CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6 – The Digital Toolbox

Explain Everything

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016Valerie Harlow ShinasLeave a comment

Grades: 4-12

Purposes: This content creation app allows teachers and students to create multimodal compositions and presentations.

Cost: A variety of pricing options: free to try, $5.99 for the fully functioning iOS app, and additional educational pricing options for multiple licenses.

Developer’s Website: Explain Everything Website

Platform: iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets; Chromebook and Windows devices; companion web-based Explain Everything Discover with free or paid subscription

Every teacher has his or her favorite content creation app. Typically, it’s a flexible, easy-to-use tool appropriate for a variety of purposes – one that teachers and students can use to capture and share their ideas. Explain Everything is such a tool and may become your new favorite app. Explain Everything is a multimodal content creation and presentation app that you and your students will use again and again. An interactive whiteboard, it combines ease of use with the multimodal capabilities of a sophisticated presentation app and the power of a screen casting tool. Explain Everything allows students to create, collaborate, share, and animate within a single platform – it is an essential tool to add to your digital toolbox!

Explain Everything™ - Import&Export - iPad

Explain Everything™ - Record, Annotate, Animate - iPad

In the Upper Elementary Classroom: Explain Everything can be used to support collaboration and composition in the upper elementary grades. Students can use the capabilities of the tool to create compositions with their own artwork and animations. When planning for small group work, consider that Explain Everything allows students to work together in a digital environment to create high-quality projects.

In the Secondary Classroom: For middle and high school teachers looking for new ways to flip the classroom, Explain Everything is a great tool to explore. The screen capturing capabilities and the convenience of online sharing via Explain Everything Discover (available with a subscription) allow teachers to create and share engaging multimodal lessons their students can view at home. In addition, students can create their own projects for any topic and view those created by their peers.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.5, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.9, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.5

Toontastic

November 17, 2014April 18, 2016Valerie Harlow ShinasLeave a comment

Grades: PreK – High School

Purpose: Language development and digital composing tool

Cost: Toontastic original and Toontastic Jr. theme-based apps are free; upgraded Toontastic school edition app, $9.99; bundle the Toontastic and Telestory apps for $11.99

Developer website: http://www.launchpadtoys.com/toontastic/

Platforms: iPad and iPhone

Toontastic is one tool in a suite of fun and engaging educational apps developed by LaunchPad Toys. Designed by a team that includes educational researchers, media professionals, and digital design experts, this award-winning app transforms children’s play into authentic opportunities for learning. Your youngest learners will enjoy using the Toontastic Jr. apps to create theme-based narratives as they develop their language skills and learn story structure and digital composition. Older students can use the Toontastic app to create content-based, multimodal narratives and presentations to share with others. Teachers report that the app is easy to use and flexible, thus making it the ideal choice for a wide range of learners in classrooms across the grade spans. By integrating any of the Toontastic apps within your literacy or disciplinary classroom, you will provide your students with a digital, multimodal option to paper/pencil writing tasks, thus supporting the development of 21^st century literacy skills.

In the PreK classroom: The suite of Toontastic apps includes theme-based digital story-creation tools perfect for your youngest learners. Children can use the digital “toys” and their own voices to create digital stories that can then be shared with parents and other students. For whole-class lessons, Toontastic can be projected onto the Interactive Whiteboard, thus allowing teachers to model use of the tool while engaged in shared, interactive writing lessons.

In the elementary classroom: Toontastic is a versatile tool appropriate for use in the elementary-level classroom. In the English Language Arts classroom, digital storytelling comes alive as students have unlimited opportunities to use their imaginations to create multimodal narratives. With Toontastic, interdisciplinary projects become opportunities to teach others as students use the capabilities of the app to create digital lessons to share with their classmates. For more information about the many ways you can use Toontastic in the classroom, visit http://www.la unchpadtoys.com /edu/#about.

In the secondary classroom: Although Toontastic is ideal for young learners, older students can use the app to create digital compositions to create original stories, scripts, and presentations. Students can create digital math stories or re-enact history using the features of this flexible tool. For teachers interested in the many ways to integrate the Toontastic app within the secondary classroom, the developer’s website has a large collection of educational resources and lesson ideas available (http://www.launchpadtoys.com/edu/#leaders). We were amazed by the many ways secondary teachers use Toontastic to engage older students and extend learning to add value to their instruction. Do check it out!

Please note: This is a general list of our suggestions of the Language and Literacy standards this tool addresses. Toontastic has aligned the tool to the Common Core State Standards for specific lessons; readers may find the Toontastic recommendations more useful given the specificity. You will find a table with a variety of connections to instruction at: http://www.launchpadtoys.com/edu/learning-goals/#common-core

ShowMe

October 22, 2014April 18, 2016Valerie Harlow ShinasLeave a comment

Grades: K-12 students and educators

Purposes: Interactive, recordable whiteboard app for the iPad that can be used to compose and design multimodal presentations and lessons that can be shared online

Cost: Free

Developer’s Website: http://www.showme.com/

Platform: iPad

In our view, the best educational apps are simple to use, flexible, and allow teachers to easily share digital creations and compositions with others. ShowMe is such a tool. It allows teachers to share digital lessons with colleagues, share student work with parents, and create opportunities for students to produce multimodal compositions and then share their learning with each other. Using the ShowMe app, teachers can create digital lessons using video, audio, images, and text and share them quickly and easily, making it a perfect tool for sharing lessons across teaching teams, with students in the flipped classroom, or with a substitute teacher. This versatile tool is a must-have for K-12 classroom teachers.

Because ShowMe is free and so simple to use, nearly anyone can use it without support. However, the developers of ShowMe recognize the need to provide immediate, accurate support to app users. With that in mind, their website includes many examples of projects that can be created using ShowMe. In addition, they provide access to tutorials, blog posts shared by ShowMe Ambassadors, and prompt feedback to specific questions, thus creating a system of support that will allow you to use ShowMe successfully in your classroom.

In the Elementary Classroom: For young students, the ShowMe app can help you transform skill-based work. Replacing paper/pencil tasks and the use of erasable whiteboards with the ShowMe app on mini iPads allows youngest learners to practice letter formation, save their work, and return to it again. For young writers, ShowMe allows them to create professional looking compositions in ways not possible with traditional tools. Using a finger or a stylus, children can write, illustrate, and record their own voices, add images, and then share their work with others using secure, password-protected sharing sites. Elementary teachers can use ShowMe to re-envision Writer’s Workshop for the 21st century.

In the Secondary Classroom: ShowMe allows users to create multimodal tutorials using images imported from secure file-sharing sites. This allows older students to create sophisticated projects that include original images or primary documents. In addition, use of the ShowMe app is the perfect tool to facilitate collaboration among students. Finally, secondary teachers can use their own ShowMe tutorials in their flipped classrooms.

Socrative

June 9, 2014April 16, 2016Valerie Harlow ShinasLeave a comment

Grades: Upper elementary through High School

Purposes: Student response system, assessment data collection tool

Cost: Free

Developer’s Website: http://www.socrative.com/

Platforms: App for iPad or iPhone and Web-based response tool

Socrative is a simple to use web and app-based student response system that allows teachers to collect real-time evidence of students’ learning. Whether you want to poll your class during an activation strategy, administer a quick quiz at the end of a chapter, or collect exit tickets to informally assess students’ learning at the end of a lesson, Socrative makes it easy to gather data and document students’ learning.

Socrative has many uses in the upper elementary and secondary classroom. We have seen teachers use Socrative effectively as a homework collection tool or to capture in-the-moment responses to daily learning experiences. Importantly, you may create small group tasks and allow students to view the posts of all groups, thus supporting collaboration that allows your quieter students to add their voices to the conversation. Because the tool is available as an app or an online tool, students can log in to Socrative and post responses to teacher-designed tasks from any Internet-connected device. All data are securely stored within a teacher-created, password-protected classroom site where each student has a unique log-in.

Socrative also makes it easy for teachers to collect evidence of learning toward the Common Core State Standards and provide students with opportunities to rehearse for technology-based assessment. Multiple-choice items are graded for you and reports can be generated quickly and easily. When planning for use of Socrative, you’ll find a rich collection of ideas, resources, and help tools on the Socrative blog. These include lesson plan and creative ways to use Socrative in the classroom. During these busy last weeks of the school year, why not give Socrative a try?

Common Core Connections: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6

Can be used to assess progress toward standards, including: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.3, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.6, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9

Educreation

May 12, 2014April 18, 2016Valerie Harlow Shinas2 Comments

Grades: K-12 students and educators; higher education

Purposes: Interactive, recordable whiteboard app for the iPad used for composing and designing multimodal presentations and lessons

Cost: Free

Developer’s Website: http://www.educreations.com/

Platform: iPad app; companion website with presentation sharing capabilities

In our work in schools, we have observed effective teachers across the disciplines who use technology in artful ways to support literacy, learning, and student engagement. Some teachers take this a step further. For example, we observed a team of teachers who use the Educreation app to provide their young adolescent students with opportunities to take on the role of teacher. Within collaborative communities of learners, students used this versatile, easy-to-use app to create digital, multimodal lessons to share with their classmates. Students work in pairs to compose mini-lessons that include brightly colored illustrations and worked examples with audio within their video tutorials. We were impressed with the students’ confidence using the app and the quality of the work they produced after only a brief introduction to the app presented in a whole-class lesson. More important, we found that were engaged and learned deeply the concepts they were asked to “teach” to their classmates.

While Educreation is a great tool for students, teachers can also use this app to transform their own teaching. Educreation has an online learning platform that allows teachers to upload and share digital lessons that students can access from home. The capabilities of the tool allow teachers to flip their classrooms – by moving their lessons online, teachers can use instructional time to support students’ learning through inquiry-based and differentiated learning opportunities.

Two challenges to technology integration in the classroom include ease of use and availability of technology support. The developers of Educreation have attempted to resolve both of these obstacles. The Educreation app is easy enough for young children to use with relatively little support. In addition, tech support is available 7 days a week, important for busy teachers who often plan lessons on the weekend. If you’re looking for a flexible, versatile tool that will allow you and your students to create and share exciting, multimodal digital lessons, give the Educreation app a try.

In the elementary classroom: There are many ways to use Educreation in the elementary classroom. For example, students can utilize the capabilities of this easy-to-use app to compose original multimodal compositions with embedded images and audio. The recording capabilities of the app allow young writers to create digital stories using audio recordings along with their own photos or illustrations. Once students have created their compositions, teachers can share their work with parents in the secure online learning platform at http://www.educreations.com.

In the secondary classroom: The Educreation app can be used to transform traditional student presentations. Older students can use the Educreation app to create sophisticated digital presentations with audio, video, and original images, then share their presentations with teachers and classmates via social networking or by projecting them on a digital, interactive whiteboard. Students can also use the app to create visual demonstrations of their knowledge. For example, students can upload a piece of literary text or artwork to Educreation, then use the features of the tool to mark up the text and record audio commentary.

Common Core Connections: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.2, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.5, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.7, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.9, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.4, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.5

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