Digital Learning Day is right around the corner – a week from Wednesday (February 5, 2014) to be exact! This third annual event is sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education with many partners including the National Writing Project, Library of Congress, and Edutopia. The day itself is simply a national day to celebrate innovative teachers and students and share creative ways to use technology for learning.
At Natomas Charter School we’ll be celebrating Digital Learning Day. It is the perfect opportunity to try on a new tool or strategy…or showcase the brilliant work our students have been doing over the past year. At our school teachers are celebrating it a bit differently depending on their grade level or lesson plans for the day. We have one academy celebrating it school-wide, while others teachers are celebrating the day from their classroom. Regardless of what you have planned keep it simple, easy, and fun.
Below are just a few ideas for what you might do on Digital Learning Day and any of them could tie in nicely with the lessons you already have planned.
- Explore the use of a new digital resource with your students. Some interesting ones I’ve been recently playing with include Perfect Pitch, Class Dojo, and LucidPress.
- Collaboratively write a blog post or story for the day using Google Docs.
- Are a significant number of your kids coming to school with smartphones? Take them on a QR code or Instagram scavenger hunt…or develop a visual literacy lesson on smartphone photography (here are my resources from CUE Rock Star Tahoe 2013).
- Have something more direct-instruction planned for the day? Consider giving Socrative or NearPod a try as part of a lesson.
- Know of a few iPads you can get a hold of? Have your students work in groups to demonstrate their learning by creating a movie (iMovie), digital poster (Comic Life), or screencast (Educreations).
- Have your students create an infographic for an upcoming unit.
- Skype or Google Hangout with an expert, author, or another classroom. No idea where to begin? Check out Mystery Skype.
- Analyze texts or music lyrics using Wordle or Word It Out (Chromebook-friendly).
- Analyze a TED Talk or other video using Video Not.es or image with comments in Google Drive.
- Challenge your students to expand their literacy skills by using programming challenges on Code.org
Regardless of what you choose to do on Digital Learning Day, share it with the world using the #DLDay hashtag on Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or Facebook. It is a great way to share the innovative and inspirational learning you and your students are doing. Have any other ideas for how to celebrate Digital Learning Day, post them in the comments section below.
Joe
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