Four Online Gadgets to Engage Kids in Learning

As a new educator, I have been given the opportunity to observe a teacher while preparing my curriculum. After only two days, I have found myself floored with one of my co-workers. In such a short time, I have noticed how amazing some of her teaching methods are and how much potential they have to work within a school. It is beyond incredible to be introduced to some of these brilliant resources, so I definitely have to give her credit for introducing me to them.

Blabberize: This is a website that allows for anyone to take a picture and turn it into something that talks. They record the voice, combine it with a still-picture that has a moving mouth, and turn it into a semi-animated short. Apparently, a couple teachers have found this a useful tool for motivating kids to be really creative. The topics can be quite broad and vary from history to English literature, and it looks like something that everyone can get into at any age.

The great thing is that students can do this, even if they do not have a microphone available; there is a phone number that can be called to record their message to include on their Blabberize project. It is also incredibly versatile, so you can use it for a number of projects. I saw kids using pictures of soldiers and describing the Vietnam War in order to relate the story they were reading in class. As they developed their own script for their Blabberize, it reinforced learning about their book and history.

CoverItLive: My knowledge about this tool is primarily through liveblogging sessions, where someone could integrate information from a number of contributors, Twitter, Facebook, and commenters with their own blog. The thing that makes this work for classes is that the educator is able to skim through the comments and remove the inappropriate ones; you can monitor the content that is posted, so you can keep the comments on track.

Watching her use this was amazing. For the most part, the kids all had their own laptops; a few of them had to share, but this still worked out quite nicely. For instance, say two students named Amanda and Candice were sharing a computer; they could take turns and replace the name so that they could each answer the question posed to them. On top of this, the conversations remain logged. This specific teacher still has them available on her blog, so the kids have access to the answers from other class periods. It was a great experience to see her use it, and I had so many ideas of how to utilise it for my own classes were I to use it.

Blogs: I have been noticing multiple teachers doing this through various places, such as Blogspot, WordPress, or LiveJournal. Some of them even have it installed on their own website or subdomain of the school's server, which is even more extensive. The best thing about this is that the teachers can leave the daily assignments there, allowing the kids to know what happened if they happened to miss class. Regardless of age, this is a great idea; it really connects people and can help keep kids on task.

This is a great way for the students to get involved, too. This same teacher has asked her kids to do daily safe-blogging, which means that they blog about appropriate topics. Sometimes they have free-writing assignments, and there are other times where they have specific topics to write about. A few of the kids do it on their own time without being told to, and this is wonderful. It really can be a way to help the kids on a variety of levels: decrease stress, increase writing capabilities, increase creativity, and so much more.

Google Docs: They don't even need the traffic, but they provide such amazing services that really assist in the classroom. The teacher I met found a way to create self-grading quizzes by using Google Docs, which is a great idea. You can see the results in real time if they are taking the quiz. It saves a lot of time, especially for educators. Even as a homework assignment, it can save a lot of paper by allowing the kids to submit it electronically. Plus, there is never the excuse for having lost it or something having happened. On top of that, the kids can have their own account to upload their own documents to the website (either in a converted form to edit them online or unconverted to view them as they were originally drafted). There are a variety of useful qualities that Google Docs has going for it.

There must be an extensive network of new and useful technologies. These are only a few that I have been exposed to in the last few days, and they are quite impressive. Trying to find things to get kids engaged is the most important thing; they learn more when they interact, and they are more likely to enjoy it at the same time.