After recently writing a blog post about some little-known edtech gems, I haven’t been able to stop thinking of more and more that I’d have liked to have included! There’s nothing better than coming across a particularly fantastic resource and sharing it far and wide with those who might not have previously heard of it, so here’s another round-up of some exciting and unusual edtech tools!
1. Thumbscribes
This brilliant and innovative tool brings together the artistic side of creative writing with the collaborative innovation of digital technology. It enables students to work together to create a piece of literature, from a haiku poem to a short story, a novella to a song, with the option to collaborate in real-time. It’s a beautiful idea, and the results can be absolutely fantastic!
2. Flockdraw
Like Thumbscribes, but for art and design, this fantastic tool gives students the opportunity to co-create works of art, working together to draw, sketch and imagine a pictorial landscape as wild as their imagination can invent! It works online, with unlimited participants, and alterations are uploaded in real-time, so people can collaborate simultaneously. Fantastic for group projects as part of a flipped classroom model, or to use during ice breaker or team building style exercises, as students must work together to create a picture that is coherent and complete.
3. Hot Potatoes
A fab but little-known resource perfect for innovative educators, this tool includes six applications, enabling teachers to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises which can then be put on the internet, allowing students to complete them remotely.
4. Canvastic
It might not be as widely-used as Doink or Go Animate, but this tool comes top of the class when it comes to user-friendliness, making it suitable for immediate use by students of almost any age. Perfect for the simplest drawings, it performs similar functions to Paint, but can be immediately printed or saved to form part of student projects or provide quick additions to current pieces of work.
5. Watch Know Learn
It’s not as well-known as the juggernaut that is Khan Academy, and therefore often ends up left in its shadow, but this website shouldn’t be underestimated. Simple, clear and user-friendly, its educational videos are categorised by both subject and grade level, making it easy for teachers and students to quickly find relevant material. And with over 10,000 videos on Science alone, it’s ready to give Khan Academy a serious run for its money!
What are your best recommendations for little-known EdTech tools? Share them with us in the comments below!
Image courtesy of Flickr, RLHyde.