The new academic year is here and it is time to organize ourselves. This is a great time to reflect and utilize technology that can help organize yourself and your classroom for the upcoming year. Where should you start? Cathy and I think that this is the perfect time to share how we stay organized and to recap some of our favorite and most useful technology tools.
To maintain easy access to our documents from anywhere or any device, Cathy and I utilize Dropbox for document cloud storage. In addition, Dropbox allows us to easily share documents with anyone. Other cloud storage services that we recommend are Google Drive (https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/google-drive/), Microsoft One Drive and Apple iCloud.
In addition, a great note taking app is a must have for increasing productivity. Both Notability (https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/notability/) and Evernote (https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/evernote/) are tools that we utilize on a weekly basis. Additional note taking tools that we recommend are GoodNotes, Notes Plus, Noteshelf and Apple Notes.
Furthermore, Cathy and I utilize technology to convert our typical classroom into an interactive whiteboard environment. Doceri (https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/doceri/) allows our hand held devices to project images through the classroom overhead projector and to record our lectures. Additional whiteboard and/or lecture capture technology that we recommend are Explain Everything, Educreations, ShowMe, Notability, Splashtop, Scoodle Jam, Camtasia, Tegrity ,Snagit https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/snagit/ and Microsoft Whiteboard https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/10/.
To increase student engagement in the classroom environment, Cathy and I utilize several polling and gamification technologies. Poll Everywhere https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/poll-everywhere-update-poll-everywhere-competitions-now-available/, Kahoot https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/?s=kahoot, Piazza https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/?s=piazza, Sli.do https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/sli-do-a-student-engagement-and-data-analysis-tool/, and Socrative https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/?s=socrative are a few of our favorite polling options. These student engagement technologies work great for on campus or online learning environments.
Cathy and I integrate many group team activities into our course curriculums. Some of the technologies that we use to support the group workflow and grading are: Google Keep https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2019/03/, Slack https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/slack/ and Microsoft Teams https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/microsoft-teams/. Another technology option to consider for team communication is Group Me.
If you are looking for technologies to introduce data analytics into your curriculum, Tableau and PowerBI https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2019/02/ are very user friendly tools. In addition, Cathy and I describe how we introduce data analytics into our curriculum at https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2019/07/.
Finally, Cathy and I try to utilize technology to engage our students outside of our classroom lectures. Some effective technology tools that we use to accomplish student engagement are: Kahoot Challenge https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/kahoot-update-now-available-create-out-of-class-assignments-with-kahoot-challenge/, Flipgrid https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/flipgrid/, Google Slides https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/engaging-students-with-google-slides-qa/, and Recap https://teachingandlearningtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/recap/.
We hope that you take this opportunity to discover at least one technology that can help you become more organized throughout the upcoming year. We recommend checking with your institution to see if they currently provide any of these technologies at little or no cost to faculty. Many technologies provide similar benefits; therefore, we identified several tools within each organizational category listed above. We suggest utilizing tools that compliment your teaching style and that can be acquired for the least amount of resources. Good luck and have a great academic year.
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