools to help differentiate content, product, process, and assessment.

1. Poll Everywhere is an online polling platform that does more than just have students respond to a survey or multiple choice question. With Poll Everywhere students can respond to an open ended question and even formative assessments where students can pin a location on a map or diagram.
2. Padlet – Yes, the online sticky notes where students can respond to a question or post a response. Padlet let’s users respond in text, drawing and images, and even audio. I recently had students share book reviews on Padlet of nonfiction independent reading books.
3. Quizizz is so much better than Kahoot because it is not a competition but an assessment tool similar to Kahoot that let’s students work at their own pace to show their understanding.
4. Nearpod is an interactive slideshow creator with a quiz feature. Nearpod does so much more and the paid version even offers AR & VR components.
5. Edpuzzle is great for sharing videos in class and then students can answer questions before, during, and after viewing of their learning.

Teaching is an art more than a mechanical exercise. Students vary as learners and not everyone’s road map is identical for learning. When we know our students we are able to better create learning opportunities that honor their strengths, abilities, and cultures.

6. When thinking about differentiating the process and student’s understanding Anderson spoke about Gamification (Oh, Yeah!!). He shared Breakoutedu, Classcraft, Class Badge, Mincraftedu, and Duolingo – many gamification tools that I blog about regularly.

7. Flipgrid is now free since Microsoft has acquired it and it can be used in so many ways for the classroom from students reflecting on their own learning and thinking to posting a book review or explaining how they solved a math problem.

8. Book Creator is one that I am going to invest more time and attention to this year. Book Creator allows users to create their own interactive ebooks.

9. Microsoft’s Sway lets you create visually appealing and multitiered presentations. You can record audio on the slides and it will even grab resources for you when creating a presentation about specific topics. This is one to check out if you are looking for more interesting Google Slide Decks or Prezis.

10. TextHelp is the makers of Fluency Tutor and Read Write, these two Chrome extensions offers assistive technology that supports literacy in different ways. Fluency Tutor allows students to record text passages to help build their reading fluency and comprehension whereas Read Write has a dozen different tools on its toolbar to support readers and writers.

The key is choice when thinking about differentiating in your classroom. Choose technology platforms that allow students the opportunity to create new products and new knowledge. Remember, it is not technology for technology’s sake, but about creating a learning environment where there is “equity of access to excellence.”

 

Transforming Writer’s Lives With Digital Tools #ILA16

Later this week I will be heading to Boston for the International Literacy Association Annual Conference in Boston, MA. I am excited to be presenting with two of my esteemed colleagues: poet, Laura Purdie Salas and blogger and literacy consultant, Carol Varsalona.

Our hands on workshop will present a series of creative and collaborative activities  integrating art and technology with literacy. More than a dozen digital tools and resources will be featured to examine, explore, and share, including Google Docs, word clouds, KidBlog, photo-editing tools: PicMonkey, Canva, PicLits, and Wonderopolis so educators can model and integrate these resources into their instruction. Our objective is that participants will engage in conversations about the effect of digital literacy on classroom instructional practices and literacy learning to encourage teachers to build classrooms that promote choice and voice.

Here are sketch notes I created highlighting the tools and literacy strategies we will cover during our presentation.

As technology continues to expand the way students and teachers engage in literacy, teachers need to embrace the role of digital media in the classroom to foster a culture of creativity and innovation. There are dozens of tech tools that help young people build literacy skills and simultaneously allow students to become writers, poets, and digitally literate meaning makers. Literacy 2.0 brings to the forefront digital tech tools that enhance learning and literacy in the digital age where students are content creators and critical thinkers.

Shifting teachers’ thinking about writing from a traditional sense to next generation literacy instruction utilizing digital toolkits, electronic devices, and digital platforms will allow students to become meaning makers where voice, choice, and perspective are honored.

How will you deepen your understanding of literacy development through Literacy 2.0? 

Here are some tools we will address in our workshop.

Want to know more? I have included the slides to our presentation for more insight and digital literacy tools.

More to follow about literacy learning at #ILA16 in the next post.

Digital Writing Tools For Reluctant Writers

So, your students tell you they hate writing or they profess they are not good writers. Why beat them over the head with writing essays? Here are ten digital writing tools to help build writing endurance and have students create authentic and creative writing pieces.

1. Blog It – This year my students are blogging about their Genius Hour projects. Each of their blogs detail and record their passion project research and findings. Students can create blogs about anything and everything so don’t only have them write on lined paper for your eyes only. Let students write for a global audience and write about topics that are meaningful to them.
2. Collaborative Writing with Google Docs – Whether students are working collaboratively compiling research for a debate or working together to write a screenplay or story, why do it alone? So many authors today are collaborating and students should be able to work together too.
3. Digital Inspirations – My friend and colleague, Carol Varsalona creates these amazing pictures and inspirational words on her blog Beyond LiteracyLink and has all different writers, teachers, and artists contribute their own digital inspirations. Have your students take their own photographs and write inspirational words, poems, ideas to go along with the images produced.

4. Podcasts are a great way to get students writing, speaking, and collaborating. I am a huge fan of NPR’s RadioLab podcasts and have used them in my classroom as a mentor text. Students can script their podcasts before recording them and make their own radio shows on all different issues and topics.

5. Prezi Picture Books in lieu of a traditional picture book, students can create their own digital picture books using Prezi or Google Slides and then screencast an audio file reading aloud the picture book created.

6. Twitter Poems and 140 Character Memoirs

7. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books in the 1980s? Have students create their own Choose Your Own Adventure story or research inquiry using YouTube, Thinglink, or SymbalooEDU. Students do all the writing and research and allow the viewers to choose the direction of the story or inquiry.

8. Create Your Own Textbook on Wikispaces. What if you had students create the course textbook for the students next year? Let students curate the materials, and design the texts that are essential to classroom learning and content knowledge.

9. StoryWars is a website that was recently shared with me because it is a collaborative story telling website where people can upload their own stories or contribute a chapter to an existing story. Participants can read a story, write a chapter, or vote on a story’s path.

10. Make it a graphic novel using ToonDoo or Bitstrips blending dialogue and cartoon images together.

#ISTE2015 Tech SmackDown & TakeAway

I have just arrived home after attending the ISTE (International Society for Technology Education) annual Convention. The conference is an incredible opportunity for teachers, administrators, and anyone working in technology and education to see amazing speakers, innovative technology for the classroom, collaborate and be inspired. Below is a list of all the super cool technology tools that were shared (new and old). I have organized them according to the Common Core Standards to help think about how to use them in the classroom. The key idea of the conference is that it is not about the tech tool but building relationships, engaging students, teaching skills that will help students think deeply and succeed.

Reading & Writing

Reading Closely:

ThinkCerca – Reading & Writing Tool

The Learning Network – The New York Times

TED Talks

Actively Learn – Reading & Annotation Tool

Wonderopolis – Reading & Research Tool

Buncee – A Writing and Creation Tool

Comprehension:

Popplet – Storyboarding & Semantic Maps

Pixton – Storyboard & Animation Tool

Wordle – Word Generator

Tricider – Collaborative Polling Tool

Summarize:

iMovie Book Trailers

Big Huge Labs – Create Movie Poster

Twitter – Conversation Tool

Padlet – Collect Student Responses

Analyze:

Socrative – Polling Tool

Easel_ly – Create Infographics

Evernote – Curation and Writing Tool

Edmodo – Collaborating, Communication, & Curration Tool

Trello – Visual Organization Tool

Speaking & Listening – Presenting Tools to Build and Present Knowledge

Prezi – Digital Presentation Tool

HaikuDeck – Digital Presentation Tool

Animoto – Movie Making Tool

Glogster -Digital Posters

MovieMaker – Create Movies

PowToon  – Animation Tool

GoogleDocs – Collaborative Writing & Individual Writing

Google Slides – Google’s Power Point

Smore – Digital Newsletters

PodBean – Podcasting

ThingLink – Visual Curating Tool

Gamification

Classcraft – Game Platform

Kahoot! – Easy Polling & Assessment Tool

5 Things I Will Do Differently as a Result of #Edscape 2013

Today I attended the Edscape Conference at New Milford High School in New Milford, NJ.  If you participate in #Satchat or the 140Characters Conference you might know many of the innovative educators presenting at Edscape, sharing ideas about innovation, collaboration, and transformative teaching and learning practices. The conference is organized by principal, Eric Sheninger of New Milford High School and Teq.  Throughout the day I was inspired, made connections, and collaborated and networked with many educators.

Here are a few things that I am going to as a result of the conference when I go back to my classroom on Monday morning:

1. “Be More Dog”

George Couros, principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning with Parkland School Division in Alberta, Canada kicked off the conference with a hilarious and meaningful keynote. He spoke about meaningful creation, disrupting our routine, and allowing our students the opportunities to do the extraordinary.

2. Create a Paperless Digital Classroom

Each year I challenge myself to use less paper and teacher at NMHS, Vikki Smith, shared how she has gone completely paperless in her High School science class this year by using Nearpod, Edmodo, mobile devices, and Classmarker. Class wikis, blogs, and Google Drive are also great tools to help reduce the amount of paper used in schools for worksheets, and handouts. I am going to try out the Classmarker for creating and administering a quiz this month.

3. Participate in the Global Collaborator Network

This fall my middle school students are participating in the global collaborative project “Digitween” created by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis of the Flat Classroom Project. The project centers around digital citizenship. But digital citizenship is not one lesson that is taught one day. Rather, teaching digital citizenship is ongoing so that my students understand their responsibility as a global citizen. Bill Krakower and other teachers of the Global Collaborator Network shared many more global collaborative projects that teachers and students can participate in.

4. Allow Opportunities for Voice, Choice, and Authentic Audience

The assessments and projects that my students do in my class need to matter in life, not just in school. Dr. Robert Dillon addressed how voice, choice, and authentic audience need to be central to learning. These three elements are the keys to engagement and integration.

5. Use Twitter for Reading Comprehension and Literary Analysis

Teacher Matthew Morone shared his experiences with his class using Twitter as a tool in his English classroom. As my students are reading we will try out Twitter as a web tool to record observations, define terms, decipher allusions, apply critical theories, argue claims, and justify connections with others.

You Have to Read This Now! Book Trailer Projects

You Have to Read This Now! Book Trailer Projects

For a summer reading assessment my students created a movie trailer for the second required reading book they completed. Students selected a second summer reading book based on a list of titles recommended by their teachers.  I am over the book reports, power points, and dressing up as one of the characters as a way to assess readers in “creative ways.”  I wanted students to impress me with their technology and reading skills by creating a book trailer that would captivate an audience to go out and buy the book.

I did not give my students any models for the book trailers.  Rather, I handed them the assignment and gave them two weeks outside of class to show me  a book trailer that made me say, “I gotta read that book now.”

I am beyond impressed by the awesomeness that my students created!  Some of the trailers give me chills and others make me think I have the next Oscar award winning director sitting in my classroom.

Technology can be used to create a wide variety of reading assessments.  Whether using video, Prezi, Storybird, Glogster, or blogging, there are unlimited web 2.0 applications that allow student to share what they know and read in a creative way with others (not just the teacher).  All my students’ book trailers would uploaded on to our class Wiki so they could be seen by many.

Mark Prensky said, “Instead of looking at our kids’ test scores, let’s see them as individual people and partners in learning.” The trailers that my students created tell me so much more about them as individuals, thinkers, and creators, rather than a test score. My goal as a teacher is to balance between the tests and the projects so that I can encourage a sense of independence, critical thinking, and close reading capacities in all of my students.

Here are a few of my students’ trailers just to get you to go out and read the book!

Twitter Resources for Educators

I have said over and over again that Twitter has revolutionized my professional development and learning.  Twitter is a tech tool that I use everyday professionally and, I have even started to use it with my students.  This past spring my eighth grade students initiated three different Twitter discussions about To Kill a Mockingbird.  Twitter allowed students to extend classroom conversations and collaborate outside of the classroom.

Last week I taught a workshop to teachers in my school district on Twitter for Educators.  Whether you are new to Twitter or have started to get your feet wet with this social media, check out the resources below to help you utilize and learn about the potential Twitter has to offer.

Twitter in Plain English [Video] by Common Craft

Twitter Cheat Sheet from Dr. Kimberly Tyson @tysonkimberly

Rules of Twitter Etiquette from Educational Technology & Mobile Learning

100 Ways to Use Twitter in Education, By Degree of Difficulty @Edudemic

Educators Guide to Twitter LIVEBINDER curated by Steven W. Anderson @Web20classroom

Examples of Using Twitter for Education from the Innovative Educator @InnovativeEdu

60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom from 21^st Century Fluency Project

Twitter Spectrum for Educators Infographic from Teachthought.com