A Review of Technology in the Classroom

I have used three technologies new to me in my Math 1 class.  The three technologies used were Tweet Deck, Emaze, and Easelly.  I am providing a five-point review of technologies.  The areas that I will discuss are 1) Level of user friendliness 2) Application 3) Student Response 4) Time to finish projects and 5) Benefits.   Each technology will have a paragraph dedicated to reviewing the technology. 

Tweet Deck
Tweet Deck is a useful interface for Twitter.  TweetDeck consists of a series of customisable columns, which can be set up to display the user's Twitter timeline, mentions, direct messages, lists, trends, favorites, search results, hashtags, or all tweets by or to a single user. The client uses Twitter's own automatic and invisible URL shortening whereby a link of any length will only use 23 characters of a Tweet's 140-character limit. All columns can be filtered to include or exclude words or tweets from users. Tweets can be sent immediately or scheduled for later delivery, (Wikipedia, 2017).  TweetDeck was very easy to set up.  Without having previous experience, it took me less than five minutes to set up my columns to receive tweets from my students.   The interface is very easy to use.  So far, I have only used the platform as a means for my students to share the answers to problems that they have worked out in groups or individually.  My students like the opportunity to use their phone.  I like the level of engagement that students exhibit.  Another way I have used TweetDeck is to give students a forum to discuss problems in real-time.  They post findings and ask questions on my TweetDeck.  It is cool to watch the messages pop-up on the screen, probably more so for me than the students.  Students chat all the time.  One issue with TweetDeck is that students, per the students, don’t use Twitter as much as they have in the past.  Twitter’s lack of popularity is a small problem.  Not much time is required to use TweetDeck.  You just sign into the interface and have the kids chat to your handle. 

Emaze
Emaze is similar to PowerPoint and Prezi.  If you visit the Emaze website, the about us sections states, “emaze is the next generation of online content creation technology, enabling beautiful content design within minutes. While initially just presentations, emaze has now expanded its realm to offer a creation tool for beautifully designed social hub websites, blogs, ecards and photo albums in minutes. State of the art HTML5 technology enables the addition of media, gifs & live social feeds. Innovative video, pan and zoom and 3D transitions transform content into journeys through virtual worlds. Easily share content anywhere on the web and then analyze who’s watching with advanced analytics. emaze empowers the everyday creator to be simply amazing.”, (Emaze, 2017).  Emaze is very user-friendly.  The commands are similar to the commands of the majority of the software programs in the world of retail and online applications.  Universal symbols for media, sound, etc., are you used with the appropriate wording associated with the symbol to avoid confusion.  Learning how to use Emaze takes a few minutes of experimenting with commands and functions.  After creating a basic presentation any familiar with word commands will create a conference worthy presentation in no time.  The uses for Emaze are similar to the uses for PowerPoint and other presenting software programs.  One difference between PowerPoint and Emaze is that Emaze is internet based.  There is a free version of Emaze and a professional version.  As one can imagine, the upgraded version allows users to utilize features not accessible to users using the free Emaze version.  My students were not blown away by my use of Emaze.  My students appreciated the organized presentations, but I did not improve the academics of my students using Emaze anymore than if I had used PowerPoint.  For me, completing Emaze projects takes a great deal of time.  Project times for me average one hour or more.  Emaze users have nice pre-constructed templates that they can use to speed up production.  Time needed to complete a project is comparable to using PowerPoint and Prezi.

Easelly
I used Easelly least of all.  I created three pages using Easelly to organize my lesson plans, post videos, and to post supplemental material for students to access the information online.  It is another tool for presenting and organizing information.  Students like organized material.  Easelly helps to organize links, data, lessons, and student resources.  


References
Emaze. (2017). Emaze. Retrieved from Emaze: https://www.emaze.com/

Wikipedia. (2017, January 20). TweetDeck. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TweetDeck