Part of the Effective Technology Category!
For the past few years, I have played around with creating a digital advent calendar. With an advent calendar, a new idea, prize, or suprise is revealed each day. My Digital Ideas December Advent Calendar will be updated each day with a technology integration idea. These will be posts I’ve previously written that provide great free resources, web tools, and apps for teachers. Some of these will also be new posts. You can find my Digital Ideas December Advent Calendar here, http://teacherrebootcamp.com/free-ebooks/digital-ideas-advent-calendar. I’ve also embedded it below.
31 Days of Digital Tech Integration Tips
Create Your Own
I first read about the idea from Kelly Tenkely’s fantastic Edtech blog, I Learn Technology. Kelly creates her calendar with Wix. I decided to do mine with Thinglink, a free tool to make clickable images, and Google Spreadsheets. The reason for my choice is I wanted to create a template teachers could replicate and use. To create your own:
- Go to my Google Calendar Template. Click FILE then MAKE A COPY and it will open in your Google Drive. If you do not have a Google account then Click FILE then DOWNLOAD AS.
- Edit the calendar to fit your needs or have students create their own.
- Take a screenshot of your calendar.
- Upload this image to ThingLink.
- Add the links each new day.
You can use this digital calendar throughout the year to motivate your students. Here are a few ideas:
- Motivate learners to accomplish tasks during their breaks! Add a new game or app each day.
- Share free community events and activities with parents.
- Add a writing prompt each day.
- Have them solve a brainteaser, word scramble, optical illusion or other challenge.
- Reveal a new clue to solve a mystery.
- Share a joke or meme about your topic. Tons of jokes and memes for math, science, etc.
- Share a motivational quote or poem. This could be to support learners who are trying to accomplish goals.
- Share a new video. Thinglink will have a Youtube pop-up. It could be a TED Talk or funny video.
- Have them discover a new cool fact of the day about your topic.
- Have students create their own Random Acts of Kindness calendar. With Thinglink you can just add text so each day they can write what they did that day.
Create your own digital advent calendar.
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