Hafa Adai, during week #16 of the course the class was tasked with reviewing eight technology tools for educators. We were required to assess Moodle, Google Chrome, Google apps, LiveBinders, and four tools of our choice. This was a very fun assignment for me to reflect on all the tools I have in my toolkit as a technology educator. I rated each tool at of five based on how user-friendly it was, accessibility (whether it was free or not), and how well it performed its task as a tool. Please read my reviews below carefully and share your thoughts in the comments.
Moodle is an open source course management system used by educators for creating and managing private online courses. Educators can create assignments, assessments, and insert grades using this system. Students and teachers can communicate effectively through this system by creating individual accounts that connect to their respective courses.
At the University of Guam, Moodle has been an educational tool vital to the successful completion of most college courses. I think the overall performance of the platform is excellent. The speed of the feedback from the platform is moderate, and all notifications are forwarded to my email. There are desktop and mobile versions of the app which provide more accessibility. The platform is design is simple and easy to navigate. As a student to it has many convenient features, such as a deadline calendar, forums, and grade reports. However, I think the effectiveness of this tool depends on the educator’s ability. In most cases my professors have had trouble using this tool, while others have integrated it well into their courses. The downfall of this tool is the lack of user proficiency (not user-friendly) and your school must pay for it before you can use it.
Rating: 4/5 😃
Google Chrome is a free web browser that synchronizes users to their Gmail accounts. Once synchronized, users can save their passwords, recent tabs, and browsing history to their account. Another feature is incognito mode which you can enable on Chrome for private browsing. After closing a browser in this mode, all your history and login information is deleted. You can download Chrome as an extension to your current browser.
As a lifelong, Google user, I may be biased in my rating. However, I have found Chrome to very convenient because it is connected to my Gmail and all my information is saved. I have also found it to be faster and safer to use than Microsoft Edge or Firefox. In addition to performing well as a browser, it is free and user-friendly. The design is also minimal which makes it easier to navigate when searching information. Overall, this browser is the best for educators and students to use because it is safe, simple, and convenient.
Rating: 5/5 😃
Google apps is a web-based platform with a set of cloud computing applications developed by Google. These applications are not software that you can download, but services you can use under the Google cloud host. Some of these applications include Gmail, blogger, drive, and YouTube.
This platform is excellent for collaborative work because you can save your work online in one place. Google drive has made it easy to share information in various forms such as docs, sheets, and slides. There are even more apps to add to our educational technology tool belts. I can learn how to code and make my own programs using CS First. This emphasizes the plethora of applications Google has created for users especially educators in all subject areas. It is user-friendly, free, and performs well as an online tool belt.
Rating: 5/5 😃
LiveBinders is a virtual binder that organizes online resources. You can insert URLs and have web pages appear in your binder along with other content like text, videos, and graphics. This website is a great tool to keep your online resources neatly organized in one place.
I think Livebinders is a free user-friendly tool for teachers to organize and present their lesson plan ideas. The main feature that I like is the "live" aspect, when the live website page is inserted. However, this feature is a one hit wonder because it only works with certain URLs. Speaking of design, the website lacks modern design and tools to make binders more aesthetically pleasing. It is also inconvenient to click on each button to edit the binder. I think it is a great tool for presenting information in an organized way, but this website lacks in performance. It needs to update the design, navigation, and URL compatibility to gain full rating from me.
Rating: 3/5 😊
Weebly is a free website builder and web-hosting service. This tool provides web page templates to create an efficient and presentable website. Manual coding it not required instead you can drag-and-drop your website features and select its design.
At first, I really liked this tool because of it was free and easy to make my own website. I can pick a design template, insert features of my choice, and published my website. I was also able to give access to multiple users, but the website only allows one person to edit a page at a time. Despite being free and user-friendly, this tool had terrible performance. The edited website was not translated into the published website. In other words, after making changes to the design of the edited website and publishing it, the actual published website did not show the changes. This problem occurred several times, therefore, I rated this website builder very low.
Rating: 2/5 😑
Kahoot is web-based platform for creating engaging activities. Educators can create surveys, quizzes, and student responses in different forms like multiple-choice. You need to create an account and create your quiz. Then you can connect your players (students) using a generated game PIN and use any device to answer the questions. At the end of each question, it lets you know if the players were correct or not and displays the top players based on award point system.
I love Kahoot! This game-based platform makes interactive class activities fun. From the bright colors to the lively sound effects make the overall design captivating. You can also gain feedback using the point award system and look at the activities made on the platform by other users. It a free to use, user-friendly, and performs well as a class activity tool. I think this a great tool for class interaction and assessment.
Rating 5/5 😃
Pear Deck is a web-based application for creating interactive presentation and flashcards. When you create a presentation, it connects to your Google drive and inserts Pear Desk as an add-on to your Google slides. From your Google slides you can add interactive questions, student responses, and quizzes. Another application of Pear Desk is creating flashcards. You can make a vocabulary or any flashcard list on the website. After making it, you can study your deck by playing a game called flashcard factory.
This was a unique tool I found for presentations and flashcards. I like that you can add interactive elements to Google slides. I like Google slides in general and this application adds to the efficient educational use of this presentation tool. The flashcards application is a great alternative to Quizlet, but I think it would be used mainly for group activities and not individual study. Pear Deck was user-friendly, accessible, and performed it's tasks well. However, this tool is not entirely free.
Rating 4/5 😄
Wizer.me is an online worksheet creator made for teachers. You can create, design, and share worksheets for any grade level and subject. Worksheets can be created based on common core standards, subjects, grade levels, and even languages. The free version is called Wizer.me Lite which you can search community worksheets and/or create your own.
This is an amazing worksheet maker! The application is user-friendly and ensures the most unbiased worksheets as possible. It is a web-based tool, so it is easy to access and share your work. The free version, Wizer.me Lite, is effective enough for creating worksheets. I think this is the best tool to use for offline and online student worksheets.
Rating 5/5 😃
Hi Ms. Acfalle:
ReplyDeleteThank you for introducing me to Wizer. You did an excellent job.
-j-