Padlet with Blaine Ashton and Ashley Watier

Feb. 8, 2023

CoryB

Background:

Blaine Ashton is the Riverheights principal and Ashley Watier is a grade six teacher at the same school. Blaine drives home the point of technology being one of the important resources you can use in your classroom because of the simple ways of adding engagement and improving lessons with the use of technology. Where Brandon school division uses Microsoft as their main software option

             https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/18/padlet-raises-1-2-million-for-its-easy-to-use-collaborative-website-builder/

Padlet, Gizmos and Lumio:

When using Padlet you can let your students go crazy on it for 10-20 minutes to get used to it because then they will have some comfort using it but could also teach you something that you might not know.  Ashley showed lumio where you can use some pre-made resources and is interactive with the smart boards in some of the classrooms you will have so you can enhance engagement in your class. Another tech source she shared was Gizmos which is extremely expensive for a teacher to get but is really good for meeting cross-curricular outcomes. Gizmos goal is to build inquiry, understanding, and a love of math and science through simulations, with a library of over 500 virtual. Gizmos give everyone something to graph, measure, and compare. Lastly, another thing Ashley uses is Microsoft OneNote, she did not go over so much but she uses it to put all her lessons in and is where she has her grade book and said is what most of the teachers at her school are using, so it is another spot where teachers can decide if they want to put their grades or put their lessons in.

                                               https://www.macstories.net/stories/ipad-mini-review-small-wonder/

Tech Reading Help Options:

Guided reading can be done so now by using IPAD in schools for students to make notes and highlight things they want in an easier way than having them write notes on paper and read a physical copy. Some other options to help with reading are snap and read which helps with everything from comprehension and helping students with learning disabilities. ReaderPen is a portable tool to help support independent reading and literacy. Scan text with the pen and have words read out loud with natural-speaking voices and defined with dictionaries. The pen also features a voice recorder and supports storing scanned text. Another one is CO: WRITER which supports translation and speech recognition to help unstick ideas and get them to flow in writing. Then lastly, is google Translate, which instantly translates words, phrases, and web pages between English and practically any language you can think of, which is handy when you have students that English isn’t their first language. These are some of the tools Blaine discussed with us that would be useful for teachers in the classroom.  

Final thoughts from Blaine are to introduce purposeful technology and make sure to have a plan for how it is going to benefit your classroom by engaging and enhancing your lessons. The idea is to constantly evolve in your teaching ways by being willing to learn new technology to incorporate in your classroom to make things easier on yourself, but also to create more engagement and excitement in your class. Thank you to Blaine and Ashely for a very good and informative presentation that is super beneficial for new teachers.