Cindy Kaardal EdTech Tool Analysis

	B	C	D	E	F
1	*When Ranking, Use 1 for Lowest Score and 5 for Highest Score.
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5		Two Tech Tools You Used This Past Spring		Two Brand New Tech Tools
6		Two Tech Tools You Used This Past Spring		Two Brand New Tech Tools
7		Tool 1	Tool 2	Tool 3	Tool 4
8	Technology Tool Name	Google Docs	FlipGrid	Belouga	Fotor
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10	Social Presence Rank (1-5)	4	5	4	1
11	Evidence/Rationale	Google Apps such as Docs and Slides have a collaborative aspect where students can work on the same document at the same time. Students/teachers can also provide feedback using the commenting or suggesting tool. I have done this as a teacher, but my students have not yet used this function together.	Flipgrid is a great place for slow, collaborative chats to happen. Participants can answer questions, tell stories, reply to people in short video recordings. These recordings can also have creative written expression overlaying them. One aspect I havent used with students is GridPals, where we can connect with other students around the world.	Belouga looks like a good platform for students to engage with and post meaningful work and ideas alongside students around the world. They describe it as "streaming learning activities blending real-world experiences and events with everyday classroom curriculum, all in a collaborative environment." The paid version has a better social presence than the free version. It includes security compliant video conferencing, video chats, etc.	Photor allows students to be creative and express themselves, but has no element of collaboration or interactions with other humans.
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13	Engagement Rank (1-5)	4	4	4	2
14	Evidence/Rationale	In my experience, my students have been focused on the task when using Google Docs, particularly when we are using it in a collaborative way, but the task needs to be described beforehand. My students love to share their stories with eachother on Docs, and love even more to write stories in the same doc as their friends. Sometimes this is co-use on one iPad, sometimes it is co-engagement in the same Doc. They spend a lot of time working on these stories together. They are motivated to use these features, rather than individually writing in their own notebooks where they know noone is likely to see/read their content.	Flipgrid allows for focus on the task because there is only one task at a time on Flipgrid. The teacher/creator will have instructions and maybe even an introduction video. Usually flipgrid will motivate students, but sometimes people don't want to be on camera. It is good practice in confidence for the students though, and a lot of the time it allows different perspectives to shine that would not normally participate in a class discussion. All students become active social learners through co-engagement.	In Belouga, students are taken through a series of videos, reflection questions, and activities to post one piece at a time. I assume that this focus would be quite high, as long as the content was engaging for the student. The short videos each start with looks like it would probably motivate students to start the learning process. It shifts tehm to become active social learners through co-engagement with other students around the world. This could also be engaging for students to view the work of other students they do not know.	Pop-ups and adds made it distracting, and students might not know how to navigate these yet. Fotor would probably motivate students because it is a creative tool they can use on their photos. It does not really push for the shift of behaviour in being an active social learner. They could share creations after, but that is about it.
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16	Enhancement Rank (1-5)	2	4	5	2
17	Evidence/Rationale	If the teacher can scaffold, Docs might aid students in developing a sophisticated understanding of content because it is a blank canvas for creation. However, the tool itself does not provide many options for this. Maybe one could say that the templates could provide a bit of a scaffold, but I dont think this would be true for all activities/needs for actual content or concepts.. just ideas for layout and creation. The teacher would need to create paths for demonstrating in different ways, but it potentially provides the opportunity.	Flipgrid provides a tool for students to demonstrate their understandings in a sophisticated and creative way. Students are creating and producing. Students have a scaffold set up by their teacher that is provided in the same screen as where they will create their answers/discussion. Different paths (grids) could occur, but many would look the same in terms of production, just not content.	Belouga provides great multimedia sources for students to develop their understanding of content, and also express their creations in different ways. Students would likely use other tools to complement this in some activities, and others are just written responses in Belouga. Belouga has good scaffolding, only focusing on one question/aspect of an activity at a time. Some activities in Belouga allow for students to demonstrate their understandings in different ways, plus the global collaboration aspect is something that wouldn't happen with traditional tools.	Belouga offers opportunity for creating/production and demonstrating their understanding of content, but doesn't help students to develop this understanding. It scaffolds students to create with design principles in mind for different purposes, so I suppose if your lesson was about that, it could work, but it doesn't scaffold learning other content areas, just for creating. Fotor allows for paths in the sense of editing a photo, creating a collage, or creating other designs for different media purposes.
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19	Extention Rank (1-5)	4	3.5	4	2
20	Evidence/Rationale	Students can use Docs at any time and any place. Even if they need to use a different account for some reason, they can share the permission settings to allow for that. This would allow them to create at any time of day. Docs is used by many businesses and universities around the world. While my students are only 9 years old, it is a great opportunities to bridge the gap between "school" life and "every day" life when they are ready to leave school because they are already on a similare page of use as adults with this exposure. This is also allowing them to build skills they can use in their every day lives because it is encouraging communication and collaboration on a writing platform.	Flipgrid is open to students outside of the school day. This is beneficial for asynchronous home learning tasks as well. In a way you could say this is bridging a gap between school and home just by building confidence in being on camera and discussing things with a group of people. This builds communication skills for them to use in their everyday lives. However, the platform of FlipGrid itself is not a very "real-world" situation. I suppose it could simulate video calls, but there are many skills to a video call that is missing on flipgrid, like waiting turns to speak, actions and feedback in real time, etc.	Belouga can be accessed by students at any time outside of their school day. They could choose activities they are interested in learning about and watch videos and create replies as they wish. It bridges a school and every day life because the activities revolve around issues around the world that students on the platform are trying to learn about and create solutions for. This builds skills of collaboration and communication which is needed in their every day lives.	Students could create and learn new design principles at any time of day. In students every day life, they may be creating content that can be made on Fotor, and in the future these designing skills/creation of an eye for design could be useful to them. However, it is very personal and I feel that there are other "soft skills" for students to learn/use that are not present with Fotor.
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22	Privacy Rank (1-5)	5	4.5	3.5	3
23	Evidence/Rationale	Strong complience with COPPA, FERPA, GDPR etc, data transparency, no ads, built in protections. alert centres, data loss protection, proactive prevention all happening. https://edu.google.com/why-google/privacy-security/	No advertisements, do not sell personal information,but it is collected. Parent consent form is available for under 13s, videos and comments can be set to wait for teacher approval before posting (to filter) https://legal.flipgrid.com/privacy.html	No advertisements, COPPA and GDPR compliant, Teachers have a lot of control to delete things, however - personal information is displayed publicly and user-created content is not filtered, https://belouga.org/privacy-policy#coppa	Personal information is encrypted, will not transfer to a third party, does not specify about under 13s or compliance with regulations that schools would need https://www.fotor.com/privacypolicy
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