EDge21 Favorite: Flipgrid

Using Flipgrid, teachers create grids of short, discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos.

Begin by creating grids and adding questions. A Flipgrid account lets you can create up to four grids free. Grids can be classes, sections, groups of students, or any collection of users interested in a common set of questions. A grid can contain an unlimited number of questions, and each question can accommodate an unlimited number of responses. Questions are short, text-based prompts that can include links to websites or documents.

Students respond with video of their own. Students can receive email updates when new questions are added to grids they follow. You can easily email a link to a grid or an individual question. Students respond by snapping a thumbnail photo with their webcam, recording their video response as many times as they need, and submitting their video.

There are several ways students can connect with their personal videos and those of their peers: by likes and direct links, as well as Twitter, Blog, and Facebook integration. Teachers control whether videos can be shared outside ofFlipgrid.

 Watch a video demo of Flipgrid

Flipgrid uses a streamlined single-page administration tool for teachers to create, manage, and share grids with students and colleagues.

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First posted 6-13-2013

Featured: 9-26-2013 Typeform

 

Based in Barcelona, Typeform is a new cloud based service that allows you to create innovative forms and surveys that function seamlessly across all devices.

Typeform is for anyone who wants to provide users responding to questions online a more enjoyable experience. In order to improve completion rates, Typeform strives to engage users like no other type of webform has.

Typeform allows anyone to create cross-platform 'typeforms' intuitively with a minimum of effort. One of the goals of the creators of Typeform is to assure the people building typeforms would enjoy making them as much as the users filling them in.

A single typeform is compatible with desktops, smartphones, tablets, blogs, websites, even Facebook. This, along with multi-language support, means your forms and surveys can reach the largest possible audience.

Get insightful usage metrics across devices, and generate great looking reports, or export the data for further analysis.

 Watch a Typeformdemo video

Typeform is currently in beta and and can be used free. It will likely eventually be subscription based and competitively priced, but with a 'freemium' option.

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Featured: 9-25-2013 Kaizena

 

Kaizena reinvents the teacher feedback process. It’s as easy as highlighting and speaking. Voice comments make your feedback personal and engaging.

Giving feedback with Kaizena is faster than using a word processor, or even a red pen with its negative connotations. Kaizena is built to save you time, allowing prompt, useful feedback.

Other features of Kaizena:

• Students can respond to your feedback with a voice comment of their own.
• Support for text comments.
• Attach a resource.

Common problems can be taken care of with reusable mini-lessons. Add a link once, and reuse it every time you encounter that same problem.

 See a video demo of Kaizena by Greg Mcverry

Kaizena works seamlessly with your Google Drive workflow. No new usernames or passwords are needed.

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Featured: 9-24-2013 Zinn Education Project

The Zinn Education Project is a website that promotes and supports the use of the book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms.

The goal of the Zinn Education Project is to provide students with an understanding of United States history that is perhaps more accurate, complex, and engaging than that which is found in traditional textbooks and curricula.

Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States emphasizes the role that the choices and actions of working people, women, ethnic minorities, and organized social movements had in shaping history.

The website offers more than 100 free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level. The teaching activities are comprised of reflections on teaching about a people’s history, lessons, and critical reviews of literature. All of the suggested lessons have been used and developed in classrooms. The site also highlights the many available resources on people’s history.

 Watch Lauren Cooper speak on the Zinn Education Project

The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.

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Featured: 9-23-2013 Virtual Experiments

Virtual Experiments are multi-dimensional nonlinear movies of real experiments available on the web in any modern browser.

Virtual Experiments are not simulations. The user has full control of various parameters in the experiments so that he/she can carry out the experiment in their browser* just as if they were remotely controlling the real experiment. No physics or other science is coded into a VE, and whatever may be discovered in the real experiment can also be discovered in the VE.

Virtual Experiments are not intended to replace the real hands-on laboratory, but they can offer value as warm-ups to the real thing, or when equipment is scarce, dangerous, or expensive. They can be repeated as often as you like, and can't be broken.

Virtual Experiments are developed at the University of Reading (UK) Department of Physics for student levels from GCSE through to final-year university using a well equipped photographic studio and staff who contribute to their design, production, and programming.

*Does not appear to work on iOS devices

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The Rearview Mirror 9-21-2013

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

 

Monday

The National Constitution Center is the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the US Constitution. The Center strives to illuminate constitutional ideals and inspire active citizenship through a state-of-the-art museum located on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

Tuesday 

Classmint is an interactive study notes tool that lets anyone create annotatable, audible, notes that can be folded like a paper.

Wednesday

LearnBIG is a tool to facilitate searching for online educational resources. Access tens of thousands of online courses, educational games, videos, and more.

Thursday

NuIDEAS is a catalog of descriptions of and links to hundreds of online classroom resources.

Featured: 9-19-2013 nuIDEAS

NuIDEAS is a catalog of descriptions of and links to hundreds of online classroom resources.

NuIDEAS organizes classroom resource collections for each major subject: math, language arts, social studies, and science, as well as collections specifically for elementary classrooms and for teachers of other subjects such as music, art, health, foreign languages, and more. There is also a collection of items that might prove useful to any teacher regardless of subject.

NuIDEAS has been aggregating and presenting quality classroom resources since 2009. It was started and continues to provide a central location where teachers could easily and quickly discover the many diverse useful things available to them online.

 Take a quick look at nuIDEAS

Each nuIDEAS item includes a brief description of the resource, a direct link, and the date it was added to the collection. Many of the included resources are free.

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Featured: 9-18-2013 LearnBIG

 

LearnBIG is a tool to facilitate searching for online educational resources. Access tens of thousands of online courses, educational games, videos, and more.

Filter LearnBIG searches by subject, level, media, device, and even learning style, helping you find exactly what meets your needs.

LearnBIG resources are user-rated. You have a community of teachers, parents, and learners sharing their experiences with the best tools out there. Registered users can review resources as well as share their favorites on LearnBIG.

 See how LearnBIG works

Based in Seattle, WA, LearnBIG is made up of educators, parents, grandparents, and students.

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Featured: 9-17-2013 Classmint

Classmint is an interactive study notes tool that lets anyone create annotatable, audible, notes that can be folded like a paper.

Classmint notes makes it possible to add complex math, computer code, and images to notes, as well as having the ability to explain notes with text and image annotations to create more useful notes.

Image annotations can reveal information on your mouse-clicks, enabling learners to retrieve information on-demand. Notes can be played in a text-to-speech audio-visual player. Students can learn concepts by reading and listening to the study material.

Classmint also maintains an automated 'revision' list to aid in the process of reviewing the notes on a subject, especially in preparation for an examination. Notes are designed to simulate the popular Cornell Notes format. Users can digitally fold the notes like paper and try to recall concepts.

 See a video overview of Classmint

Currently, Classmint is completely free to use and ad-free.

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Featured: 9-16-2013 National Constitution Center

Constitution Day, September 17, commemorates the formation and signing of the US Constitution on that date in 1787.

The National Constitution Center is the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the US Constitution. The Center strives to illuminate constitutional ideals and inspire active citizenship through a state-of-the-art museum located on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

The National Constitution Center website offers innovative, standards-based lesson plans, activities, and other resources to connect the Constitution with your curriculum and bring American history to life for your students.

Give your students a Constitution Hall Pass to explore America’s civic holidays and constitutional history. Created and produced by the National Constitution Center, this webcast and live chat series features the Center’s education staff, distinguished scholars, and even some famous faces who bring America’s democracy and the stories of “We the People” to life.

The Interactive Constitution on the Center’s website makes it possible for students to search the United States Constitution and find relevant passages and explanations.

In To Sign or Not to Sign: The Ultimate Constitution Day Lesson Plan students will examine the role of the people in shaping the US Constitution.

 Watch a photostory describing the highlights of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia

You can download and view the text and high-resolution images of the Constitution and other historical documents from the National Constitution Center.

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The Rearview Mirror 9-14-2013

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

Kids for Saving Earth provides educational materials, posters, and a highly acclaimed website featuring environmental education curriculum and activities.

Tuesday

Rewordify is powerful, free, online reading comprehension software designed to help people comprehend difficult English faster and learn words in new ways.

Wednesday

The Hunt Institute is a leader in the movement to transform American education, working at the intersection of policy and politics, supporting and empowering state and national policymakers.

Thursday

Net Texts helps schools replace or supplement traditional textbooks with customized multimedia courses delivered to students' iPads, Android tablets, and laptops.

Featured: 9-12-2013 Net Texts

Net Texts helps schools replace or supplement traditional textbooks with customized multimedia courses delivered to students' iPads, Android tablets, and laptops.

Teachers can use NetTexts' Content Management Website to select existing courses or to create new ones by mixing and matching items from the NetTexts library with their own educational material. Courses can include videos, slideshows, e-books, PDFs, text, audiobooks, and Web links.

Students then use the NetTexts iPad, Android, or web app to download and view these courses. Students will feel more engaged and have more ownership of their learning, whether reading the latest assigned e-book or watching a 'flipped classroom' video.

Net Texts consulting services help your school get the most out of Net Texts. Teachers will be trained how to use the content management site and mobile apps, how to find Open Educational Resources, and how to create high quality content.

Net Texts can build customized OER courses based on teachers' recommendations, syllabi, and state standards. A school or district can replace textbooks with a multimedia curriculum based on OER, saving money on textbooks for years to come, as Net Texts courses can be updated with new material at any time.

 Watch Introducing Net Texts: The Digital Backpack for Your iPad

Net Texts courses contain teacher-created material as well as Creative Commons-licensed and other open education resources from the Web.

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Featured: 9-11-2013 Hunt Institute

The Hunt Institute is a leader in the movement to transform American education, working at the intersection of policy and politics, supporting and empowering state and national policymakers.

Drawing on expertise from every corner, The Hunt Institute works to bring together the best people and resources to sharpen visionary leadership, encourage active dialog, and mobilize strategic action.

The Hunt Institute bases its work on these core beliefs:

• Education is the cornerstone of American democracy and must be available to all citizens. 
• A free PreK-12 education is the birthright of every child and should be of sufficient rigor and relevance to ensure high school graduates are prepared for citizenship, college and work.
• Access to higher education should be available to all citizens at the most affordable price.
• Leaders who are endowed with the public trust have a responsibility to make informed decisions that create and maintain educational standards that are second to none in the world.
• Opportunities for lifelong learning are critical to sustain the nation’s economic health and the prosperity of individuals.

The goal of The Hunt Institute is to "use our unique qualifications to help lead the way to sustainable solutions."

 Go to the Hunt InstituteYou Tube channel

The Hunt Institute was established in 2001, as an affiliated center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Featured: 9-10-2013 Rewordify

Rewordify is powerful, free, online reading comprehension software designed to help people comprehend difficult English faster and learn words in new ways.

Paste a difficult English sentence, paragraph, or more, or enter a website URL and click the 'Rewordify text' button. You'll get an easier-to-understand version of the text. The modified version is also specially highlighted to help build vocabulary.

The Rewordify technology aims to develop independent learners by helping people read, understand, and learn what they want to read, on their own.

 Watch a video overview of Rewordify

 Try the RewordifyTeacher Demo

Rewordify is completely free. There's nothing to register for, no app to buy, no software to install. The site displays no ads and requires no log-in or user registration.

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