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Leveraging technology to increase student engagement

FACILITATING lessons that engage all learners
MOTIVATING students with creative learning opportunities
DESIGNING access to materials to streamline lessons and maximize class time

These three things are worth the planning because the payoff is a smoothly run, engaging and empowering lesson. In the end, everyone including the teacher enjoys the class more!

Here are some things that you can put in place to increase engagement while fostering creativity, increasing valuable formative assessment, and supporting those learning differences.

The first and last 5 minutes of class can be very engaging by leveraging 1-1 technology. Or use such tools to "regroup" in the middle of a long block.
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PollEverywhere.com is a really fun service that will accommodate teachers for free.
PollEverywhere has a "Live Visualization Link" so contributors can view the responses of others. This is one way to facilitate a discussion and engage students anonymously.

Padlet.com - group posting board Padlet is a 2-dimensional space like a board on a wall.... an interesting way to leverage Padlet is to have students post links to their web-based projects, blogs, prezi, voki, glogster, or any other tool you are using for creative work.

A TED-Ed flipped lesson

 Here is an example of a lesson that I found and published as my own on a topics page. They are customizable, sharable lessons that include video, quiz, discussion and more info.. You could like to these from a Topic page!

Google Form embed code puts your Form right on the Topic for student input - either anonymously, or with a name for points. Participation, assessment, feedback, opinion.

Comment on a blog post of your choice! Read and comment intelligently on at least one blog post that MOTIVATES you...so you can experience this form of engagement and choice.

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