TOO COOL (PERFECT FOR SCHOOL): We've got our favorite edtech teacher and administrator tools for the week right here, as highlighted in our Instruct newsletter. By the way--got a favorite S’Cool Tool you like to use? We would love to hear and share your recommendations! If you’ve got a tool that makes you or your students sing from the proverbial mountaintops, fill out this form to let us know. It might just get featured!
Free! Every band teacher knows that getting musical scores involves navigating a tangle of software licensing issues and ten other headaches. In waltzes VexTab, a tool for creating standard notation and tablature, and then sharing it. Here’s a tutorial that will share the code you need to write the notation.
Freemium: Want to create and share read-out-loud exercises for English language learners or struggling readers? With Fluency Tutor for Google, students can record reading exercises on their own. Educators can choose selections from a bank of passages, and then provide students with feedback and track their progress. Fluency Tutor integrates with Google Docs and Google Classroom.
License: BrainScape’s slogan is “Personalized repetition.” What that means in practice: you can create flashcards that adapt to student studying. Students rate their confidence when answering questions and the software delivers more questions in areas where they express low confidence. Teachers can borrow other teachers’ flashcards or task their students with writing them. Teachers can track student progress with the flashcards as well as create a classroom page to distribute assignments and grades.
$50 and up: Move over, Matrix--Dash and Dot’s got a collection of kids’ customizable mini-robots. They run on the simple programming language Path, the intermediate Wonder or the more advanced Blockly, all of which are enable children of increasing ages to code behaviors for the robots. Teacher discount packages are available--get more info here.
