5 eLearning Tools & Set-ups I Brought Back In Person

We are back in person! But there are many tools and set-ups I used in remote teaching that are here to stay in my classroom.

How much technology should we use in the classroom and how? This is a question that teachers have asked ourselves, and our answers have changed dramatically in the last couple of years. Before remote teaching, I had used Kahoot! pretty regularly and casually used Schoology to organize some class materials. Then, when we switched to remote teaching I had to rethink all of the systems and routines that existed in my classroom! When things got hard or I felt like I had hit a wall, I would think, "Man, I can't wait to be back in person so I can do this the way I've always done it!" What I didn't expect is that once I WAS back in person, I DIDN'T want to go back to the way that I have always done things.

Switching everything to a virtual learning platform required me to really thinking about things from my students' perspective. How could I make sure that my students got immediate feedback? How could I make sure that my students regularly showed their learning? How could I make sure that the students felt that the assignments connected, and weren't just busy work? How could I make the Unit roadmap clear, and make Schoology easy to navigate? These are questions I worked hard to answer, which resulted in a significant mind shift to the way I did things as a teacher in general. Luckily, now my district has shifted to 1:1 and requires students to bring their laptops to school everyday, which meant that I could continue to incoporate a lot of the tools and systems I worked hard to create and my students got used to.

Here are the top 5 tools that I still love using in person!

• Schoology Part 1: Banner for Easy Resource Access 👩🏻‍💻

  With all of the online tools I started to incorporate, I wanted to make sure that there was an easy and quick way for my students to access resources, current materials, and past materials. First, I made sure that I had an easy to understand folder system that my PowerPoints, Zoom recordings and assignments would be in. I decided to organize my materials by Unit, then by week. Next, I made a banner on Canva. Then, I put the design onto a Google Draw document, and linked each button to the appropriate tool or folder. Every week on Monday, I update the "Last Week" and "This Week" button links. I see my students use the banner every day when they need quick access to in-class assignments, Quizlets or the resource Padlet. Although it took me awhile to set up intially, reimplementing it this year took me a fraction of the time and it is the foundation for everything that I do in my classroom.
  🎥 Click here for a simple tutorial for creating a clickable Schoology Banner!

• Schoology Part 2: Assessments for Quick Feedback and Grading 👨🏿‍💻

  After my district implemented Schoology as the main LMS, we synced it to our main gradebook system. Once it was synced, Schoology became our main grade input platform. That meant that any automatically graded assessments were also entered in the gradebook automatically! This cut down on so much grading time for me and provided immediate feedback for students. There are a variety of types of questions that you can create, and the assessments are reusable year after year! I have since switched many of my assessments to Schoology, cutting down on time at the printer and time at my desk grading.
  👉 Click here for detailed instructions creating assessments on Schoology!

• Padlet as an Online Textbook 👩🏼‍💻

  Remote teaching meant...no textbooks! Okay, yes we could textbook checkouts, but I wasn't really using the textbook when I was in person. Most of my materials were made by me or my colleagues, so I just needed an easy-to-use tool to organize the most useful "cheat sheets" for my students. That's where Padlet came in! Using the column feature, I created a column for each Unit and added resources in jpeg, png and PDF format. I also ask my students what resources they would like added, and I get suggestions all the time! I love that it has become a collaborative space and is a "living" resource.
  
  Check out my 3 Padlets:
  👉Japanese 1 Resource Padlet
  👉Japanese 2 Resource Padlet
  👉Japanese 3 Resource Padlet

• Quizlet for Vocabulary Practice 👨🏽‍💻

  My students LOVE Quizlet, whether it's the practices, competitive practices like Match, or Quizlet Live in the classroom! The possibilities are endless: You can use Quizlet to introduce words or review them, as a warm-up or an exit task, or even as an assessment by using the Test option that gives you a percentage score. There is great differentiation for students since there are so many ways to learning the words. And since I'm a language teacher, I can add culturally relevant pictures and images to the vocabulary words to enhance learning.
  👉Check out my all of my sets here!
  🎥Click here for how to create a Quizlet class and monitor your students' progress!

• Nearpod for Checkpoint Reviews 👩‍💻

  Nearpod is my favorite tool to use for big checkpoints, usually every 25% of a Unit. I have also seen Nearpod be used as an introduction into new topic as well! There is plenty of scaffolding that you can provide, and the variety of interactive activities that keeps students very engaged. It also give you immediate feedback that you can address on the spot. I have actually found that I enjoy using Nearpod in the classroom even more than I did during remote teaching!
  👉Check out an example Nearpod that I made here!
  🎥Click here for an overview of Nearpod!
  🎥Click here for the ULTIMATE GUIDE to Nearpod!

This page was built by Alicia Ceban