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! Note: If we have not appended a privacy flag to a tool’s description, it does not collect personally identifiable information. If a tool collects personal information, parents or educators should create an account for users under 13.
Free!—EducationFirst’s Playbook—A handbook titled “Fewer and Better Local Assessments: a Toolkit for Educators” for revising and refining student assessments. Created by education consulting firm Education First in conjunction with Achieve.org’s Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts (specifically EducationFirst’s pilot with Syracuse City School District), the handbook details five phases of reassessing tests with guided steps through each one.
Free!—Curriki—A library of open educational resources with curated curriculum collections. Educators and Curriki’s content partners create content and share it on the site and create collections of resources. The Curriki team and designated educators also select collections of high quality. All materials on the site are downloadable and customizable. Teachers can rate resources, search by alignment to standards and pool students into groups to work on certain resources. The site also offers professional development on how to integrate its resources into lesson plans. Privacy flag: If students register for Curriki, they must provide personal information. It is possible to use the tool without registering.
Free!—The Educal—A crowdsourced map and calendar of education events (meetups, professional development, lectures, etc.) worldwide. Users can add, find, and promote learning opportunities and professional development. Users can also search for events by location, date, name, intended audience or topic. There are 161 events listed in the next eight months mostly in the USA, so there’s probably something out there for you!
