5 ed-tech tools to support your students this school year
Student engagement plays a large factor in student success. A Gallup Study found that students with high engagement performed 12.9% higher in all subjects. But, engaging your students in relevant ways isn’t always easy. With the 2022 school year quickly approaching, we are here to make sure you and your students are set up for success this year. To elevate your lessons and improve class engagement, here are some of the latest and greatest ed-tech tools. These will help improve your students’ knowledge and well-being so that you can have the most successful year, yet!
Ed-tech Tool for For Building Financial Literacy Skills: Build Your Stax
How it works: Build your Stax is an interactive website that teaches students how to save and invest their money responsibly, while simultaneously growing their wealth. Build your Stax highlights the importance of setting financial goals and sticking to them to support yourself in the present and in the future.
Why it’s TSI Approved:
- When surveying 1000+ American adults (ages 45 and up), 88% of them said they believe schools should require financial education. While there is no current requirement for this, financial literacy is an important skill that benefits all students. What better way to teach it than to go where students are: Online!
- The gamified aspect of financial literacy makes it more fun and engaging for students, allowing them to take away more information than traditional learning methods like books or lectures.
- It’s a free and easy way to get students excited about financial literacy and increases their willingness to start saving and investing outside of the classroom.
Ed-tech Tool for Exploring Civics and Government: iCivics
How it works: Get students involved in their local, state, and federal government with iCivics– A fun and interactive game that allows students to explore different parts of the government and the processes that go on within. Let students experience a day in the life of a governor, and learn how much impact citizens have as a whole on our government– and maybe even spark some new career interests!
Why it’s TSI approved:
- With the fall coming up, and seniors coming of age to vote, staying informed is important now more than ever before. Being informed before going to the polls is powerful, and it allows you to make decisions based on your values and vote for people that you believe will have the best impact.
- Despite its notable benefits for students of voting age, it’s a valuable tool to teach students in grades 3-12 how our government works and the responsibilities and impacts that each of us has as citizens.
- iCivics influences students to be more active in the community and participate more in local, state, and national events. They will become positive influences online and in their community, and possibly even in their school!
Ed-tech Tool for Developing Grammar and Writing Skills: Noredink
How it works: Noredink provides lessons and games that teach valuable grammar and writing skills while tailoring to the interests of the student. Students can practice independently reading and writing with content that interests them, while students and teachers can change lessons based on where a student is succeeding or struggling.
Why it’s TSI approved:
- Students tend to find traditional grammar and writing lessons boring. They’re not very interactive, and the prompts aren’t always interesting. Noredink allows students to work with prompts tailored to their interests and the gamified aspect to it makes students more engaged.
- Building proper grammar skills and improving syntax will allow students to show that they have a strong and deep understanding of a language, and will appear more intelligent through their work. This will benefit them when applying to colleges, filling out a resume, giving speeches, and more.
- Improving literacy and reading has actually been found to improve students’ mental health. In fact, A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%.
Ed-tech Tool for Promoting Student Participation: Padlet
How it works: Padlet is a tool that allows students and teachers to post notes, comments, and questions on a communal board. With a wide variety of design tools and programs available within the site, students have the ability to showcase their creativity and organize their notes in a way that works best for them.
Why it’s TSI approved:
- It’s a great tool for allowing students to collaborate with others, while also working in a way that’s best for their individual learning style!
- Teachers and students are able to work together on one platform, allowing easy access for educators to help their students where it’s most needed.
- While the platform has access to hundreds of designs, it’s also compatible with almost every file type– allowing students and teachers to upload spreadsheets, photos, and even music into the platform! Having access to all these different tools allows Padlet to be available for a multitude of uses, and more importantly, allows students to have fun while learning.
Ed-tech Tool For Supporting Student Well-Being, School Culture, and Smarter Decision-Making: #WinAtSocial
How it works: #WinAtSocial is a gamified, online learning platform that empowers students to navigate their social world positively — including social media and technology — to fuel their health, happiness, and future success. Students get to learn modern life skills to equip them for healthy, happy, productive lives, while teachers and administrators learn insights about their students to inform smart decisions across the school.
Why it’s TSI approved (OK, we’re biased!):
- #WinAtSocial allows students to navigate social media and technology in healthy ways that they may not learn otherwise in school or at home.
- #WinAtSocial Insights captures data through student responses in #WinAtSocial Lessons, then analyzes and shares that data with educators through an easy-to-understand dashboard, with actionable steps to further support students.
- #WinAtSocial tackles real world situations that students may face online – some situations that students may have had no previous guidance for. Being able to support students in a way that educators have not been able to in the past allows them to form better relationships with their students.
- Its primary focus is to support student well-being through topics impacting social experiences. With a variety of lessons, including LIVE Lessons that address current events, teachers will have important conversations with their students on a variety of topics and improve students’ social and emotional skills.
With these new tools available right at your fingertips, we hope you and your students are set up for success. If you are passionate about supporting your students and their overall well-being, learn more about how to get started with #WinAtSocial here. To learn more about TSI’s mission to support students across the globe, you can follow us @thesocialinst on Instagram and stay up-to-date with student trends, social media updates, and tech!
The Social Institute (TSI) is the leader in understanding student experiences and creator of #WinAtSocial, a gamified, online learning platform that equips students, educators, and families to navigate social experiences — online and offline — in healthy ways. Our unique, student-respected approach incorporates topics like social media, technology use, and current events that have a significant impact on student well-being. Lessons teach life skills for the modern day to inspire high-character decisions that support the health, happiness, and future success of students, while capturing data that provides insights to school leaders to inform school policy and communications, and enable high-impact teaching and a healthy learning environment. For schools, our turnkey technology allows for easy implementation and a comprehensive game plan to support the well-being of school communities.