Digital Tools to Teachers can use to measure and improve learning outcomes in children
The present age of digital content consumption offers numerous resources for the teachers to utilize for delivering the course content. With the accessibility to digital tools, evaluating student activities has become much easier.
Technology has the power to break down the barriers of education and equip the students with the skills they need to succeed in this 21st century. The steady rise in dependence on digital technology results from the availability of simplified solutions for enhancing educational practices.
In this era of digitization, the students expect schools to employ the kind of digital tools they are fond of or used to. Participants are so digitally active to consume different forms of content in their handheld devices.
Digital materials and their various elements, when incorporated with the teaching and learning process, can create an engaging learning environment and help the students learn better.
Assessments are aimed at developing the skills of each and every student. The major contributors to measuring student performances are learning outcomes of assessments, which are measurable skills and achievements that help analyze what a learner should know, be able to do, and value after the learning activity is completed.
Measurable outcomes of learning provide information on different skill sets that include but are not limited to, critical thinking, collaboration, self-efficacy, higher engagement & motivation, problem-solving, intellectual skills, cognitive strategy, discipline, risk-taking, verbal & language communication, motor skills, attitude and creativity.
By keeping such aspects in mind, the ed-tech service providers have developed educational apps that touch multiple areas of learning outcomes and bring the best possible result to support course delivery and assessments.
Here are the top digital tools that can assist the teachers in analyzing the learning outcomes and making improvements in the teaching & learning process:
Online platforms for course creation, course material references and e-content
Diksha
Diksha or ‘digital infrastructure for knowledge sharing is a national educational platform, a school education based initiative from the govt. Of India. This knowledge sharing portal stores many e-books and digital content created by the states, union territories and national level organizations. The content on Diksha is available in 32 Indian languages, and they relate to 1-12 class syllabus. This platform offers critical thinking practice resources, competency-based learning, and course assessment creation in various formats to make assessments more interesting.
ePathshala
ePAthshala is a joint initiative from the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development, CIET, and NCERT. Much like Diksha, it also holds a collection of various forms of digital content that help children achieve expected learning outcomes. The application offers numerous NCERT based free educational resources, including digital books, e-textbooks, audio, videos, and other open resources in multiple languages. Students, teachers and parents can easily access those contents from the ePathshala mobile app.
Khan academy
Khan academy is a free platform that provides numerous resources for teachers, students and parents. The learners are provided with interactive activities and challenges. There are various exercises, quizzes, and unit tests for students for each lesson. They can practise at their own pace and save progress to the profiles. With this digital tool, teachers can identify gaps in students’ learning and meet the needs of every student.
Udemy
Udemy is an online teaching and learning platform that provides massive open online courses. Instructors from around the world can use the tools and skills to teach what they know and build courses for their own students and students around the world. They will have access to dashboards and curriculum pages to keep them organized. The platform also provides options for creating assignments to test the knowledge of students that they have gained through the course.
Eduonix
An online learning platform that provides course materials on various topics. Much like other learning platforms, learners will receive certificates after completing the courses on their website. Both free courses and paid courses are available on this platform. Eduonix offers a five-minute assessment series on various topics, apart from the normal courses.
Simplilearn
Simplilearn is a certification course provider that offers both free and paid courses on skills that are in demand. This e-learning platform covers almost every topic, from simple courses like introduction to MS excel to deep learning subjects like artificial intelligence and machine learning. The website also offers free practice tests on various topics, which the user can attempt multiple times
Gamified teaching & assessment tools
Kahoot
Kahoot is a learning platform that delivers a variety of options to engage students in the assessment process. The game-based assessments made available on this platform focus on creating fun-filled formative assessments and class progress tracking. The application has options to allow students to play games as an individual or as a team. With this easy-to-use application, teachers can get actionable insights from reports, assess class progress in real-time and reinforce topics to help students master them.
Quizizz
Quizizz is an Indian ed-tech company that offers a gamified student engagement platform. Like Kahoot, this platform also helps create gamified quizzes and interactive assessments. Apart from creating their own assignments, teachers can also use questions or games created by other users, and share the activities with students on Google Classroom. Students will be awarded grades for their activities. The teachers can view the results of individual students and the whole class data.
Gimkit
A gamified platform that provides gameshows for the classrooms where students can easily participate from their own devices. Users can search for question sets known as ‘kits’, which other users create, and copy or modify them for their own use. Students can build a kit by submitting their own questions using the KitCollab feature. Games can be played live by the students, or the teachers can assign them as independent practices.
Plickers
Plickers is a digital assessment tool that provides an easy way to evaluate student learning. Users can sign-up for free on their website. This ed-tech platform provides a free card game that helps to collect instant results in the classroom. In addition to the free offering, they also provide a premium product with additional features.
ClassRealm
A customizable classroom management application that supports teachers to set specific achievements for individual students or the entire class. With this platform, teachers can introduce gamification into the classrooms and also track student data & progress.
Students can earn points by performing a wide range of tasks which will motivate them to explore further assignments.
Zondle
Zondle is a game–based website that helps teachers use games to support student learning. Assessments can be delivered in the form of questions and answers integrated into a game environment. Teachers can either use the games already created by other users or build their own games from scratch.
E-portfolios, file sharing, communication & collaboration
Google classroom
A free educational product developed by Google for simplifying activities related to grading and assessments. This blended learning platform aims to accelerate file sharing and enable easy collaboration between students and teachers. Students can easily post questions and receive answers from their teachers on this platform. The application also allows teachers to post questions, assignments and course materials for the students to review at their homes. Google Classroom can be integrated with third-party applications and other Google products like Google docs, Google forms etc.
Duolingo
Duolingo is a language learning website that offers various interactive practice exercises to practise grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. It is a good digital tool for gaining a base knowledge of a variety of languages. The Duolingo mobile application is highly structured and organized, its home screen displays a list of modules in order. With their user-friendly mobile app, the users can strengthen their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.
Padlet
An educational company that acts as a real-time collaborative platform for uploading, organizing and sharing content to a digital notice board called ‘padlet’. Students can post questions or any other concepts on these padlets, and the teachers/their classmates can view/answer them. The digital notice board is able to feature content in various formats like text, images, links, videos etc.
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a social learning platform that connects teachers and students through free video discussions. It provides an easy way for the students to be engaged in assessments, with teachers creating short videos asking questions or directing students on how they would like them to respond. Educators can easily create groups, add students, create topics and share those topics with the students while students can join the discussion, record their responses and submit them.
Edmodo
An all-in-one educational tool that connects teachers & students, sharing content, and managing classrooms. Using this platform, teachers are able to create online collaborative tools, share educational materials and measure student performances. The application also allows parents to get class updates and stay in sync with the teachers.
Classdojo
It is an educational tool that connects teachers, students, and parents through its exciting communication features. It serves as an assessment tool for teachers, guiding them on decision making about future instructions. Classdojo enables easy sharing of what’s being learned in the classroom through photos, videos, and messages.
Educlipper
Educlipper is a social learning platform that helps ‘clip’ website links, videos, images, documents etc., for the students. This helps to manage academic content online, create an easy reference collection, improve research technique, track students’ academic growth and have a digital record of what students learned. The application is 100% free for teachers and students.
Peergrade
Peergrade is an online learning platform that supports peer evaluation and grading. By using this application, the teacher sets up an assignment, and students submit the work to the assignment. Students can review each other’s works and provide anonymous feedback. They discuss, react and engage with their feedback. Finally, the teacher will get a complete overview of what is happening in the assignment
Polls, surveys and other formative assessments
Socrative
Socrative is free educational software that helps teachers create practice exercises and various formative assessments. It is an efficient tool that monitors and evaluates student activities on a real-time basis. From short quizzes to other assignments, Socrative offers numerous features for formative assessments. Teachers can see the results of student activities and even make the assignments more personalized. The application is available on all major platforms and devices.
Quizlet
Quizlet provides a platform for teachers and students to create and share collaborative learning materials. The application helps students confidently learn anything with the help of free study sets, in-class games and other interactive resources. Major tools of this application include digital flashcards and live quizzes. Purchasing the premium version of Quizlet (Quizlet plus for teachers) helps organize your class and track student progress in a far better way.
Formative
An application designed to improve student engagement. The app helps focus on real-time instructions by assigning activities, tracking student progress and providing feedback in real-time. It makes it easy to understand student progress and adapt teachings according to their needs and capabilities.
Quizalize
A platform that helps to build academic quizzes easily. It lets the teacher build their quizzes, opt for released tests or utilize teacher created resources. The application features options to track instant data on student achievements and progress. It can also automatically assign different resources to students depending on the scores obtained in the quizzes.
Nearpod
Nearpod is an online learning platform that provides an engaging learning environment through interactive videos, formative assessments, simulations, gamified learning and other resources. Teachers can get real-time insights into student learning. It can also be easily integrated with existing tools like Google Slides, worksheets and LMS.
Google forms
A simple & widely-used digital tool from Google, which can be helpful for building surveys, polls and quizzes. To record the response of students, questions can be made in the form of multiple-choice as well as short answer types. Teachers can analyze the results in real-time from any device of their choice.
Mentimeter
Mentimeter lets the user create interactive presentations with different question types. With this app, teachers can engage with students using quizzes, live polls, word clouds, multiple-choice questions and more. The results appear in real-time; they can also be downloaded and saved for future reference.
Projeqt
A digital tool for creating multimedia presentations for the K-12 classroom. This application’s dynamic slides help the educators embed interactive videos, links, online quizzes, links, and more in them. With Projeqt, students can access and review their work from anywhere. This creates a social and interactive experience compared to normal, exhausting PowerPoint presentations.
Technological advancements in today’s world have made it possible for educators to utilize abundant resources for teaching and conducting assessments. With these tools, the performances of teachers as well as the students are observed to be improved on a larger scale. Ed-tech apps offer an all-in-one solution to build communication and manage all student-related activities. Incorporating such digital technology in your school will help reduce the burden of daily tasks and improve the learning outcome of students.
