U of W teaching tool goes online

Parents suddenly thrust into teaching roles amid provincewide school closures have new resources from the University of Windsor’s faculty of education to keep their kids learning. Launched Friday, the series of online videos and podcasts called #Uwintoolparade showcase various digital teaching tools parents can access from home. The resources were originally intended for educators, but they will appeal to parents, too, as families stay home to help in the fight against the spread of COVID-19, according to resource developer Bonnie Stewart, a professor in the faculty of education. “I saw my students doing great work evaluating digital platforms and realized that my future students, my own faculty colleagues, and the K-12 teaching community could all benefit from capturing and sharing that knowledge,” Stewart said in a news release Friday. The podcasts and videos are presented by university faculty, teacher candidates, and students in Stewart’s Online Pedagogy Service Learning classes. The resources are accessible on a new Faculty of Education webpage called The Open Page (uwindsor.ca/ education/openpage). Teaching tools showcased include Mentimeter, Kahoot, Flipgrid, Canva, Piktochart and Zoom. Parents looking for online lessons for their children might be interested in podcasts about the Khan Academy, Headspace and Knowledgehook, and videos about TED-ED and Prodigy Math.