NVOL Digital Learning Commons: Tech Tools

Anchor is a platform which enables you to create your podcast from any device.

Canva is an app or web-based graphic design and photo editing program with a drag-and-drop interface that makes it a cinch to design whatever you want in a visually appealing way. It has thousands of well-conceived templates to choose from, many of which are free.

A new addition to Google Earth, Tour Builder allows students to pick locations and add photos, text, and video to a map and then share their tours.

Wakelet provides a whole new way of sorting through quality sources. The free visual content platform allows students or teachers to curate lists of resources related to what they’re learning in class. Teachers can create collections of vetted resources to scaffold student research. Students can showcase research skills by sharing their resources with others.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s interactive periodic table features history, alchemy, podcasts, videos, and data trends across the periodic table. This fact-filled, image-rich app is the only periodic table learners need. Users can opt to access the information at introductory, intermediate and advanced levels and it allows learners to view data like melting point, temperature or atomic radius for the complete table. With an Internet connection, users can watch videos about the elements.

Metaverse is the easiest way to create Augmented Reality experiences. Create mobile games and choose your own adventure interactive stories using the Metaverse Studio and watch them come to life in the Metaverse app browser. Learners can create all kinds of interactive experiences, including games, scavenger hunts, memes, and other educational experiences.

This is an app that simplifies digital ebook borrowing from Overdrive with a public library card. Easy taps and swipes get you to the ebooks and audio books you want. If you belong to several public libraries, you can enter cards for each of them and easily switch back and forth between collections. But there’s more: the app includes an impressive built-in ebook reader and an audiobook player. You can set up wishlists and you can opt to send books to your Kindle for reading.

This app puts the reader in the middle of a growing number of virtual reality stories and demonstrates new possibilities for interactive storytelling. Each of the stories is a 360 video experience to be viewed within a VR viewer or on a device or screen. Users are prompted to download a story before reading for easy repeat access. Among the elementary stories are The Windy Day, Buggy Night and Duet. The reader focuses attention on the scene, with the story adjusting and presenting a personalized experience.

Turn your iPhone into a video production studio with Clips. Create and edit dynamic videos with the ability to add subtitles, animated stickers, filters, and music, all within the app. Videos are easy to make and share via text or social media.

Although designed with journalists in mind, this suite of online tools will prove useful to high school students looking to infuse a degree of professionalism into projects. Features such as Juxtapose, Scene, Soundcite, Storyline, and StoryMap leverage online content in a way that will enhance online storytelling and journalistic efforts. Step-by-step tutorials will assist students and educators in making the most of this robust collection of resources. Grades: 9-12

This tool allows you to create presentations, infographics, video presentations, resumes, and more. It includes many templates with access to photos, animations, and illustrations giving the user the ability to make any image or text interactive. Content can be shared through a link or downloaded. Teachers can make materials to share with students or other teachers, and students can use to build resumes or design a product for summative assessment.

This suite of mobile and web tools lets students create and share visual content on a browser, and includes Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. It’s great for getting kids to easily create graphics, video, and audio, and to mix that content with text to generate stories.