Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Google Jamboard is a collaborative whiteboard platform with huge educational potential. Since its introduction a few years ago, more and more teachers and educators are using it within educational contexts to augment teaching and learning. Google Jamboard leverages the power of collaborative whiteboarding in education making it super easy for individuals and teams to brainstorm, collaborate,  and share ideas in real-time.

Brainstormer is a new online brainstorming tool that is easy to use and helps solve the "what do we do now?" problem that often arises at the end of group brainstorming sessions. Brainstormer solves that problem by letting members of the brainstorming session vote for their favorite ideas. 

As a remote-first company, we love tools that let us collaborate in different, creative ways. We also find, for the sake of productivity, meetings are best avoided unless there’s a strong and clear reason for them. We wanted to share some tools that can be useful for different types of collaboration - for when the standard, janky conference call software won't do the trick. These are tools that are free and with a low barrier to entry.

NowComment is an interesting tool for creating online conversations centered around shared documents. While you could do something similar in Google Docs, NowComment was designed for hosting threaded discussions and works with a wide variety of document types including PDFs and Word files.

The web is a treasure trove of interesting resources to use for a variety of educational purposes. To leverage the educational potential of the web and be able to make the best of it in your instruction, you need to be equipped with tools that will enable you to curate, save and share the content you come across online.

Webjets is a new information management tool we discovered through a post by Larry Ferlazzo. Webjets provides you with an intuitive platform where you can collect, save and organize digital content. Besides content curation, you can also use Webjets to record your notes, set goals, remember tasks, create mind maps, and share your digital libraries with others.

Workplace productivity training

I love using Padlet with my class – completely free and easy to set up / use. It is basically an online ‘wall’ which all of the class can simultaneously contribute to.

Sitting down to map out your thoughts can be a great way to get yourself organized before embarking on a big writing project. It's als

Padlet is a tool that I've been using and recommending to others for more than a decade. I started using it back when it was known as Wall Wisher. I often used it to create digital KLW charts with my U.S. History students. Over the years Padlet has evolved by adding more features, updates to the user interface, and updates to privacy and sharing options. If you haven't tried Padlet or you're looking for a tutorial to share with others who are new to using Padlet, take a look at my new video that covers all of the basics that you need to know to get started using Padlet with students.

Below are platforms that offer digital workspaces where teams come together to collaborate, brainstorm, sketch, draw, and share ideas visually. 

The current pandemic has definitely created 'new realities' for us teachers and educators, as is the case for everybody else. It has shaped the way we teach in transformative ways, to say the least. More and more teachers are now incorporating the power of EdTech in their daily practice creating thus new learning possibilities for their students and opening up new avenues for professional development and personal growth.    

Librarians do an amazing job at school. They are entrusted with various educational tasks. These include, according to Queen University library, help students with information-related activities, assist students in developing information literacy skills that allows them to navigate and search the web effectively, collaborate with teachers in creating challenging project-based activities, run different literacy clubs, build library collections and many more.

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Extensions for Google Chrome can do all kinds of helpful things for you and your students. This is the time of year when teachers who have Chromebooks for the first time ask me what they should add in addition to the standard things that their IT staff installed. Usually my suggestions begin with a few Chrome apps and some extensions. Here are five Chrome extensions that I frequently recommend to teachers.

A great, simple, collaborative mindmapping site. Invite other users to share ideas together in real time. It uses html which means that you can use it with most web enabled devices. Sign in using a Google account.