Flocabulary

Flocabulary is a web tool that allows your K-12 students access to engaging educational hip-hop videos. Each video is accompanied by interactive activities, and assessments. You can search by grade level, topic, or subject area and each video can be aligned to Common Core Standards. I love that the videos are relevant to today's students and the music is well written and catchy! Even if the kids pretend that they are too cool to sing or listen to an educational hip-hop song they will still remember it because it's so catchy! The interactive lyrics that they offer can be used to create an active listening experience for students. There are also links within the lyrics document that students can click on to learn more about a particular item within the song. The only drawback to Flocabulary is that it is a paid site. An individual teacher can purchase an account for $96.00/year. A 14 day free trial is offered to individual teachers to try it out. There is also an option for school accounts. A school account is $1600/year and there is a 60 day free trial that is offered for schools. Although, this tool is not free, it is still a very valuable and relevant resource that can engage and spark interest in learning for your students.

Schoology

Schoology (skoo.luh.jee) is the worlds leading learning management system (LMS). So what is a leaning management system? An LMS is a software application or web-based tool that is used to plan, implement, teach, and assess a specific topic. Many schools and classrooms that are turning toward blended and flipped classroom models are using a LMS to help manage the course. Schoology is one of the most user friendly and connected learning management systems.

Some of the Features...

• Seamlessly access your documents from Google Drive as a teacher or student
• Enhance your lessons and assignments with YouTube, Khan Academy, and more.
• Create or upload assessments and administer them all from within Schoology.
• View data and feedback from test/quiz results. 
• Comment on student work
• Create class discussions
• Post course updates
• Create and manage a grade-book
• Use the Calendar to manage upcoming assignments and due dates
• Align assignments to Common Core Standards
• Connect with peers

Blended and Flipped Classroom Models

As technology and web tools are being used more and more in classrooms today, so are new ways of instructing. Blended and Flipped learning environments are on the rise and for good reason. The blended learning model allows students to work in a classroom with a teacher in the traditional sense, as well as use computer software, LMS (learning management system), and web tools to personalize learning and work at their own pace. Using the flipped classroom model, students are able to spend class time engaging in meaningful activities because the content was obtained outside of class-time. The teacher is still teaching, using class-time to apply and practice learning. To learn more about blended and flipped classroom models, click here.

Blended Classroom

Flipped Classroom

PBS LearningMedia

PBS LearningMedia is versatile resource for anyone in education. PBS LearningMedia offers access to thousands of digital media resources that are aligned to Common Core and National Standards, engaging, innovative, and free! There are interactive activities, lesson plans, images, videos and more. PBS LearningMedia has a collection of productivity tools that include a Lesson Builder, Storyboard, and Quiz Maker to help personalize lessons for your students. This can be a valuable tool for self-paced learning, and flipped/blended classroom models. The site also offers Professional Development for teachers in the form of webinars, training, and in-person events geared toward supporting 21st century instruction. It is a great way to connect with other professionals, educators, and instructional technology specialist. Join the PBS LearningMedia Community today!

Welcome to PBS LearningMedia. 

Here is a quick guide to get you started.

Edpuzzle- Interactive video lessons

Videos are an excellent way to introduce a new concept, engage students, reteach information, or use with a flipped or blended classroom. With Edpuzzle, teachers can take already existing videos from the web or your own, and use them to create interactive lessons with voice and questions right in the video. Sometimes students can lose interest in a video or get distracted, you can use Edpuzzle to shorten videos to just the right length you need for your students. This web tool allows the teacher to see if students have watched the assigned video and how many times they watched it. Edpuzzle also shows student responses to your questions from the video. Now when you use a video with your classes, you can be sure that students are more likely to be engaged and accountable.

Getting started is easy and free!
Simply go to https://edpuzzle.com/  and create an account. You can log in using your Google or Edmodo account or create a new username and password to access the site.


Check out how Edpuzzle works:

Symbaloo- book marking in the cloud

As educators, we are always searching for the best resources to use in our classrooms and share with our students. Symbaloo is a cloud based bookmarking tool that allows you to create and organize what they call a web-mix that contains visual links to all of your favorite sites. You can create a web-mix for anything! It is easy to use and accessible. Simply log in using your Google account or create a username and password, and begin adding your favorite sites. Symbaloo even offers a Google Chrome extension that allows you to save sites to your Symbaloo web-mix as you are browsing the web for content.

Teaching Ideas

• Use Symbaloo to organize resources for a research project
• Create a webmix for students to use with a lesson and share it on your website or blog  

Guides and How To's

Quill- Interactive Writing Lessons

Quill is an excellent resource for teachers to help middle and high school students of all levels improve their writing skills. All of the activities are aligned to the Common Core Standards and it's free!

• Quill Proofreader- gives students passages with grammatical errors that need to be corrected.
• Quill Grammar- teaches grammatical concepts using sentence writing
• Quill Writer- two students take turns writing a passage together from a shared list of words. 
• Quill Sentence Shuffle- Students arrange sentences in the correct order (Spring 2016). 

Learn More...

1. How to sign up
2. Creating your classes
3. Assigning activities
4. Viewing results