Bringing Technology into the Classroom with Ease
Including technology into any type of teaching (individual tutoring or classroom environment) can be a balancing act. Too much technology is distracting and full of technical difficulties that may be time consuming. But, too little may make the job more difficult and lower engagement with students. Below I discuss the balance that has worked for me.
I have taught at multiple levels of education from kindergarten to college (except 7th grade for some reason as I never had the opportunity). Due to this, I think technology has to work directly with the situation. The digital resource has to be something that will make your life as the teacher more efficient as well as bring engagement into the classroom. Without these two items, the resource might end up being more time consuming over time efficient.
Below are some of the different sources that I use help students:
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Exit Tickets, Feedback, or easily graded quizzes: Socrative - I think that this resource is most helpful for educators as it allows for a electronic and quick version of feedback from students. I use this to create quiz competitions, quick reading quizzes, and to get a feel for what the students have learned that day.
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Vocabulary Building: Academic Vocabulary Set 1 - This site helps with practicing definitions of words as well as spelling. Multilingual students may have some trouble with spelling words in English and the Spelling Bee tool works on listening skills and spelling skills. There are also many different ways to challenge yourself to learn new words, further than the ones on just the list shown here.
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Grammar: Study.com Sentence Types - This site helps with much more than sentence types and gives examples of the different types of writing styles and sentences. It can be a bit overwhelming though. If you are looking for a simpler explanation of things. You can also check Grammarly
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Formatting: Purdue OWL - I tell all of my students to use Purdue OWL for formatting needs. It is not a citation creation site. Unfortunately, most of those are get aspects of the updated formatting incorrect anyway. Some things can be difficult to find but the majority are easy to navigate.
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