The Digital Teacher

THE DIGITAL TEACHER

Autor: SIMONA BARBU
Şcoala Gimnazială „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Brăila

As technology advances, so does educational technology tools. Given the huge number of tools, choosing the ones that best meet the students' needs and are appropriate for the subject area and grade level, is a difficult matter.
Web 2.0 Tools are online software programs that allow users to do a number of different things. They can be used to teach curriculum content, store data, create/edit video, edit photos, collaborate and so much more. These programs are often free and are used by teachers, students, and sometimes parents, both in and out of the classroom, on a pretty regular basis. How we use these tools is going to make a critical difference in how we measure our students success and how they are supported to meet 21st century skill sets. The focus is not upon the tools themselves that we use with students, but why, and when a certain tool is needed.
Here are 30 examples of Web 2.0 educational tools that I encourage you to seek out, practice with, and learn to incorporate into your teaching and assesing process.

1. Adobe Spark - It is a media creation tool that can be used to create three types of media content–videos, webpages, and graphics.
2. Animaker - A versatile site that allows teachers and students to create presentations, posters, animations, and infographics. Offers free account for up to two teachers and 25 students as well as
affordable premium accounts.
3. Animoto - Create impressive-looking slideshows that include video, images, music, and more. Free accounts allow users to create unlimited videos.
4. Baamboozle - An easy-to-use site that allows teachers to create learning games with text, images animation, and more—or browse the thousands of existing games to find one that fits. Can be shared and played remotely.
5. Diagrams.net - Completely free online software to create mind-maps, flow charts, network diagrams, and more. Drag and drop pre-existing shapes, arrows, tables, and symbols, or draw each one yourself on the canvas. With no cost, no account needed, and sharing capability, it’s a great tool to use in any classroom.
6. Edublog - Designed to make it easy for teachers and students to create and maintain their own websites, Edublog is also a great platform for collaboration. Free and modestly priced pro accounts are available.
7. Educandy - A free and easy-to-use site in which teachers make learning fun by creating “flavours” of activities: words, pairs, and quizzes. No student account required.
8. Educaplay - An excellent free way to gamify learning with interactive multimedia educational activities. Premium accounts also available, offering additional features and removing advertisements.
9. Flipgrid - A fully free and simple-to-use video discussion site. Educators choose a topic and students respond to the challenge creatively by recording and uploading video. Includes a library of
more than 25,000 topics to browse.
10. Floop - A web app dedicated to helping teachers provide faster and more meaningful feedback to students. Students submit assignments online, where instructors can quickly and efficiently add commentary that guides students to improve their work.
11. Glogster - Kids combine images, colors, text, audio, and more to create collaborative, interactive posters in this safe environment. Multiple affordable pricing options available.
12. Gnowledge - A free platform to create collaborative online quizzes, share resources, view others’ quizzes, and more. Excellent tech support and tutorial videos as well.
13. Infogram - A site that allows users to create charts, maps, and infographics. Free basic account includes a nice variety of professional templates, up to 10 projects, object animations and
more.
14. Little Bird Tales - A wonderful site for digital storytelling that allows kids to upload artwork, then record and narrate a story. Affordable rates for teachers and schools.
15. Liveworksheets – Allows you to transform your traditional printable worksheets (doc, pdf, jpg...) into interactive online exercises with self-correction. They may include sounds, videos,
drag and drop exercises, join with arrows, multiple choice and even speaking exercises.
16. Padlet is the number one electronic stick notes tool. Notes are created on Padlet walls and the notes can contain texts, images, videos, and links. It is great as a collaborative tool.
17. Pixton - This engaging comic creator will motivate students to dream up their own digital stories.
18. Playmeo - Hundreds of fun interactive games for groups, with a library of core activities for math, science, health, and language arts. Searchable by theme, exertion level, duration, or group size.
19. PresentationTube - Create, upload, and share video tutorials using PowerPoint and the website’s free software. An affordable premium version is available. Browse uploaded videos to get ideas for your own.
20. Prezi - Prezi allows users to create slideshows and presentations, and works with multiple popular apps such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and YouTube. Free basic plans, plus
very affordable paid options for educators.
21. SpellingCity - A user-friendly and engaging site for teaching and learning spelling and vocabulary. Extensive teaching resource include word lists, lessons, standards- and grade-based vocabulary lists for literature titles, and STEM vocabulary lists.
22. Storybird - A site that inspires students to read and write through the use of digital visual storytelling, from poetry to longform writing to flash fiction and comics. Education plans
available.
23. StoryJumper - A free site for digital storytelling in which students can incorporate their own art, publish online, share with others, or order a print copy of their own work. Integrates with
Google Classroom and offers many examples to browse.
24. SymbalooEDU - Teachers and students can save, organize, and share links to websites, videos, web documents, and other learning resources. Free and pro accounts available.
25. Thinglink - Imaginative site for combining images, video, 360° images, and 360° videos to create interactive visual presentations, learning materials, or student projects. Available as a mobile app also.
26. Toonclip - Allows users to create animations with simple English language text and drag-and-drop images. Free account allows 20 animations per month.
27. Triptico - A great free tool for teachers to create, share, and edit interactive lessons. Engaging features include word magnets, drag-and-drop templates, and gamified activities.
28. VoiceThread - Ed.VoiceThread is a safe and secure platform to help students develop critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity skills via multimedia presentations.
29. Weebly - Offers a drag-and-drop website editor to create a free class website with multimedia capability and expanded blogging features.
30. WordCloud Generator by MonkeyLearn - A clever site that is very simple to use--just paste or upload your text and the AI generates a word cloud showing the most frequently used words. Great free tool for exploring and analyzing literature, advertising, and more.

Web 2.0 sites are built for interactivity and collaboration - two features essential to education. As educators, the use of Web 2.0 tools is transforming our work, and more specifically the way we
support students in the classroom.

Bibliography
https://www.techlearning.com/tl-advisor-blog/3936
https://kidsdiscover.com/teacherresources/web-2-0-tools-classroom/
https://techoacademy.com/web-2-0-tools/