Almost weekly I get contacted by phone, email or twitter about a fantastic new product that will surely improve teaching & learning at my school. While I think it is important to be continually improving our learning environment I often feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of apps, tools & devices that are available.
How do I determine if something is worth checking out? I base it on the following:
- Does this product fulfill a current need?
- Have I heard others talk (rave) about this product?
- If I need to spend money will it be cost-effective?
Here are some examples of “new things” that we have incorporated at my school. The first is Seesaw. We use this product for digital portfolios for our students. When we were looking for a suitable platform there was quite a bit of buzz online about Seesaw. We did some testing -teachers loved it- and it quickly became our tool of choice. Seesaw is a paid service but we found the cost per student (and the unlimited number of classes) was well worth the benefits that came with this platform. It has become more and more popular and our Mandarin teachers are the latest group to incorporate Seesaw into their classes.
Another new product was Gibbon EDU. Gibbon (gibbonedu.org) is a Student Information System and a Learning Management System all rolled into one. My school had been searching for a new SIS and by chance a few staff met the Gibbon EDU developer at a professional development activity. His short overview piqued our interest enough to test out this platform. At the time Gibbon was being used in a handful of schools and it was still a young product. The positives for us was that it ticked a lot of boxes and the developer was a teacher; a person who understood the needs of a typical teacher. Again after a testing period we decided to use this young & developing platform. The interesting thing about Gibbon is that it is open source - no initial fees or subscription fees. This allowed us to take the money we normally spent on a SIS/LMS and put it towards a new staff member who would oversee this new platform.
My experiences show that there is value to be found; you just need to do your research and don't be afraid of some of the more obscure products out there. Good luck!
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