Blendspace

Blendspace by TES is a free web tool that teachers and/or students can use to compile and store a collection of resources. Teachers can pull information from the internet such as website links, online quizzes, worksheets, and more. They can also upload videos from places like YouTube. Also, information can be pulled from social media accounts such as Facebook and Flickr. This would be an extremely useful time management tool in an elementary classroom because attempting to pull up multiple resource during a lesson would be impractical and time consuming. Not to mention, students would begin to lose interest. By using Blendspace in the elementary classroom, teachers can compile information, assignments, and assessments beforehand and have the entire lesson prepared and readily available for the students to access and complete. If I were using Blendspace in my classroom I would use it to introduce new units or topics. The system would allow me to collect a wide variety of instructional material to thoroughly introduce the unit/topic. I would also assign students group research using the application. By doing so, my students could expand upon the information that I presented and broaden their knowledge of the assigned topic. Having the students work in groups like this would teach communication and collaboration, as well as creativity and critical thinking. Assigning students research topics allows them the freedom to explore the topic from any direction while teaching them the skills they need to evaluate whether certain information is useful or irrelevant. 

Below is a YouTube tutorial of how to use Blendspace!