Blog Post #8

What are some 21st century learning and communicating tools?

When looking for new tools that teachers are using to help facilitate 21st century learning and communicating I ran across Edudemic. This website gave 50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About, which ranged from social learning, to help with lesson planning. One website I found on here that I thought would be helpful and fun for elementary students was FunBrain. After playing around on this website I found that your students can play educational games, read books, or just have a good free time game to play. Each game or book is set up to your students grade level and skill and allows them to learn in a fun interactive way. I would definitely use the math games offered on this site to help students learn math and improve their basic math skills. The grammar and reading tools that FunBrain offers are beneficial in getting students engaged in reading, as well as help them improve their grammar skills in a fun way.

Educreations was yet another website that I believe would be helpful to use in the classroom. Topics that have already been shared on this website cover every subject in school and then some.

Teachers, or students, use iPads to post their presentations online to share with the classroom or others around the world. To me this tool would be especially beneficial to use for math "how to" videos. The presentation can be viewed online and looks like an on-screen white board. To me this seems like a better option than doing a YouTube video of a lesson. The student can clearly see what is being written in front of them, and the teacher does not have to worry about standing in the way of the problem while it is being worked. Students can pause the video if they need to catch up, or go back and view how to work a problem again.

A tool that I found which would be beneficial to me as a future educator was Teachers Pay Teachers. I have actually seen this site in action during my observation hours. This site is loaded with worksheets, coloring sheets, and activities for different subjects and topics. Teachers Pay Teachers allows you to access other teachers activities and ideas from around the world. All of the items offered can be printed off for your use in the classroom. Some are offered for free while others you have to pay a small fee to use. I think I would use this website often as a teacher to help bring new material into my classroom. I can also get helpful and creative ideas to teach a new subject to my students.