Featured 7-16-2014: MIT OpenCourseWare

 

MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses freely available on the web.

 

With more than 2200 courses available, OpenCourseWare provides free MIT educational content that can be used to augment your knowledge or in teaching others.

 

Each course consists of at least two parts: some type of instruction (a syllabus, lecture notes, reading list, calendar, etc) and a learning activity such as assignments, quizzes, or exams.

 

You may choose to use a complete course from beginning to end or just implement select concepts. You may use the material at your own pace.

 

 

OpenCourseWare offers several resources for you to use, adapt, and share with your students:

• Use advanced search to find assignments, recitations, exams, labs, study materials, or related resources on a specific topic.
• Simulations, applets, and visualizations let your students modify or control experiments.
• Audio and video lectures can facilitate a flipped classroom.
• Students can review concepts they should master for your course.

 Visit the MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube channel

 

MIT OpenCourseWare is free and requires no registration.

 

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Featured 6-18-2014: CollegeEd

 

CollegeEd is the free, standards-based* college planning and career exploration program for middle and high school students from the  College Board.

 

 

Drawing on more than a century of experience by the College Board in guiding students on the way to college, the CollegeEd program provides lessons and activities meant to help students evolve the skills needed to meet their goals. In collaboration with Roadtrip Nation, CollegeEd gives students the chance to "explore their aspirations and set long-term goals to get them on the path to higher education and a successful career."

 

Lessons written by experienced counselors and AP teachers are organized around three consistent themes: "Who Am I?", "Where Am I Going?" and "How Do I Get There?" 

 

 

CollegeEd offers flexible options for teaching, implementation, and family involvement. The program consists of three levels, each with its own student workbook and accompanying educator guide:

• Grades 7-8 gets students thinking about the path to college.
• Grades 9-10 has engaging activities to help students discover their interests and begin planning for college.
• Grades 11-12 guides students through the college search and application processes.

 

CollegeEd materials can be used online and are also provided as downloadable, printable PDFs. Materials are also available in Spanish.

 

* The CollegeEd program is based on standards developed by the College Board, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and ASCA.

 

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Featured 6-9-2014: Visme

 

Create interactive presentations, infographics & other interactive content from numerous templates and presets or a blank canvas with Visme.

 

Visme promises the ability to customize every object to fit your specific content needs using attractive fonts supported in a range of languages, millions of free images from Flikr, and thousands of free vector images.

 

 

Transform data into engaging visuals with custom built infograph widgets,charts and graphs to quickly visualize your data to engrossing content.

 

Visme is built on HTML 5 so it's light, quick, easy-to-use, and supported on every device mobile.

 

 Watch Animating with Visme

Visme Basic is free and includes up to three projects, 100 MB of storage, publish or download as jpg, and public projects. Paid options offering more projects and storage as well as additional features start at $4.50 (US) per month.

 

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Featured 6-2-2014: Q?rius

 

Created for teens and tweens, Smithsonian's Q?rius (pronounced curious) is intended to help students make sense of the connections between nature, the planet, the universe, and their  everyday experiences.

 

 

Q?rius is an interactive and experimental "learning space" that capitalizes on the science, researchers, and collections assets of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History  Visitors are encouraged to be an active part of this energetic and fascinating community.

 

Through conversations with scientists and interactions with thousands of authentic specimens and objects, visitors will boost their understanding of the natural world, find new interests, and develop inquiry skills. Educators will come away with fresh ideas for engaging their students in science.

 

 

A Q?rius teacher account allows a teacher to create one account with multiple associated student sub-users. Teachers add student sub-users by providing a user name (not the student’s real name) which is associated with the teacher’s email address. No personal information is requested or collected about the students.

 

Student sub-users can create, save, and access a digital field book as part of the Create Your Own Field Book activity. Students can also post moderated comments to the Q?rius user community. Comments are only visible to other Q?rius users, and only by the user name provided. Sharing features, such as sharing content via social media services or email, are disabled for teacher accounts.

 

 

For student sub-users under 13, teachers are responsible for obtaining verifiable parental consent prior to registration. Teachers must retain this information for the duration of the school year in which they created the teacher account.

 

 Watch Q?rius - Question Everything - Discover More

 

Q?rius allow users to include media from Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo into their field books. The AddThis service is used to allow certain users to share content via social media services using their own user names and passwords for those social media service accounts.

 

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Featured 5-22-2014: The Math Open Reference Project

 

The Math Open Reference Project is free, interactive math textbook on the web covering high-school geometry.

 

 

The Math Open Reference Project has the goal of providing high-quality digital content free of charge to the end user, while providing numerous benefits over paper textbooks:

• Accessible anywhere, any time.
• Interactive, interesting experience.
• Hyperlinks promote exploration and easy lookup.
• Use the search to look up a word or term.
• Interactive quizzes with instant feedback.
• Lower cost.
• Less weight.

Using interactive tools and compelling animations, The Math Open Reference Project provides an engaging way to learn and explore the subject. A vast library of virtual manipulatives can be used to demonstrate concepts using a computer, projector, and whiteboard. Students can use the same manipulatives themselves outside the classroom.

 

 

The Math Open Reference Project meets the NCTM standards for content and is aligned with the Common Core standards, but also has the potential to adapt to and comply with the standards for every state.

 

The Math Open Reference Project will work with most popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. The interactive illustrations use Java and/or Flash, so these plug-ins must be installed on the user's computer.

 

The copyright and license agreement permit any printing for non-commercial use, useful for class handouts.

 

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Featured 5-21-2014: ChalkUp

 

ChalkUp is a student engagement platform designed to foster real-time school-work collaboration, learning, and studying, ChalkUp enables students to ask questions, discuss and share interesting educational content, and work with each other.

 

Dashboard is a real-time feed where you can comment on discussions, submit assignments, and even view files. Chalkup keeps all assignments, quizzes, and tests in one place.

 

Assignments can be delivered to students quickly and in real-time. Drag-and-drop a document from your computer or use one that you have stored on Google Drive or Google Apps for Education. Create folders, rename files to be organized.

 

Students can turn in assignments as easily as dragging-and-dropping, uploading as many files as necessary. Annotate and grade uploaded file submissions right inside ChalkUp. Personalize feedback with a quick note.

 

 

Messaging lets the people in your class chat in real-time and share files with each other. Teachers can send messages to students to clarify, remind, and keep them engaged. Chalkup uses 256-bit AES encryption to make sure your messages are safe.

 

The free version of ChalkUp provides 1 GB of storage per class with a file size limit of 25 MB, and all the core features including integrated flashcards.

 

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Featured 5-20-2014: Amazon School Lists

 

Amazon School Lists is a new way for K-12 teachers to create and share online back-to-school supply lists with parents.

 

By using Amazon School Lists teachers will have more students better prepared from the first day of school and throughout the year.  A teacher creates student supply lists for his/her classes, posts them to the Amazon School Lists website, then sends parents an email with a link to the list. 

 

The School List form includes the option for teachers to comment on each item. For example, you can add a note that indicates a particular color marker may be needed, or that similar items can be acceptable.

 

Amazon School Lists lets K-12 parents know exactly what school supplies their children will need for class. They can view and purchase supplies from their children's own teacher's lists or suggested grade-level lists. Parents can view and shop directly from the list or print the list to take shopping.

 

 

Teachers may begin creating Amazon School Lists for fall 2014 back-to-school preparation immediately. Parents will be able to access school lists right now as well. At the end of a term, the supply lists for that term will be disabled. To re-use a list, a teacher can re-save the list with a new name and the new term date.

 

Note: Only registered Amazon customers can create or use School Lists.

 

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Featured 5-19-2014: Google Classroom

 

Classroom is a new, free tool coming to Google Apps for Education that helps teachers easily and quickly create and organize assignments, provide feedback, and communicate with their classes.

 

By integrating Google Docs, Drive, and Gmail, Classroom can help teachers manage assignments quickly and easily, and communicate with their students more efficiently and effectively. Classroom lets teachers make announcements and pose questions online.

 

Students using Classroom are able to better organize their work, complete and submit assignments, and interact directly with their teachers and peers. Drive folders are automatically created for each assignment and for each student. Students can readily see what assignments are due on an assignments page.

 

 Watch Previewing a new Classroom by Google

 

Classroom contains no ads, does not use your content or student data for advertising purposes, and is free for schools.

 

 

A limited number of educators are being invited to try Classroom. Teachers can apply for a preview. By September, Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education.

 

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Featured 5-12-2014: EverySlide

 

EverySlide involves students by making it possible to integrate open-ended questions and polls in the same slides you are already using.

 

A free EverySlide educator license can make your classroom more interactive:

• Re-use existing slides
• More engaged students
• Know what students are thinking
• Generate class reports
• Instant polls and word clouds
• Students use their own devices

Upload a presentation created in PowerPoint or Keynote to EverySlide and press ‘present'. A unique registration link will be generated that your class can use to join your slideshow using any device they happen to have.

 

 

Ask a question or run an instant poll. After the presentation, you can review students’ interactions online or download their details and answers as a spreadsheet. You can leave a copy of your slides on participants’ devices.

 

 Watch an overview of EverySlide

 

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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 4-28-2014: Scrawlar

 

Scrawlar offers schools free cloud-based collaborative word processing that works on any smartphone, tablet, or computer.

 

Use Scrawlar to create, edit, share, and save documents on any web-connected device. No app, installation, or plugin is needed.

 

 

After creating and saving a document, students have the option to share with any classmates. They can also choose whether other people can edit or just view the original document.

 

As a teacher, create an account for any class. Add your students to your network, each student is assigned a password. Students login using the class code you provide and their unique passwords. No student signup or email is required.

 

Teachers can leave feedback right on documents, and parents can follow along in real-time from anywhere.

 

 

Scrawlar also offers an easy-to-use whiteboard interface that includes basic drawing tools and text.

 

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Featured 4-17-2014: Operation LAPIS

 

Operation LAPIS is a two-year game-based introductory course in Latin and in Roman culture. It may be used on its own, or as a supplement to other materials.

 

Over the course of this two-year epic adventure to find and to interpret the LAPIS SAECULORUM, students will learn to read Latin with fluency and understanding. They will also discover why their learning was important, and how they can use it.

 

 

Operation LAPIS covers the same content to be found in a very wide variety of Latin textbooks, for example the Cambridge Latin Course, the Oxford Latin Course, and Ecce Romani. Operation LAPIS can take the place of a traditional textbook, or serve as a supplementary set of materials, to help students reach the learning objectives that are standard in first and second year Latin at both the high-school and the college levels:

• Read and write Latin
• Identify key products, practices, and perspectives of Roman culture
• Summarize key events of Roman history

Google Drive and Edmodo support most of the activity in Operation LAPIS. All the story elements take place on the Edmodo platform, which serves as the bulletin board. Use Google Drive to share your students’ Operative Dossiers as well as a few other documents, like worksheets and character descriptions. All participants are required to create free accounts on both of these platforms in order to access and utilize the materials.

 

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