12 Tech Tools For Student-To-Student Digital Collaboration

contributed by Nicholas Martino

We are living in a digital age where students shuffle between smartphones, iPads and MacBooks on the daily.

We can now communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime through the simple click of a button, and it is our job as educators to leverage these collaborative tools in the classroom. Many schools are finding creative ways to incorporate blended learning in their curriculums, and THINK Global School, where I teach, is no different.

Due to our focus on blended learning and travel, it is imperative that we remain as paperless as possible. Technology can often make or break our experiences as we study in different countries around the world, so we must hit the ground running during our seven-week intensive country visits. And depending on how they are integrated into our teaching toolkits, the tools used for our blended learning units can either help or hinder our student learning experiences.

Like you, we’ve tested our fair share of tools in trying to make the digital collaboration process with our students as seamless as possible. Some have worked incredibly while others not so much. But there are five that we’ve ended up going back to time after time, little technological jewels that just make blended learning that much easier.

You can find those tools, along with 7 more added by TeachThought editors, below.

12 Tech Tools For Student-To-Student & School-To-School Digital Collaboration

1. Utilizing PBL in your classroom? Check out Edio

Designed by Mike Hourahine, former head of technology at THINK Global School, Edio (now Headrush Learning) is a learning platform built specifically for project-based learning. This tool helps educators plan, execute, assess, and report the projects they facilitate for students.

Anyone who teaches project-based learning knows it is messy and involves a lot of work on the teacher’s end to provide deep learning opportunities for students. This platform aims to digitally manage PBL work in order to minimize the mess that teachers face while running multiple projects concurrently.

How We Use Edio

At TGS, Edio is our command center, not only for blended learning but also for our group fieldwork. Students view assignments, submit work, and check their module progress all in one handy application. Edio also offers support for student’s individual, advisor-mentored project work and a clean interface for end-of-term reports and transcript processing.

Still in its early days, this tech tool is already the gold standard for any aspiring PBL classroom or school.

2. Dig social bookmarks? You’ll love Diigo

Remember the old days when a librarian came carting books into your classroom for an upcoming report?

Imagine Diigo as a digital version of that librarian and the entire internet as her cart. Items in this cart, however, can be retained for as long as you like without the fear of overdue book fees. Diigo, which stands for ‘Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff,’ is a great social-bookmarking tool that helps students or classes capture relevant research articles on a given topic.

By offering mobile versions via Android and iOS and add-ons downloadable for Firefox and Chrome, Diigo can be accessed anywhere, anytime—perfect for lessons in the classroom and those that extend out into the field.

How We Use Diigo

This tool has become a crucial part of our school’s approach to managing project-based learning resources. Since we are constantly on-the-move, a few books, let alone a physical library, are impossible for us to reasonably transport. Diigo eliminates that concern, and helps our students curate and build an ever-growing library of bookmarks for our modules year after year.

Countries and specific place- and project-based modules have their own groups for students to contribute to and annotate resources. When a guest speaker visits, we can quickly create a research group to curate a list of resources so that our entire student body is informed and attentive before the speaker arrives.

3. Tap into your students’ love of video with Flipgrid

FlipGrid is a video tool that is meant to encourage discussion and engagement. These short video-logs allow students to share ideas and opinions in a fun and hands-on way, as video submissions are often more enticing to students than a written response (this is especially true for teachers of ESL learners, who sometimes get anxiety about their written work.)

FlipGrid provides another approach for long-distance collaboration: The time limits are an added challenge to students who sometimes struggle with brevity. It’s important to note that the free version offers limited features, while the paid version features offer full student collaboration and video conversing.

How We Use FlipGrid

In our Economics and eCommerce module, students use FlipGrid to summarize, discuss and review two different resources for the project-based learning module. In the module students learn social entrepreneurship and e-commerce by developing a web store to support rural artisans.

Before their arrival in India, students researched the stories behind successful brands and shared them in a ‘grid.’ In the ‘grid,’ students use rhetorical devices to compete with their classmates to pitch the story of the brand they selected. This early application of rhetoric devices develops throughout the module before students present a business pitch to a panel of potential investors.

4. Collectively annotate YouTube videos with VideoAnt

As a former history and anthropology teacher, I was thrilled to stumble across VideoAnt. In the past, my students would laugh at the amount of times I would pause a video to ask a question or interject a counterpoint. Now, instead of just showing a YouTube video, you can annotate YouTube videos to maximize efficiency and learning.

Students and teachers can add comments to video ‘Ants,’ adding all sorts of untapped academic potential. Students can point out bias, critique video style, and ask probing and clarifying questions, just to name a few uses.

Also, if any coaches are reading this, this makes for an excellent review tool when analyzing practice drills, pre-game scouting, and game film breakdowns.

How We Use VideoAnt

In our Zero to Infinity module, students carved up an hour-long documentary about mathematics titled “The Story of One.” Educators annotate certain times with questions for reflection and short answers, while students annotate with different follow-up questions, and clarifying comments.

Due to our students’ geographic diversity, there can be large gaps in their understanding of mathematics. This tool helps educators gain more insight into the student math experience before starting the module.

5. Create & Collaborate Anywhere in the World with Padlet

Padlet allows for creative collaboration using a range of different mixed media sources.

In real-time or across time zones, students can contribute videos, images, comments on a virtual corkboard. Each student can comment or reply to the work of another student or add a new strand on the topic that is introduced.

How We Use Padlet

During our ongoing “Water and Sustainability” module, students are using Padlet to document their experiences with data collection and the use of statistics in their daily life. They are sharing passions, applications, and websites to help each other realize the everyday benefits of understandings statistics. These include a range of topics such as distance running, gardening, vegetarian nutrition, and sleep maintenance.

By learning about each other, they are in turn gaining a deeper understanding of the wide range of applications of statistics.

Other Technology Tools For Global Digital Collaboration

6. Video Chat, text chat, and more via Skype

7. YouTube Live Streaming

8. Collaborate on multimedia projects with Google Drive & Google Classroom and document creation with Google Docs

9. Transfer files of almost any size with WeTransfer. Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive are decent alternatives.

10. Translate languages with Google Translate and soon, Amazon’s Echo Dot (and voice tool Alexa) for real-time conversational translation (Amazon affiliate link).

Conclusion

While the TGS Changemaker Curriculum is unique in its approach to blended and field learning, any institution can adapt these tools for their personal teaching methods. Portable, user-friendly and effective, these tools can and will help anyone, anywhere, as they make content more fun for students to digest.

Absences are a daily occurrence at any school, but these tools can ease the burden on both the teacher and the student by keeping them informed and engaged regarding the day’s lesson plan. Teachers who flip their classrooms (here are 54 tools for a flipped classroom) can also use these tools to ensure students collaborate productively from home.

With the application of any new tech in the classroom, it is important to remember that web tools do not replace sound pedagogy. When adding these to your toolkit, treat them as learning supplements, not as a magic wand for better teaching.

Follow @maats_defenders for more on education; previously published at TeachThought.com