Jordan Carmer Portfolio Assignment

Digital Tools in the Classroom

In the digital age, educators have an opportunity to expand their methods of relaying information to students. Most are familiar with the use of slides, but fewer teachers might be aware of the vast range of digital tools available at their disposal. With these tools, teachers can create or view projects that make information more easily digestible for students or show them new ways of analyzing data that are less doable when approached with traditional methods. 

I've done two such projects and included them here. The first is a digital mapping project over the Silk Road, and the implications it may have in the future. Digital mapping tools can be used to pinpoint geographic locations and provide information about them in a format that comes off as more approachable than perhaps combing through articles. In this way, students can gain a base knowledge of situations facing their world. With this base knowledge they're now better prepared to explore these matters in more depth. 

The second project is one over textual analysis. Textual analysis allows users to quickly analyze large bodies of texts using computational analysis, producing what Franco Moretti calls "noise." From this noise, this unorganized raw data, students can be taught to further use digital tools to look for patterns and associations that might have otherwise taken them a great deal of time to achieve otherwise. 

There are, of course, other digital tools both students and teachers might find useful for a multitude of projects and purposes. Though not every tool fits every subject, many enjoy an ability to cross the boundaries of the disciplines. In preparing students for the world outside of school, teaching them to use digital tools and understand how they work and present data in any number of areas can give them an advantage. This page lists a few more digital tools that educators might find useful and that students stand to gain from.