Top 5 Technologies to Use in the Classroom

Using technology in the classroom is something that I love to do....as long as it enhances the students' learning experience rather than distracting from it.  There are many apps that I use in my math classroom, but here are my top 5 technologies to enhance student learning no matter what subject you teach.

We use Smart boards at my school, which is an important piece as you can project literally anything on one of these.  Using Smart Notebook is also great as it makes Smart boards an interactive whiteboard.  I kind of feel like this part is old news, so I'm not going to go too much in detail with that.  What I do want to rave about is the Smart Suite add-on Maestro.  Y'all....this was a game changer for me.  What this does is that it enables you to use your iPad to write on your Smart board from anywhere in your classroom. You can be at the back of the classroom and use the Smart Notebook app on your iPad to write on your Smart board in the front of the room!  I know....coolest thing that ever happened in my room too. Also, you can take pictures of student work while they are working in their groups and project it directly onto your Smart board for the rest of the class to see. I just love this add-on!  Now, your district will have to purchase this or you can purchase it for yourself ($55.00 for the year), but it is totally worth it, and I recommend talking your school into purchasing this for everyone.  Distance learning became so easy with this because I could share my screen with my students (in Teams...I'm getting to that too) with my Smart notebook pulled up and use my iPad to write so that I had a virtual Smart board. This was AMAZING.  Another device that comes with the Smart Suite is the Smart Recorder.  This recorder captures your computer screen and voice so that you can record lessons either while you teach or if you want to record lessons at another time.  This was also a game-changer during distance learning because I could record the lessons and post them on my YouTube channel (McCready's Classroom) so my students who were unable to make it to my video call could still do the lesson.  I also like doing this when we are in the classroom because (especially during spring sports season) there is inevitably ALWAYS someone out, and this helps them to be able to keep up with the lessons.

My school uses Office 365, and I like to utilize the apps that will make my life and my students' lives easier.  One that I have found that I absolutely LOVE is OneNote for Windows 10.  Y'all.....you know how you hate (I mean I really hate) an unorganized student binder where they can't find anything? This app takes care of all of that hate.  OneNote is a virtual student binder in which you control the section tabs and where "papers" are distributed. I place my students' notes, homework, syllabus, anything that I would hand out to them into OneNote.  They can use a stylus (I like Apple pencils, but a cheap stylus can be used) to write notes, work homework, collaborate as a group in the collaboration section, and tons more.  I can grade their homework from my iPad so I am not carrying around a huge stack of homework papers. Another pro to grading homework in OneNote from your iPad is that you can leave audio feedback for your students. You can also insert Microsoft Forms (which I will talk about in a minute) into OneNote or YouTube videos (and they will never leave OneNote to watch these, they play in OneNote).  Go check out my YouTube channel (McCready's Classroom) to see the videos I have on setting up OneNote.

Another Office 365 app that I love is Microsoft Teams.  You can create a team for each of your classes, add different channels for different topics, preload websites you want them to view, place digital textbooks here, host a classroom discussion board....the list goes on and on. If the students have this app loaded on their phone, they will get a notification that someone directly asked them a question in the chat feature (which you as the teacher get to moderate...so if anyone is acting inappropriately, you can "mute" that student so that they can't participate). The teacher can make announcements (like.."don't forget about tomorrow's quiz" or "field trip forms due tomorrow") that will show up in the chat feature.  Also, most students have a group class text for every class, but inevitably someone gets left out of that group text.  In Teams, you can make a channel for something like "Homework Discussion Board" where everyone is involved in the class discussion.  Like I said earlier, if the students have this downloaded on their phone, they can chat like they text.

Microsoft Forms is a lot like a Google Form, but the Microsoft version.  It is also an Office 365 app.  I use these for quizzes as well as surveys to gather student feedback.  After they finish a homework assignment, I have them take a quick survey to see which homework questions they want me to go over in class the following day.  This way, I'm not wasting class time asking them this question because I already know their answer.  They are also great for warm-ups at the beginning of class or closing tasks at the end of class.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but iPads and a stylus (Apple pencil or a cheaper stylus) are crucial in my classroom.  I use mine to interact with the technology in the classroom, and my students use them.  If your students do not have one, check to see if your school will rent them to the students.  

Quizlet is an app that I use quite a bit in my classroom.  I can create study sets for my students to study or we can play a Quizlet Live game in the classroom with the study sets. 

The last piece of technology that I want to tell y'all about is the Apple Classroom app.  This app can make everything else that I discussed so easy to do!  With this app (downloaded to the teacher's iPad), the teacher must request that all students join the "classroom" (created on the teacher iPad) by submitting the code provided on the teacher's iPad.  The students do not have to download this app onto their iPad, it will appear under their Settings. Once the students have joined the classroom, the teacher can open any app on all of their iPads (such as OneNote) and lock their iPads in that app so that they can't exit out and look at other things on their iPads.  Also, from the teacher's iPad, the teacher can view every student's open apps to be sure that they are staying on task.

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