Technology offers many unique opportunities for students to engage with their peers, instructors, and course content. In this article, we use five important elements of learning (the 5 Cs) as a framework for selecting educational technologies:

• Create
• Curate
• Communicate
• Collaborate
• Explore course content

Before selecting an educational technology, read this article about important factors when evaluating educational technologies for appropriateness. For a comprehensive checklist for evaluating educational technologies, see our checklist.

Create

One of the best reasons to implement technology in your teaching is to enable students to become content creators. Encouraging students to create content enables them to become active participants in their learning, and they then develop a wider variety of necessary skills for their futures.

Look at this list of exceptional student multimedia projects. You can help your students become content creators through a variety of digital tools. If you are unsure of how you might assess these projects, here are some multimedia project rubrics from North Carolina State University.

Not only does content creation enable students to become active learners, but it can also become a form of student activism. Several groups have organized wiki-a-thons to increase the entries of underrepresented groups on Wikipedia.

Curate

Because the Internet offers an overwhelming amount of information, students need the tools to organize this material in a meaningful way. Many social media sites such as Pinterest, Diigo, Evernote, etc. offer the ability to curate links, images, and texts. In addition, these sites enable collaboration for students working together on group projects.

Communicate & Collaborate

Digital tools for communication and collaboration are a great way to help students manage projects. Most learning management systems offer a variety of communication and collaboration tools such as discussion boards, blogs, and journals. In addition, there is a multitude of similar tools available on the Internet:

• Google Drive offers free storage and allows multiple people to collaborate on a project.
• UNT supports Microsoft OneDrive which is connected to students’ EagleConnect accounts.
• Wikis are also a great way for students to collaborate and track their work.
• Synchronous communication tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts allow students to meet up without the trouble of getting everyone in the same place at the same time.

Explore Course Content

Finally, the Internet provides access to many previously inaccessible cultural works:

• You can find the writings of Plato, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and many other books in the public domain for free on the Internet.
• Of course, the availability of texts isn’t limited to traditional prose. The Digital Comics Museum offers access to public domain comics from the Golden Age of comic books.
• Many museums such as the British Museum, Louvre, the MET, Smithsonian, and many more offer online components to their exhibits. Some museums are entirely online.
• The Digital Public Library of America conglomerates many of these open resources in one single location.
• Additionally, your university library is always an excellent source for finding digital texts whether they exist in the public domain or not.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – sometimes just searching for a text you want or need in an internet search engine can yield a wealth of new resources and ideas.

References

Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment and Redesign. (2016). Teaching Resources for Engaged Educators [online training modules]. Denton, TX: University of North Texas.