Discover the tech tools teachers can use to maintain engagement and focus in their classroom during the weeks before holiday breaks.
Using EdTech to Teach the Arts
Technology offers endless opportunities to expand and enrich the way students learn. While many of us grew up learning to draw with pencil and paper, shaping clay with our hands, or gluing stiff pieces of macaroni to construction paper, today, the ways in which students can learn are infinite—and decidedly less messy.
Beyond cutting down on cleanup time, using edtech to teach the arts offers other unexpected benefits. Technology allows students with disabilities new, more accessible ways of creating, evens the playing field for kids who believe they can’t draw a straight line, and increases engagement for learners who might otherwise be reluctant to learn the arts.
Below are a handful of impressive edtech tools that can be used for teaching the arts.
Google Arts & Culture
A quick scroll on Google Arts & Cultures reveals a multiverse of engaging content for curious kids—and adults, too. Curious students can explore art and art history by color, a time period, a culture or a theme.
The site provides virtual tours of faraway museums or galleries, as well as a collection of arts and culture-based games in addition to its deep dives on visual art.
Smarthistory
The result of a collaboration of more than 500 professionals in the art world, Smarthistory is another great resource for educators and students. The site hosts a variety of webinars, videos, courses and multimedia textbooks on topics of art history ranging from ancient Egyptian artifacts to modern art.
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts offers educators free lesson plans on subjects like visual art, theatre, opera, literary arts and more. Whether you’re prepping for a high school lesson plan on Shakespeare or an elementary school unit on the life cycle of sunflowers using Van Gogh’s paintings, the Kennedy Center offers a rich resource for educators. Eager learners can also view video-based art lessons from a roster of talented visiting teachers.
PlayART app
A fun app designed with younger children in mind, PlayArt allows kids to use existing elements from classic artwork and add their own touch, encouraging both artistic exploration with a pinch of art history.
Music Constructed
Music Constructed provides music teachers with a variety of lesson plans, teaching units and a wealth of ideas, as well as three tiers of professional development resources. The site also boasts an online forum where teachers can network, connect or ask questions of their peers.
Soundtrap
Students can collaborate on musical projects or podcasts through Soundtrap, a cloud-based app. Soundtrap lets students experiment with sound, recording, rhythm and more. Students and teachers can add tracks from home, allowing plenty of opportunities to collaborate, whether in the classroom or from home.
Book Creator
With Book Creator, students can create impressing, multimedia comic books, magazines or books. Designed to include reluctant writers and kids with learning differences, the app allows users to incorporate voice recordings, videos, icons, emojis and more as tools for expression.
Best of 2019: This Year’s Favorite Blogs
At the end of the year, it is said (or sung) that old acquaintance should be forgot. But as we prepare to close out the calendar and delve into a new one, we’re focused on what should be remembered from 2019: lessons learned, skills acquired, and relationships built.
Our end-of-year reflections also include the informational impacts made from the year’s blog posts. Below is a collection of our favorite Arey Jones blogs from 2019.
Most Popular Devices of 2018 topped the list of most popular blogs. Its comprehensive guide gave shoppers, educators, and administrators an inside look the latest and greatest in Chromebooks. The feature comparison between several different brands helped readers discern which model would best fit their needs.
Intended for teachers, It’s Time to Redesign Your Learning Spaces, explained how EdTech is challenging the norm of classroom design. The blog also offered helpful and practical suggestions for changing up classroom layout in an effort to increase collaboration and efficacy.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with technological clutter. That’s why Clean Out Your Electronic Files Like a Pro was a hit with readers. This piece provided detailed instruction aimed at helping computer-users simplify and organize their documents.
In the spirit of March Madness, The Biggest Players in Tech highlighted two major tech companies and their respective, successful products. Looks like a win-win to us!
The struggle to stay organized is one that all educators bear. Teaching Tips: How to Stay Organized All Year provided teachers with valuable advice and practical tools for effectively and efficiently completing workday duties (so that they didn’t become evening and weekend chores).
So here you have it: Arey Jones’s favorite blogs of the year. What content would you like to see highlighted in our 2020 blogs? Comment below!
How To Put Play Tech to Work
As an educational technology company, we love to talk about how technology helps kids learn more efficiently, engage in heightened collaboration, and access real-time data and resources that would otherwise be unavailable in traditional classrooms. Technology can and often does make us better at almost everything.
And it can make us really good at being distracted.
One could argue that the minds of students have always been easily lured away from classroom activity. The only difference now is that instead of staring out of windows, they are staring into Microsoft’s equivalent; instead of daydreaming, they are building virtual realities in Minecraft.
As adults can attest, switching from “play mode” to “work mode” isn’t easy, especially when using the same device for both. Children have a particularly hard time making this transition; not only are they more easily influenced by technology, but they also don’t get as many chances to learn and practice their focusing skills--and the distractions are only a click away.
And I don’t think we’re alone when we say us adults could use a refresher course, too. Here are a few tips to help you and the students in your life focus on what’s important and still make time for play, be it in their Minecraft world or on social media.
Give yourself a clear lead.
You may never be able to remove every distraction from your classroom, office, or home, but you can learn to clear and calm your mind. If it helps (and it likely will), remove visible and audible distractions from your desktop, log out of your email and social media, silence notifications, and put your phone in a drawer. If all else fails, fight tech with tech. These distraction-diverter apps can help.
Classroom focus: Guide the kids through a quick mindfulness exercise that includes some deep belly breathing before starting a new task.
Intentionally place your focus on the task at hand.
It’s been proven that multitasking physically shrinks your brain, so stop doing it. Work on your task or watch television or text your best friend, don’t try to do all at the same time. Your attention will suffer on all, and you’ll only accomplish a fraction of what you want and need to get done.
Classroom focus: Clearly state the one task you want your students to accomplish and what you expect to be completed at the end of the alloted time. Have them write it down or repeat it (out loud or to themselves) to make sure it sticks.
Take short breaks.
“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” said Dr. Rich of Harvard Medical School in a New York Times article. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”
There’s a reason why productivity systems like Pomodoro are popular--because they work in realistic ways. The Pomodoro Technique, which is a time management method that interlaces timed bursts of productivity with short breaks, helps keep people focused because it keeps work and play in perspective, all while allowing access to both. Make sure some tasks or breaks are of the unplugged variety to give the brain time to process and adapt to something new.
Classroom focus: Incorporate tech-free breaks throughout your day and encourage students to take breaks from a task on a regular basis to do something physical or an activity that allows their brain to rest.
What else are you doing in your classrooms to maximize their focus and learning potential? If you ever need ideas, we've got a few.