Online resources that are created for students to complete strictly on a device like a tablet, laptop, or even mobile phone are now a necessity in education. With so many students needing to be engaged with technology in their daily lives to access learning, educators are quickly adapting to incorporate tech and innovative online resources into their teaching practices to help students stay engaged in their education.
The Benefits of Online Resources: Engagement, Differentiation, Insights, and More
In addition to helping students learn subject matter content in exciting new ways, using a computer, tablet, or other device can encourage self-directed learning and enable students to be active participants in the learning process. Take an online resource like this one created in Google Slides™️, for example. It gives students the unique (and fun!) opportunity to become party planners while they develop their measuring, budgeting, communication, and design skills. There’s also the opportunity for differentiation since students can work at their own pace and go as deep and creative as they’d like. Plus, with a self checklist, peer checklist, and teacher rubric included, the teacher can gain insight into what skills students are excelling at and where they may need additional support.
Barriers to Implementing Online Resources
Educators don’t always receive a lot of guidance on how to “go digital” in a way that really helps their students learn at their best. According to the 4th Annual Educator Confidence Report (2018), 72 percent of teachers feel that they’re not yet making the most of what technology has to offer them and their students, despite 80 percent of teachers saying that technology has helped them be better teachers in ways not otherwise possible (and 82 percent of administrators agreeing).
In TpT’s conversations with educators in our community, the sentiment was very similar. We hear time and again that many teachers simply don’t know how to use digital tools to create engaging, high-quality resources to use with their students — even though they would like to. Some of them have devices available to them through their school, but getting past that learning curve takes time. Time that they just don’t have. So it doesn’t happen.
Using Online Resources Made With Google Apps™ on TpT
Right now on TpT, Teacher-Authors across grades, subjects, and specialties are sharing online resources that fellow educators can easily incorporate into their own lessons.
With TpT’s new features that offer more support for resources made with Google Apps, it’s easier for Teacher-Authors to share high-quality online resources, providing greater opportunities for educators to bring the benefits of digital learning to their students.
Alongside many of these resources are tips and ideas — coming directly from Teacher-Authors’ experiences in their own teaching — on how to most easily and effectively implement these resources into lessons. Seeing real examples of how a fellow teacher has used technology to tackle similar classroom challenges and accessing the resources used is often the best form of digital professional development.
Explore ideas for Online Resources on TpT here.
An Important Note About Google Drive Access:
When a resource has a “Made for Google Drive™” badge like the one seen below, this means it was created using Google Apps (e.g. Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Forms) and is listed on TpT as a direct integration from the TpT Teacher-Author’s Google Drive.
In order for you to have your own copy of the resource, TpT will need permission to access your Google Drive. Because of our partnership with Google, Google itself shows you a default warning message that the level of access TpT requests would allow us to “See and download all your Google Drive files.” However, this does not reflect our actual use of the access you would grant us.
TpT will only use this access for the purposes of:
- Making a copy of the resource in your Google Drive
- Creating a “TpT Purchases” folder where you can access the digital TpT resources you’ve added to your Drive
The warning message reflects the minimum level of access that Google requires us to request for our integration to function. This is a standard part of Google’s integration services so that a large number of different companies and services are able to sync with Google Drive as required for their purposes. Our system is only designed to access your Drive for the sole purpose of delivering copies of compatible resources you’ve purchased.
For more information on Google’s efforts to support educators, visit their Google for Education site.