A primary teacher recently contacted Free Technology For Teachers to get ideas for how to incorporate technology into an activity where her students are learning the different characteristics of mammals. She wants them to be able to create a sort of virtual animal park.

I have several ideas for how this can work. While these options will discuss animals, they can be modified for any subject and grade level. All three of these options make student learning visible and provide students with the opportunity to show what they know.

Option 1: Have students use Adobe Spark Video to create a narrated description of the animals they have selected. Adobe Spark Video is incredibly easy for students to narrate.

Option 2: Students could use a combination of Google Slides and an extension called Talk and Comment. A single slide presentation could be used to house all of the slides and students could record a narration to go along with their slide or slides. The narrations could be added as comments or they could be added on top of the image of the animal.

Option 3: Each student could have their own Google Drawing and upload one or more images to it. They could record their narration using the Talk and Comment extension, then link the recording to the images of their animals.