Lauren MacDonald
Tool Name: Digizen http://www.digizen.org
Short Description: Digizen is a digital citizenship awareness website for teachers, parents, and students. Digizen shares specific advice and resources on issues such as social networking and cyberbullying and how these relate to and affect their own and other people's online experiences and behaviors.
Examples of Uses: Digizen offers an online game that concerns cyberbullying in a high school setting. The interactive game allows the user, or student, to create her own character and interact with another student named Joe who is being cyberbullied. The user is able to make decisions about how to help Joe through the cyberbullying and what the user can do to stop it and try to prevent it from happening in the future.

Lauren MacDonald
Tool Name: Kahoot! https://kahoot.com
Short Description: Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform for teachers to create assessments in a variety of ways using images, videos, and diagrams. The students then complete the assessment by playing the game. Ideally, the assessments are meant to be played in a group to promote collaboration! Also, Kahoot! promotes peer based learning where students can work together and learn from those in the same classroom and even around the world!
Examples of Uses: After hearing multiple sources rave about and compliment Kahoot! I knew I had to look into how the technology can really benefit the classroom. Kahoot! is used as an assessment tool in and out of the classroom. Students can create their own kahoots to deepen their understanding of the material. The quizzes on Kahoot! can be shared that can help teachers save time or modify to meet the needs of their own class without having to make a completely new quiz. Kahoot! is an extremely useful assessment tool that is free, easy to use, interactive, and provides students with a new avenue for learning through technology.

Lauren MacDonald
Tool Name: Factitious http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/
Short Description: Factitious is an online fact-checking game for middle and high school students, or even anyone who needs help deciphering between real and fake news. To begin a full game, the player inputs information about him/herself such as; age, gender, education level, and news savviness. Then, the player can choose to play a full version or short version of the game. The player will be presented with three rounds of short articles to read and then uncover the source. Once the player has the source, it is up to him/her to decide if the news is fake or fact depending on the article and the source presenting it. The game then lets the player know if they got the answer correct and gives a short description of the source noting if it is credible or not.
Examples of Uses: Using this tool can benefit anyone who struggles with finding credible sources and needs to refine his/her media literacy skills. Teachers can use this tool with their students to prep them for research projects so the students learn the difference between satire and factual reporting. Some articles are even appropriate for elementary school students!

Short Description: Whooo's Reading is a tool used to check reading comprehension in elementary school aged students. The process begins with the students completing their reading that was either assigned or chosen by them. Next, the students take a short quiz that contains three higher-level thinking questions that are automatically scored and sent to the teacher. The students are given positive reinforcement for their reading and writing, as well as virtual coins called Wisdom Coins that they can spend on their Owlvatars. Then the students are given customized suggestions for what book to read next. The teacher receives the students' scores for each book to ensure that they read it and are able to track their students' progress over time

Examples of Uses: Using this tool benefits teachers and students. Teachers no longer have to give multiple choice questions to test for reading comprehension, rather they can hold their students accountable with higher-level thinking quizzes that prepares them to cite their evidence and answer all parts of a question. Skills that the students will need to be successful in the future can be taught at an earlier age. Also, students receive positive reinforcement for their hard work leaving them with an optimistic outlook on reading and writing. To add, when students log in to Whooo's Reading they are able to log their minutes and pages read to make reading become a daily habit. Parents also have access and can sign off on reading logs and receive progress reports for their child's literacy. Lastly, this tool makes reading social where students can create conversations on books and receive feedback.

Lauren MacDonald
Tool Name: Remind https://www.remind.com
Short Description: Remind is a teacher tool that allows teachers to send out reminders or alerts to students and even parents as text messages concerning upcoming deadlines or important information. Remind allows for students to stay on top of their work with friendly messages from their teachers. One of the benefits of Remind is that teachers do not have to give out their personal information in order to text message their students or parents, rather they use their Remind account to reach anyone.
Examples of Uses: Use Remind to alert students and parents to return paperwork such as; field trip permission slips, homework, projects, and other necessary forms. Also, stay in contact with parents through the individual messaging feature to communicate directly with one parent, or send out blast messages to all parents. Remind holds students even more accountable for their upcoming assignments through the use of text messages.

Lauren MacDonald Tool Name: TodaysMeet https://todaysmeet.com Short Description: TodaysMeet is a backchannel virtual classroom tool used for communication and collaboration between students that occurs during a lesson, when students are at home, or even with students from other schools. TodaysMeet allows for the elimination of off topic comments and helps keep the classroom as a whole focused. Also, this tool allows for all students' voices to be heard and opens the conversation up for everyone to effectively collaborate. What is extremely helpful for students is that they can print out the conversations on TodaysMeet or re-enter the classroom while at home to refer to notes, instructions, or help on homework. Examples of Uses: Students can access the virtual classroom on TodaysMeet anywhere and continue the conversation with classmates and teachers even after the lesson has ended. This is extremely helpful for teachers when they come across more challenging concepts or units in the curriculum because students can use each other to bounce ideas and questions off of rather than the teacher taking a whole class period to answer multiple questions from confused students.