Tech Tools: Blendspace



Last year I learned about what has quickly become one of my favorite organizational tools for PD. It also can serve as a great tool in the classroom too. It is called Blendspace. Blendspace allows you to combine, text, pictures, websites, videos, links to sites like Educreations, photos, and more in one place. I have used it for lessons and PD presentations and have loved it for both.

Whether I am teaching a lesson to students or sharing with co-workers, I find that I always have at least a few different links that I want to share with them both during and after the presentation. By using Blendspace, I am able to combine all of my information in one place so that I don't have to bookmark a bunch of different sites or have them open ahead of time. I also like that I can add text to highlight what it is that I want to share. It's also great that I can add videos from YouTube because there are often great tutorials there that I want to share. Then afterwards, I can share the Blendspace on my website so that they can access it themselves later to reference the sites that I spoke about.

For classroom teachers, there is a really great feature that allows you to create 'classrooms' with which to share your Blendspace lessons. So you could have your students join your 'classroom' using the given code, and always be able to access the Blendspace lessons that you've shared with them. This is great for flipped learning, review, or so that absent students have a way to catch up easily. 

Another thing that I love about Blendspace is that you can view other Blendspace lessons that were shared by other educators. I was able to search by subject areas and access incredible lessons complete with video tutorials and links to really useful sites. 

Yet another possible use is to have students create Blendspaces as a presentation format for their own projects. Privacy settings are completely adjustable.

Blendspace is great for organization, presentation, and giving students and parents access to what you shared at any time. I highly recommend checking it out!


Here is a sample Blendspace that I used for a recent staff PD: