Digital Compass https://www.digitalcompass.org

Short Description:This is an interactive game for students to learn about their role as a digital citizen. Students follow animated characters through a variety of digital life situations and choose their own path as the game progresses. Topics include Internet safety, privacy and security, relationships and communication, cyberbullying and digital drama, digital foot and reputation, self-image and identity, information literacy, and creative credit and copyright. It is available as an app or directly through the website. It was developed for grades 6 through 9.
Examples of Uses: This site provides great educator materials to help them teach their students about their role as a digital citizen. Each story line takes about 45 minutes for students to complete. It may be a good homework assignment, or an advisory period activity (our school has a weekly advisory period to discuss a range of topics with students.). Great class conversations could follow as the student’s share how their journeys progressed, and each student’s journey could be completely different as the site offers 8 different characters with 50 possible story combinations!

Doctopus goo.gl/McMitA 

Ideally integrated with Google Classroom, this Google Sheets extension allows teachers to “ingest” or import turned in assignment from Google Classroom into a Google Sheet. Teachers can then attach a rubric (must be in Google Sheets) and grade each assignment in a split window, with the rubric on the top half, and the assignment on the bottom half. Teachers can record their voice for audio feedback to students in addition to the rubric, and at the click of a button, the assignment rubric with feedback can be emailed to the student.

This website offers educators and students a reliable source of news articles, historical documents and texts. The website compiles articles from media sources like the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, PBS, History.com, and many more. This site also allows educated to customize the reading levels of any article (based on the Lexile level), and also includes multiple-choice quizzes and writes prompts for every article.

Wisemapping is a free, web based tool that allows users to quickly and easily create a “mind map” without a login or account. Suggested uses for students could include brainstorming project ideas, studying for exams, making connections between different course materials, collaborative work, project research, character mapping for theater or English courses, etc. The “mind maps” can easily be downloaded in multiple formats for future use. http://www.wisemapping.com

Screencastify is a Google Chrome extension that allows users to record themselves for a variety of purposes, whether using webcams, microphones, recording their computer screens, or any combination of the three. Users may record their entire computer screen, a specific application window, and/or just use their webcam for a visual of themselves. It is great for users looking to create digital presentations or tutorials of virtually anything- website usage, software usage, etc. Teachers may be interested in using this extension for student video reflections or different forms of presentations. All videos save in a folder in your Google Drive. https://www.screencastify.com/

Students can create and post a Google Form to Google Classroom prior to a project presentation for their peers to complete after the presentation. In my middle school music technology courses I create a form template for each project we present in class. I share this template with students to “make a copy” and reformat specific to their project. Students share their forms on Google Classroom, and after their presentations their peers from the other groups complete the forms. Students meet with their project groups and discuss the feedback (generally what went well and were could we have improved) before completing a written reflection of the project. https://docs.google.com/forms/