Technology Tools

There are so many technology tools out there for students to use to create and present their learning in the classroom. These tools are vastly different from each other and each one has its own pros and cons. In my research I found three main tools that I really liked and are great for students to use to create. First, I played around with Procreate which is an online website that allows students to bring their creations to life by allowing them to create expressive sketches, paintings, illustrations, and even animations. I really liked this tool however it does have many limitations when thinking about associating it with educational purposes. Secondly, I played with an App which allows students to create stunning visuals for a very wide range of purposes. I feel like students could really use this app to help them with book reports and creating presentations for their classroom assignments. This app I enjoyed more because it seemed more multipurpose. Last, I played around with an online resource called Chatter Pix which is a fun, creative app that allows students to create projects that talk to present their work for them. This could be a great tool to use with children in the classroom for many different reasons. All three of these online resources would be great tools to have in your classroom. I want to dive more into the Chatter Pix resource and explain a little of why I liked this one over the others. 

Chatter Pix is a photo app that allows students to share anything they are working on by making anything talk. It can be great for teachers to use to allow their students to use for many different projects and storytelling. Some examples are letting students create a project over animals and habitats and the animals talk while sharing the work the students added to the project or creating a research paper and having an historical figure speak their research work. In using the project over animal habitats this could help those students that need modification in completing their assignments. Integrate the technology allows for them to use their creativity while completing their assignment. Some students struggle with just simple writing up information they have learned, and this will allow them to meet the guidelines set forth and the TEK of what they are being taught and show that they have learned the information in a new way. There are of course pros and cons to each tool so let's talk about that for this source. One pro is that it is easy to use and can be paired with any elementary school subject. However, one con is that it has limited recording time and no in app drawing availability. The bottom line is still that the possibilities are endless and only limited by you and your student's creativity. 

In completing this research, I have found that it is important for educators to be flexible with what technology they allow their students to use as each student is different in their approach to creating and so therefore, we should be more flexible in what we allow in our classrooms even if it is something that we don't particular care for it. Technology tools help students in ways that I didn't even realize until completing this tech play and research technology tools. There are so many students that can benefit from these different tools when completing assignments. They can help them express their thoughts and ideas in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Our whole goal as educators is to help our students be successful so we have to work hard at making sure that we are giving our students all the tools they need in order to help their reach to the level of success that we know they all can.