Please review the tabs below to explore various instructional technologies to help your students learn.

Otter.ai
Jamboard
Kahoot
Padlet
Nearpod

Otter.ai An Educational Tool to Support Students With Disabilities

Have you ever had a student enrolled in your course who needed note taking assistance as an accommodation?

With many courses shifting to meeting virtually via Zoom, providing a note taker for a student with a disability has become increasingly more difficult to manage. Otter allows for the responsibility to be shifted from the professor and/or student volunteer, and gives the student in need of the accommodation ownership and confidence to be successful in the classroom.

Otter is a web-based program that enables students to record audio directly into their user account. The recordings are converted into smart notes (transcriptions), which can be easily highlighted, customized with personal comments, and students can search and save their recordings for future reference.

Session attendees will recognize the reasoning behind the decision of the Office of Student Disability Services to consider adopting Otter, and the benefits of using the program for all parties involved.

Presenter: Ken Ashlock, Director Office of Student Disability Services

Session 1. Using Google Jamboard to Engage Your Students

We get it. You have questions! Are you interested in getting students engaged in your classroom? Has your class gone virtual and now you are using Zoom to teach? Are you wondering how to get your students engaged in class activities? Do your students use their devices?

If so, come learn how to put those devices to learning use during your lectures and help students become more interactive in your instructional practices! Let’s add some tools to your toolkit!

Jamboard is part of the Google Suit most people have probably never noticed or used but it has so many features students can interact with and demonstrate their knowledge of topics- Plus it is fun to use.

You can even create a “scratch off” page just like a lottery ticket! Can you imagine having a prize hiding on a slide and when a student “finds it” how exciting it can be for a student? Jamboard allows you to incorporate various content area topics, movement, writing, pictures, and student collaboration into your lessons. The best part of Jamboard - It’s FREE!

Presenter: Dr. Jamie Mahoney, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Services in the Adolescent, Career and Special Education Department

Session 2. Jamboard - Engaging and Interactive Learning

Jamboard is a whiteboard app and part of the Google Suite that allows you to collaborate; use sticky notes, text, images, breakout room activities, arousel activities, templates, shapes, drawings, etc. to think visually. Session attendees will learn what jamboard is, locate jamboard, make a jamboard, make stickies, use templates and tools available with Jamboard, ways to incorporate Jamboard into various content areas, and be actively involved with Jamboard. The ideas are only limited to your imagination.

Presenter: Dr. Jamie Mahoney, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Services in the Adolescent, Career and Special Education Department

Session 1: Kahoot! as a Conversation Starter

Have you thought of different ways to get your students to interact with you and their classmates?

Getting students engaged in material, prepared for class, and active in class sessions is a difficult task at any level course. Students are busy, preoccupied with life, entrenched in the show up - memorize - dump system of "learning"; but that does not have to be the way we operate our classes. In this session, we will take a look at Kahoot! as a tech tool which can help us guide conversation, create friendly competition, and gauge students’ understanding of material before the course assessment.

Presenter: Dr. Priscilla Maghrabi, Assistant Professor, Applied Health Science

View Session Handout

Session 2: Using Kahoot

Kahoot is a competitive online game teachers can use to teach and review instructional material delivered after instruction or preview material as a pre-assessment to prepare students for the lecture to be discussed. Students can play individually or in teams. Kahoot uses students' personal devices as a tool to respond to the questions delivered from the teacher's computer displayed through the projector. Kahoot can be played as a live version, through Zoom virtual distance learning classes, student paced lessons, and is customizable in many ways. Teachers can share created games with other teachers or students. If you knew Kahoot a few years ago- improvements have been made and it has come a long way baby!

Kahoot provides engaging and interactive methods for students to preview and review instructional materials. Kahoot offers a free or paid version.

Presenter: Dr. Jamie Mahoney, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Services in the Adolescent, Career and Special Education Department

Session 1. Padlet in the University Classroom: A Place for Reflection

Are you interested in exploring how to use Padlet effectively to help your students engage during the learning process?

Padlet is a tool that can be used as a digital canvas for content creation. This session provides you with opportunities to do the following:

View examples of how Padlet can enhance student engagement
in the university classroom
See how Padlet was applied in Murray State classroom this past Fall as a weekly discussion board and as a classroom blog
Review the versatility of Padlet for other classroom uses
Review several first-time user issues to provide instructors a head start for utilization in one's classroom.

Presenter: Dr. Olga Koulisis, Associate Professor, History

To follow along in presentation visit: https://padlet.com/okoulisis/j0j4nkgvr9yoe701

Session 2. Padlet: A Tech Tool for Active Learning, Collaboration and Assessment

Padlet is a free “virtual wall” where students can express thoughts on topics

of their choice. It's like using Post-It Notes, but on the web. Students can
access it for free. In this session equip instructors to use Padlet as part of
their teaching toolbox to summarize a large amount of information—text,
photos, graphs—and present it in a visually pleasing way. Instructors can use
this tech tool for assignments: a reflection question, book reviews, or
discussion.

Presenter: Dr. Melony Shemberger, Associate Professor Journalism and Mass Communication

Using Nearpod to Engage Your Students

Are you wondering how to get your students engaged in class activities?

This session will help you to put your students' devices to learning use during your lectures and help students become more interactive in your instructional practices!

Using Nearpod puts the PowerPoint or Google Slides on students' devices. The use of Neapod provides the availability of student engagement with the information contained in the slides such as pre-tests and other activities of the lecture with videos, polls, drawing activities, quizzes, memory puzzles, fill in the blanks, and collaborations (all from each student's computer, iphone, tablet, or personal device) while the teacher is instructing and using information on the slides. Nearpod allows teachers to personalize the information and engage students at the same time by incorporating activities. Students can see the slides on their own devices rather than having to strain to see the presentation from various seats across the room. Think about those visually impaired students who need to see the slides closer or have them larger- their own devices can be adapted for a better view. Nearpod has a Free or paid version.

Presenter: Dr. Jamie Mahoney, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Services in the Adolescent, Career and Special Education Department