Digital Smash Hits

10 Favourite tools to make life easier and learning more fun!

Toni Westcott - Masters in Digital and collaborative learning, working for Digital Circus.

1: Quizlet
Collaborative quiz activity. Good for terminology or vocabulary.

2: Toby
Chrome cast extension - Organise all of you tabs. Morning tabs etc create links and can open multiple tab at once that might relate to that particular session or block. Share tabs or links to websites. Give kids 15 places they can find information rather than them having to research themselves.

3: Boomerang
Schedule emails to be sent at any time in the future. Reminders etc. Can install it and then it will pop up in your emails (extension).

4: Edpuzzle
Go on youtube and make it interactive. Check in points throughout the video which asks questions etc (Can be a must do task to go with a reading or writing task).

5: Bookmarks
Add in more bookmarks along your bookmark bar. Save and organise the most used bookmarks.

6: Macroniser Tool
Input any Maori word or phrase and it will figure out where the macron goes you can copy and paste.

7: Google forms for student agency
Mixed reading workshops. Put a text into a google form and ask the students to choose which story they would like to read. They book in a time and must be there at that time. Top readers as it would not match the goals for lower learners. Easily organised mixed ability groupings based on interest. Easy way to facilitate students agency. Sign up for a reading workshop - unpack a paragraph based on the strategy they have chosen to learn (summarising) - Kids are excited to read because they have facilitated their own learning - Mixed level groups. (Possibly give kids 3 things they need to work on based on their goals and that day they can choose what they would like to learn about). So they have two things to choose - Reading or text and the strategy they are learning.

8: Digital Breakouts
Michael Davidson Resources. There is a story that has a problem where the kids have 45minutes to figure out. Google form to fill in the answers. Unlock all the locks and breakout. There a things hidden which children need to find. (Broken eggs and broken dreams).

9: Seesaw

10: Read Aloud
A Text to Speech Voice Reader. Extension downloaded off the chrome store. Highlight text on the internet and click the extension. The computer can read it back to you. Works if you are a learner who needs to hear something (auditory learner) for you to understand or process easily - struggle to read but would still like to access the information.