The Teaching Channel is a video resource focused on teachers' classroom practice -- the website is connected to the TV show that airs regularly on PBS. Through the site, educators can watch videos of teachers working in their classrooms as as way to learn from, and provide feedback to, peers in their profession. The site's platform also gives teachers a space to share lesson ideas and strategies across a fairly broad range of subjects and grade levels. New videos are added periodically, helping the overall collection grow. Additionally, the site's new Teaching Channel Teams platform functions as a private space for professional development among smaller, closed networks of teachers. It's essentially a more personalized version of the site's public video-PD model, geared toward individual schools or even departments within a school. Teachers can use Teams to connect and share videos of their practice within a small group setting. This creates a safe and supportive place for mentors and coaches to work with new teachers and teaching interns, but could also support collaborative groups of veteran teachers looking to learn from one another.
Pear Deck is a simple presentation tool designed to enhance student learning during a slideshow. Ideally, each student in the class should have their own device, and the fact that Pear Deck works on all platforms makes it a great fit for a 1:1 setting. Students use their devices to follow along with the teacher's slideshow on a classroom screen. Throughout, teachers can pause at points where they've added questions -- a variety of question types are available. Teachers can view students' responses to these questions immediately, as well as post the results on-screen for all students to see. On the setup side of things, teachers will need to take some time preparing presentations and adding the interactive elements that make the platform engaging. Pear Deck has made this process somewhat easier for teachers -- there's a built-in Google search tool to use when adding images and videos into slides. What's more, Pear Deck will helpfully cite any images inserted using this tool! LearnZillion is an online database of short video lessons that address learning topics aligned to individual Common Core standards. The lessons cover math, close reading, and some writing standards. Experienced teachers create the 3- to 5-minute videos and lesson plans, complete with leveled practice problems, anchor texts, and writing prompts. For kids, the videos feature commentary, extra hints, tricks, and a “try it yourself” segment to help them practice on their own, using pencil and paper to follow the video’s guidance. Multiple-choice quizzes help assess students' learning. When both kids and teachers create accounts, teachers can assign lessons to individual students or to the whole class, see who's completed a lesson, and view students' scores. JumpRope is a comprehensive platform to help teachers tackle the challenges of mastery-based planning and assessment. The planning tool helps teachers set up units of study and learning targets, each aligned to the Common Core standards. Although we will be using Mastery Connect to do this, there are some classroom management features. JumpRope has an attendance tracker and a commenting system to help track student behavior, follow-up, and interventions. The teacher dashboard even includes a visual gauge of positive vs. negative comments logged, which can act as a helpful reminder to give students positive feedback. Reports can be viewed online or printed, as well as customized to show various levels of detail. CK-12 has a wealth of great content that teachers can work into the classroom. You're likely to find a lesson that directly corresponds to what you're teaching, and the diagrams and videos are very accessible. If you don't find what you need, you can add your own content, creating Flexbooks (or ebooks) for your students that contain the material you'd like to share. Digital Is is a media-literacy website created and curated by a community of educators. As a source for professional development, the site shares the NWP's ethos of encouraging teachers to help others in their field. Content on the site is organized under four tabs: Blog, Resources, Collections, and Community. The succinct blog entries link to activities and, when needed, definitions. Much of the Resources section is comprised of teachers' documentation of their own inquiries into their practice. These narratives focus on specific activities, like media storytelling, Connected Learning projects, or social-justice units that are tied to current events. The Collections are exactly that -- resources grouped by theme; as such, they serve as a user-friendly way to get at the site's content. Gooru functions as a sort of search engine for online lessons and learning materials. Its slick interface makes it very simple to find curated resources, like videos, interactive activities, digital textbooks, and websites. Most of the curated content centers around core academic subjects: math, language arts, social studies, and science. Teachers (or students) can organize resources into collections that are viewable for their classes or by other online viewers with the link to their collections. Students and teachers don't need a Gooru account to search the site or browse collections. They can search by subject area and drill down to specific lessons ("collections") within each topic. For teachers, collections within most courses also indicate which Common Core State Standards or Next Generation Science Standards align with the materials. While resources might originate from anywhere on the Web, Gooru users view them as they're embedded within the site's interface. With a free account, teachers can create collections for their students to view in a specific order, presumably giving purpose to an overall learning arc. The site is set up to allow easy transitions between video clips, digital textbook chapters, and websites, and all navigation takes place within the Gooru. Skype is a website that allows users to communicate using instant messaging and video and voice calls. Its basic features are free. After downloading and installing Skype, a log-in screen will appear. You can sign in using a Skype, Facebook, or Microsoft account. You can add contacts using someone's name, Skype handle, or email address. After adding contacts, you're ready to start calling. Click on the name of the person you'd like to chat with; if there's a green light next to their name, they're already signed in and ready to receive your call. They'll answer, and you should be able to hear them as well as see them using your webcam. During your video call, you can also share screens or send files, which can be very useful in a classroom setting. This can also be used for collaboration between teachers. Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging platform that allows users to communicate through 140-character messages on a computer or smartphone. It's used by millions of people worldwide to keep up with news, gossip, events, weather -- you name it, it's being talked about on Twitter. You can also use Twitter as a home base for classes, assigning homework or quizzes, or starting conversations with students. When using it as a class, though, make sure you set up ground rules for language and respect, as kids may be used to using Twitter for more casual communication. Teachers should also be aware of the incredible resources available on Twitter for professional development. Across the world, educators are turning to Twitter as a way to build personal learning networks. By following other educators and participating in education-focused chats, teachers can expand their network of colleagues and find resources to further their classroom practice. Wordpress is a free blogging platform. For teachers creating their own classroom blogs, they can use the WordPress apps on mobile devices to simplify the setup process. Most of the features are actually more accessible (and easier to find) in the app than they are online; typing on the touchscreen rather than a keyboard is the main difference that might slow posting down for students and teachers alike. Students 13 and up can use the app for the iOS or Android device to create and manage WordPress blogs. Once registered, students can post blog entries with text, photos, or video as well as manage their blog's templates and design, approve comments, and adjust its settings. In addition, students can use the Reader tab to read blogs they follow or search for blogs on subjects of interest. While most of the web-based features are available in the app, there are some notable mobile-only functions, like voice-recognition dictation to post blog entries and one-tap picture posting for images and videos from the device's camera roll. Wordle is a fun tool that creates a word cloud from text users input. A word's size in the cloud is scaled to how often it appears in the text. Users can paste text from a document or type it directly into Wordle. The tool automatically generates a word cloud that visually represents how often various words appear. Frequently used words are larger than others. The first rendering is generated randomly, and users can then customize its appearance by removing less significant words and adjusting orientation, color palette, and font. Though a simple tool, Wordle offers an engaging alternative to the traditional way of analyzing a text or set of words. Turnitin is an online plagiarism detector, as well as an electronic grading and feedback system for students' writing assignments. As teachers create assignments, students submit files from a computer or a cloud-based service. Turnitin checks each assignment for plagiarism (or improper citation) using its OriginalityCheck system; assignments can also be peer- or teacher-evaluated using the PeerMark and GradeMark features. There's also a forums section for hosting class discussions, with customizable moderation levels. The OriginalityCheck feature checks student papers against a massive database of content, with detailed similarity reports for teachers. The GradeMark feature lets teachers use their own rubrics or select from a vast library of pre-loaded ones. Feedback can be given using pre-made or customizable markings; teachers can also attach comments to specific parts of students' papers. Shmoop is a website offering a variety of study materials for kids and teens written by scholars. The catch? Shmoop's study guides are purposefully written in a conversational tone. Sometimes they're downright hilarious, and the fun language helps kids access complex subjects and relax into learning. Teachers have to pay to access site materials designed for educators –- including hundreds of student assignments, quizzes, and activity tips. However, most student content is free (with the exception of a few sections, such as the standardized test prep guides and most of the calculus section). The free learning guides available for students cover a variety of topics, including biology, U.S. history, algebra, and calculus. The site's literature section covers classics; users can also access in-depth allegory, character, and theme info on modern reads like The Hunger Games. And the site's learning resources are legit: Ph.D. and masters students from schools such as Stanford and Harvard write much of the conversational content, which is peppered with pop-culture references. GoClass is a learning platform that allows teachers to create lessons and deliver them directly to students' mobile devices or computers. With a free account, teachers can create courses and develop lessons, share content, and assess student learning in real time. Lessons follow a specific structure: show (media and videos), explain (notes and examples), and ask (polls and assessments). Teachers can add individual students or upload an entire class with a .csv file. Students receive an email about how to get started with GoClass. To conduct a session, both teachers and students will need devices -- an optional projection screen can allow whole-class viewing. Teachers can then share content to student devices while simultaneously projecting the same or different content to the class. Teachers can scribble on an image or add an explanation to emphasize a concept. They can also time lectures and assessments and see which students are engaged with the presentation at a given time. Expanded features in the paid account include scheduling for flipped-class instruction, student note-taking and annotation, and space for additional student accounts and lesson plans. Curriculet is an easy-to-navigate e-reading platform with a built-in loaning library. What's more, teachers can embed a variety of "checkpoints," or assessment items for students, within texts. The library primarily includes public domain literature, searchable by categories like grade level and genre. While you'll find a range of classics from Shakespeare to Mark Twain, there aren't as many contemporary titles at present. That said, teachers can upload their own texts to the library in a variety of formats, including PDFs, Word documents, Google Docs, or websites. After selecting texts, teachers can get to work adding a variety of checkpoints to help guide students' reading. Checkpoint options include multiple-choice, short-answer, annotations, or hyperlinks -- these can be aligned to various ELA Common Core standards. Grouped together, the collected checkpoints for a text are called Curriculets. The lending library includes a number of texts with ready-made Curriculets -- teachers can use these as is, edit them, or even create their own from scratch. All Curriculets are customizable and shareable. Within the texts, students attend to checkpoints as they read, getting instant feedback on the multiple-choice questions. In fact, students can't proceed to the next page of text without completing each checkpoint. Using the e-reader's tools, students can search a text, adjust the font size, make annotations, and look up definitions of unknown words. For teachers, the platform offers a quick way to grade short-answer questions, as well as provide detailed data reports for each student. |
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