This document discusses several free online tools that teachers can use to engage students, including Edmodo, Kidblog, Edublogs, Collaborize Classroom, SymbalooEDU, TeacherTube, and SchoolTube. Edmodo allows student-teacher interaction and discussion like Facebook but is designed exclusively for education. Kidblog provides a simple way for younger students to collaborate through blogs. Edublogs and Collaborize Classroom support group projects and participation. SymbalooEDU and TeacherTube/SchoolTube provide educational videos that can engage students when other sites are blocked.

1. Edmodo
Kidblog
Edublogs
Collaborize Classroom
SymbalooEDU
SymbalooEDU
EDU 2.0 neolms.com|
symbalooedu.com|
collaborizeclassroom.com|
edublogs.org|
kidblog.org|
TeacherTube and SchoolTube (and YouTube)
edmodo.com|
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Get your pupils' undivided attention for a longer span of time by having their
eyes and ears glued to videos. YouTube comes to mind first but if it is blocked in
your school, which is usually the case, you can use TeacherTube and
SchoolTube. There is always a video in YouTube for your need but TeacherTube
and SchoolTube also does and even saves you search time because of its
specialisation in education. And again, you won't have to worry about being
blocked. TeacherTube even crowdsources lots of documents, audio and photos
you can use in your lesson plans.
Want the advantages of blogs but your school does not want
to use them because of its exposure to other blogs? This
problem's solution is Edublogs with which you can “blog”
for educational purposes like group projects, reflection
journals, school newspapers, class web pages and parent
newsletters and other creative alternatives.
Listening and paying attention may not be a problem with some students but that is not engagement.
They should participate. But the problem is that some pupils do not contribute to discussions. Some
of them just do not or do not have intentions of doing so and some of them are hindered by
competing for time and attention with others who dominate the discussion either intentionally or
not. Collaborize Classroom is the answer to this problem. Students can participate by agreeing,
disagreeing, answering a multiple choice question, adding a response or voting for one on one page
for the whole class where teachers can also add photos or videos.
One important part of today's technology is social
media. Instead of students being distracted from their
studies because of social media, teachers can use it to
engage their students.
Teachers Can Use to Engage
The Best Free Social
Media Tools
Pupils and Students
Getting pupils and young students engaged is
important in teaching. It is arguably the best way to
succeed at teaching. This fact is true then
and it continues to be so now. It has even become a
more pressing problem now in the advanced times
when there are many distractions created by
technology. Come to think of it, teachers can solve
this problem by turning it into the solution.
Teachers can use these technology distractions to
help them in engaging their students.
EDU 2.0 is a cloud-hosted free online course management system that has
additional features like sharing of lesson plans, quizzes, videos, experiments and
other resources and a community section where teachers and students can network
and collaborate among themselves including creating a network of classes in a
school and schools in a district. They also provide free access to online tools like
gradebook, customised quizzes, a debate tool, chat, classroom blogs, proficiency
tracking ability and a customised portal page.
SymbalooEDU is the “EDU” version of the popular visual organising
and sharing tool Symbaloo. Its academic resource pages are subject-
specific. It allows full embedding for many top tools like TeacherTube,
Slideshare, Google Docs, Flickr and others.
Are your pupils too young for the flexibility and rather risky advertisements of
Edublogs? If so, you can engage them with the much more simple and specific
Kidblog. Your K-8 pupils can start collaborating by as simply as finding the recent
post feed on the left of the home page and their classmates' blogs on the right. On
your part as the teacher, you can easily control how private the blogs are like
keeping it between you and your students or providing access to parents or sharing
them with the public.
How about using Facebook to engage your pupils? It's popular and easy. But it's risky.
You cannot moderate or control it. And it's not even allowed in school or for school. That
is why Edmodo is here. Edmodo looks like Facebook and functions like it. Imagine the
same interaction as Facebook but exclusively for education purposes and without the
pupils “talking” or chatting among themselves. Yes, your young learners can interact
and discuss among themselves in Edmodo but only through commenting. They can only
chat to you teachers. But don't worry if you need the help of other teachers. Teachers can
chat among themselves in Edmodo.