The 4 Essential Questions and Their Digital Resources

What are the 4 essential questions in the collaborative team process?

• What do you want your students to know and be able to do?
• How will you know if they’ve learned it?
• What will you do if they don’t?
• What will you do if they do?

These are the questions essential for collaborative teams. Where does digital learning fit within these questions?

Digital learning is embedded within each of the questions. It supports the learning process, provides the data, and gives means to the learning.
As we look at the standards and plan what we want our students to know and be able to do, digital resources like Nearpod provide means of engagement and interest in the lessons. Resources like Flipgrid and Padlet provide student voice. Resources like Explain Everything and Book Creator allow students demonstrate their learning. Resources like Showbie allow students to differentiate the format of their answers on everyday work. Resources like those that GSuite provides allow students to work collaboratively on a variety of products, share their products in teams and with the teacher. There are so many resources available for students to demonstrate what they know and are able to do!

How will you know if they’ve learned it? Nearpod provides on the spot feedback on how students are understanding the material during instruction. Kahoot, Socrative and Zipgrade provide immediate formative feedback. For performance assessments, Google Slides, Keynote, PowerPoint, Explain Everything, iMovie, Book Creator and Padlet are student-friendly tools that allow for students to demonstrate their understanding in more creative, individualized ways.
What will you do if they didn’t learn the material? In the secondary world, there are deadlines: learning outcomes by specific times. How is this addressed without falling behind? Digital resources provide a different means to address this. iMovie, EdPuzzle, Blendspace, are a few means to provide supplementary instruction. ZipGrade and Socrative provide easy means to re-assess students. The LMS of your choice provides a place to house those supportive resources.

What will I do if they do know the material? This is the time for students to lend their voice and choice to demonstrate that learning! Have your students create the learning experiences by choosing a tool or combination of tools to explain what they know.
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It’s all about the right tool for the learning experience. Sometimes it’s print, sometimes it’s digital, sometimes it might even be the student’s choice.