We love our technology at Mash HQ and these 3 websites are on our hitlist for 2020.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is by no means anything new to the primary classroom but 2020 is where we think it’s really going to hit the mainstream. Just before Christmas, Google piloted two new features which we think are very cool. The first is a plagiarism checker. While probably not a massive deal at primary level, teachers can now check how original a student’s work really is or whether they’ve simply copied and pasted from the Internet.
The tool we’re most excited about is the rubric tool. This gives us great scope for assessment. For example, if you’re giving a project for a student to do with 5 criteria, you can now assess each aspect of the project using Google Classroom Rubric tool.
We’ve been playing around with Google Classroom for a good while. For example, in Simon’s school, they ditched homework journals two years ago and they are in the process of evolving homework from a traditional type of homework to something that fits more into a 21st century classroom’s needs.
Rozz has been giving her classes collaborative projects where group of 4 pupils have to work together (they don’t have to be in the same room!) to come up with a joint project. The results have been fantastic.
We often use Google Classroom for giving quizzes, sharing documents, videos and all sorts of other web-based projects.
Flip Grid
We’re in love with Flipgrid!
It’s such a simple, but amazingly effective way to get kids to answer questions or give their opinions or even review a book. The idea is that the teacher videos herself/himself asking a question or a prompt. It can then be posted to a Flipgrid (it integrates with Google Classroom) and then children can click on a link to record their response as a video. The teacher can set this to a limited amount of time so you might limit a child to 30 seconds for a short question or give them 3 minutes to review a book, for example. It’s so easy that even Junior Infants can do it!
Jamboard
While there are many online Interactive Whiteboard Software products out there, for us, Jamboard has an edge as it ties into Google’s suite of apps in Google Drive. One can share Jamboard files like one would share documents or presentations and multiple people can collaborate on a file at any one time. While one gets the full power of the Jamboard app on an actual Jamboard (pictured above) there’s enough in the basic app to satisfy most people’s needs.