Digital teaching tools/resources for collaboration?

[swimmermom3]

Sailor Dude is now in his second year of college and I am still not taking homeschool retirement well. My answer to that is to work towards my teaching certification at the ripe old age of 54 with the goal of enlightening high school students about the various social sciences. It is an accredited online program that my alma mater steered me towards as a much less expensive and time-consuming program as I already have a masters (albeit not in teaching) and "some" teaching experience. :D

 

We started this week and I love it!  I am in a cohort of 12 people, many of whom are already in the classroom. The program is highly collaborative, interactive, and technological. I am scrambling on the technology end of things, but enjoy the challenge and the plethora of resources I am discovering .

 

One of our first assignments is to discuss as a team which collaborative tools we want to use outside of the virtual classroom.  Skype of course has been suggested as well as Google Hangouts from one of our colleagues who is a university professor looking for a change to a high school classroom.

 

For those of you that are in the classroom or who work in collaborative environments, what collaboration tools do you like to use?

 

Also, for those of you in flipped classrooms, if you are making your own videos, what do you use to make them?

 

Thanks to you all I even know what a flipped classroom is.  Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can link some of the inspiring videos and tools I've encountered in my program so far.

Edited October 14, 2017 by swimmermom3

[nansk]

Google Docs, Google group Calendar, and I just found Google Keep for collaborative notes and lists.

Alternatives to Google are Dropbox, Todoist, and Evernote.

 

Slack is a communications app that young people use to collaborate on projects. Some companies have deployed it at work. An alternative is Skype.

 

ETA: Many YouTubers I follow use FinalCutPro for making videos. 

 

Here is a list of apps one YouTuber, Thomas Frank, uses.

 

 

 

Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can link some of the inspiring videos and tools I've encountered in my program so far.

 

Yes, I want to know more.

Edited October 15, 2017 by nansk

[Arch at Home]

My office is using Slack for communication and Trello for collaborative information tracking, Scrum, and many other things.

[AngieW in Texas]

I am 50 and in my 4th year of teaching after getting my alternative teaching certificate.

 

In my classroom, I love using Quizlet Live. You have to have the students present together in a classroom to use it though. After you have a minimum of 6 students sign in, you start the game. It randomly assigns students to teams of 3-4 students each. Each team gets a question and 12 answer choices (it uses flashcards that you create in quizlet). Only one person on each team will have the correct answer. This game requires students to talk to each other and collaborate. In order to win, you have to be the first team to get 12 in a row correct. Because you have to get 12 in a row correct, no team is ever out of the running. I have had teams get as far as 10 in a row and then get knocked back down to zero.

 

I think my kids get a lot more out of Quizlet Live than they do out of Kahoot. With Kahoot, they are far too focused on being fast than on being correct and they never really talk to each other with Kahoot, even if I have them playing in team mode. They are too concerned with being fast.

 

I also love Plickers, but with Plickers, I'm the only one with technology. I use Plickers for bonus points.  For Plickers, you print out cards for your class. Each student is assigned a number. You give the students their cards and they turn the card so that the letter for the answer option that they are choosing is at the top. You scan the whole room from the front with your phone. I have a large classroom because I'm in a lab and I can still scan the entire room from the front.

 

Table group discussions work well for me too. I put a list of questions up on the board with a timer. They need to discuss the questions as a table group. I will call on each table to answer a question, but I use my random number generator to decide what order to call on them.

 

My students know that anything they see as bellwork, table group discussion, or plickers is absolutely going to be on a test or quiz.

 

Flipped classrooms wouldn't really work with my students. While most of them have smartphones, they rely on wireless for internet and only have that at school. I'm at a title I school.

 

Aside from that, a lot of my kids don't live in homes that are conducive to studying. Most teachers at my school try to get everything done in class. Students still end up with homework when they goof off in class, but most students should be able to finish in class.

 

I tried Padlet, but had too many issues with immature students, so I only used that once. And that was with 10th-12th graders.

 

I love google classroom. I have it set up for all of my classes. I post all of my google slides on it at the end of the schoolday. I also post all assignments on google classroom so students have the option of turning their assignments in online or on paper.

 

I use remind extensively to warn students of deadlines, quizzes, and tests.

[nansk]

@SwimmerMom3, I saw this via Twitter today and thought of your thread:

Teacher Recommended: 50 Favorite Classroom Apps