Using Digital Task Cards in the Classroom: A Quick How-To Guide for Teachers!

Since the pandemic, teachers everywhere have been incorporating more technology into their classroom practice. It makes sense – digital activities have a lot of benefits that the distance learning era brought to light. For example, digital assignments are easy to share with students whether they are present at school or not. They save paper and your time at the copier. Students (and teachers) won’t lose Google files as easily as they may lose a worksheet, and some digital activities are uniquely interactive and even self-correcting! 

One type of digital activity that has a permanent place in my classroom routine is digital task cards. Similar to printed task cards, digital task cards are simple to understand – they often have one problem per card and are most often on Google Slides presentations, with each problem being on a separate slide. However, digital task cards have so many benefits over their printed counterparts! 

Benefits of Digital Task Cards

• You don’t need space-consuming organization systems to store digital task cards, as they are all housed in your Google account!
• They are easy to customize by combining sets of digital task cards or deleting cards to create shorter assignments.
• Absent students also have instant access to the assignment without having to be present to get a paper copy!
• They help struggling students and students with attention difficulties by helping them focus on one problem at a time. 
• Digital Task Cards can be interactive, and require students to do a variety of things to show their understanding of a concept, such as dragging and dropping pieces, categorizing, circling, etc. 
• Using Digital Task Cards, students gain practice in how to use digital editing tools, like how to add text boxes, use spell check, or copy and paste! To make sure my students have a good understanding of how to use important tools before we get into our first digital assignment, I love to use this Google Slides Review to remind students of the most common tools!
• Digital task cards have so many uses, it’s almost like 5 resources in one!

Speaking of how to use digital task cards in the classroom, here are my favorite ways to use them!

• I love using digital task cards as a practice assignment after I’ve taught a lesson in place of a typical worksheet. My students get overwhelmed by seeing all of the practice problems at once. Digital task cards allow them to see and focus on one problem at a time, which is a relief for some of my struggling students! I can also delete slides/problems that I don’t want my students to work on or that we don’t have time for, so digital task cards are more customizable than a worksheet, in my opinion! 
• Using digital task cards, it’s easy to create review activities that are unique to my students. I just copy and paste the questions I like from a few different sets of digital task cards to create a Frankenstein resource that includes all the topics I want to review. This is great for the beginning of the school year to ease students into academic work, to review prerequisite skills before jumping into a new unit, before an end-of-unit test, or even to review what you’ve taught all year before a state assessment!
• I also love using digital task cards in formative assessments or exit tickets! I simply download the slides I want to use as PNG or JPEG images and insert them in Google Forms. I can set the form as a quiz and even have it grade the questions for me! 
• Digital task cards are also great for an easy class warm-up. Either assign or project one or two task cards for students to complete at the start of class, and review them together to remind students of what was recently taught! 
• While not often, I do occasionally print out digital task cards to use in a variety of ways around my classroom, especially if I feel like my students need a break from technology! I love that I have that flexibility. I’ve printed them and hid them under tables, behind posters, and around the room or hallway for an engaging and educational scavenger hunt. I’ve set them up in a predictable path around the room for a timed scoot-style activity, where each student starts at a different problem and the class rotates after a certain amount of time! I’ve also printed them for a student who lost technology access due to poor choices and given each student a printed task card to serve as an exit ticket! 

As you can see, digital task cards have so many uses! As a teacher who tries to leave planning and prep at work – I feel like they are a must in any classroom! 

Do you use digital task cards in your classroom? Let me know how in the comments below!