Educational Technologies

With so many tools available that can easily be used or adapted for education it can be overwhelming to try to sort them all out. This is why having the help from colleagues becomes so important. I want to share three tools that my peers found useful, and how I too have found a use for them.

First, TeacherTube (http://www.teachertube.com./) is an innovative tool that offers videos from instructors and students covering a variety of subjects. In addition users can get sample study plans, flag inappropriate content, and create or participate in groups for easy communication and collaboration. If this wasn’t enough to grab your attention, the site is free. I would use this tool to supplement my teaching, by embedding some of videos into my class’s group. I can also assign each student a segment of the week’s subject and have them find videos that would help them teach the subject to their fellow learners.

The second tool I would use is StudyBoost (https://studyboost.com/). The beauty of this instrument is that it allows the educator to create a quiz or question and answer session and deliver it to students’ computers or mobile devices by text or instant messaging. The learners can also ask the teacher questions synchronously. Another wonderful thing about StudyBoost is that it is free. I would use StudyBoost to give in class quizzes that can be answered individually then tabulated within the class room. I would then divide the class into small groups to answer and correct any questions.

The last recommendation is Flipboard (https://flipboard.com/). Thisis a news aggregator that allows you to customize your menu and manage content that you find valuable. The content is very consumable and the images are engaging. I would use this tool in my interpreter training, and ask each learner to bring in an article that can be shared with the class about issues that are affecting our immigrant and refugee communities. We would then discuss how this issues may present themselves in an interpretative encounter, the possible lexicon that would be involve, and possible dilemmas that may need to be navigated during the encounter.