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—Dance Mat Typing—Basic typing instruction led by farm animals. The BBC’s browser-based typing game takes students through proper hand positioning on the keyboard and teaches them how to type the letters on the keyboard. The target audience is students ages four to eight years old. Stay tuned next week for a more advanced platform that tests students’ typing! Privacy flag: Dance Mat Typing collects no student data.
Freemium—With more Spanish speakers than Spain, the U.S. can no longer call itself a monolingual country. So, edtech leader Newsela, which rewrites the news as reading activities, was inspired to create Newsela Español. This literacy tool publishes relevant and thought-provoking news content in Spanish at five levels of complexity for grades 2-12. Privacy Flag: Newsela’s privacy policy (here), lays out what information it collects about students over the age of 13 and how it does so. It does not make information available to third parties for marketing.
Free—Chairs—An organic chemistry game for iPhone and iPad designed to teach students spatial thinking, one of the science’s most difficult and crucial concepts. Students complete puzzles by assembling increasingly difficult molecules in three dimensions. The name comes from chemists’ slang for a cyclohexane molecule’s angles. And fun fact? Our DILAs Teacher Trailblazer winner and chemistry teacher, Julia Winter, created Chairs! Privacy Flag: Alchemie Games, the maker of Chairs, says it does not collect personal information. It's in the process of developing a privacy statement.
