Best Apps and Websites for the Flipped Classroom: Common Sense Media — Top Picks
“Be more mentor than teacher by turning traditional lecture-based instruction on its head. These great flipped-classroom apps and websites help students gain new knowledge at home so that they can come to class ready to put it to use. “
Excellent Early Childhood Education Resources: Common Sense Media — Top Picks
“We’ve handpicked our favorite top-rated, seriously fun early learning apps, games, and websites.”
CAST UDL Book Builder
“CAST UDL Book Builder is a free online tool that lets kids create, publish, share, and read digital books. The tool is designed around Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an educational framework meant to support diverse learning needs. Books can include a range of visual, audio, and interactive supports for readers. “
Skill Champ
“Skill Champ is a free app designed specifically for early learners and children on the autism spectrum. Its combination of ten themes and ten lesson types makes for 100 unique exercises with which to challenge younger kids and kids with ASD and other executive function disorders.”
Websites and Apps for Making Videos and Animation: Common Sense Media — Top Picks
“These video and animation apps and sites offer user-friendly tools and features that make it more fun than ever to get kids’ productions created, edited, and polished. There are also a few tools that feature video-based formative assessment, so kids can record and share their video reflections.”
Research and Citation Tools for Students: Common Sense Media — Top Picks
“Students are always needing to effectively gather, study, and cite sources for their essays and projects. As teachers know, the internet has made this process both more fruitful and more complicated… To this end, on this list you’ll find top-rated tools for not just collecting sources but annotating and citing them.”
The Best Free Apps and Websites for Learning: Common Sense Media
“Whether you just got new tablets, Chromebooks, or computers — or you’re just looking to fill some curricular gaps — it can be pricey to connect students with quality content. That’s why we’ve hand-curated these awesome free apps and websites that get high marks from our editors for engagement and pedagogy. “
EquatIO for your Classroom: A Play and Pause Resource in partnership with TextHelp
“Make math digital with this FREE EquatIO Play & Pause resource where you will learn to use EquatIO and create four ready-to-use activities for your next math class!
These activities are geared for a Grade 7 or 8 mathematics classroom, and can be easily adapted to both lower and higher grades.”
EquatIO Math Space
“Making math digital is no longer a struggle with TextHelp’s EquatIO!”
Increasing pre-teen and teen exposure to the French language with technology
” Tips on how to increase exposure to the French language using family time and technology – pre-teen/teens.”
Increasing children’s exposure to the French language with technology: 4-10 year olds
“Tips on how to increase exposure to the French language using family time and technology.”
Texthelp: Teaching Math Online
“In this guide you will find lots of useful information on how you can create engaging math online. There are videos, blogs and downloadable guides that you can keep to refer back to.”
Library Learning Commons
” A learning commons is a whole school approach to building a participatory learning community. The library learning commons is the physical and virtual collaborative learning hub of the school. It is designed to engineer and drive future-oriented learning and teaching throughout the entire school. Inquiry, project/problem-based learning experiences are designed as catalysts for intellectual engagement with information, ideas, thinking, and dialogue. Reading thrives, learning literacies and technology competencies evolve, and critical thinking, creativity, innovation and playing to learn are nourished. Everyone is a learner; everyone is a teacher working collaboratively toward excellence.”
What classroom activities can be adapted for online teaching?
“Audrey McLaren talks about the best activities for online teaching (1m 57s).”
How do you know your students are listening and engaged in an online class?
“Peggy Drolet talks about student engagement in an online setting (5m 17s).”
Voicethread
“A collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways – using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam)”
What skills do students need to be successful online?
“Kerry Cule highlights the top 3 skills needed to be a successful online learner:
1. Motivation 2. Organization 3. Communication…NOT tech skills!!! (1m 10s)”
What activities can you use in an online class to build community?
“Peggy Drolet talks about ‘getting to know you’ activities and discusses how a virtual class forum can be similar to the school cafeteria or student lounge, as a place for students to socialize (1m 01s).”
How important is it that students be comfortable with technology before making the shift online?
“Kerry Cule talks about student comfort with technology (0m 57s)”
How do you provide opportunities at the beginning of the year that allow for students to connect with you and each other?
“Peggy Drolet talks about beginning the year with online students. (1m37s)”
How do online teachers communicate with their students?
“Audrey McLaren talks about communication strategies with online students. (1m 36s)”
How to Combat Screen Fatigue
“The workshop was on March 29th, 2021 from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM. It was hosted by Frank Furfaro, educational consultant at the EMSB and chairperson of the EPC committee, Marc Gariépy and Emilie Bowles, RÉCIT consultants for Adult General Education.”
“Here is the outline of the workshop:
- LEARN what screen fatigue is
- RECOGNIZE the signs
- UNDERSTAND what causes it
- IDENTIFY what you can do about it with research-based strategies to help you cope”
The Distance Learning Playbook, Grades K-12
An online resource by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and John Hattie made available by Corwin: A SAGE Comapny
12 Key Ideas: An Introduction to Teaching Online
A free online book by Dave Cormier and Ashlyne O’Neil .
Learning to Code: from procedural puzzle-based games to creative programming by Romero et al.
A research article about programming.
Educational Robotics: from procedural learning to co-creative project-oriented challenges with LEGO WeDo
“Romero, M., & Dupont, Y. (2016). Educational robotics: from procedural learning to co-creative project oriented challenges with LEGO WeDo. Presented at CIDUI.”
Hummingbird and Finch Program Manager
Learn more about products BRAINBIRD TECHNOLOGIES.
LEGO Lesson Plans
Check out LEGO’s lesson plans and STEAM activities.
Strawbees Learning
Learn about how to use Strawbees in your classroom. Includes lesson plans.
Hummingbird and Scratch Introduction
Hummingbird robotics kit lessons.
TurtleArt
“TurtleArt lets you make images with your computer. The Turtle follows a sequence of commands. You specify the sequence by snapping together puzzle-like blocks. The blocks can tell the turtle to draw lines and arcs, draw in different colors, go to a specific place on the screen, etc.” You Can Request to download offline editor from creators for educational/personal purposes
Programming in Scratch
A collection of video tutorials by Colleen Lewis.
SPHERO and OLLIE Activities
Lesson plans by grade level and subject using the Sphero and Ollie Robots.
Scratch JR Lessons
“Each of these activities gives you a quick way to learn how to do new things with ScratchJr. “
SNAP!
“Snap! is a broadly inviting programming language for kids and adults that’s also a platform for serious study of computer science.”
