At the Academic Technology Fair this past fall, the Tech Hub Faculty featured a variety of useful online teaching tools, including Kami, Padlet, Kahoot, Accessibility Checkers, and DTEN/Zoom rooms. We’d like to highlight these tools again for those of you looking for new ways to engage students and enhance your teaching. Here is a brief synopsis of each of these tools.
Kami is a tool that allows users to mark up and annotate documents, including PDFs. This tool can be especially useful for working with print handouts, facilitating student collaboration and providing feedback to students. Kami assignments work with SpeedGrader. (Chemeketa has licenses for this tool. Please contact us if you are interested. This tool is an LTI that can be integrated into Canvas.)
Padlet is essentially an online notice board that can be utilized by instructors and students in a number of ways, including brainstorming, collaborating, and sharing information. Posts to these boards can be in the format of texts, videos, links, images, and documents. This tool can also be useful when working with colleagues. (Chemeketa has licenses for this tool. Please contact us if you are interested. This tool is an LTI that can be integrated into Canvas.)
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform where instructors can create polls and quizzes to increase and diversify student engagement. The quizzes and polls can be used live or asynchronously with students. (Chemeketa has licenses for this tool. Please contact us if you are interested.)
Accessibility Checkers: There are several programs instructors can use to ensure their course content is accessible for all students. Grackle is a tool for making docs, slides and sheets accessible in Google. Additionally, Ally is an accessibility tool that is integrated into Canvas courses, and it allows students to access alternative formats for content. Learn more about Accessibility Checkers available to you.
DTEN/Zoom rooms: DTEN units are a Zoom specific tool of varying sizes that aids in the delivery of remote meetings, conferences, and classes. The CAI has facilitated training sessions on how to use DTENs to deliver mixed attendance classes. (This tool is an LTI that can be integrated into Canvas.)
If you are interested in using any of these tools, Contact the Center for Academic Innovation at academicinnovation@chemeketa.edu or by calling 503-589-7710.