Francis_u03a1

Having technological tools in a teacher's toolbox can be incredibly time-saving and beneficial to him/her and his/her students. After reviewing a few tools, I have decided a few are better than others.

Using bookmarklets can make accessing specific websites much easier. I chose to review Quietube.com, which took me a moment to learn how to use. When I clicked on the link, it took me to the basic website without any directions of how to use it, but I decided to look at a Youtube Video on its own. Once viewing a video, I then clicked the Quietube bookmarklet that I had saved to my bookmarks bar and it transferred the YouTube video I had chosen to bookmarklet's plain background.

I really appreciate the clean look of this because there have been many times when I have shown YouTube videos and students are distracted by ads or the "suggested video" column to the right. They spend more time after the educational clip trying to convince me to click on something else than they do on reflecting on and reacting to what they just watched, so getting rid of these distractions is very nice indeed.

URL shortening is very nice for people who have their own websites they need to share, however, I'm honestly not sure how I would use it in the classroom or on my own.

I've seen QR codes used in the classroom, and I think they would be really helpful for discovery learning, especially in classrooms that are rendered 1:1. I would like to be able to use these in literature circles or grammar stations if I could get iPads for that use.

I have created the below QR code (although I can't print it out for lack of a printer) that takes you to a specific resource I have used for my own photography.

The interesting thing about making a QR code is that I can create one and post it to the class website for students to use or I can print them out and put them around the room for a pseudo-scavenger hunt.

These are just a few of the tools that I can use in and out of the classroom, and I hope I can use the QR code and the Bookmarklets in the future.