Three Tools Overview

The hardest part of teaching — or leading meetings — is sparking engagement. Getting people to engage enthusiastically with something new can be tough. It’s especially challenging if people are overwhelmed, super busy, or just tired.

As we aim to stretch people’s thinking in a new direction, tools are just one part of the overall picture. But they can help. Last week I shared five tools for creating learning paths, interactive lessons, and new kinds of digital notebooks. Today’s follow-up recommendations focus on creative engagement.

You don’t have to be a teacher to find these resources for opening up participation useful. If you lead a team, run meetings, or collaborate with colleagues, you can benefit from these tools.

I’ve baked into this post multiple ways to engage.

* Chime in on the teaching tool chat thread

* Share your idea on the shared Padlet about teaching tactics

* Test out your trivia skills on my new open Kahoot quiz game

* Add a comment to the shared Craft doc about lesson planning

Padlet — Inspire Creative Collaboration

Padlets are digital bulletin boards where people can post comments, links, voice recordings, or short videos.

How it works: Set up a board with a topic or a template. Start with a blank grid, map, timeline, discussion thread, or an image gallery. Participants can use their own devices to add notes, documents, images or comments. Or they can use Padlet’s built-in recorder to add audio or video.

How you can use it: Build a board to accompany a live, collaborative lesson, event, or meeting. Or have people contribute to it asynchronously. You can also use it as a showcase for exceptional work, or as a space for peer collaboration.

How I use it: I find Padlet useful for group brainstorming, icebreakers, and for online learning activities. For remote classes, I’ve used Padlet to collect questions before class and for team-building collections, gathering people’s favorite songs, books, and snacks, to help us get to know one another. I’ve also used Padlet as a more visual, welcoming, version of an online discussion board.

Who it works for: It’s easy to use, so most people jump in without any training. Padlet works at all levels. I’ve used it with graduate students and for mid-career training., as well as with colleagues. It’s popular in elementary and high schools too. It’s one of the best tools for getting people to build on each other’s ideas, rather than passively consuming content.

Example — try it! Jump into my board on Engagement tactics for impactful teaching. Explore the ideas others have added and contribute one of your own!

Pricing: It’s free to create up to three boards, or $120/year for unlimited use.

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Kahoot — Add Fun to Learning

No other teaching tool generates as many smiles and laughs as Kahoot. It turns quizzes into playful learning games.

Why it’s so useful: What makes Kahoot especially engaging is the variety of question formats: In addition to standard multiple-choice and true-false queries, you can have students drop pins on images, fill in blanks, guess numbers, or order items in a list.

How to get started: Design your own quizzes or pick from a massive library of questions by teachers and organizations around the world, like National Geographic and NASA. People can play individually or in teams, live or asynchronously. You can share a link or show the game on screen. People play on their own phone or laptop by answering questions and earning points..

How I use Kahoot: Sometimes I start class with icebreaker questions, or conclude a session with a review game. Occasionally, if I sense students losing energy or focus, I’ll turn class-related questions into a playful Kahoot competition for a change of pace.

Example — try it! Play a new Kahoot I created about journalism AI. Email me afterwards with a screenshot of your completed game for a digital prize.

New tip: Kahoot has a new AI assistant built in, so you can quickly convert text from any document or handout into editable quiz questions.

Pricing ranges from $3/month (50 players at a time) to $19/month (200 players). Kahoot’s pricing has gotten more complicated: some quizzes & special features now require premium plans.

Alternatives: Gimkit, Wayground and Blooket are good alternative game-style quiz platforms that offer fuller free plans for those on a tight budget. Genially also works well for classroom games, or try the free JeopardyLabs. (Browse and try out existing Jeopardy boards like AI in Schools).

Craft — Organize your Materials

Craft is a surprisingly useful, underrated tool for creating and organizing notes and documents. Use it to develop attractive lesson plans, student handouts, syllabi, or collections of resources.

How to use it: Organize materials into neat visual cards students or colleagues can click to explore. Add text, images, links, or tables to your documents. They’ll be more visually appealing than Microsoft Word or Google docs, or Apple Notes.

Sharing Craft docs: It’s easy to share Craft docs publicly or privately with a link, or export them as PDFs or Word docs. You can even transfer content directly to Ulysses, Bear, iA Writer, Day One, or other tools. I find it easier to use than Notion, Coda, or other pro tools I like, and I prefer the look of the shared docs.

Example — see how it looks: Here’s a Lesson Planning Resource I made with Craft to illustrate how you can use it for handouts and guides. It has subpages that hold PDFs, notes, docs, lists, and various other content.

Other features: Craft has a remarkably good mobile app for designing and viewing full docs. And while docs are private by default, you can now enable collaborative or even public editing, so people can work together on a project.

Pricing: Craft is free with a content limit, or $6/month for unlimited use. (I include Craft as part of a bundle of pro tools paid Wonder Tools subscribers get access to for free).

Bottom line: Consider Craft as a new, flexible place to make, organize, and share docs, especially if you’re drowning in scattered teaching materials.

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