Blog 9: Beneficial Activities to Keep Students Engaged

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- Online Learning Activities That Keep Students Motivated and Engaged 



Online Learning Activities That Keep Students Motivated and Engaged 

This article was inspired by the fact that some schools decided that their classes would remain online, whereas others would be adopting a hybrid model, including a blend of in-person and remote learning. It's important that teachers refine their lesson plans to include fun and engaging online activities. 

The article considers activities that they believe would be beneficial to incorporate in the classroom: 
  • Real-world case studies: Ask students to find real-life case studies, not generic ones! They get to research their own case study that they find most interesting.

  • Online Debates: Debates force students to dig deeply into a topic and understand both points. Plus, they love the fact that they get to defend their side. 

  • Whiteboard Teaching: Explain Everything Whiteboard is an app that allows teachers and students to create dynamite whiteboard presentations. 

  • Classroom Newspapers: Create a classroom newspaper. Hand out story assignments or encourage students to pitch you stories. It works for every subject. Edublogs allows teachers to create customizable classroom blogs. 

  • Trivia Competitions: Encourage students to think fast by posting multiple choice questions and have them answer as soon as possible. Poll Everywhere Competitions allows students to answer questions in real-time from their phones or computers and includes a constantly updated leaderboard. 

  • Comic Strips: Can be used for any subject as well and adds humour into the classroom. Synfig is a resource ideal for beginners to animate a comic strip.

  • Video Newscast: Great for cross-curricular with drama and another subject. Encourage students to research a topic, write their story, and record them as news reports. PlayPosit makes it easy for students to create interactive videos.

  • Google Earth Scavenger Hunt: Create a historic location scavenger hunt, a geological scavenger hunt, or a nature-based scavenger hunt. Have them screenshot their findings. 

Resource: https://blog.polleverywhere.com/online-learning-activities-that-keep-students-engaged/




Comments

  1. KaitlinAugust 11, 2022 at 1:29 PM

    Hi Giulia,
    Thank you for sharing this list of resources. To add to your comic strips one and Synfig, I know some people who use Powtoon, Storyboard that... I don't know anyone who's used these in K-12 classes, but one of my colleagues made Powtoons for her Master's at UBC.

    The biggest challenge I encounter, with technology usage, is finding software that we have the legal rights to use. In BC, at least, we are responsible for upholding FOIPPA guidelines (Freedom of information and protection of privacy act). Most basically what this means is, we cannot have students engage in any software/technology where their information is stored outside of Canada. Yes, that means we can't have students use Google, which is beyond a doubt the hardest thing, to get them to move to other platforms (e.g. MS Teams), when they are so used to using other systems for their personal usage. When I searched FOIPPA, it came up on our Ministry of Education website: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/policies-for-government/bcea-policy-and-procedure-manual/foippa/information-privacy-and-security-foippa. But I'm wondering if this is, then, something specific to our province. You mentioned in an earlier post you're from Windsor - do you know if your provincial guidelines also have something similar?

    Thanks,
    Kaitlin

    ReplyDelete

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