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Week 9: ISTE Webinar Takeaways

Writer: Miss Hennings
Miss Hennings
Oct 22, 2018
7 min read

Although I was really hoping to attend the Indiana Connected Educators (ICE) Conference this year, I opted instead to learn more about the current developments in #edtech by watching two webinars created by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Read on to learn more about the webinars I chose and my biggest takeaways from them. (Long post alert!)

ISTE WEBINAR #1:

"30 Tech Tools to Support Diverse Readers"


As a preservice teacher for Secondary English/Language Arts, I found this webinar on the intersection between EdTech and student literacy particularly appealing. Before watching the webinar, I was already aware that I needed to differentiate and make accommodations for my students' diverse needs and abilities as readers, and I believed in the power of educational technology to help me achieve that, though my arsenal of resources and tech tools was severely limited. That's where this webinar comes into play. Presented by Michele Haiken, who has 20 years of experience as a middle school literacy teacher and adjunct professor, this webinar provides 30 different tech tools to support all aspects of student literacy. She categorized them into the following groups: "Digital Reading Platforms;" "Finding Text by Content, Level, and Interest;" "Building Background Knowledge with Video and Visual Text;" "Building Background Knowledge with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality;" "Supporting Diverse Readers;" "During Reading: Tracking our Thinking;" and lastly, "After Reading: Check for Understanding."


DIGITAL READING PLATFORMS


Digital reading platforms like these provide students with access to articles and news stories in nearly every content area, along with optional comprehension checkers and assessments. They could potentially be used to:

  • practice specific skills (e.g., identifying the author's tone or locating parts of speech)

  • scaffold instruction

  • differentiate readings through jigsaws

  • assign "articles of the week"

  • encourage and provide independent reading choice

  • act as "bell ringers"

  • assess student learning

  • analyze learning data and track student growth

While these are certainly not the only digital reading platforms available, they are reliable and provide many features that support differentiation, including a variety of lexile levels and grade-appropriate texts.


FINDING TEXT BY CONTENT, LEVEL, AND INTEREST


These resources can be used to strategically select articles that: connect to current classroom content and learning principles; are quality-based; and are directly related to one another. The stories range from the weird and wonderful to the historical and political.


BUILDING BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE WITH VIDEO AND VISUAL TEXT

8. TEDEd


Haiken references ReLeah Cossett Lent in saying that "background knowledge is not a frill of education, a nicety that simply helps students enjoy reading and learning. Background knowledge is essential to comprehension, to making connections, and to understanding the big ideas. Background knowledge is the foundation of all academic study." For English Language Learners and struggling readers in particular, building background knowledge makes it easier to understand more challenging texts, and videos/visual aids are especially helpful with this. As Haiken points out, close reading strategies can be applied just as easily and effectively to visual texts like movies, commercials, print ads, and videos. Each of these resources have been designed to help strengthen students' comprehension skills and build their background knowledge through the inclusion of video and visual elements.


BUILDING BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE WITH VIRTUAL REALITY AND AUGMENTED REALITY

17. Within


Similarly, virtual reality and augmented reality help students build background knowledge by encouraging them to see beyond 2D texts and be truly immersed in the content. This kind of immersion compels students to ask questions and make inferences about the content that they otherwise might not have, which ultimately leads to a deeper understanding of the material and its significance/relationship to the "real world". In other words, it makes learning seem more authentic and provides a more relatable context for material that may otherwise seem irrelevant or too challenging to students.


SUPPORTING DIVERSE READERS


These resources were created to accommodate students' diverse needs, ability levels, and potential learning impairments; they are scaffolding tools to bolster students' comprehension and make texts more accessible. Collectively, they can:

  • convert text to speech;

  • differentiate for dyslexia, blindness, or other visual impairments;

  • paraphrase complex texts using simpler language (particularly useful for ELL students or struggling readers); and

  • promote listening comprehension with transcripts of audio (podcasts)


DURING READING: TRACKING OUR THINKING

23. Padlet

26. Bubbl.us


As Haiken points out, good readers--regardless of ability level--track their thinking while reading and actively engage with the text throughout the reading process. These five tools can be used to help students creatively organize their thoughts while reading, construct collaborative outlines, share questions with classmates, and so much more. (These are definitely the resources that made me most excited!)


AFTER READING: CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING

30. Buncee

32. Canva


Lastly, these resources can not only help teachers assess their students' reading comprehension but can also strengthen students' oral communication skills and promote their synthesis of the material. For example, FlipGrid allows students to create short video responses to questions or prompts posed by the teacher and even provides students with the opportunity to respond to each other's videos, effectively creating a video dialogue among students. Also, sites like Canva and Piktochart can challenge students to visually represent a condensed and organized version of their thoughts.


TAKEAWAYS

Since my primary content area is Secondary English/Language Arts, each of these resources could directly benefit my future students, and I appreciate how diverse they are in the various aspects of reading that they address. However, Haiken notes during her presentation that every teacher, regardless of their content area, is a reading teacher; every teacher helps build their students' literacy skills in one way or another. Because of this, these tools aren't only beneficial to E/LA or Reading teachers, but to every teacher. Which ones seem most appropriate to your own subject area?

ISTE WEBINAR #2:

"The Top 10 Tools Every New Teacher Needs"


As a preservice teacher who is quickly approaching her first true student teaching experiences, I thought this webinar seemed especially appropriate. The presenters of this webinar (Pena Bedesem, Chip Cash, Jennifer Courduff, Dennis McElroy, Rachelle Dene Poth, and Susan Poyo) chose these tools because they found them to be beneficial for both engaging and motivating students, as well as essential to meeting the ISTE standards for both students and teachers. (Side note: 7/10 tools chosen here were also picked as some of the most beneficial literacy tools in Webinar #1!) Here are their 10 must-have EdTech tools, in no particular order:


1. Google Suite for Education: This seems like a no-brainer. Google for Education is great at providing teachers with extensions to increase accessibility for their students and offering highly customizable resources that can be individualized for each student based on her/his needs.

2. FlipGrid: Another common teacher favorite! FlipGrid, as previously mentioned, is a video response platform. It is useful for both student-student and student-teacher discussions, formative assessments, and most importantly, providing students with the opportunity to make their voices heard (literally). It can also be directly embedded into a variety of Learning Management Systems, making it even easier and safer for students to use.

3. twitter: For teachers, twitter is one of the quickest and easiest ways to grow their Professional Learning Networks and connect with other educators, especially through "twitter chats" and the hashtag database. It also provides an alternative means to chat with parents. For students, twitter can be used to forge global connections with other students and professionals from around the world. Students can also create a class account and use class hashtags to form a back channel through which they may have discussions with each other.

4. Padlet: Padlet provides students with the ability to share their own projects, have discussions with peers, curate resources, and even create a digital portfolio, all on one site. Teachers can also use it to teach lessons, send announcements to students and parents, and give formative assessments.

5. Adobe Spark Suite: Adobe Spark gives students almost complete freedom with the ability to modify nearly every creative aspect of their project. It can be used as a direct substitution for whiteboards or PowerPoint presentations through the use of video, text, audio, images and sharing. Students can also use it to make stunning social graphics (e.g. posters, book report covers, etc.), videos, and even web pages.

6. Piktochart: Piktochart allows students to create conceptual representations of the content with infographics. This is particularly useful for helping students synthesize the material through its strategic organization and condensing.

7. Buncee: Buncee is perhaps one of the most versatile tools on this list because of the sheer number of ways in which it can be manipulated by both students and teachers. This tool can be used to create graphics for all ages and content areas and meets all ISTE student standards. It is very user-friendly and makes grading and teacher commenting very easy.

8. Nearpod: Nearpod allows teachers to create presentations that incorporate various types of questions, file uploads, virtual reality tours, and 3D images. It also encourages student engagement and facilitation of lessons (as students can create and teach lessons themselves using Nearpod). Students also receive immediate feedback for their responses to embedded questions, AND there is a function called "Nearpod for Subs" (How cool!).

9. Explain Everything: This resource gives teachers and students the ability to create instructional videos that are interactive and collaborative. They can be saved, shared, and customized.

10. PlayPosit: PlayPosit allows teachers to embed questions into videos so that teachers can collect data that will then inform subsequent class discussions of the material. They can even be created by students and integrated with Explain Everything videos!


BONUS: Read&Write: Lastly, this "bonus" resource, a G-Suite extension, supports students' literacy and accessibility for English Language Learners, struggling readers, and students with learning impairments.


TAKEAWAYS

Each of these resources seems to make some aspect of teaching or learning more efficient or effective, which is ultimately the goal of EdTech tools--to improve education for both teachers and students using technology. I am excited to test out each of these resources during my final years at Indiana University and beyond.


Overall, I hope these EdTech tools prove to be beneficial additions to your classrooms, should you choose to test and adopt them! These webinars have certainly expanded by teacher tool box and I look forward to seeing which of these resources become part of my daily classroom routine.


--Miss Hennings

 
 
 

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