Productivity Tools

Digital productivity tools help learners collect, organize, and analyze data in different ways.  These tools are vital to push learning higher in Bloom's Taxonomy.  They help learners to deconstruct their learning, then recreate something new, or apply it in new ways.

When most people think of productivity tools, your typical "office suite" comes to mind:  word processing, spreadsheets, and slide-based presentation tools.  However, the web offers new and innovative tools our students can use that embed 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.  Here is my review of five such tools.

StoryboardThat- (https://www.storyboardthat.com)

StoryboardThat is a browser based Storyboard Creator.  With it's simple drag-and-drop functionality, teachers and students can create storyboards, graphic organizers, comics, and other visuals to demonstrate learning.  Once created, the creations can be presented via PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Apple Keynote.  Boards can also be emailed, posted to social media, or embedded on a blog or web page.  Users can access their account anywhere, from any device, no download needed. This tool is very user-friendly and gave just the right amount of choice - enough to allow users to express their unique view, but not so much they get bogged down in the details.  Learners will be creating and composing their learning, which is the highest level of thinking according to Blooms taxonomy.  The learning experience is definitely one of performance and presentation, in which students must think creatively and communicate their learning in new ways.  Between the ease of use (not too much instructional time spent teaching how to use the tool) and the higher order thinking and learning, this is definitely a "go-to" tool for educators!

Draw.io (https://www.draw.io) and Gliffy (www.gliffy.com)

These are two diagramming tools, that while not the "slickest" were both free and did not require an additional account creation.  Draw.io can integrate with your Microsoft OneDrive, where Gliffy is a Chrome extension.  Both tools had your very basic shapes and lines for students and teachers to create graphic organizers, flow charts, and mind maps.  Since both integrate with tools most are already used to, the menus and choices were very easy to figure out.  These tools can be used to illustrate and compare (apply and analyze levels of Blooms) as well as plan and design (creating level of Blooms) - it all depends on how you use them.  The learning outcomes would also reflect higher levels of design, create, present.  As with most web-based tools, they make collaboration easy, seamlessly embedding those 21st century skills right into the lesson.  

Poll Everywhere - (https://www.polleverywhere.com)

This is a web-based audience response system that lets you embed live polls and surveys directly into your presentation.  The audience responds on the web or via SMS texting on their phones. The interface is very user friendly and aesthetically pleasing, allow the user to customize the look of the polls.  Data can be exported into spreadsheets for further analytics.  Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended allowing for a wider variety of data to be instantly and accurately collected.  In Blooms taxonomy, this tool would assist thinking at the analyze and evaluate levels as data can be examined and used to justify a position or decide a course of action.  It could be a very useful tool for formative data collection for teachers.

Chartle - (https://www.onlinecharttool.com)

Does Excel give you anxiety?  If you need a quick way to make professional looking charts and graphs for a presentation without all the formula writing and data validation in a spreadsheet, then this tool has got you covered.  It is fast, easy, and requires no account creation!  After you've created your chart, you can download it in a number of formats including CSV (spreadsheet), as an image (PNG, JPG), or as a PDF.  You can save it online to come back to, email it, or share it via social media. Students can use this tool to analyze and evaluate data or to use that data to predict, formulate, or forecast, all higher order thinking skills.  This tool will allow them to design thought-provoking presentations and models to stimulate analytical discussions.  Charts and graphs allow students to reorganize information in new ways for better analysis.  It allows learners to evaluate the data from another angle that could lead to creative ideas.

Easel.ly - (https://www.easel.ly/home)

This tool states as its mission: "to inspire and enable anyone to represent and idea in a visual way".  Users can do just that by creating beautiful infographics that are so easy!  Easy-to-edit templates are provided for inspiration, or you can start with a blank slate.  These infographics can easily be embedded in a web page or social media account, downloaded as image files or PDF's, or shared via email or link.  Learners can even collaborate on the product through a "invite" system.  Infographic creation definitely calls on higher order thinking skills and learning experiences by allowing learners to deconstruct their "remember" and synthesize it into a new design.  It also calls on creative skills to consider the organization and aesthetic of the final product.  It's like graphic organizers on steroids!