Nearpod – The Future of Technology in the Classroom?
Nearpod is one of the leading websites in creating interactive classroom experiences. The website has a wide library of over 22,000 pre-made videos, lessons, and activities from numerous educational publishers. Nearpod also lets teachers create their own lessons, with the ability to upload videos, PDFs, and slideshows to implement into virtual or augmented reality. These lessons are customizable, with over twenty different formats for assessments and media experiences.
Nearpod’s wide array of lessons, and ability to create one’s own lessons, allows for a near endless pool of opportunities for global collaboration and exploration. For example, in this featured lesson plan students are able to take a virtual reality trip to Hong Kong to explore the celebration of Lunar New Year and the traditions behind it, which also features an extensive lesson on the holiday as well as its impacts on culture in the United States. Thus, through lessons like these, students are able to immerse themselves into cultures and regions all across the world, and thus increase global collaboration through mutual understanding and learning about, and through, each other.
Overall, nearpod’s structure is very conducive to enhanced, or even transformative student learning, and allows for increased immersion into other cultures and places across the world, all without having to leave the classroom. The potential impacts a program like this may be the future of increasing global collaboration and learning in the classroom, even from an early age.
Resources:
https://nearpod.com/how-nearpod-works
https://nearpod.com/nearpod-library
https://nearpod.com/t/social-studies/3rd/an-introduction-to-lunar-new-year-35-L109601499
Microsoft Translate: Breaking Language Barriers in Education
Microsoft Translate is an often forgotten about, yet still very important, part of the Microsoft Suite. Although programs such as Google Translate are very commonly used on a day-to-day basis to translate relatively simple things, Microsoft Translate has some unique advantages to it that many other translators simply do not. Here are some of the benefits that using Microsoft Translate may bring to you and your classroom!
Education
Microsoft Translator has the unique trait of being able to be easily implemented into the classroom. It can be implemented to parent-teacher conferences to provide real-time translation of what is being communicated. It can help provide translated captions/notes for students who are hard of hearing, non-native speakers, or otherwise have trouble taking notes. Overall, this tool can be seamlessly applied to just about every other Microsoft tool, and can thus enhance the education of not only those who don’t speak a native language, but also students who are deaf, hard of hearing, or face any similar disability.
Ease of Group Conversations
The Microsoft Translate app offers the ability to create large groups chats to allow for mass communication across language barriers. Much like Zoom, Microsoft Translate allows for the generation of a conversation code, which can be sent to anyone you wish to add to a conversation. Now, large business discussions across numerous countries and languages can be done effortlessly with real-time translation done through Microsoft.
Offline Usage
One unique advantage that Microsoft Translate holds over other translators is the ability to be used offline. As long as you download the associated language packs for the languages you wish to be able to translate offline, the translator functions just as well without internet as it does with it. One teacher from the Perusall reading mentioned that, within a diverse school district, by downloading the language packs for the 10 most common languages spoken there, she was able to communicate with 80% of her non-native students and families, all without needing the internet!
Overall, Microsoft Translate is an essential tool in any diverse classroom, and can even provide benefits to certain native-speaker students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The ability to be seamlessly applied to any lesson, be used as a real-time translator in parent-teacher meetings, and to be used even without internet makes it a tool which should be used wherever possible!
Works Cited:
https://www.dutchtrans.co.uk/microsoft-translator-app-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/
Youth For Global Rights: The Importance of Teaching Human Rights from a Young Age
Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) isa non-profit organization formed in 2001 by Dr. Mary Shuttleworth. After living through apartheid in South Africa, and being exposed to glaring discrimination and a lack of human rights, she came up with the idea of founding an organization with the purpose of educating the youth on the importance of human rights. The “purpose” section of their website outlines their belief that children are the future, and it is thus important to teach them about human rights, and how to protect themselves and others, from an early age so as to instill such values during development.
This organization uses multiple materials in its lessons, such as a multitude of short videos that outline each of the 30 articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as booklets summarizing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an easy to understand manner. Personally, I believe that this package of information would be great for a week of lessons (or less), as the material doesn’t go into a crazy amount of depth, but still covers everything that it needs to within multiple short, easy to understand lessons. It’s hard to incorporate the teaching of human rights into a normal curriculum, but including these within a week’s worth of social studies classes could be beneficial towards teaching children about human rights, and how to uphold them, from an early age, and can benefit them and their communities largely in the long run in exchange for only a small amount of their time.
Check out the website here! https://www.youthforhumanrights.org/about-us.html
Thanks for reading!
Luke Leonard
Why Microsoft Teams is Essential for Collaboration in Education
Microsoft Teams is one of the premier tools in modern-day collaboration. It is an ideal program featuring many collaborative tools, such as scheduling meetings, exchanging messages, sharing files, and more. While more and more schools and companies continue to adopt Microsoft Teams as a go-to program, there are still many people out there who have little to no experience with the program. Thus, I present three majors reasons why YOU should consider Microsoft Teams as your collaborative space if you haven’t already.
Ease of Communication
One key benefit of Microsoft Teams is the ability to communicate efficiently and effectively as compared to traditional means of communication. This especially applies in the area of needing to send quick messages or ask quick questions to individual (or multiple) members of a team. Normally, one would have to email the person individually, or perhaps get their phone number and text them. However, with Microsoft Teams, one doesn’t have to send emails or texts, as the Chat function allows for the sending of quick messages amongst team members, which allows for the creation of group chats, files to be sent among individuals, and even allows for a level of self-expression through emotes and GIFs.
Video Conferences
Not only does Microsoft Teams offer efficient Instant Messaging services, but it also offers quality meetings via video and/or audio. Unlike a program like Zoom, there is no password required, and setting up a video/audio meeting is as simple as pressing “Meet Now” to start a call with your team. Joining in a call is as easy as clicking “Join” when a meeting is in session for your team.
Connection to All of Microsoft’s Programs
Much like Google’s Suite, Microsoft Teams features and utilizes all the tools present in the Microsoft Suite. Microsoft Teams allows for the sharing and editing of files with such tools as Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. The program also allows users to easily share their screen with their coworkers, which pairs well with a program like Whiteboard where members of a team can all contribute in real time.
Conclusion
Overall, Microsoft Teams is an essential program because of how many tools it brings under one umbrella. Teams concurrently uses services similar to zoom, google drive, and instant messenger, and employs all of them within one convenient, easy to use program. With the use of this program, projects that used to require multiple programs to properly meet and collaborate can now be organized, discussed, and completed all under just Microsoft Teams. If you are your teams haven’t looked into the program yet, I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking to do intensive, collaborative projects in the near future!
Works Cited:
“Welcome to Microsoft Teams.” Microsoft Support, support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/what-is-microsoft-teams-3de4d369-0167-8def-b93b-0eb5286d7a29. Accessed 24 Sept. 2023.
Chester, Julia. “10 Benefits of Microsoft Teams (to Make Life a Whole Lot Better).” BEMO, BEMO, 11 Feb. 2022, www.bemopro.com/cybersecurity-blog/10-benefits-of-microsoft-teams#:~:text=All%20in%20all%2C%20Teams%20makes,overall%20a%20lot%20more%20productive.
“5 Reasons Why You Should Start Using Microsoft Teams Today.” Microsoft Pulse, 21 Aug. 2019, pulse.microsoft.com/en/work-productivity-en/na/fa2-reasons-why-you-should-start-using-microsoft-teams-today/.
Augmented Reality: The Future of Education?
Augmented Reality, or AR, is a technology that enhances an individual’s experiences in the real world with an added virtual overlay. Unlike Virtual Reality, you are not fully immersing yourself into a virtual world; rather, AR technology imprints a virtual world upon the real world. This is an increasingly popular technology, with such programs as AR Games on the Nintendo 3DS and mobile game Pokémon Go being some of the most popular games to utilize augmented reality. However, AR may have the potential to enhance students’ educational progress as well.
User CybTekk posted a comprehensive thread on X (formerly Twitter) outlining the potential upsides of augmented reality within education. This user argues that AR would allow for the classroom experience to be more immersive, with such examples as “history com[ing] to life” and “virtual labs enhanc[ing] science classes,” and that with AR, students would be able to virtually connect with the rest of the world, and take virtual, augmented reality trips to various places in the world to learn about them, all without having to leave the classroom. Plus, the article mentions how 80% of businesses use AR, and that learning how to use it early may be a valuable tool in the job market of tomorrow.
Unfortunately, there is no mention of current AR tools in use within the educational field currently. However, the potential benefits of using AR for education are not to be overlooked. The idea of allowing students to be immersed into what they are learning, rather than learning at a distance, is an exciting idea for innovation within education. I like the ideas put forth by this user, and hope that the idea and application of using AR within education is one that continues to grow traction, as it very well may be a big part of the future of educational technology.
Thanks for reading!