MATT COHEN

EDUCATION 6620

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Volume 1, Issue 1
Friday, June 19, 2015

How Technology is
Changing Education
Many of us may remember
those late night homework
sessions with textbooks piled
high on the kitchen table
from the night before, packing them into an oversized
bookbag that is already tearing at the seams. School
bags filled with spellers,
readers, textbooks with broken bindings and hoping
that the student to have had
the book the previous year
had highlighted all of the
important passages and
scribbled some useful answers to the questions in the
back of the book. More of us
may remember sitting in
social studies class when
your teacher would spend
the entire class period writing notes up on the front
boards, then the side

boards, then back to the

front boards, while students
with cramped hands tried to
keep up so we did not have
to borrow scribblers from
friends to copy their notes
before the next test.
Now, it is difficult to believe how education has
changed in just the last
twenty years alone. Many
classrooms are outfitted with
SmartBoards instead of the
dusty ol chalk boards of
yore. Data projectors have
replaced, the noisy overhead projectors, and IPads,
Tablets and mobile devices
are beginning to replace
textbooks. These changes
are not only allowing educators to become more creative in their lessons but they
are also permitting students

to experience the classroom

like never before. While the
applications you may see
listed below is certainly not
an exhaustive list or meant
negate any best practices
for educating students, they
are simply meant to show
some of they ways in which
they have been being used
in todays classrooms to enhance the curriculum and
student learning.

Zielezinski, 2014).
Not only has the use of
technology been helping
some students stay in

Padlet

Mindshift

Tellagami

Educreations

Plickers

References

The proper use of technology keeps many students

engaged in learning.

E n h a n c i n g s t u d e n t ac h i e v e m e n t
students and created interactive learning for disengaged students (DarlingHammond, Goldman &

ClassDojo

Special points of interest:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/mar/29/grammar-schools-

Although relatively new to

the classroom, many educators and students have been
embracing the use of technology and applications in
their classrooms. The use of
Technology in the classroom
has lowered the drop-out
rate by motivating at-risk

Inside this issue:

school, but a recent pilot

study in California claims
student math scores
jumped a whopping 20%
when allowed to use
IPads instead of the traditional textbooks
(Aimonetti, 2012).

Technology can increase

participation.
Apps can help those with
learning disabilities achieve
curriculum outcomes easier
than ever before.
Enhancing student achievement

PAGE 2

MORNING NEWS

Managing Behaviour with Classdojo

While there are many behavior managing applications Classdojo seems to be
one of the highest rated and most used.
Classdojo is meant to encourage and
track student behavior and communicate with parents. Teachers either import class lists of student names or write
the names for the students in themselves. When a class is generated, the
teacher is free to add positive behaviours to track, such as exhibiting leadership skills, staying on task, participating,
being respectful etc. Teachers can also
record negative behaviours such as not
completing homework, being disrespectful, exhibiting off-task behaviours
and so on.

ior they are exhibiting, whether it is

positive or negative. Then, teachers
have many options such as creating a
graph of individual students and their
behaviours, tracking an entire class to
see when certain behaviours escalate or
improve. Once teachers have collected
data, they can either save the data and
use it for writing Learner Profiles on
their report cards (Nova Scotia) or they
can email parents the information at the
touch of a screen.
https://www.classdojo.com/

After teachers have their classes set up

and behaviours they would like to track,
Classdojo allows teachers to click on a
student name and select which behav-

I n c r e a s i n g Pa rt i c i pat i o n w i t h Pa d l e t
How many of us have asked to brainstorm ideas or volunteer an answer to
only hear from a handful of students
willing to participate? If so, this next
website is called Padlet. At https://
padlet.com/ teachers can create a Wall
and have students use their mobile devices to either anonymously write a
question up on the wall or to throw up
real-time brainstorming ideas. The
Padlet Wall could then be projected so
that all students can see and participate.

All teachers have to do is go to

www.padlet.com to create a wall. Students then copy the simple link into
their mobile device and they can start
participating in anyway. Students can
add pictures, videos and text. Teachers
can also monitor what is being posted
and track which students are participating.
Padlet is an online bulletin board that can be used to display
information on any topic or used as a graphic organizer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9lX1suh8M

Decreasing Anxiety with mindshift

According to the Public Health Agency
of Canada, anxiety disorders affect
roughly 12% of the population. In 2007
Anxiety BC and BC Mental Health &
Substance Use Services worked to

create an evidence based app that

would help people deal with anxiety (AnxietyBC, 2007). This free app
is researched based and allows users to track situations where they
feel anxious, develop relaxation

For more information or a tutorial on

Padlet, please go to:

techniques, change their thinking

patterns to help manage excessive
worry, when facing performance
anxiety or dealing with conflict to
name a few. This app is a great resource for school counsellors to use
with students and for students
themselves to make an important
shift in thinking and help manage
their own anxieties.

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

PAGE 3

Virtual Presenting with Tellagami

Ever have a student that was terrified to present in front of his/her
peers? Or just simply hated presenting? Then by App Smashing
iMovie and Tellagami together, students will not only enjoy creating their own avatars, using different backgrounds but they will have
lots of fun watching their
peers presentations as well.
With Tellagami, after students
have created their avatar,
they can choose a background and record their
voice in a 30 second clip. The
avatar then moves and can express

different emotions during this time.

If a student wants to record many
clips, they can simply insert each

clip into an iMovie to create an entire presentation that can be pro-

jected on the whiteboard without

ever having the student have to
stand up and speak in front of their
peers. If students are still uncomfortable speaking into the microphone
and recording their own voice,
Tellagami also has a great text-tospeech function that would allow
students to write down information
and select a voice to share the information.
Tellagami can also be used to increase student engagement, have
students explain concepts, teach
others about what they learned on
class trips and so on.
https://tellagami.com/edu/

R e c o r da b l e W h i t e b oa r d w i t h E d u c r e at i o n s
Educreations is a fun and easy to use
app that turns your IPad into a recordable whiteboard. This app can be used in
a few different ways. Students can draw
and record their
voices at the
same time to
Turn your IPad into a
help them exrecordable whiteboard
plain concepts,
teachers can
check for understanding, use creations
for assessments and much more.

Teachers can also pre-record a partial

lesson such as how to multiply binomials and place it somewhere in the classroom. While some students quickly
grasp the concept others may need to
hear the explanation repeated. These
students could easily hit play to hear
the lesson again. Similarly, if a teacher
has a homework page, they can easily
share the lesson so that students could
review the lesson for homework or an
upcoming test.

For a quick tutorial, please go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=DqrO4mKEzdA

F o r m at i v e A s s e s s m e n t w i t h p l i c k e r s
Plickers and Plicker Cards are a great
way to check for student understanding
within seconds. They can be used at
any time during a lesson
and are especially great
to use as exit slips.
The idea is that each
student is assigned a
Plicker Card such as
those pictured here.

Depending on how the students hold the card up, determines if they are answering
A, B, C or D. The teacher then takes a quick
scan of the room on
their smart phone or
mobile device (roughly
10 seconds) and the
information is recorded
to see which students an-

swered correctly and which ones need

more practice. Having used these in
class, the students enjoy using these
and report to feel less self-conscious
when answering questions and state
that they are more willing to participate. For more information, please go
to https://www.plickers.com and
download your free cards today!

As mentioned earlier, technology has been a welcomed addition into many classrooms over the years. For the most
part, educators have embraced the opportunity to increase
student engagement and enhance the curriculum but
many may struggle or become overwhelmed with the influx
of useful apps and technologies. It takes time, patience,
practice and professional development to stay on top of
useful technology and how to properly integrate them into

As cited in White and Alexander (2014),

the classrooms of today.

Colpaert states that if your teaching is good

nowadays it will include technology. Unfortunately, the converse -- if your teaching includes technology, it will be good -- does not
follow.

References
Aimonetti, J. (2012). iPads in classrooms provide 20 percent jump in math. C-Net Mobile. Retrieved from:
http://www.cnet.com/news/ipads-in-classroom-provide-20-percent-jump-in-math-scores-study-says/
Anxiety BC (2007). Resources. Results. Relief. Retrieved from http://www.anxietybc.com/mobile-app
Darling-Hammond, L., Zielezinski, M.B., & Goldman, S. (2014). Using technology to suport at-risk students
learning. Stanford Centre for Opportunity Policy in Education. Retrieved from: https://
edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/scope-pub-using-technology-report.pdf
Public Health Agency of Canada. (2003). Retrieved from: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/miic-mmac/
chap_4-eng.php
Whyte, S., & Alexander, J. (2014). Implementing Tasks with Interactive Technologies in
Classroom Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL): Towards a Developmental
Framework. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 40(1).
https://www.classdojo.com/
https://www.educreations.com/
https://www.plickers.com
https://tellagami.com/edu/