[00:00:00] Shanna Martin: Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. For each week, we talk about a free. Piece of two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I’m your host, Shanna Martin. I’m a middle school teacher, technology and instructional coach for my district,
[00:00:31] Fuzz Martin: and I’m a producer and husband, fuzz Martin.
[00:00:33] Fuzz Martin: Just trying to put the pieces together each and every week. You’re on the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, Shanna?
[00:00:39] Shanna Martin: Yes.
[00:00:40] Fuzz Martin: Hope you had a great Mother’s Day. Aw,
[00:00:42] Shanna Martin: I did. Thank you.
[00:00:44] Fuzz Martin: You are welcome. We’re recording in the basement studio because we didn’t wanna drive back after our Mother’s Day excursions. To the other studio.
[00:00:53] Fuzz Martin: So if it sounds slightly different and I saw it a bit baier, that’s because, uh, we’re on the, uh, the OG studio, not the O OG studio, but the,
[00:01:02] Shanna Martin: the downstairs OG studio,
[00:01:04] Fuzz Martin: the down the downstairs OG studio.
[00:01:07] Shanna Martin: So that’s fun. We are in May, boy are we in May, and I know some districts are done at the very end of May.
[00:01:15] Shanna Martin: We go through the first week of June. Some districts go through the second or third week of June. Wherever you are. I get it. We are in the fourth quarter and here in Wisconsin. Actually lately the weather has been beautiful. Blue skies. We could use a little rain actually, but it’s been so nice out. So the kids are a little cagey because they are ready to be outside doing all the outside things and it’s not, not quite time yet.
[00:01:46] Fuzz Martin: Yep.
[00:01:47] Shanna Martin: I mean, they can do the outside things just when, when appropriate. Not in the classroom. So I thought that I would find a fun tool that can lighten the load, give you a brain break, give your kids a brain break, some online fun things to play around with. So I’m highlighting five cool things about Digi Puzzle.
[00:02:09] Fuzz Martin: Digi puzzle.
[00:02:10] Shanna Martin: Digi Puzzle has a huge variety of. Activities. So it doesn’t matter like what content you’re in, there are tools that you can use in any variety, like any, like any classroom. Yeah, there’s a huge variety, I would say is great for elementary, middle, and some high students, high school students, but mostly elementary, middle for sure.
[00:02:36] Shanna Martin: For this one. It comes in several languages. So if you are a world language teacher, actually that would be useful in high school because you can have them practice Yeah. In the language that you are educating them in. Mm-hmm. It is a huge variety. It comes in a variety of languages. The activities, some of them are gonna be purely academic and some of them are gonna be more like word search based or things like that.
[00:02:59] Shanna Martin: So there’s fun things to do that are art related and. Math related and spelling related, and I love a good puzzle. And there’s a variety of different like brain puzzles that they can do. Which is very cool, and there’s just a lot of cool things. And also highlighting that for the end of the year there’s over 500 games in puzzles, so there’s lots of options.
[00:03:25] Shanna Martin: So the kid’s like, oh, I’ve already done this one. You’re like, oh, let’s try something else. And they’re like, oh, but I’ve already done this one. You’re like, oh, let’s do something else. And so you could do it as a whole group. You could do this in small groups. You could have ’em working on their Chromebooks individually, or an iPad if you do those in your classroom.
[00:03:40] Shanna Martin: Like there’s just a lot of ways to build these in. And there’s a large variety of them. So check out Digi puzzle.
[00:03:47] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, Digi puzzle.
[00:03:48] Shanna Martin: Alright, so on Digi puzzle, it is D-I-G-I-P-U zz l e.net. Yes. So digi puzzle.net.
[00:04:01] Fuzz Martin: Digi puzzle.net. Dig. You know, did you puzzle net?
[00:04:06] Shanna Martin: Then you can choose your language. And then you can choose topics.
[00:04:12] Shanna Martin: So animals, kids, dinos, transportation, the World Logic, Easter, spring. So those things are in there as options or you can just kinda look through them all. So I’m gonna go under education and then I’m gonna go on kids. And in the kids category there are like jigsaw puzzles. Mm-hmm. Like digital jigsaw puzzles.
[00:04:34] Shanna Martin: There is Sudoku for kids. They have both numbers and pictures, which I think is interesting. There’s matching games. There’s like mosaic tiles where you like match ’em and find them. There are like all kinds of like.to dot puzzles. There’s crosswords, there’s all kinds of puzzles and things to work your brain.
[00:04:58] Shanna Martin: Okay, so that’s only like the kids category. Under animals you have. Again, some puzzles with animals. Some are gonna be Sudoku with animals. Some of them are gonna be word searches and games and all kinds of things. There’s like a word scramble mix. There is a mosaic tile mix. There is animal solitaire.
[00:05:17] Shanna Martin: There is a word search with animals. And I started playing one of the word searches the other day. ’cause I was like, does this really know? I’m picking the right words and it does, ’cause it will not take it off the list if you don’t find the actual spellings.
[00:05:29] Fuzz Martin: Okay.
[00:05:30] Shanna Martin: And there’s a few children I know in my lifetime that could practice her spelling.
[00:05:34] Shanna Martin: She may live in our house. Yeah, so great spelling practice and then once you finish one it goes, go to the next level and it gives you the next word search with the next spelling practice. So that’s a cool thing that you can do. There’s logic puzzles, so if you click on Logic Puzzles and they’re like 3D model logic puzzles.
[00:05:51] Shanna Martin: There’s 3D mazes. So if you go to like 3D Maze, you have to pick a level and you have to unlock them in order for it to actually work. And then you have to like work your way through your little 3D maze. And if you click on it wrong, you like tank and it starts you over again. So there’s like, it builds up to difficulty levels as well.
[00:06:11] Shanna Martin: Mm-hmm. So that’s kind of fun. And then there’s like little adventures that you can go through. You practice some of those, I think like kind of basic coding skills, but it’s understanding patterns like on your computer while you’re doing it.
[00:06:23] Fuzz Martin: Sure. Yeah.
[00:06:24] Shanna Martin: And then they have like tic-tac toe and patterning.
[00:06:28] Shanna Martin: So even like our little ones who need to practice their pattern sets on there, they also have tangrams, which we love, A good tangram, both physical and they have digital ones. What are you playing right now? You look distracted.
[00:06:38] Fuzz Martin: Uh, yeah, sorry. I’m, uh, I’m finding the differences between two pictures. Uh.
[00:06:43] Shanna Martin: Oh, you have to like identify the two different things.
[00:06:45] Shanna Martin: Some
[00:06:45] Fuzz Martin: lamb. Yeah, and a cow.
[00:06:47] Shanna Martin: Nice.
[00:06:47] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. Pretty, pretty talented.
[00:06:51] Shanna Martin: Then in Digi puzzle they have crosswords, so you can fill in the crossword things. What I like about Digi puzzle too is yes, there are a few. Ads, but it’s not like ad heavy where there’s a thousand popups coming up. So there’s just an ad that’s kind of on the left hand side of the screen.
[00:07:07] Shanna Martin: But you can,
[00:07:08] Fuzz Martin: yeah, when you click into one two, there’s like an interstitial ad that you gotta click close on,
[00:07:13] Shanna Martin: but then they stay away. Yeah. Which is good. And there’s like a little background, they even have like a spring coloring thing where you can digitally color little spring pictures. They have like Pacman, they have spring word Pacman.
[00:07:24] Shanna Martin: So you can go through and you can like play Pacman. I dunno if you can kind of hear it in the background. Oh, you PAC Manning? Yeah. Yeah. So they got Pacman in there where you have to like grab the letters of this word. It’s like I’m finding Tulip and then I have to like, Pacman has to hunt down the little ghost that spell Tulip.
[00:07:41] Shanna Martin: So it’s like spelling and Pac Manning at the same time. Anyway, so there’s a lot of games and activities for Digi puzzle and in May we need something new to kinda shake it up a little bit, practice some skills. None of these are gonna be like. Earth shattering skill practice. But there are plenty of ways for kids to practice their skills and give them something new to look at.
[00:08:03] Shanna Martin: And also great for summer reinforcement. So if that’s something where you could even have them working on this the last week or two of school, so they’re used to it, and then you can share it with families and parents and say, this would be a great way. For kids to practice their spelling, um, some of their number basics, patterning, puzzles, that type of thing where kids can practice at home as well over the summer.
[00:08:23] Shanna Martin: And there’s so many different choices that there would be plenty of things for them to practice as well, for like basic reading, math, spelling skills, and some brain work as well.
[00:08:33] Fuzz Martin: Great.
[00:08:34] Shanna Martin: Yeah,
[00:08:36] Fuzz Martin: could feel my brain working overtime to find these two other pieces that I haven’t found yet.
[00:08:42] Shanna Martin: So maybe we’re beyond elementary and middle.
[00:08:44] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:08:45] Shanna Martin: You can challenge yourself as a teacher. Challenge your friends to dig you puzzle activities.
[00:08:50] Fuzz Martin: Yes. I love it. Maybe I’ll do this with my buddies from college instead of wordle in the morning. We’ll just play a. Uh, you know, find the differences between farm animals game.
[00:09:00] Shanna Martin: Perfect. There we go. So yeah, so there’s all kinds of different games and activities.
[00:09:05] Shanna Martin: Obviously there’s over 500 of them, so check out Dizzy puzzle for your sanity for some fun in your classroom. It’s an easy way to mix things in. And once you click into something as well, I didn’t say this before, but like, once you’re into math, it’ll give you like math to 10. Clocks counting, fractions, typing.
[00:09:23] Shanna Martin: So it’ll tell you, like once you click into something, you’ll get even more categories to pick into. So you’ll have lots and lots of choices once you start searching things. So please have some fun with Digi puzzle. Other two things to highlight. There are two. Podcast episodes. I went back to check the numbers.
[00:09:42] Shanna Martin: It’s like episode 11 and 12 or something. Oh. But to do online quizzes, so if you’re looking for things like book it and Kahoot and Beyond.
[00:09:49] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Shanna Martin: There are several podcast episodes on those that I have created to help you, especially with end of the year. When we’re entertainment and we’re focusing and we’re trying to do all those quizzing things with kids, so those episodes are available as well.
[00:10:02] Shanna Martin: So don’t forget to check past episodes while you’re listening. So, yeah. All right, we’re gonna make it through May, everybody, it’s gonna be fabulous. Play some digi puzzles. Be
[00:10:13] Fuzz Martin: over. Before you know it,
[00:10:14] Shanna Martin: share it with your friends. We can make it through the end of the school year. Mm-hmm. Woo-hoo. Woo-hoo.
[00:10:19] Shanna Martin: Thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Blue Sky Threads, Facebook, Instagram at smartinwi. And if you wanna get more information on the links to the technology discussing this episode, you can visit smartinwi. com. If you’d like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or two visit.
[00:10:38] Shanna Martin: Buy me a coffee.com/smartinwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Thank you so much for those who have donated already. I truly appreciate it. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.
[00:10:56] Fuzz Martin: The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi website are those of the author Shanna Martin and not of her employer.
[00:11:03] Fuzz Martin: Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations, though I don’t know they’ll have any regulations on playing. Uh, find the difference between lambs. But if they do, maybe they do this podcast over. No guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we sure hope they do and we’ll talk to you next time.
[00:11:22] Fuzz Martin: Right here on the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast.
[00:11:32] Fuzz Martin: Sh
[00:11:34] Shanna Martin: start off.
