Flippity

Flippity is a program for all  grade levels that can make learning.  You can turn a spreadsheet into any of the below activities to engage your stuents in a game format. Turn a hangman game into a melting snowman instead. Create Flashcsrds, to leader boards, certificates and even fun font.  Gamify your classroom in minutes!  If you need assitance or just want an extra helping hand, we would love to work with you one on one.

 

Edulastic

Are you looking for a high-quality assessment tool with the ability to search for standard-aligned test questions?  Would you prefer to construct your own assessment questions with question types similar to those your students will encounter on their OSTs? Or maybe you'd like an assessment tool that provides in-depth insight into student data?  If any of these apply to you, then I highly recommend giving Edulastic a try!

I began using Edulastic over four years ago in an attempt to construct OST practice items for my students. One of the American History Test Prep sites I found had links to Edulastic with access to a few practice test items for students.  I was immediately impressed with the idea that students could use Edulastic to answer hard-to-mimic test question types like: Classification, Re-Sequencing, and Multi-part to name a few. 

Fast forward to this school year and the district has purchased premium accounts for our teachers.  This means access to more tools and deeper data insights!  It also means that Edulastic will have a spotlight shone upon it as one of the monthly iterations of our Step Right Up challenge series. However, for those interested in diving into Edulastic sooner, I thought I'd provide a short primer on what to expect upon logging in if the platform is new to you.

Firstly, Edulastic is now integrated with Clever, which means both you and your students can access the site from the Clever platform.  Upon logging into Edulastic for the first time, you'll want to navigate to the Manage Class portion of the sidebar. (hint: the sidebar is simply small icons on the left-hand side of your screen until your cursor hovers over it) Inside Manage Class, you'll be able to sync your Clever classes over to Edulastic.

Once your classes are synced, it's time to start finding those assessment items.  Personally, I recommend going to the Test tab of the sidebar.  Within the Test tab, you're able to search for test items by specific content standards.  You're also able to access Ohio Department of Education released test questions.  (hint: these can be easily accessed by filtering your search by Collections to Edulastic Certified)

Edulastic also allows you to clone and edit questions you come across throughout the site to tweak them to fit your needs.  Under the Item Bank tab, you're able to construct your own questions and let me tell you, you'll be hard-pressed to think of a question that the website won't allow you to assess your students with.  The depth of question types is one of the areas where Edulastic truly shines.  Combine that with automatic grading (at least for non-written response questions) makes assessing with this tool an absolute gem.  I particularly enjoy that I can control how Edulastic assesses certain questions that may have multiple answer options, i.e. Re-sequencing questions.  

There will be far more to come on Edulastic as the year progresses, but I hope this post has at least piqued your interest in the platform enough to log in and check it out for yourself.  If you have any questions about Edulastic, please click the "Email Me" link at the bottom of this post to send me a direct email.

Useful Links:

Email Me

Edulastic

Edulastic Self-Paced Training Courses

 

Edulastic for Elementary

Edulastic is in Clever for all YCSD teachers and scholars. It has OST-like questions that align with the academic content standards. For a quick 2-minute overview of Edulastic watch this:

Here are some more quick video tutorials. If you prefer a written tutorial, click here. 

Want help getting started with Edulastic? Contact the Tech Integration Department. We would love to come to help you!

Why use Edulastic in the Elementary grades? Listen to this Ohio elementary teacher to find out.

Flippity

    Is it hard to keep your students engaged? Do you want to make review more engaging? How about turning your classroom content into a game? Flippity is a website in which you can create fun and exciting games to review or preview the content you are teaching in class. All the content is created with a Google Sheet. That is not to say that it won't work well with iPads, because it does! You will create a link on a Google Sheet and upload it to your classroom hub (Google Classroom, SeeSaw, Apple Classroom). 

    The games are created with whatever content you would like to use. There are board games, breakout rooms, matching games, and so many more. If you are interested and would like help creating a Flippity game with your grade level and content area contact me! I would love to help!

Discovery Education

 

Discovery Education     
 

Innovative, interesting, and ready to use lessons for Science, Language Arts, Social Studies, STEM Coding, Current Events, Virtual Field Trips and more. It's it already in your CLEVER for your you!  Explore and take your lesson to a whole new level.

Seesaw

Are you interested in an online resource that has already made lessons and will align with the standards? Look no further! Seesaw is perfect for you!

Seesaw is an interactive online platform in which you can assign work and the students can answer directly on their devices. It works for Ipads and Chromebooks and is easy to use for teachers. Seesaw offers standards-based lessons in PK-5 and a community library in grades PK-12. 

My background is in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade, therefore I have not had much experience with Ipads. However last year I began teaching STEAM! I found that there were very few programs that easily transitioned from Ipads to Chromebooks, except SEESAW!! Access multiple free lessons or pay for a subscription to access all the lessons. 

All you have to do as the teacher is create a FREE account and connect your students. Not sure how? Click Here to access a step-by-step tutorial. 

Libby, by OverDrive

Do you enjoy reading, but lack the time to sit down with a good book? Are you interested in trying an audio or ebook? I have just the app for you. Introducing, Libby! A free app and service provided by OverDrive which connects directly to your local library's entire database of audiobooks and ebooks! I know, it sounds too good to be true. Worry not, I have tried it, and it is just as exciting as it seems!

My experience with Libby began over a year ago. I was looking for something other than music to listen to during morning treadmill workouts.  I downloaded a digital copy of Dave Grohl's book The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music.  Total plug here, but if you're a fan of music, I totally recommend listening to this audiobook.  Okay, plug over.  Back to your regularly scheduled content.

Fact: Libby makes borrowing online content fun!  Its interface is beautiful and the simplicity of its design makes navigating the app a breeze.  Plus, it's free!  If you are anything like me and find yourself lacking the time to read as often as you’d like, the ability to borrow audiobooks comes in handy! You can listen anywhere you’d like, on a bike, train, morning commute, here, there… well actually anywhere!

With all this excitement, it is important to remember there are cons to everything.  In this case it comes in the form of content caps. This means, the amount of content on the app is based on the digital catalog provided by the library to which you belong.  To combat this, you can sign up for library cards for other libraries as well! That you aren’t stuck in one content pool, which affords access to a far larger catalog. With greater access coomes the downside of greater number of users jockeying for content.  Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, all it means is that you may have to put a hold on a book and wait a week or two.  For me, that is no serious inconvenience.  However, if it is for you, Libby may not be the right answer.

If you're still interested in Libby, the process to get started is simple enough.  Just bust out your library card and sign up!  If you don't have a library card, no worries, it's easy to procure one now-a-days.  In fact, I'll even walk you through the process to apply for a digital library card from the local Youngstown and Mahoning County libraries! Just see the link below, and off you go!  The video will also give you a bit of a preview of what to expect from the app. So don't be shy, have a watch!

 I use an iPad for this tutorial video, but the process is extremely similar on iPhones, Androids, and/or tablets. If you encounter any issues, please reach out.  I'd be more than happy to assist!

Some potentially useful Links:

Libby, by OverDrive (Google Play Store link)

Libby, by OverDrive (App Store link)

The Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County

The New York Times Best Sellers

Authored by Matt Garcher