This blog is dedicated to assisting teachers in integrating Information Communication Technology, or eLearning tools into their classrooms. Here you will find sample lessons, uses for eLearning tools, bookmarks to different tools, video tutorials and classroom management tips.
Both teachers and students can benefit from the Hemingway App.
Teachers can use it to ensure that their texts are clear and easy to understand. The readability score indicates the minimum reading level needed to understand the text. This can help teachers write at the correct level.
Students can use the Hemingway App to check the style of their work. Highlighting the hard to read sentences assists students in getting their message across. Encouraging boldness and clarity will enhance any persuasive text.
The Hemingway App is one of the easiest eLearning Tools to use. Go to www.hemingwayapp.com, delete the place-holder text, and paste in your own. The app will analyse and highlight your text.
Hovering over the highlights provides suggested remedies for passive voice, and complicated phrases.
The panel on the right provides a readability score, some simple analysis. There you will also find controls to turn different highlights on and off.
Tricider's three of features suggest different classroom activities.
The ideas posting allows for easy brain storming. Not only can students quickly add ideas, but there is ample space to write a detailed explanation of their ideas. Ideas can also contain pictures and URL links.
The pros and cons section allows students to argue the idea's merits. The students are required to designate their statement as a pro or a con, which eliminates fence sitting. Students can put forward a number of arguments.
Finally the voting section allows students to put their support behind an idea. The more popular ideas will move to the front.
In addition, Tricider allows you to ask multiple questions within one Tricision (yes, that's what they are called). Here is an example of a Tricision using multiple questions.
If you want to see a lesson which uses this tool, then check out this post.
Getting Started
To get started, go to the Tricider website. You can create an account using your Goolge login. You don't have to create an account, although having an account makes it easier to manage your different Tricisions.
The video below gives you a simple overview of how Tricider works.
It is around this time every term where you can see teachers disappear under piles of drafts. Over the years I have developed an approach which reduces the amount of time I spend of drafts.
The process aids students in correcting their own grammatical errors. This allows me to focus on the content of the documents. There are many ICT tools which can support this process, and I've included them below.
The Drafting Process
Step 1 - Spell and Grammar and style check
The student must spell and grammar check the document. If I get a document with red or blue lines under the words, I give it straight back to the. Students are also encouraged to use readability tools to check the style of their writing.
Step 2 - Text to Speech Recital
Using a text to speech tool (depends on the type of document), the student must listen to their entire document read back to them. In doing this they will hear what they have actually written, not what they think they have written.
Step 3 - Peer Review
They have to share their document with another student, who reads it and leaves comment. These comments are evidence that their peer has read the document.
Step 4 - Submit for draft check
After completing the three prior steps, the student can now submit their draft for checking.
The ICT Tools
There are many ICT tools which can support this process. Which tools you use will depend upon how the student created the document.
Below is the presentation that I show my students when I explain my draft process. I have slides for both Word and Google Docs. Feel free to copy this presentation and adjust it for your needs.
With PowerPoint you can record within the program. The video below shows you how.
Prezi
Prezi is a little more complicated. First you need to record the audio and get it onto your computer.
Here's a couple of ways you can do this:
Most phones come with a simple audio recording app, or you can add one. You can then email the recording from you phone to your computer.
All Windows computers have a sound recorded installed (just type "sound recorder" into the search box). You need to make sure that you have a microphone (most laptops have them built in).
The video below will show you how to add the voice over.
There are so many classroom applications for Diigo, mostly because it has so many features and these features can be used to create a myriad of classroom experiences.
Bookmarking
The core feature of Diigo is it's ability to bookmark websites and centralise these in the cloud. This means that your bookmarks are available from any device with Internet access. Put simply, Diigo is the best way to gather and organise your online resources. All the sites you have bookmarked are added to your Diigo Account, along with a description and any tags you add. The description and tags are used for searching in your account.
Diigo goes beyond merely bookmarking a site. Diigo, also enables you to highlight web pages, and comment on them. These highlights and comments are also collated into you account where you can view them. This way you can view all the notes you have collected from each website.
Groups
Groups are a powerful organising and collaboration tool. Groups can be private or public to allow for many users to collaboratively build a library of online resources. There are different levels of collaboration, allowing you to decide the level of participation for different group members.
Lists
Lists are Diigo's tool for displaying your bookmarks. You can send bookmarks to a list that you can then share to different platforms. Lists are only only for display purposes, but are a simple way to embed an up-datable sources of bookmarks.
Educators Account
Diigo also offers a free educator account. This account gives you access to a teacher console where you can create accounts for your students and allocated them to groups.
Mobile Apps
Finally Diigo has apps for both Android and iOS. This means that you, or students can use Diigo's features on your phones or tablets.
Getting Started
To get started with Diigo, go to the website an create an account. You can use Google, Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo accounts, or create an account using your email address. Once you have created your account, then it is time to start bookmarking.
The easiest way to bookmark in Diigo is to install either Diigolet, or the Diigo Extension in your browser. The tools can be found here. There is a tool available for every browser.
The Hemingway App is one of the easiest eLearning Tools to use. Go to www.hemingwayapp.com, delete the place-holder text, and paste in your own. The app will analyse and highlight your text.