Featured 7-15-2014: Biblionasium

 

Designed to engage, encourage, and excite young people about reading, BiblioNasium is a free, social network for children in elementary and middle school.

 

 

BiblioNasium includes the tools to function as a literacy partner, helping teachers efficiently develop and propel an effective, challenging, independent reading program.

 

Differentiate reading programs to meet students' individual needs by monitoring reading logs, creating reading challenges, and helping students expand genre choices and tailor reading lists. Build and manage programs by group, class, grade, and individual student.

 

 

More that you can do with BiblioNasium:

• Track what each student is reading and at what level, using Lexile® measures provided onsite.
• Virtual bookshelves help kids keep track of what they’ve read, what they like, and what they plan to read.
• Kids can share book recommendations and books, building conversation and connections around reading.
• Mascot and reading coach Chip Manzee motivates and entertains kids, challenging them and rewarding good reading behavior.

 Tour the Biblionasium website

 

BiblioNasium has taken measures to keep information safe. Only approved friends and the registered educator can see a student’s name and school.  Other signed-in users can see the student’s anonymous username, books, and other non-personal information. No users can see student information without authorization.

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Plus 7-3-2014: Make Math a Game

 

Make Math a Game is devoted to helping people, both kids and adults, improve their math skills while having a good math experience.

 

Browse the Make Math a Game blog for ideas that can improve your math ability. The free website helps you understand the basics and alleviate confusion so that math becomes fun. The goal is to "give help to kids, teens, and adults who want to get better at math – and it doesn’t matter what your current math level is!”

 

In addition to the blog, there are sections on Math Concepts, Practice, Everyday Math, Math Tricks and Teasers, as well as special featured items.

 

 

The philosophy of Make Math a Game is that you can do math better with practice and the practice will be easier if it is fun.

 

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Featured 6-17-2014: Radix Endeavor

 

The Radix Endeavor is a multiplayer online game for STEM learning in high school.

 

When a player enters the Radix Endeavor  she finds herself on an island with many unknown species of plants and animals, many mysterious places waiting to be discovered, and many problems to be solved. She must try to determine what is causing the problems, how the natural systems work, and which factors need to be changed to improve the lives of the people and save the island from destruction.

 

 

The game offers students the opportunity to participate in a collaborative, social experience in a systems-based game world while they explore how that world works and discover important scientific concepts.

 

The initial phase of the Radix Endeavor will cover topics in biology, algebra, geometry, probability, and statistics. Designed to align with the Common Core standards in mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards for high school students, there is also particular emphasis on developing key mathematics practices and 21st century skills.

 

 

Innovative task-based assessments will be embedded into the game, and that data will be used to track players’ strategies, progress, and potential misconceptions. The data will be analyzed in real time to offer feedback and support to the player to promote learning when concepts and skills are being first introduced. It will also be available on a 'Teacher Portal' to help teachers monitor student progress and differentiate their lessons to meet students’ needs.

 

 Watch The Radix Endeavor Trailer

 

The Radix Endeavor is being developed at the MIT Education Arcade in collaboration with Filament Games, and is funded by the Gates Foundation.

 

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Featured 5-7-2014: Shooloo Learning

 

 

Upper-elementary and middle school students can help one another practice word problems and apply math to real life using the collaborative learning platform, Shooloo, which means “Number Joy” in Chinese.

 

At Shooloo  students can write their own math word problems, publish them onto the web, get feedback from other students, demonstrate their solutions, and continuously clarify their math reasoning.

 

Tagged with the associated Common Core State Standard, word problems are accompanied by I Can statements. Students can easily compile their own I Can journals, enabling teachers to assess which students are struggling with which Common Core standard. Analytics provide automated progress tracking, real-time reporting, and standards-based grading.

 

 

Founded just last year, Shooloo already claims the world’s largest collection of student-authored math word problems that can be used for on-line learning, worksheets, discussions, and assessment.

 

 Watch Shooloo -- Collaborative Learning for Common Core Math

The Shooloo concept aligns with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practices. Students publish their own math word problems, construct viable arguments, critique the reasoning of others, and model real life with mathematics.

 

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Featured 5-5-2014: eduCanon

 

eduCanon is an online learning tool that can be used to build and share interactive video lessons transforming passive content into an active experience for students.

 

Begin with a YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video. Use eduCanon to break the content into digestible chunks by time-linking activities that students interact with as they view the video - increasing student engagement and, with real-time monitoring, informing the next day’s lesson planning.

 

Principally designed to be used in a 1:1 student learning environment, teachers have used eduCanon in class as a blended tool, assigned students an eduCanon lesson as homework in a flipped setting, and had students to create their own lessons. eduCanon is flexible enough to be adapted to your resources and teaching style.

 

 

eduCanon is a web-based app, so no downloading or installation is required. It works on Macs and PC, on all major browsers, but the best experience comes with Chrome or Safari. It can even be embedded into a website or blog.

 

 Watch eduCanon’s introductory video

 

eduCanon is committed to keeping a free, functional site. Some premium features are offered such as gradebook export, free response question types, and a lesson search giving you access to the library of high-quality lessons created by users.

 

Note: Students are not required to have an email address to sign up for eduCanon.

 

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Featured 5-1-2014: Pear Deck

Pear Deck makes it easy to plan and build interactive lessons that promote active learning in the classroom. Real-time data provides teachers the feedback needed to make on-the-fly adaptations.

 

Create a new Pear Deck from Google Drive then use the editor to quickly create any of four kinds of slides: static, multiple choice, Draggable™, or free response. You can also import slides from most presentation software, such as Powerpoint or Keynote, as a PDF.

 

 

Once your Pear Deck is built, launch a unique presentation session directly from the editor to your students using your Google Apps for Education domain. Pear Deck’s Google Chrome extension lets you launch the presentation on their devices with no cooperation required.

 

 

Students follow along on their devices and respond to the unique question types when prompted. As the teacher, your device can isolate individual or groups of answers to put on the interactive whiteboard for further discussion or review.

 

 See how to present a Pear Deck

 

Pear Deck is currently in limited beta. They are looking for schools that:

• Use Google Apps for Education
• Use or are evaluating Chromebooks
• Are driven to fostering an environment of active learning
• Are driven to increase and improve formative assessments and data-driven instruction

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Featured 4-7-2014: Geddit

Geddit is a free iOS app that enables students to give instant private feedback about their understanding in real-time in the 1:1 classroom. It also works on any web-enabled device.

 

Designed to be used with any lesson, you don't have to change anything to use Geddit.  Start collecting real-time, personal student feedback as they participate in your lesson.

 

You can get insights into your students’ confidence and understanding in context. Geddit includes several built-in question-and-answer features. Multiple choice and short answer responses let you immediately check for evidence of understanding. 

 

 

Students can develop metacognitive skills using Geddit. They are able to develop a realistic understanding of their own learning, at the same time you can identify individual student needs on the fly with Instant, real-time feedback facilitating better differentiation.

 

Geddit supports differentiation by helping you: 

• Respond to needs and effectively direct your attention
• Form collaborative groups based on ability
• Facilitate peer-to-peer coaching

 Watch What is Geddit?

 

Geddit for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch is available free from the iTunes Store and requires iOS 5 or later.

 

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Featured 3-18-2014: Knowmia

Knowmia is a free, easy-to-use collection of video presentations and interactive assignments that can impact students both in and out of the classroom.

 

Knowmia is designed for education, without limits or ads. Knowmia's growing library of educational video content includes over 25,000 video lessons from teachers everywhere on a wide range of school subjects. Each lesson is tagged, making it easy to find.

 

Teachers can use the Knowmia library to share lessons with a wider audience as well as with their own students. Users can upload any video file. Because students have individual learning needs, Knowmia welcomes a variety of teaching styles.

 

The Assignment Wizard Tool is an easy-to-use, web-based tool that enable you to create assignments with video lessons, summary or instruction slides, and interactive questions. Each assignment can include a series of lessons that you create or find in the lesson library. Once you send out an assignment, assignment tracking provides real-time results with detailed reports on each student.

 

Free training for teachers shows you how to use the Knowmia tools to create and find engaging video lessons and share them with your students. Gather five or more interested teachers and schedule an online learning session.

 

 Watch an Introduction to Knowmia

 

 The Knowmia Teach iPad app is a free lesson planning and recording tool. It helps you create video lessons on any subject and publish them on Knowmia  Import your own visuals, organize them in steps, and record your voice and face. You can record illustrations as you draw them and create animation sequences.

 

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Featured 3-17-2014: Oppia

Students can learn by doing using the interactive online activities that can be created with Oppia  It allows students to engage more deeply with activities in a way that videos or books often do not permit.

 

Oppia uses interaction dialogues to facilitate the way that a student has and a teacher work together. In an interaction dialogue, a teacher asks a student a question, and the student then reacts. The teacher responds in a way that is helpful to the student. Unfortunately, the teacher will sometimes not have time to address every individual issue or to work out an appropriate response. In many cases another teacher in a different school has been faced with the same question. Teachers using Oppia to record such interactions can share their knowledge with more students without duplicating effort.

 

Oppia explorations are the main units of learning. These multi-stage interactive activities are meant to engage readers in a learning conversation and provide formative feedback.

 

Any user of Oppia can play through, browse, and search for any public explorations. To create or edit explorations, a user will need to be logged-in and author his/her work under a username. All explorations are initially private, meaning they can only be viewed by the exploration's editors, invited playtesters, and site administrators. 

 

Responses submitted to explorations are stored anonymously. These responses are shown to exploration's creators and editors, in order that the explorations can be improved over time. When an exploration has developed to the level of being appropriate for general use, it may be published.

 

 

Writing, editing, or learning from explorations on Oppia is completely free, no trial periods, no freemium plans, no advertisements. Additionally, all lessons on oppia.org are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, which means that you are allowed to copy, modify, and reuse lesson content.

 View an overview of Oppia

 

Much of the code that powers this site was written as an open-source project by a group of Google engineers in their '20% time.' However, Oppia is not a Google product, and Google bears no responsibility for the content of this website.

 

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Featured 3-12-2014: LessonWriter

LessonWriter instantly creates personalized print, web, and mobile-ready literacy lessons using any text providing literacy and critical-thinking support to help students read and understand more.

 

LessonWriter is fast, free, and easy-to-use allowing users to create comprehensive literacy lesson plans and student materials from any content in minutes.

 

LessonWriter key features:

• Unlimited customized lessons from any digital texts
• Automatic text-specific literacy support
• Graphic organizers, prompts, and questions to support higher order thinking
• Accommodation settings and differentiated Instruction tools
• Unlimited classes and unlimited differentiation groups
• Teacher’s lesson plan with standards
• Lesson resources and ready-made lessons
• Instant reinforcement materials: vocabulary flash cards, word searches and question review sheets.

 

 

 Watch a video demo of LessonWriter

 

A premium LessonWriter account adds more features such as lessonizing any web page instantly, teaching all your lessons online, unlimited student accounts, a variety of lesson designs, and double the word limit.

 

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Featured 2-26-2014: Gooru

Gooru is a free search engine for education that makes it easy for K-12 teachers to discover topic-relevant content aligned to Common Core standards.

 

With millions of online resources available, teachers can organize learning playlists called collections to use in the classroom or to assign to students in a flipped classroom concept. Teachers receive direct feedback on mastery and progress as students study collections and answer questions,  allowing educators to differentiate instruction to meet individualized learning needs.

 

 

Users can contribute to an active community of teachers and students by sharing collections and best practices. Over half a million teachers in 140 countries and all 50 US states use Gooru to help students reach their full potential. Free learning materials can be found, rated, remixed, and shared.

 

 Watch Gooru: Discover, Organize, Teach

 

Gooru, developed by a non-profit organization whose mission is to honor the human right to education, is free of cost and ads. 

 

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Featured: 2-4-2014 Vocabulary Notebook

Vocabulary Notebook provides a a set of tools for schools and teachers to help students learn vocabulary faster using technology, making it more contemporary and engaging.

 

With the full Vocabulary Notebook for schools, students will have Cloud Accounts and teachers will have a dashboard to manage and get feedback about their students.

 

Key Teacher Dashboard features:

• Check your students' most important and unknown words.
• See interactive charts with stats about your students.
• See your student's tests scores and number of words.
• Suggest words to your students.

Vocabulary Notebook is easy for students to use. Just install the app and start to type those words you always forget. Change the importance of a word and mark it as "known" or "not known" whenever you want.

 

Students are able to filter words by importance or categories, for example, showing only words related to “work”. Sort words alphabetically or display only those words, phrasal verbs, or idioms that you don't know.

 

The test tool will randomly select words according to your filters and it will ask you to select whether you know them or not. Those words you don't know will automatically be marked as "not known", making it easier to take another look at them later.

 

Cloud Accounts and the web app synchronize with students’ mobile apps for iOS and Android. 

 Watch a video overview of Vocabulary Notebook

 

Teachers can discover which words students don't know as well as the categories they use most. With Vocabulary Notebook, teachers are able to send lists of vocabulary to their students.

 

With the Teacher Dashboard, you will see key information about your students. See stats like the number of words each student has, their average score in self-assessment tests, how often they use the app, and more. 

 

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Featured: 12-19-2013 Class Charts

With Class Charts you get data-rich seating charts and streamlined behavior management tools. It is even possible to collaborate with other teachers and work together to address behavior issues.

 

Class Charts lets you optionally include and display key data about each student which can be used to intelligently position students in the classroom to maximize learning. Use icons or photos to identify students.

 

The seating plans you create in Class Charts can also be a behavior management tool which you can use collaboratively with colleagues to track and analyse student behavior. Quickly give behavior points and get detailed reports of behavior for classes or individual pupils. 

 

You can add students individually with the Quick Add feature or you can upload a spreadsheet containing all student data. 

 

 

Class Charts uses industry-standard SSL encryption for data transfer and key database fields, safeguarding student information. They are registered with the Data Commissioner* and all staff have enhanced Criminal Records Bureau checks. 

 

 Watch a video overview of Class Charts

 

Class Charts works on any Internet-enabled device, so there is no software to download or install, and Class Charts is totally free to use.

 

*The UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

 

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