# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Stable Diffusion can take an English text as an input, called the "text prompt", and generate images that match the text description. These kinds of algorithms are called "text-to-image".

First, describe what you want, and Clipdrop Stable Diffusion XL will generate four pictures for you. You can also add a style to the prompt.

Then you can retry until you find the perfect picture or customize your text prompts. When you find an image that works, you can download it!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SDXL 1.0: A Leap Forward in AI Image Generation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Create personalized stories for children that instill a love for reading, spark creativity, and build important life skills.

Create Story

Develop social-emotional intelligence through stories

Children's needs are constantly changing, making it difficult to provide emotional support. Personalized stories help children learn important life skills in a fun and engaging way.

Create your own personalized library

Tired of reading the same old books over and over again? Customize characters, names, and even include familiar faces, making each story a truly unique experience.

Inspire learning through fun story adventures

Storytelling is an engaging and holistic form of education. It turns the learning process into an adventure.

Spark your child's imagination

Discover the joy of learning through personalized, illustrated stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Storybooks - Create and Discover Bedtime Stories - Illustrated bedtime stories that instill a love for reading and strengthen the bond with your little one. Make storytime fun, magical, and enriching.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Illustrated bedtime stories that instill a love for reading and strengthen the bond with your little one. Make storytime fun, magical, and enriching.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
AI Pet Photos: Transform Your Pet's Photos into Unique Characters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover the magic of AI with AI Pet Photos. Transform your cat's or dog's photos into 21 unique characters and see your furry friend in a whole new light. Try it now for a fun, unique, and memorable experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Zarla AI Website Builder - Create Your Website 100x Faster

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get a professional website that builds itself in seconds ❤️ Try Zarla's AI website builder for free and launch your website today!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EssayGrader - Grade essays with the power of AI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EssayGrader is a tool built for teachers to grade essays and papers online. Get essay feedback based on rubrics, find grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, summarize long essays and detect if an essay was written by AI.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Let AI Grading handle the heavy lifting of assessments for you. With its data-driven algorithms and standardized criteria, it takes care of all your grading tasks, freeing up your valuable time to do what you're passionate about: teaching.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elevate your essay writing skills with Smodin AI Grader, and achieve the success you deserve with Smodin. the ultimate AI-powered essay grader tool. Whether you are a student looking to improve your grades or a teacher looking to provide valuable feedback to your students, Smodin has got you covered.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
AI Emoji & Keyword

Our AI analyzes your video to automatically add relevant emojis and highlight keywords, which increase views by over 42%.

Trusted by 1 million video creators

Our website uses cookies. By continuing, we assume your permission to deploy cookies as detailed in our Privacy Policy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opus Clip - AI-powered Video Repurposing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opus Clip turns long videos into high-quality viral clips for you to share on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels to increase social media reach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
That's what my colleague said to me just moments before opening , the new artificial intelligence-driven writing app.

He typed, "Write a limerick on fly fishing."

At the push of a button, a flashing cursor revealed this:

The moment was reminiscent of the first time I used a digital camera, accessed the nebulous "internet," or test drove our electric car: the ground was shifting and things were never going to be quite the same. Later that evening my phone buzzed with a text from my 18-year-old son saying that the ChatGPT site had shattered the time it took to reach 1 million users: 5 days. Facebook took 6 months.

ChatGPT, which was developed by a company called Open AI, dominated the week following. My email lit up with questions and comments from educators. I surfed the internet. Our district held meetings.

The themes were pretty consistent. They largely surrounded queries like, "Is writing dead?" "Can we no longer use computers or tablets for in-class writing?" "How will teachers police this?" There were more questions than answers. The "Chicken Little" record I owned on vinyl as a kid came blaring into my consciousness: "The sky is falling, I'm off to tell the king!"

In the weeks since, the dust has settled a bit, and I've had some time to think about this new technology. Let's be clear, none of us can possibly claim to know where this is going. Some argue that the human race has finally produced a technological advancement that will lead to mass unemployment (which has been claimed with most technological advancements but has yet to occur), while others see this as a tool that will perform amazing, constructive features such as narrow socioeconomic disparity, predict natural disasters, and . . . improve education.

I don't claim to be able to make such prognostications. But I do believe that school leaders and educators need to get in front of this technology and look for ways to use this tool for its incredible potential to enhance instruction-and the way our students use and understand information. Our students need us to surf this wave with them rather than lunging for the life jackets.

In the short-term, here are some ways I think schools can start to adapt, integrate, and perhaps dabble with this intriguing new technology.

While banning use of ChatGPT by students is tempting-and I've seen a few stories of schools moving in this direction-so far my school district has decided to not ban the platform. I support this decision for a few reasons. First, shutting down the use of this technology will be incredibly difficult to manage. Today it's ChatGPT, but by the time you read this, Google may have already launched its version of AI, called Sparrow. Microsoft is looking to embed additional AI tools in Word. Second, we have limited resources and trying to control readily accessible tech is not going to be a good use of them. Third, and most important, educating our students and ourselves about AI is almost certainly a better bet for long-term success. Students need us to help them make sense of this powerful technology and use it creatively-not turn a blind eye to it. Institutions that try in vain to restrict AI will only send it underground, and consequently be oblivious to how students are using, or abusing, it.

I remember taking on previous changes in my classroom such as allowing for retesting, not grading certain homework assignments, and sharing learning targets. With each change in my teaching practice, I learned the best way to navigate it was to bring it into the open, discuss it with students, and get their perspective, opinions, and insights. I suspect the same will be true of AI. I recently spoke to Marcus Blair, a high school English language arts teacher in my school district. He told me one of the first steps he took was to have a class discussion on ChatGPT. As he wrote to me:

We spoke about ChatGPT, what it's capable of doing, what one could use it for, and also how one shouldn't use it in place of their own ideas and learning. Students and myself first marveled at its capabilities. But we also agreed about how misrepresenting its responses as our own learning is unethical. I stressed that I'd rather they take a couple extra days to finish something than resort to having AI do it in their stead.

I think when we model openness it compels students to do the same. Let's not forget this is new for us and our students. Having an open conversation allows teachers like Blair to marvel at this new technology, manage it, embrace it, and navigate its potential uses and challenges.

As anyone who has read knows, I have long argued that assessment should be grounded as much as possible in the predictability, safety, and structure of the classroom. Plagiarism is not new. Generations of students have known that whenever grades are awarded for written work, you can get others to do it for you (or cobble it together from print or online resources) and claim it as your own. With each historical leap in technology, such as Microsoft Encarta, AOL, and Google (not to mention countless online paper-writing services), the act of outsourcing one's writing assignments got faster and easier.

Perhaps ChatGPT will provide a service to education by finally ripping off the "Band-Aid" and making it crystal clear to everyone that high-quality information is readily available for students to crib from. This in turn may lead us to recognize that the most viable way to assess student writing on a personal and accurate level is to conduct those assessments in class, or to embed them in an authentic performance task. We might also think about forgoing traditional essays at times and giving students the option to explore other ways to communicate their learning-such as in short videos, podcasts, or multimedia presentations.

At the same time, it might help us to realize that the more we can inject in our instruction and assignments personalized elements from our communities and our students' lives, the harder it will be for AI to conjure up relevant fodder for them. In the process, we will also likely heighten students' personal investment in their learning. Perhaps it's high time that we even encouraged students to both design and respond to their own inquiry questions. (For an example of what I mean, check out the "Pizza Inquiry Project" that Blair and I designed.)

In terms of writing instruction, ChatGPT is mainly a problem if we don't have a good sense of our students' writing in the first place. When I was teaching high school social studies, I made sure to utilize short in-class writing exercises, exit slips, and other formative assessment "check-ins." Typically, these activities involved a quick write or diagram using a pen and paper. It was personal, we didn't need a cart of laptops, and it gave me a pretty good window for how each of my students communicated their ideas. I could use these quick writes to get instant feedback on the effectiveness of the lesson, shape the next day's activity, give personalized feedback and help develop a student's writing voice, and build community through getting to know my students. In the rare cases that a student submitted writing on a formal paper or essay that was significantly different than the baseline level of communication we'd established, I could take steps to investigate.

Whatever fears we have about AI, we must acknowledge it's here to stay and it will almost certainly play an increasingly significant role in our students' lives and careers. With this in mind, it's important for us to help them-in the safe, structured settings that classrooms provide-get familiar with it and use it in ways that can empower them.

There is now a growing body of examples of how educators can leverage the power of AI and ChatGPT in particular for student learning. To add to the recommendations, here are a couple I would deploy if I were teaching social studies right now-each designed to allow the technology to do the basic work while boosting students' capacity for critical thinking and analysis.
Activity 1: Pick a controversial topic and ask ChatGPT to write a short essay including references.

a. "Fact-check" the claims made and references used by ChatGPT. (As many users are becoming increasingly aware, the program has a tendency to make factual and citation errors.)

b. Plot the points made on the political spectrum and/or check for political leanings.

c. Write a counter argument.

Activity 2: Give ChatGPT a complex command, then have students fill in the blanks.
I typed the following into ChatGPT:

Analyze the ways in which the United States sought to exert influence abroad during the Cold War.

The resulting paragraph was well "written" and included six seemingly good points. However, it didn't include a shred of specific supporting evidence nor references. A great student assignment would be to get the students to add these features.

Those are just two examples from my own subject area. I have colleagues in English language arts who use ChatGPT to demonstrate specific writing skills and generate drafts for editing and revision.

The ways in which ChatGPT can support teachers both administratively and pedagogically may be where its real potential lies for education. For instance, for the past decade or more, I have been trying to help teachers navigate a shift to standards-based grading. With the emergence of ChatGPT, we might need to broaden who we include in the conversation. I recently walked down the hall and knocked at the door of our district's director of information technology, Matt Williams. Together we explored how we might leverage ChatGPT to help teachers better understand and incorporate AI in a standards-based approach.

We asked the program: "What are the writing standards for grade 4 students in BC [British Columbia]?'"

The program produced a few of them, with decent accuracy. We then asked ChatGPT, "Can you write an example of a grade 4 paragraph that would meet these standards?"

It did, and even explained how the paragraph met the identified standards. We then asked it to produce a multiple-choice quiz to check for reading comprehension of the paragraph it wrote.

ChatGPT supplied four questions and an answer key.

Lastly, we asked for an open-ended question that would assess deeper understanding. We got that too, and it was quite good. ChatGPT even explained why the question was appropriate to assess understanding.

If you had told me a year ago that I could use a computer program, on my own laptop, to look up learning standards anywhere in the world, and help design unique assessments for these standards, I wouldn't have believed you. Now I think the power of a tool like this for teachers is limited only by my own presumptions. Once we begin to experiment and imagine, this program may vastly increase our professional knowledge and repertoire.

The other evening I was listening to NPR, and they reported that ChatGPT was set to introduce a feature that allows teachers and professors to detect if something is written by AI. This suggests that the folks at OpenAI really do want to work with educators on bettering learning, rather than jeopardizing it.

Writing-and the importance of writing-will not go away, but we will be challenged to blend new technologies with the teaching of it. The hope I have for ChatGPT is that we might truly be forced to explore ways to stay one step ahead of technology and embrace more effective ways of teaching and learning while we do it.

And by the way, I asked ChatGPT if the sky was falling, and apparently it's "just a figure of speech as the sky remains in its current position."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
For Educators, ChatGPT Poses Big Questions-and Big Possibilities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
That's what my colleague said to me just moments before opening , the new artificial intelligence-driven writing app. He typed, "Write a limerick on fly fishing." At the push of a button, a flashing cursor revealed this: The moment was reminiscent of the first time I used a digital camera, accessed the nebulous "internet," or test drove our electric car: the ground was shifting and things were never going to be quite the same.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Class Tech Tips is an EdTech Blog that helps teachers and schools discover new an innovate ways to use technology in their classrooms. Read the latest.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stable Diffusion 2-1 - a Hugging Face Space by stabilityai

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover amazing ML apps made by the community

# data[].attributes.headline
Performance review generator- Uses AI to generate reviews. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Performance review generator- Uses AI to generate reviews. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Performance Review Generator | Michael Schmitt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Automatically generate performance reviews based on more than 40 attributes

# data[].attributes.headline
PeerStudio: the peer feedback and assessment tool that helps students learn

# data[].attributes.subject
PeerStudio: the peer feedback and assessment tool that helps students learn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PeerStudio makes peer feedback easier for instructors to manage, and students to learn from. It automates away the tedious aspects of peer reviewing, and learners use a comparison-based interface that helps them see work as instructors see it.

More than 14500 learners in dozens of universities use PeerStudio to learn design, writing, psychology, and more.

Get started as an instructor

Comparative peer reviewing allows students to see what instructors see

The theory

PeerStudio leverages the theory of contrasting cases: comparing similar artifacts helps people see deeper, subtler distinctions between them. Think of wine tasting. It's much easier to notice the flavors when you compare one wine to another.

How PeerStudio uses comparisons

When students review in PeerStudio, they use a rubric that instructors specify. In addition to the rubric, PeerStudio finds a comparison submission within the pool of submissions from their classmates. While reviewing, students compare the target submission to this comparison submission using the provided rubric.

AI-backed, always improving

PeerStudio uses an artifical-intelligence backend to find just the right comparison for each learner and submission. (Among other features, we use learners' history of reviewing, and that of their classmates to identify optimal comparison submissions.) This backend is always learning, with accuracy improving even within the same assignment.

Guided reviewing

Learners often want to review well, but don't know how. We both help students learn how to review through interactive guides, and automatically detect poor reviewing.

INSPIRE STUDENTS

Inspire students with peer work

Most students in college today see so little of the amazing work their classmates do. PeerStudio creates an opportunity to see inspiring work and get more feedback on it. Instructors also tell us that their students enjoy writing, designing and completing assignments for a real audience, and how the benefits of peer reviewing spill over into clearer presentations and more insightful questions in class.

CLOUD-BASED

Work as your students do

PeerStudio is cloud-based, so it is available from any computer, and allows students to view most common assignment materials without any additional software: PDFs, videos (including auto-embedding Youtube), formatted text (bold, italics, tables,...) are all supported. And because it's backed up every night, your students (and you!) never have to worry about losing work.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Automated assignment of reviewers

With traditional peer feedback tools, instructors have more, not less, work. You not only need to write the assignment and the rubric, but also assign students to review each other, make sure they do it on time, re-assign students who miss the deadline and so on.

PeerStudio automates it all. It uses an AI-backed to assign reviewers to submissions, automatically deals with balancing out reviewer load, and more. It even sends email reminders to students who haven't submitted their work or reviewed others.

REMAIN IN CONTROL

Grant deadline-extensions, keep an eye on review quality, and more

PeerStudio automates the busywork, but you remain in control. On your dashboard, you can grant one-time exceptions, track who's late, even read individual reviews. Many instructors also use their dashboard to find examples of excellent work to show in class, or to recognize excellent peer feedback.

We can help you implement peer reviewing correctly and set up PeerStudio in your class.
To get started, schedule a time to chat with us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PeerStudio: the peer feedback and assessment tool that helps students learn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PeerStudio makes peer feedback easier for instructors to manage, and students to learn from. It automates away the tedious aspects of peer reviewing, and learners use a comparison-based interface that helps them see work as instructors see it. More than 14500 learners in dozens of universities use PeerStudio to learn design, writing, psychology, and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers, log in with Google or your email and password.

# data[].attributes.headline
PLATFORMING WRITERS OF COLOR:A TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY REFERENCE GUIDE

# data[].attributes.subject
PLATFORMING WRITERS OF COLOR:A TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY REFERENCE GUIDE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop Reading List

# data[].attributes.body
Way better than breakout rooms. The only thing is that each room only has capacity for 25 guest. But this is excellent! Watch the video!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
#1 Virtual workplace tool

The most highly reviewed virtual meeting tool on G2! Help your remote or hybrid team feel more productive today.

The Kumospace Virtual Office App

Join a virtual meeting from anywhere

Never miss a company conference call again. Kumospace offers a full suite of desktop and mobile apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Company culture happens here.

Give your remote team a virtual office to create connections and strengthen relationships.

Be seen. Be accountable. Be heard.

Walk the floor-just like if you were in the office. See how your team is getting their work done.

Online Workspace Insights

Advanced people analytics

Have visibility into how your team is spending their time with the Kumospace virtual office platform.

Works with Your Tools

Integrations to power your virtual office software

Connect the apps your team already uses to customize your virtual workspace needs.

Kumospace explained

See how your online workspace and virtual events come to life to help build team collaboration and company culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Virtual Office Software for Teams & Events - Kumospace

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kumospace is the go-to virtual office and event hosting platform. Remote teams can communicate, collaborate, and meet online in our virtual workspace.

# data[].attributes.body
Get up and get moving to energize the brain and your kiddos.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
TheLearningStation - Kids Songs and Nursery Rhymes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brain Breaks ♫ Action Songs and Dance Songs for Children Playlist ♫ Move and Freeze ♫ Kids Songs

# data[].attributes.body
Seesaw is the best classroom platform for meaningful student engagement. K-8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

# data[].attributes.body
Find and fix learning gaps k-8

# data[].attributes.body
A throw back test generator.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
EasyTestMaker is an online test generator to help you create and manage your tests!

Create, print and publish your tests online! EasyTestMaker makes it easy for you to perfectly format multiple question types, print alternate versions, and publish to the web for online tests. Online tests are automatically graded!

Sign Up - It's Free

Features Why you should use EasyTestMaker!

Perfectly formatted tests

Create multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true or false questions. Add instructions and divide your test into multiple sections. Learn more...

Online tests graded automatically

Published online tests are graded automatically. View and print student's results and override grading when necessary. The same test you print, is the same test you publish online! Learn more...

Question Pools

Create a test with your entire question bank. Publish your test and choose to present as few or as many questions as you require. Each test taker will have a random set of questions.

Question analysis reporting

Quick and easy reports to see how many test takers answered which questions right and wrong.

Alternate versions to reduce cheating

Alternate versions and answer sheets provided with no extra work. Questions and answer choices are automatically resorted in a different order. Learn more...

Build exams with ease

Create an exam from your existing tests with just a few clicks. At any time you can copy a question from one test to another one! Learn more...

Export to Word or PDF

Any test, any version, including answer sheets can be download as a Micrsoft Word or PDF document to be saved and printed later. Learn more...

Make the most of your time, sign up now for EasyTestMaker!

EasyTestMaker eliminates wasted time spent on formatting. Add new questions and sections, move them around as needed and let EasyTestMaker do the hard work for you. All your tests are saved for easy retrieval. You can make changes or print out additional copies of any test you create.

Features I'm confused. I thought this was free?

Free, Plus and Premium plans are available. All are without ads. See below which plans include specific features. If you are not completely satisifed, we'll refund your full payment within the first 30 days of purchasing or upgrading, no questions asked.

Free $0/year
Core features to create tests

An easy to use test interface

All question types available

Answer sheets

Multiple sections

Automatic question renumbering when questions are moved

25 test limit

Publish online tests with up to 25 results stored at one time.

Sign up now!

Plus $59.95/year
Everything from Free plus:

Automatically generated alternate versions

Exam builder

Export to PDF and Word

Spell Check

Bold, Highlight, Italicize & more...

Unlimited tests

Publish online tests with up to 250 results stored at one time.

Sign up now!

Premium $79.95/year
Everything from Free & Plus plus:

Upload images, charts or graphs

Results automatically graded

Set time limits for online tests

Print individual test results with grading marks

Export results in Excel/CSV file

Publish tests to be taken online with up to 2,500 results stored at one time.

Detailed test result analysis reports. See which answers were selected and by who for each question. All in one summary view.

Advanced online test options, timed tests, download options and more...

Sign up now!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EasyTestMaker is an online test generator to help you create and manage your tests! Create, print and publish your tests online! EasyTestMaker makes it easy for you to perfectly format multiple question types, print alternate versions, and publish to the web for online tests. Online tests are automatically graded!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
StoryJumper: #1 rated site for creating story books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easiest way to create, narrate, and publish your own hardcover and paperback books. Read and listen to books from our worldwide community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Storybird - Read, write, discover, and share the books you'll always remember.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Become a better writer with Storybird's creativity tools. Online courses, challenges, and reader feedback will help you improve your writing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Discord Is The Best Place To Talk and Hang Out

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn why 50 million people are using Discord every day to stay connected with friends, families, and communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 217 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast Jesse Stommel shares about how to ungrade.

Production Credit: [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:21] Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I'm Bonni Stachowiak. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:48] It's been a long time since I've got to have a conversation, at least one that took place in the audio form with today's guest Jesse Stommel. It's been too long in fact. I'm excited to say that not only will he be joining me for today's episode, but there are many episodes in the coming months where he'll be either directly part of an episode or some of the people that he has collaborated with through the digital pedagogy lab will be joining us as well so I'm grateful for that.

Bonni: [00:01:20] Let me start out by telling you a little bit about Jesse. Jesse Stommel is Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington. Jesse is also the Co-Founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy and Open Access Journal of Learning, Teaching, and Technology. Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, and new media. Jesse experiment's relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He's got a rascal pup, Emily, two clever cat's Loki and Odin and a bad ass daughter. He is online at jessestommel.com and on Twitter @jessifer.

Bonni: [00:02:17] Jesse, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Jesse: [00:02:20] It's good to be with you again.

Bonni: [00:02:22] Today we are going to tackle the ever so easy topic of grading. And you are going to clear up all the questions we have and all the challenges. [laughing]

Jesse: [00:02:31] I feel like when you say the word grading that either you should have kind of a "DUN DUN DUN." There needs to be a musical cue every time in higher education that the word grades or assessment is mentioned. Or it could even be the Darth Vader march...

Bonni: [00:02:47] Yeah. What are some of the challenges with the way that we think about an approach grading in higher education?

Jesse: [00:02:54] Well it actually connects to that last comment that I made about the Darth Vader march, which in some ways I say cheekily but there is almost a way in which over as many years as I've been talking about teaching, talking about pedagogy, it feels like almost every conversation grades end up being the elephant in the room of the conversation. And a couple different things here. You're almost certain that grades are going to come up. So if you're talking about experimental assignment design, you're certain to get the question but how would I grade that?

Jesse: [00:03:25] So two features. One is that it's constantly a kind of elephant in the room. But I think it often kind of kills the conversation because it ends up not allowing us to move forward in our thinking about how we approach the work of teaching. It ends up being almost a wall that we crash up against when we're talking about innovative pedagogy, when we're talking about our experience as teachers, or even talking about the feelings that we associate with the work of teaching. Almost any conversation, grades are almost certainly going to come up.

Bonni: [00:04:02] When I had asked Asao Inoue on this show one of the examples he- he didn't describe it this way but in my head I took it this way- of just bad grading was writing "AWK" on someone's paper and I thought oh I did that. I did that for years. For years I did that I thought it was helpful maybe because the sentence TO ME, he kept emphasizing "TO ME it wasn't clear, TO ME" and that's not actually helpful at all. Not not at all when I think about it from the students perspective. I think that one of the challenges is we make a lot of assumptions about our learners. In that particular case for me, well you didn't do the work. You were doing this at the last minute and you didn't care and you purposely and there's air quotes about it and you purposely wrote an awkward sentence. Right.

Bonni: [00:04:58] Can you talk about some of the challenges just with how the way that we grade is so loaded with assumptions about our students and therefore is not helpful to them in most cases?

Jesse: [00:05:12] Yeah. I was going to start a sentence with the problem of grades... And I feel like I've I've used that sentence a lot in my career and that it always has something else at the second half because there are quite a lot of problems with grades. But I think in this instance, the problem of grades is the way that they become a shorthand. And the way that we rely on them as a shorthand, as a way of talking about complex things in the learning environment, complex things in a student paper, a way that we kind of reduce the complexity of learning and the complexity of the relationship between a student and teacher into a shorthand.

Jesse: [00:05:53] But what's interesting about that shorthand is it's usually a shorthand that that teacher is extraordinarily well skilled in. Teachers are almost stenographers in the shorthand of grades, grading, marking. And the student on the other end, it doesn't really have any power in that economy. They don't really have any facility with that language necessarily. And they also don't have any control or command over that language.

Jesse: [00:06:19] So when we reduce these complex interactions and discussions about what it is to learn? Or did you learn? Or what is it that you're learning? Or how are you learning? When we reduce those to things like AWK or A/A- or A-/B+ or upper third. All of these strange demarcations that really don't facilitate the communication the feedback that we're trying to have.

Bonni: [00:06:48] We've looked at why you don't grade. What are some of the inherent challenges of it. And one of the things then that has to happen is we have to unlearn a lot of things. And that I mean we have to do this individually. And then our institutions also have to go through this discovery process- I mean we can only hope that our institutions start to question the ways in which we're approaching this.

Bonni: [00:07:15] I was thinking about when Cathy Davidson was on and she shared about her book A New Education that the meat graders did not even find that grades of meat, ABCD were useful enough to them in grading what we might eat. So what we need to unlearn in order to rethink this? And you've called this ungrading.

Jesse: [00:07:42] So I recently wrote a couple of blog posts. One is Why I Don't Grade and then the follow up was How to Ungrade. And I very specifically waited quite a while before I wrote the how to ungrade piece even though it was all in my brain. I waited because I almost feel like we move too quickly to best practices. We move too quickly to how do I do it? Rather than really sitting and thinking about why do we do this? Why do we grade it? When I lead workshops on grading I usually spent a good hour just talking about how does it feel grade? Why do we do it? When did it first happen for us?

Jesse: [00:08:17] So in some ways I kind of want a delay gratification of just jumping in to the how to. But I would say that the biggest how to, and this is both for individuals and institutions, is recognizing that our pedagogic approaches are idiosyncratic and that they should be. We have to recognize that there aren't best practices around grades and assessment and giving feedback to students. That ourwork with students as idiosyncratic. Our work as teachers is idiosyncratic.

Jesse: [00:08:45] And it's also subjective. We try and imagine that we can have some objective measure of learning but something as complicated as learning can't be reduced to an algorithm. It can't be reduced to rows in a spreadsheet. We actually even need the subjective ability of humans to recognize that we are all different. Every teacher is different. All students are different. Which means we have to approach the student as themselves not just as a series of rows and columns and spreadsheets.

Bonni: [00:09:15] What have you found was the reaction to these two posts- maybe the reaction to the first post. I have found that you don't always have a lot of super happy agreeable people on Twitter when I venture over to your tweets.

Jesse: [00:09:28] Well actually what's interesting is that I find that the response to my work on grading and my pushback against grading is usually a lot of people sharing stories with me about the way that grades and that our institutional systems negatively affect the work that they do. So I tend to get a lot of people telling stories and a lot of people agreeing.

Jesse: [00:10:00] I think at this stage of moving to taking action that people have difficulty. And it's in part because our institutions feel like they're on lockdown around issues like learning objectives, around issues of the particular bureaucratic structure that grades live within. And it means that I get a lot of responses like but how could I even do that? But I can't do that at my institution. But I'm an adjunct. But I'm at a community college.

Jesse: [00:10:29] And I get a lot of that. And my response to it is to say well I did it at a community college. I did it as an adjunct. But that isn't a sufficient answer because my experience is very different from other teachers. And so but my response is not to say "I did it, so you could do it too." My response to it is to say this is possible. What we need to do is figure out what is actually possible within our specific circumstances at our specific institution and then go from there.

Jesse: [00:10:59] I don't think it's easy to push back on grading as a system. It is easy though I think to open the conversation about what grades are, how they work, how we can move away from them, how we can work within a system that requires them, open that conversation to students and include students in sort of medalevel dialogue about what grades mean. And that helps a lot.

Jesse: [00:11:24] So I guess my best practice that I would say, the thing that I would recommend for anyone interested in pushing on grading is you don't even actually start with ungrading or removing grades from your classroom. Start by just talking to students about how grades work, what they mean, who they affect, how they affect different students differently. Because in a way they're a power code which means that they are power code that more privileged students have access to more of the control and agency that they need around grades than students who are less privileged.

Jesse: [00:12:00] And also to some degree because of that if you take grades off the table that can also be damaging because sometimes if you take grades off the table, you don't really take off the internalized tacit intrinsic stuff that is lying underneath grades. The grade as a symbol of a way that we engage with students and the way that education thinks about students and teachers. Just taking the grade off the table doesn't do the harder work of demystifying that culture that we've created within education.

Bonni: [00:12:32] I can remember when I was early in teaching in a doctoral program that I had a flight to catch and I needed to get on the road with the rental car and didn't set my boundaries very well and wound up speaking with a student who is very upset about the grade on her paper and we went through it and printed it down and going through it all in excruciating detail. And I should have set better boundaries, I didn't.

Bonni: [00:12:55] And I got home and of course I'm going to follow up and I'm looking through it and I realize actually- because the highest grade you can earn in this program is an A. We had a 45 minute conversation and this woman was still clearly in the clear for a very very high A, even though there's no such thing as a high A. But it was like what you're describing to me is all the things that had come before for her in her educational life that reduced this grade to something so punitive and we're talking just a few points off. But just that we just we are part of a greater system we're also a part of a past of what these students have experienced in grades. And I've been speaking about grades a lot as feedback because that is how I tend to think about them. But of course a lot of people want to use grades for different reasons too. They want to use grades to differentiate the quality- it's meat, it's all back to the meat and the quality of the meat. Oh wait sorry the quality of the papers, the quality of the students. And yeah that's another.

Jesse: [00:13:57] Well I think that the grades get used as a motivator. Grades get used as a sort of punishment. Grades also get used as a way to rank students against one another as a ranking system. And they also get used as a way to communicate to the board or to the accredidation rating board that stuff is happening. So grades are used in so many different ways and I think it's pretty rare that they're only used as feedback.

Jesse: [00:14:29] And I think if we think about grades as feedback immediately I think well is there a better way to give feedback? And what is the better way? So Peter Elbo who has inspired a lot of my kind of practice my day to day practice around grading, he has several different pieces that I really like. One piece he talks about minimal grading and essentially he talks about a system that has a hundred points. So there's a hundred different demarcations. If you give one student and 89 and you give another student an 88. What does that mean to them? What does an 88 intrinsically mean? What does an 89 intrinsically mean? They actually don't communicate anything different to those two students except that one was better than the other. That's the only thing that really gets communicated because what does an 87 mean? I'm an 87. My paper is an 87. It really doesn't convey very much. And so that's a lot, 100 demarcations.

Jesse: [00:15:25] If you go to a grading system where it's A+, A, A-, B, B+, B-. You're still looking at- I think I can't do the math in my head. 15 demarcations. If I tell you you're a 13. Your work is a 13 or your work is a 14.

Jesse: [00:15:43] Does that really convey- does that really give feedback except that if you're 14 you're better than 13? So again and then he kind of goes even- So he argues for there being fewer and fewer demarcations. So a system where you have exemplary, meets expectations, does not meet expectations, a three level system is extraordinarily clear. Each of those levels is extraordinarily clear. And there is very little room to compare students to one another within that system.

Jesse: [00:16:12] And then he goes even further to say you could have a 2 point or a one point or zero point scale. So you could have an assignment where students either turn it in or they don't. And you could also have a zero point scale where students are asked to do the work but then their work is never actually checked. So in a sense they are asked to do the work. But you're not policing whether they do or do not do the work.

Jesse: [00:16:36] And so his argument is that we think about the different assignments we're offering and we think about what kind of scale is actually going to communicate best to the student. So a journal for example, oftentimes people will check journals if the students are asked to journal. They'll look at the Journal. Does that really create the kind of skills that we want to create when we ask students to journal? Journals are about self reflection. It's about intrinsic motivation. It's about touching base with yourself. The idea that a teacher would check your journal for whether or not you did it seems to remove a lot of what a journal is for. And so that might be a perfectly appropriate thing to use a zero point scale. So if students didn't do it, they just didn't do it.

Jesse: [00:17:19] And something like participating in a conversation. Did you show up for the conversation? How do you how do you measure that? And oftentimes we're measuring the wrong things because. Did you show up for the conversation? Usually we measure did you speak within the conversation? Which really does harm to introverts for example or people from different cultures where there are different cultural norms where participating in a conversation doesn't always mean speaking. And in fact, we need people in conversations who are listening, who are summarizing, we need people to play different roles and conversation. So in that sense ranking students against one another doesn't end up being a very good mechanism for creating community. Because you actually don't want every student to be the same. You want students to be different from one another and to succeed in different ways.

Bonni: [00:18:09] I know that you have some real criticisms of the use of rubrics. I did want to mention that I have used rubrics to try to avoid something which is-

Jesse: [00:18:25] [both laughing] DUN-DUN-DUN. The Darth Vader music comes in. Bonni Uses rubrics!

Bonni: [00:18:25] I know. I'm trying to less and less, I promise. But one of the things I used to do was allow poor- what I construed as poor writing skills to have what is called the halo effect or the opposite of the Halo Effect where because that wasn't good, then the whole entire evaluation of the paper came down. They could have had some really good insights. So That has been helpful I wonder if Peter Elbow's work or your thoughts on this if there are ways in which we cannot allow one aspect of what we're evaluating to become overemphasized in our evaluation.

Jesse: [00:19:07] What's interesting is that I talk about the minimal grading and I talk about how using fewer demarcations can create and offer better feedback. There's another extreme that we could go to in a positive way which is to recognize that humans are really high resolution. By that I mean that we are millions of pixels. That our work as millions of pixels. That our work has millions of different variables happening within it. So to try and reduce that to a number like 87, your work is an 87 reduces the complexity of human creativity, human conversation, human dialogue. And so to recognize that sometimes we just need to talk to students about what they're learning and talk to them about their learning and not have expectations about what shape that conversation might take. Be open for surprise. Great books don't create much space in them for surprise. I think often the worst rubrics don't create space for surprise. They don't create space for discovery or epiphanies, things you wouldn't expect. They try to anticipate learning.

Jesse: [00:20:16] And so my pushback against rubrics is twofold. One is that they try and imagine that we can know what students should and could learn before they do. The other thing that I would pushback on is that making a rubric is a really really great way of thinking through what the goals of an assignment are. It's a great way to think through what learning looks like, what success looks like. And so I ask why wouldn't we have students do that? Why are we taking from students the most important kind of activity, the most important metacognitive work that they could do? So that's why if if people want to use rubrics I say well have students build them. Or at least have students build them with you. Or talk to students about them so that they're doing that work. And it's the same reason why when I talk about not grading people ask well what is it that you do do? Don't institutions require you to submit a final grade at the end? Of course they do. I know. They all have. And I submit a final grade at the end. And what I do in my teaching is self evaluations and I have students doing a lot of self evaluating, some peer evaluating as well. But the self-evaluation sort of reflective letters, process letters, process essays, and artist statements depending on the class.

Jesse: [00:21:41] One of the things I would say about that is that students often know better whether they're learning than I could because I'm not inside their brain. They are. And so why not rely on them?

Jesse: [00:21:52] The other thing I would say is that evaluating is a way that we learn. And so asking them to evaluate themselves ends up being a really important learning experience for them. And it wouldn't work the same way if they were asked to do a self evaluation but at the end of the day I was just going to be the one evaluating them because it wouldn't seem real. And so having it be actually real. Ninety five percent of the time I take the grade they gave themselves and I bubble it in on the bubble sheet at the end of the term.

Jesse: [00:22:25] I do change sometimes and that's mostly when someone- when it's clear that they're either not fully engaged in the process of self evaluating or and this is more often when they are belittling themselves when they're not. When they say something like I did everything but I just I'm not an A person, so I'm going to give myself an A minus. That's the other thing that I'm not willing to accept. I'm not willing to accept modesty I guess in self-evaluation. Honesty is what I'm looking for.

Bonni: [00:22:59] In your role of faculty development you are not only coaching and advising those that teach in the humanities. What inspiration have you taken from people doing some work on rethinking grading in the sciences?

Jesse: [00:23:15] Well one thing I would say about that is that when I talk about grading I often get pushback. While this wouldn't work in my discipline or this wouldn't work in the sciences, this wouldn't work in my statistics class. And I always find that strange because I think I don't necessarily think of disciplines as discrete containers. They're complex. And so to lump the entirety of a discipline into one container that way has never made sense to me. It's a very humanity's way of thinking though I recognize that that sort of disciplines don't exist. Everything's fuzzy.

[00:23:50] Interestingly the first pedagogy book I ever read was a book called How Children Fail by John Holt. It's a book about elementary math education. Some of my most basic fundamental pedagogy and approaches to grading are inspired by this book by John Holt who is talking about teaching math and really talking about the need for in the sciences and math and the social sciences to push even harder on systems that would imagine that there are discrete truths or that there are discrete measures for success. So essentially he's arguing that math is actually extraordinarily complex. So to reduce the measure of success within a discipline like math is to confuse the complexity of that discipline.

Jesse: [00:24:41] So I find that that the people who I'm really inspired by are not necessarily the people who are grading like I do or teaching like I do. But the people who are thinking really critically about what their work in their particular classroom looks like and how they can push upon it.

Jesse: [00:24:56] I have a colleague at University of Mary Washington, Parrish Waters who is currently using a tool called Blue Pulse. And he's using Blue Pulse to have students to give feedback. And they both give feedback on the class and the tool kind of allows for real- I haven't used it extensively myself- but it allows for real time either anonymous or not anonymous feedback. And so he has it so that the students can kind of give- it's almost like a real high resolution version of a clicker. So it's not just A, B, or C but it's that students can actually offer feedback about what they're learning, what they're stumbling blocks are. They can give feedback on the class as it's happening and it's not really feedback to him. This is working, this isn't working. But it's also like almost like a check and it's like a constant real time way that they're checking in. And he uses that tool in order to get the pulse of the room, to sort of feel what the hum of the room is. But I think it also could be used for a kind of self reflective metacognitive here's where I'm at right now check in.

Bonni: [00:25:59] Jesse, what else should we be thinking about in terms of how to ungrade?

Jesse: [00:26:05] I think we should be thinking about not necessarily jumping full on into the pool, thinking about how we can start to dip our toes in and how we can let our legs dangle in the water. So if you can't just eliminate grades from your classroom, think about what you can do. What subtle changes can you make? And actually I find that that works better because then if you change only one thing, one small thing you end up getting a lot of feedback about whether it was successful or not. If you change everything in your teaching and you have a very different experience in the classroom, you can't always know what thing that you changed made a difference.

Jesse: [00:26:37] So one of the things I would recommend is don't think about removing grading from your entire class. Can you remove it from one piece of your class? Can you create grade free zones? So for example, what if there were no grades for the first third of the term? And then grades start. And so in a sense, you could talk about that first third of the class as a developmental space. It's like the playground, the sandbox. And then we're going to get sort of prepped for the other work that we're going to do in the last two thirds of the class.

Jesse: [00:27:08] Now one thing to mention is that you could create grade free zones. You have to be really careful about how you do it because if you create a grade free zone for the last third of the class and there's grades for the first two thirds but then you remove them from the last third. It's not going to work quite as well because we're so easy to fall into the trap of grading ourselves, grading each other, thinking about our work as graded that it's a little harder to pull people out of it at the end. But if you are creating a grade free zone at the beginning, it's a really nice space for students to just do the work at the class.

Jesse: [00:27:44] So oftentimes I just don't- even with self-evaluations, I don't have students self evaluating until at least a third of the way through the class because I just want to just let's not worry about that yet. We can worry about that later. In fact we're all going to worry about that. So let's take a break.

Bonni: [00:27:59] One of the things you talked about is not just thinking about grades in terms of evaluating but also in terms of motivation. And one of the ways I continue to just be inspired is thinking about open education because you want to really get motivation for your students. And as you pointed out, this is something you can actually do in relatively small ways that don't require drastic changes in your teaching but open up the classroom a little bit. Invite people in to give students feedback on their work. Send students out to get feedback on their work.

Bonni: [00:28:31] I will never forget just in terms of having what are traditionally called Poster sessions. But to me, it was like building a fair. I mean I had students build a Barbie Dream House. It was three dimensional. I mean just incredible the work they did. But I also had a young man whose dad died a couple of weeks before that event. And what was important to me was that he didn't feel like people took pity on him to get his education, so he did fulfill the assignment. But it was done. And it met the expectations. So I had it sort of for that not a huge grade you know rigor around it. But to see the extent with which the creativity flourished and a lot of that was because of these this extra presence and the value that that might bring to some of them not to all of them.

Jesse: [00:29:21] Yeah. I actually try and have all of the work that my students do, I would call that authentic assessment. That there is there is actually something not bureaucratic in the structure of the class that is giving them feedback, whether they're getting feedback from each other, or doing something like putting on a film festival and getting authentic feedback from the community, from a community of peers that they really respect.

Jesse: [00:29:48] And so I actually don't have probably even more radical than me not grading is I don't have any of my students turn in their work to me. I don't receive any work throughout the term. I talk about this as me going to the work rather than the work coming to me. I'm not an inbox for student work. Instead what I am is I'm a curious listener and a sort of expert feedback giver of student work. I'm an expert reader of their work but I'm still a reader. I'm still someone who's curious and interested in them. And so I have them either put put their work on a blog, put their work in a museum gallery, and then I go to the work.

Jesse: [00:30:31] And I think that's an important shift. You know we're not receptacles. So when you start to push on the notion of grading what you start to realize is that we've built a whole system that's designed- Why do we receive work as though we're in boxes? So that we can efficiently grade it and give it back to students. But the problem there is not as much the the grades. The problem is that symptom that it creates this transactional relationship between us and students.

Bonni: [00:30:57] This is the time and the show in which we each get to give recommendations. And I have two. One is just off of what Dessie just said about becoming curious and interested in our students. And it's an exercise that I'd like to do that in some context is called Examen, but it's this idea of asking two questions. You can do this with yourself when you're journaling, or you could do with a group of people like in the class. And ask since the last time we met, what brought you life? And since the last time we we met, what took life away from you?

Bonni: [00:31:29] I find when I do it I often get "what does this life thing mean? What are you talking about?" So sometimes I'll use the word joy and what's brought you joy since we last got together? And what has taken that joy away from you? And not forcing everyone to respond. Everyone can pass and I try not to go ever in a particular order so it's not a forced response.

Bonni: [00:31:50] But I really work to be curious and interested in my students on everything from what that process brings up is really some of the deeper things that are going on in their lives all the way to sometimes texting back and forth, music, songs that they think I'll like or songs I think they'll like. I mean that's just fun to know what music they're into, what are they watching, what are they reading, and what are they experiencing? And especially if it's something new and different that I'm not accustomed to, really hearing more about that and they get a kick out of it. So that's my first recommendation is a couple of questions you can ask to really bring a sense of community.

Bonni: [00:32:24] And then the second one is a documentary on HBO called The Final Year. And it's really well done documentary looking at the final year of Obama's presidency. These are some tremendous leaders that are profiled in this documentary that, to me, just exude the values of our country. And it's just a really well done piece of work. So it's The Final Year and it looks at the last year of Obama's presidency. And Jesse, I'm going to pass it over to you to recommend.

Jesse: [00:32:55] Actually I have two. One has a book that I haven't recommended to people in a long time, but somehow our conversation reminded me of it. And it is the book the Deep Play by Diane Ackerman. She starts by talking about different animal species that play regularly and about how play is used as a sort of a learning mechanism. For most animals, like think of kittens playing in order to learn how to be kittens. But then she also talks about animal species where play as intrinsic and where they continue to do it as adults. In particular she talks about whales and she talks about ravens and magpies. And it reminds me how important that that space of play is for learning and about how grading ends up frustrating that play.

Jesse: [00:33:46] And it connects to my other recommendation which is the documentary because you said a documentary. This one popped into my mind. It is a nailbiter. It's like a suspenseful documentary, I teach documentary film and there's not a lot of documentaries that are like end of your seat thrillers. This one is called Icarus. It's a Netflix documentary and it's about doping in sports. And it's about essentially the large network of cheating within sports. And it's interesting to me that I think about like sports, games, play, cheating like why is that that there exists within within the sports community this large network of doping in order to cheat or win. It feels like almost the ranking of people against one another within sports creates an environment that not only makes cheating thrive but almost makes cheating necessary and that's what this documentary interestingly explores. But I think in some ways, if we're worried about students cheating, the answer is not to punish them for the cheating, the answer is to find out what that's a symptom of. Like what's the deeper problem?

Bonni: [00:34:53] Thank you so much for those recommendations and for this conversation about ungrading. I'm looking forward to our future conversations because we have an opportunity to bring some of the people that you have been involved with with the digital pedagogy lab into future episodes. I'm just looking forward to those airing and how those stories all get woven together. I just treasure the opportunity to continue to learn from you. You're my faculty development professional. I don't know if you know it or not. You don't get paid very well for that job. It's just so fun being connected with you.

Jesse: [00:35:26] Yeah great. I would love to live on this podcast if I could.

Bonni: [00:35:29] Oh and I'd love to have you do it. Thanks so much for being back.

Jesse: [00:35:34] Thanks.

Bonni: [00:35:36] It's been great getting to have another conversation with Jesse Stommel today and I look forward to the ones I mentioned earlier are going to be coming in the next few months. And thanks for your collaboration Jesse and bringing in some of your participants in the digital pedagogy lab to future episodes of Teaching in Higher Ed.

Bonni: [00:35:56] Thanks to all of you for listening and for your continued ideas for who might be a good guest for the show. There's a way to submit a potential guest on the Teaching in Higher Ed website if you'd like to do that or you're always welcome to send me a tweet. I'm on Twitter @Bonni208. Thanks for listening. We've got some great guests coming up and excited. Look for a new academic year and all the possibilities they're in. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jesse Stommel shares about how to ungrade on episode 217 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Recent Templates

Looking for how to videos and tutorials?

Are you too a #SlidesManiac?

Shout out to SlidesMania for creating so many unique and fun templates! I especially love the virtual notebooks!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SlidesMania | Free Google Slides themes and PowerPoint templates.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The best 100% free Google Slides themes and pptx templates. Your PowerPoint and Google Slides will never be the same. No registration or download limits!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
High school is perhaps one of the biggest turning points of a person's life. Sure, there's still college after that, but not everyone gets the chance to move that stage forward.

So while you're all in the stage where you go wonder what you really want to be like in the years to come, why not try listening to Podcasts to give yourself some insights about life. There are scores of podcasts that you could find all over the internet. Topics range from Academic Related stuff where you could be able to extend your knowledge in any particular class that you like, to inspirational ones which would give you some great things to think about how to live your life and how to enjoy what you have.

So here's a collection of 50 Podcasts that any high school student should listen to, categorized into the four general topics would help you focus on what you might choose to become in the years to come.
Academic Related Podcasts
Not everyone can be a History Buff, a Grammar Nazi, a Science Geek, or a Poetry enthusiast, but a person could try listening to one of these podcasts to have a bit more of new things learned from among every classes like Science, Math, English, History and Literature.

There are things that we can't just learn in a four walled classroom, which is why these podcasts could offer you more practical applications of the theories they discuss to you. Apart from that is you get to know more advance stuff that could help you appreciate learning these classes more.
General and Special Interest Podcasts
Everyone has their own sets of hobbies and interests. Some might be more of into arts (in all sorts of forms) or perhaps photography, or knitting and crocheting. Others might be interested in the latest innovations in technology. Others are superbly curious of how things work so they could make videos of it on YouTube. There are those out there who like stuff about Animals, the Universe, the Mind, Documentaries and Conspiracy Theories and so on and so forth.

So for the sake of having a lot of youngsters out there who are into several things, here's a list of podcasts for those various hobbies and interests.
Entrepreneurship
Isn't there a saying about starting up a business while you are young?

Whether you're into selling things for auction at eBay, or having garage sales on weekends, making homemade cookies and cupcakes for deliveries, it's about time you get to learn more on the techniques on how to make your business flourish into something bigger. Who knows if you could make your business your career if you decide not to go further into college.

Since it's never just about learning the theories about business, but having the ability to be quick and efficient in decision making, why not invest a bit of your time listening to pros on how they handle their business?
Inspirational & Motivational
There are plenty of days we feel down. High School is probably among those days when you feel like everything isn't going how you want them and that you feel like there's no point to all the things happening around you. Now, remember that people around you are having the same struggles too. Some of them have worse things to think and feel about themselves but they still push themselves to go on with their lives. Get to know their heartwarming stories that would tug on your heartstrings. Live by their examples and inspire others like how they inspired you.
Dennis Lee is the lead teacher at - where they provide hundreds of video lessons and tutorials for any kinds of maths, including Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
50 Of The Best Podcasts For High School Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
50 Of The Best Podcasts For High School Students by Dennis Lee, StudyPug.com High school is perhaps one of the ... 50 Of The Best Podcasts For High School Students Read More

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fun icebreaker questions for teams (remote and in-house!)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You can use these simple team building activities and games to quickly help diffuse anxiety or awkward silences in meetings.

# data[].attributes.body
This send each student back their feedback personally.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Providing valuable feedback to students in a timely manner can be a challenge. The more time that passes between an assignment's submission and the teacher's feedback, the less meaningful that feedback becomes.

Since I'm all about using digital tools to increase productivity, I embarked on quest to enhance the efficiency of my grading process. Not surprisingly, there are a variety of digital tools out there to help with this. I wrote about one of my favorite digital grading tools, Doctopus and Goobric, here. Doctopus and Goobric allows teachers to provide feedback on student work in Google Classroom within a single browser tab. It's a major time saver and has been a game changer for me in the classroom.

So in the spirit of game changers, I'm going to share with you another digital grading game changer: autoCrat.

AutoCrat is a Google add-on that automates the creation and sharing of digital documents via Google Form Submissions. Teachers can use this versatile tool to create a digital rubric in Google Forms, generating a Google Doc or PDF that automatically shares with students in Google Drive.

Like any Google Form, submission results are stored in a master Google Sheet for quick reference at any time. This helps teachers streamline their grading system while providing students with quick, efficient and organized feedback in the process.

autoCrat vs. Doctopus and Goobric

Both tools have allowed me to provide feedback to students much quicker than before, but I love and use them both for different reasons.

One drawback with Doctopus and Goobric is that the actual rubric, when appended to the bottom of a student's Doc, can sometimes appear a bit disorganized. If you use Doctopus and Goobric, you probably know what I mean. The aesthetics are not always ideal. Because autoCrat utilizes a Google Doc template you create on your own, you can design your rubric to look however you want. This makes autoCrat's rubric more aesthetically pleasing, and thus may be easier for students to navigate. Another thing to consider is that Doctopus and Goobric are exclusive to student work submitted in Google Classroom, so autoCrat is a more versatile tool.

However, in terms of skill level and setup, autoCrat is a bit more complex. While Doctopus and Goobric does require some setup in the beginning, autoCrat has more moving pieces and, in my opinion, there's a greater learning curve. Also, using a Google Form as a rubric (rather than the rubric appearing at the top of the student's assignment like with Doctopus and Goobric) requires having more than one browser tab or window open while grading digital submissions. An extra tab isn't the end of the world, but when you're used to toggling between student work within a single tab, it's worth mentioning.

Personally, I use Doctopus and Goobric to grade Google Doc submissions and autoCrat for pretty much everything else. autoCrat is ideal for presentations, speeches, or any other scenario where you want to provide students with instant feedback on the spot. Rather than fumbling around with paper rubrics, you can have the Google Form open on your phone, iPad or computer. This allows you to score students effortlessly in real time, and your feedback is automatically sent to the student afterwards.

Ultimately, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with both tools. You can learn more about Doctopus and Goobric here. To learn more about autoCrat, keep reading.

To get started with autoCrat, you'll need a few things first.

1. The autoCrat add-on for Google Sheets. Click "Add-ons" -> "Get add-ons" on the file menu in Google Sheets. You only have to do this once.

2. A Google Form rubric. More on that in a minute.

3. A Google Doc template that corresponds with your Google Form. Also more on that in a minute.

4. The RosterSync add-on for Google Sheets (optional, but recommended if you use Google Classroom).

The Google Form Rubric

Gathering student emails

autoCrat works by creating a Google Doc (based on your pre-made template) from your Google Form submissions. This new document will automatically share with students in their Google Drive. This means you'll need to include the email addresses of your students' Google accounts on your Form; otherwise, autoCrat will have nowhere to send the files.

If you use Google Classroom, I recommend the Google Sheets add-on RosterSync to create a spreadsheet of your students' email addresses. You can then copy and paste all emails at once into your Google Form. On your spreadsheet, simply Ctrl+A then Ctrl + C to highlight and copy all emails. Then, in Forms, place your cursor on the first option line and paste (Ctrl + V). This should paste all emails in one fell swoop, rather than having to individually copy and paste each address.

If you don't use Google Classroom, you'll have to find a different way to gather your students' emails in advance. You could have them fill out a quick Google Form at the beginning of the year. This way you'll still have their emails in a spreadsheet, and you can copy/paste them into your Form when needed.

I recommend using the "Dropdown" option in Forms so the emails don't take up too much space on your completed Form.
Note: Because my students' email addresses contain a portion of their name, I do not include a separate category for their real names because I already know who's who. If your student emails are something like an ID number, you'll need to include a section to select their full names as well. Most learning management platforms have an option to export a roster to Excel, so you can still use the copy/paste trick to save time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creating a Digital Rubric with Google Forms and autoCrat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Providing valuable feedback to students in a timely manner can be a challenge. The more time that passes between an assignment's submission and the teacher's feedback, the less meaningful that feedback becomes. Since I'm all about using digital tools to increase productivity, I embarked o

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Turning Texts, Images & Videos into Conversations

NowComment has the most sophisticated collaboration tools available for group discussion, annotation, and curation of texts, images, and videos.

It displays threaded commenting alongside the sentences and paragraphs of texts, the areas of images, and timestamps of videos to create engaging online conversations literally in context. Brainstorm, debate, and collaborate as never before!

Featured Public Documents

Key Features

Free Accounts

Upload and discuss documents with people you invite or with the whole Internet ("Public Documents") at no cost!

Time Efficient

Interesting comments can be found quickly (they're tied to relevant document passages), and summary lines make skimming fast and easy.

Powerful

Any sentence, paragraph, image, or video can have multiple conversations, keeping discussions focused and on-topic.

Simple to Use

Our interface is intuitive, your documents are accessible wherever you are, and we do the hosting and maintenance.

Feature-Rich and Scalable

NowComment has the features to handle very large groups: notifications, assignments, subgroups, moderation, and more.

Read It Your Way

By default comments are off to the side (with multiple sort options!), but you can also display comments in-line.

Click on a comment's summary to see it in context

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Turning Texts, Images & Videos into Conversations NowComment has the most sophisticated collaboration tools available for group discussion, annotation, and curation of texts, images, and videos. It displays threaded commenting alongside the sentences and paragraphs of texts, the areas of images, and timestamps of videos to create engaging online conversations literally in context.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The platform for rational debate. Empowering reason through friendly and open discussions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Great questions for Math, Social Studies and Science Teachers.

# data[].attributes.subject
Great questions for Math, Social Studies and Science Teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Parlay is an AI-powered instructional platform that helps teachers facilitate meaningful, measurable, and inclusive class discussions. Join over a million teachers and students. Start using Parlay for free in your class today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
2) Masterclasses, easy-to-follow tips, and inspiration from top writing experts

Whether you're writing a new cover letter, a fantasy epic, or a college admissions essay, we've got the expert advice you need to make it unforgettable. Our roster of writing experts includes college professors from top-ranked universities, #1 NY Times bestselling authors, industry leading professionals, and more.

Whatever you're writing, we're here to help make it shine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Great Writing Made Easy With ProWritingAid

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily improve your work with AI writing assistant software as well as valuable training and insights from writing experts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From the extraordinary talents of everyday people around the globe, to awe-inspiring wonders of the natural world, come remarkable great big stories.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dr. Amanda Sterk

Founder of College UnMazed

Saved $100k in total design costs and earned $30k+ in extra income

"Whether I needed visuals saved as PNG for social media, a PDF for a presentation, or any other file type, Venngage facilitated it with a few clicks."

Read Case Study on How Amanda Sterk Turned Stuffy Content into Beautiful Infographics with Venngage Read Case Study

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Venngage | Professional Infographic Maker | 10,000+ Templates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Join over 5 Million professionals who consider Venngage the infographic maker of choice. Pick from 10,000+ professional templates made for businesses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites
The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents.
Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents. Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Meditation and Relaxation

In this constantly changing world, slow down, take a breath, and listen to Vicky. Let her walk you through mediation to feel relaxed and ready to continue your day.

Vicky practices Reiki, meditation, and works with women around the world that decide to become their own inspiration and who seek to fly with their own wings, fight for their goals, and live with the intention of leaving a legacy. Warrior women that believe in their abilities and walk along a path towards freedom and love.

Learn more by visiting her website HERE.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this constantly changing world, slow down, take a breath, and listen to Vicky. Let her walk you through mediation to feel relaxed and ready to continue your day. Vicky practices Reiki, meditation, and works with women around the world that decide to become their own inspiration and who seek to fly with their own wings, fight for their goals, and live with the intention of leaving a legacy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to share voice messages over the interwebs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We’ve compiled an extensive list of 75 digital tools that can help teachers use formative assessment to elicit evidence of student learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
elink has everything you need to save bookmarks and build webpages, email newsletters, RSS website widgets, social bio links, social walls, automated content and more. Create content in minutes!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
elink.io | Newsletter Creator, Web Page Builder, Bookmarker

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
elink is an all-in-one content curation tool that helps you save and edit links from anywhere on the web and turn them into beautiful email newsletters, website content, single web pages, social media bio links, and much more! Generate content at the speed of light with elink.io

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As screen time concerns are on the rise, many parents are turning to podcasts as a fun (and often educational) way to engage kids - without the screen. But as children's audio content has flooded the airwaves, it can be a challenge to find the good stuff that's also appropriate. Luckily we've discovered some excellent kid-friendly podcasts that you and your family will love listening to. (For more age-targeted picks, try these podcasts for little kids or these favorites with tweens and teens.) If you're not super familiar with how to "do" podcasts, check out this guide which has everything you need to get started, including a list of podcast players.

Check out these 25 awesome picks for kids - including perfect bedtime stories, science exploration, cool news and more.

For the whole family

Kids are always asking seemingly simple questions that have surprisingly complex answers, such as "Why is the sky blue?" and "Who invented words?" This cute biweekly radio show/podcast takes on answering them. Each episode features several kid-submitted questions, usually on a single theme. With the help of experts, it gives clear, interesting answers. Best for: All ages

This fun and fast-moving spin-off of the popular Brains On! podcast is a family-friendly debate podcast. A kid judge listens to and scores the rousing, fact-based arguments of two contestants. With episodes like "Dragons versus Unicorns" and "Pizza versus Tacos," kids will be hooked, and they won't even notice that they're learning how to defend their ideas along the way. Best for: Big kids

This charming fantasy adventure will have listeners of all ages glued to the speakers until the very end. Two young princes seek to save their kingdoms and in the process face villainy, dragons, romance and a magical forest full of danger. Though kissing happens, it is treated with sweetness and humor. A fairy tale for our times, this audio drama is a great introduction to the world of fiction podcasts. Best for: Tweens

This popular NPR radio show is now also the most downloaded podcast in the country. It combines personal stories, journalism and even stand-up comedy for an enthralling hour of content. Host Ira Glass does a masterful job of drawing in listeners and weaving together several "acts" or segments on a big, relatable theme. Teens can get easily hooked along with their parents, but keep in mind that many episodes have mature concepts and frequent swearing. Best for: Teens

Great for learning

The catchy soundtrack is the star in this delightful podcast from children's music duo Andrew & Polly (not surprising since the hosts have created songs for Wallykazam! and Sesame Studios). But this funny program also covers a range of topics by talking to actual kids as well as experts, providing thoughtful fun for young ones and their grown-ups. Best for: Preschoolers and little kids

Kids like to be informed and engaged, but talking to kids about the news can be a challenge. This podcast, created by moms who are broadcast journalists, offers young listeners five minutes of kid-friendly news (followed by a quick quiz) each day, five days a week. Perfectly timed for waking up, KiDNuz lets you start the day off on a worldy note. Best for: All ages

Reminiscent of the TV show Drunk History (minus the alcohol), this amusing podcast features people telling interesting, little-known stories from history with an emphasis on fun and humor. Although it's not specifically a music podcast, each episode contains an often-silly song that's sure to get stuck in your head. There's even a quiz segment, so kids will learn something, too. Best for: All ages

This excellent biweekly podcast features middle schoolers talking about a popular middle-grade or YA book as well as sharing their favorite book recommendations. Public radio figure Kitty Felde runs the discussion, and each episode includes a passage of that week's book read by a celebrity guest. Best for: Tweens and teens

Best bedtime podcasts

These 10- to 15-minute stories are a perfect way to lull your little one to sleep. The podcast is updated every other week, and each episode contains a kid-friendly story, read by a soothing narrator. Short and sweet, it's as comforting as listening to your favorite picture book read aloud. Best for: Preschoolers and little kids

Thanks to the hosts' soothing voices and a pre-story meditation, your kid might fall asleep to this podcast before the story even gets underway. But if not, the gentle adventures on Ahway Island will also sweep them off to dreamland. This podcast teaches kid-friendly mindfulness practices like "deep dragon breaths" that can be carried into waking life as well. Best for: All ages

With wacky episode titles such as "What if Legos were alive?" and "What if sharks had legs?," this series takes ridiculous "what if" questions submitted by young listeners and turns them into a new story every two weeks. Host Eric O'Keefe uses silly voices and crazy characters to capture the imaginations of young listeners with a Mad Libs-like randomness. Best for: Kids

One of the first kids' podcasts to grasp podcasts' storytelling capabilities, this podcast is still going strong with kid-friendly renditions of classic stories, fairy tales, and original works. These longer stories with a vivid vocabulary are great for bigger kids past the age for picture books but who still love a good bedtime story. Best for: Big kids

Best podcasts for road trips

This serialized podcast tells the story of an 8-year-old boy living on an interplanetary space station who explores the galaxy and solves mysteries with his friends. With no violence or edgy content and with two seasons totaling over 13 hours of content, this sci-fi adventure is perfect for long car rides. Best for: Kids and tweens

In the tradition of The NeverEnding Story, this original fable centers on a magical book that takes its readers to a world where they find the strength to overcome any obstacle. The writing itself is beautiful, and the stories are immersive. Themes can be serious (bullying, homelessness) but are handled with sensitivity and remain appropriate for kids. These powerful, modern stories are sure to entertain and provoke meaningful family conversations. Best for: Big kids and tweens

Inspired by old-timey radio shows - complete with over-the-top sound effects ― this exciting serial podcast follows a plucky journalist who goes on adventures looking for her big scoop. Tweens will love Eleanor's wit and daring and might even pick up some great messages along the way. There's even a "Road Trip Edition" episode with the entire first season in a single audio file. Best for: Tweens

This Peabody Award-winning scripted mystery series has been called a Stranger Things for tweens. With a voice cast of actual middle schoolers, a gripping, suspenseful plot, and interactive tie-ins, this story about an 11-year-old searching for his missing friends will keep tweens hooked to the speakers for hours - more than five, to be exact. Best for: Tweens

Structured like a community radio show for the fictional desert town of Night Vale, the mysterious is ordinary and vice versa in this delightfully eerie series. Both the clever concept and the smooth voice of narrator Cecil Baldwin have helped the show develop a cult-like following. It's a bit creepy and dark for kids, but older listeners will find it perfect for a nighttime drive along a deserted highway. Best for: Teens

Best podcasts for science lovers

NPR's first show for kids is exactly the sort of engaging, well-produced content you would expect from the leaders in radio and audio series. Hosts Guy Raz and Mindy Thomas exude joy and curiosity while discussing the latest news in science and technology in a way that's enjoyable for kids and informative for grown-ups. Best for: All ages

Similar to But Why, this is another radio show/podcast that takes kid-submitted science questions and answers them with the help of experts. What makes this one different is it tends to skew a bit older, both in its questions and answers, and it has a different kid co-host each week. The result is a fun show that's as silly as it is educational. Best for: Kids and tweens

Often compared to a kid-friendly Radiolab, this podcast not only addresses fascinating topics but also tries to foster a love of science itself by interviewing scientists about their process and discoveries. The hosts don't assume that listeners have a science background - but even kids who think they don't like science may change their minds after listening to this podcast. Best for: Kids and tweens

From the people behind the award-winning website HowStuffWorks, this frequently updated podcast explains the ins and outs of everyday things from the major ("How Free Speech Works") to the mundane ("How Itching Works"). Longer episodes and occasional adult topics such as alcohol, war, and politics make this a better choice for older listeners, but hosts Josh and Chuck keep things engaging and manage to make even complex topics relatable. And with over 1,000 episodes in its archive, you might never run out of new things to learn. Best for: Teens

Best podcasts for music fans

A delightful offering from a music education specialist and his co-host daughter will get kids of all ages singing, rhyming, moving and engaging in all kinds of musical games. The segments, games, and songs are so silly and upbeat that the whole family will enjoy participating. Little listeners can even add their voice to the theme song in the podcast's electronically compiled kid's choir! Best for: All ages

Kids' music can be ... well, annoying. But "kindie rock" (aka, indie rock for kids) is here to help. This two-hour podcast styled like a DJ radio show features new and old songs that kids will love, many by parents' favorite musicians. Selections are generally high-energy rock, folk, or even punk-inspired songs, but listeners will also hear mellower tunes, as well as bilingual (English/Spanish) songs and hip-hop hits for a well-rounded musical experience. Best for: All ages

Families can enjoy rock and roll without the downsides with this fun radio show/podcast. Each week there's a new playlist combining kids' music from artists such as They Might Be Giants, with kid-appropriate songs from artists that grown-ups will recognize, such as Elvis Costello, The Ramones and John Legend. It's a perfect compromise for parents tired of cheesy kids' music. Best for: Kids

This weekly podcast from NPR covers the latest and greatest in new music with a particular focus on emerging artists and indie musicians. It covers a wide range of genres and even includes artist interviews and live performances. Some songs contain adult themes and explicit language, but teens will love discovering a new favorite that you've probably never heard of. Best for: Teens

Common Sense Media editorial intern Mandie Caroll contributed to this article.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
parenting  media technology kids partner syndication podcast common sense media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Forget Screen Time. Here Are 25 Best Podcasts For Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As screen time concerns are on the rise, many parents are turning to podcasts as a fun (and often educational) way to engage kids - without the screen. But as children's audio content has flooded the airwaves, it can be a challenge to find the good stuff that's also appropriate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Technologies and 21st Century Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
21st century skills are an important consideration for every educator as we are striving to prepare today's students to become prepared for the competitive global market of tomorrow. This website seeks to provide a resource that allows educators an opportunity to easily navigate educationally relevant Web 2.0 tools, resources, and examples of standards alignment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Moovly Uses Cookies

We use cookies to personalize our website and offering to your interests and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our products, you agree to our use of cookies.​

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Moovly l Online Video Editor and Video Maker for Business and Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Easily make engaging videos. Explainer video. Promo video. Training videos. Video tutorial. It's simple with Moovly, video maker just for you. Try for free.

# data[].attributes.headline
Use Google Sites to Create your own website! 

# data[].attributes.subject
Use Google Sites to Create your own website! 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On August 12th, 2019, Sycamore colleagues will gather for a professional day of learning at the high school. This site will provide you with specific details regarding the structure of the day.

# data[].attributes.body
Class of 2020

# data[].attributes.body
Here are some other examples: https://hyperdocs.co/index.php/samples

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hyperdoc Resources Just a few….so many more out there The Hyperdoc Handbook: What a hyperdoc is and what it isn’t Samples Templates Buy the Book How Hyperdocs Can Transform Your Teaching - Cult of Pedagogy ISTE Presentation Hyperdocs Facebook Page Example Lesson Plan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dear Parents and Caregivers and the So Fresh Class of 22!

Can you believe it? We are on the final leg of this race toward Sophomore Year! The goal is to survive state testing over the next few weeks...then we can get back to having BIG FUN!

So Fresh Class of 22,

Memoirs are real as they deal with life...choose your book and then discuss it with your folks at home. You know what your values and interests are; select a book that honors both.

There's a book on here for the advanced, mature and the hesitant, struggling readers. Click on the image below and it will redirect you to Amazon where you can read the novel description and purchase it in one fell swoop! Find a partner so that you're not reading alone. Books are due April 15, 2019...don't wait until the last minute to get your book. We're moving full speed ahead. Let's get it!

We have several copies of this book here at SHS, we used to do this as a whole class read. If you'd like one to borrow you can or if finances are tight right now, this is a choice option for you. Plus, it's such a good story!

Ms. Pitts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can you believe it? We are on the final leg of this race toward Sophomore Year! The goal is to survive state testing over the next few weeks...then we can get back to having BIG FUN! So Fresh Class of 22, Memoirs are real as they deal with life...choose your book and then discuss it with your folks at home.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Can you believe it? We are on the final leg of this race toward Senior Year! It feels just like yesterday that they were tenth and a half graders. Now they are driving, working and getting ready to read another novel! Yes! We are ecstatic because the list below is FIRE!

Rising Seniors,

Click on the image below and it will redirect you to Amazon where you can read the novel description and purchase it in one fell swoop! We are ending the year on a high note and we're so excited! Find a partner so that you're not reading alone. Books are due April 15, 2019...you've got an entire month to make your decision! Let's get it!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Can you believe it? We are on the final leg of this race toward Senior Year! It feels just like yesterday that they were tenth and a half graders. Now they are driving, working and getting ready to read another novel! Yes! We are ecstatic because the list below is FIRE!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Remove Image Background 100% Automatically and Free

Remove backgrounds 100% automatically in 5 seconds with one click

Thanks to remove.bg's clever AI, you can slash editing time - and have more fun!

No matter if you want to make a background transparent (PNG), add a white background to a photo, extract or isolate the subject, or get the cutout of a photo - you can do all this and more with remove.bg, the AI background remover for professionals.

Integrates with your Software Workflow

We've built tools and plugins for some of the most popular design programs, eCommerce sites and computer environments. To bring more digital efficiency to your own workflow, use our API!

All Plugins & Downloads API Documentation
Ramp up the creativity - and efficiency!

Whether you want to make a mind-blowing greetings card for your bestie or to power through thousands of car photos in next to no time, remove.bg makes it happen.

{:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}Magic Brush {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Individuals {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Photographers for Marketing {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Developers {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Ecommerce {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Media {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Car Dealerships {:class=>"text-typo w-9 h-9"}for Enterprise

Jun 28, 2024
The Future of Photography: Embracing AI for Professional Success
Jun 20, 2024
More Realistic Images with the New AI Shadow Feature
Jun 14, 2024
How to Remove the Background from your Signature

Learn more

Magic Brush

Individuals

Photographers

Marketing

Developers

Ecommerce

Media

Car Dealerships

Enterprise

Success stories

Tools & API

API Documentation

Integrations, tools & apps

Photoshop Extension

Windows / Mac / Linux

Android App

Design Templates

Support

Help & FAQs

Contact us

Refunds

Platform Status

Company

Blog

Affiliate Program

Create automatic designs

Video Background Removal

Careers

About us

Press

© remove.bg, a Canva Austria GmbH brand

Terms of Service

General Terms and Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Policy

Imprint

Thanks for your feedback!

Want to help us improve? (optional)

Contribute this image & help us make remove.bg better

Teach the Artificial Intelligence

Get better results for similar images in the future

Yes, contribute image

Choose if you want us to use this image for quality improvements.

No, don't contribute

Choose if you do NOT want us to use this image for quality improvements.

Your image will be used for future improvements of remove.bg.

Close

Your image will NOT be used for future improvements of remove.bg.

Close

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Remove Background from Image for Free - remove.bg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Remove image backgrounds automatically in 5 seconds with just one click. Don't spend hours manually picking pixels. Upload your photo now & see the magic.

# data[].attributes.body
Pair it with the Crucible

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Secrets and Séances

Episode #79

2017-11-17 12:39:54
Download
Helen Duncan was a famous medium who travelled around Britain in the 1940s performing séances. She claimed to speak to the dead, and even produce physical manifestations of their spirits. But when Helen Duncan seemed to know wartime secrets about the whereabouts of military ships, like the sunken HMS Barham, she caught the attention of MI5 and notable psychic investigator Harry Price.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Episode 79: Secrets and Séances (11.17.2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Helen Duncan was a famous medium who travelled around Britain in the 1940s performing séances. She claimed to speak to the dead, and even produce physical manifestations of their spirits. But when Helen Duncan seemed to know wartime secrets about the whereabouts of military ships, like the sunken HMS Barham,...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Video Marketing

Grow your business presence using advanced promotional videos, explainer animations, tutorials, intros, outros, music visualizations, and much more.

Replaces: All your video creation tools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
free online video maker with music and pictures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
All your design tools in one place | Renderforest

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Time to get your brand noticed. Create professional videos, logos, mockups, websites, and graphics - all in one place. Get started now!

# data[].attributes.body
Save content from the web
Save articles, videos, images, Tweets, and pretty much any link you find online.

Items that you save are private and can be edited at any time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wakelet | The All In One Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wakelet allows you to bookmark, organize, collaborate and present on content all in one platform. Harness your content to build remarkable things.

# data[].attributes.body
Save bookmarks of your favorite website

# data[].attributes.body
This is an alternative to Today's Meet a back channel for student live engagement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
GoSoapBox: Hear What Your Students are Thinking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
GoSoapBox is a web-based clicker tool used by educators around the world to keep students engaged and gain real-time insight into student comprehension.

# data[].attributes.headline
Romeo and Juliet Projects | Piktochart Visual Editor

# data[].attributes.subject
Romeo and Juliet Projects | Piktochart Visual Editor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Romeo and Juliet Projects | Piktochart Visual Editor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Share newsletter templates with other Educators on Smore

# data[].attributes.headline
PDF to HTML5 page flip - flipbook software - Flipsnack

# data[].attributes.subject
PDF to HTML5 page flip - flipbook software - Flipsnack

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PDF to HTML5 page flip - flipbook software - Flipsnack

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Login or sign up for free on Socrative - your assessment partner for real-time assessments and instant insights.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Video Email for Gmail - Chrome Web Store

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Video Email for Gmail - Chrome Web Store

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Record and send video directly from Gmail

# data[].attributes.headline
The Ultimate List – 65 Digital Tools and Apps to Support Formative Instructional Practice

# data[].attributes.subject
The Ultimate List – 65 Digital Tools and Apps to Support Formative Instructional Practice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There is no shortage of formative assessment strategies, techniques, and tools available to teachers who use formative instructional practice in their classrooms. Here is an extensive list of 75 digital tools, apps, and platforms that can help you and your students use formative assessment to elicit evidence of learning. We didn't just add any old tool to this list. Here are the criteria we used for those that made the cut:

Supports formative instructional strategies and ways to activate learners to be resources for themselves and peers

Is free or awful close to it (under $10 per year, where possible)

Allows both students and teachers to take the activator role when possible (sometimes teachers need to get things started)

Before you dig into the tools, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about exactly what you want to accomplish with your students. "How to pick the right digital tool: Start with your learning goal" by Erin Beard can help you wrap your head around goals and guide you in choosing the best tool for the task. "27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning" can help you decide what strategies work best for you and your students.

Record audio and video

Create quizzes, polls, and surveys

1. Crowdsignal Lets you create online polls, quizzes, and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers, and information can be culled for reports.

2. Edulastic Allows you to make standards-aligned assessments and get instant feedback.

3. FreeOnlineSurveys Helps you create surveys, quizzes, forms, and polls.

4. Gimkit Lets you write real-time quizzes. And it was designed by a high school student!

5. Kahoot! A game-based classroom response system that lets you create quizzes using internet content.

6. MicroPoll Helps you create polls, embed them into websites, and analyze responses.

7. Naiku Lets you write quizzes students can answer using their mobile devices.

8. Obsurvey Designed to make surveys, polls, and questionnaires.

9. Poll Everywhere Lets you create a feedback poll or ask questions and see results in real time. Allows students to respond in various ways. With open-ended questions, you can capture data and spin up tag clouds to aggregate responses.

10. Poll Maker Offers unique features, like allowing multiple answers to one question.

11. ProProfs Helps you make quizzes, polls, and surveys.

12. Quia Lets you create games, quizzes, surveys, and more. Access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.

13. Quizalize Helps you create quizzes and homework.

14. Quizizz Guides you through designing quizzes and lets you include students in the quiz-writing process.

15. Quizlet Lets you make flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are mobile friendly.

16. Survey Hero Designed to build questionnaires and surveys.

17. SurveyMonkey Helpful for online polls and surveys.

18. SurveyPlanet Also helpful for online polls and surveys.

19. Triventy Lets you create quizzes students take in real time using individual devices.

20. Yacapaca Helps you write and assign quizzes.

21. Zoho Survey Allows you to make mobile-friendly surveys and see results in real time.

Brainstorm, mind map, and collaborate

Present, engage, and inspire

Generate word or tag clouds

1. EdWordle Generates word clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion. Word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.

2. Tagxedo Allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogues.

3. Wordables Helps you elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic.

4. WordArt Includes a feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to websites, including YouTube.

Get real-time feedback

Foster family communication

1. Remind Lets you text students and stay in touch with families.

2. Seesaw Helps you improve family communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.

3. Voxer Lets you send recordings so families can hear how their students are doing, students can chat about their work, and you can provide feedback.

Strengthen teacher-to-student or student-to-student communication

Keep the conversation going with live chats

1. Yo Teach A backchannel site great for keeping the conversation going with students.

2. Chatzy Supports live, online chats in a private setting.

Create and store documents or assignments

1. Google Forms A Google Drive app that allows you to create documents students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

2. Piazza Lets you upload lectures, assignments, and homework; pose and respond to student questions; and poll students about class content. This tool is better suited for older students as it mimics post-secondary class instructional formats.

Learn more

There are several resources for learning more about formative assessment and responsive instruction strategies. Consider our formative practices workshops, where school and district teams can gain a better understanding of the role formative practice plays in instruction and the four foundational practices to use in the classroom. Or for a quick start, download our eBook "Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice."

Jump in, try new tools and methods, and have fun!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We've compiled an extensive list of 75 digital tools that can help teachers use formative assessment to elicit evidence of student learning.

# data[].attributes.headline
AnswerGarden » AnswerGarden is...- Plant a Question, Grow Answers! Generate a live word cloud with your audience.

# data[].attributes.subject
AnswerGarden » AnswerGarden is...- Plant a Question, Grow Answers! Generate a live word cloud with your audience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Demonstration

Try out this sample AnswerGarden. Respond to the question by typing in the answer field or click an existing answer, then press the submit-button to add your entry. Only the most frequent answers are shown, as there currently are more than answers in this garden! Click here to learn more on how to create and apply your own AnswerGarden. Or create an AnswerGarden right away!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Required parameter is missing: response_type

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Michael C. Carlos Museum presents Odyssey Online's Greece

# data[].attributes.headline
10 Tools For Conducting Live Polls During A Presentation | Presentation Guru

# data[].attributes.subject
10 Tools For Conducting Live Polls During A Presentation | Presentation Guru

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Getting your audience engaged is the most important thing you can do when presenting. We previously published an article on Zeetings, a program that lets the audience become part of the story by using an interactive program directly from their smartphones. Here, Farshad has reviewed ten other programs that you can use to make sure your audience becomes part of the story, instead of just listening to it.
Sometimes the biggest enemy of a presenter is doubt. One can get a bit jittery by looking at uncertain faces in the crowd. You might want to know what your audience is thinking so that you may be able to refine your presentation in case you're going off track. One of the best ways to find out what your audience is thinking is to use polls. Conducting live polls during a presentation session can help you gather instant feedback and fine tune your presentation on the fly to ensure you can be on top of your game.

There are a number of polling apps, devices and plugins that you can use for conducting live polls during presentations. Different polling tools provide different options, including some which even enable presenters to continuously gather audience feedback and view brief statistics as they present their slides. If you want to use polls in your presentations like a pro, then here are 10 best polling tools to gather instant audience feedback.

1) Presentain

Presentain is a presentation web app where you can either upload and present a PDF, PPT or PPTX file or fetch a file using your Google Drive account to present your presentation right from an internet browser. Presentain provides presenters with a URL that can be shared with the audience so they can follow your slides live as you present them, using any internet connected device.

Your audience can also take part in Live polls using the same URL, allowing you to not only present your slides by broadcasting them via the internet but also to instantly gather audience feedback by offering them polls. In fact, your audience can even ask you questions using their internet connected devices.

Here is a brief introductory video which shows all the basic features of Presentain.

2) PollEverywhere

PollEverywhere is an audience response system which enables creating polls in PowerPoint and Google Slides. The PollEverywhere add-in for PowerPoint or the Chrome extension for Google Slides can be used to create polls and gather audience feedback by allowing people to participate in polls via internet connected devices such as smartphones tablets or laptops. Furthermore, your audience can also respond to polls via Twitter.

PollEverywhere has a comprehensive set of features for conducting polls and quizzes using open ended questions, multiple choice questions, true or false quizzes, as well as clickable image and Q&A polls.

Here is a short video which explains the main features of PollEverywhere.

3) Mentimeter

Mentimeter is an audience response system which allows presenters to create polls using multiple choice or open ended questions, polls based on a point-based system, or use dual axis or scales to gather audience feedback. Your audience will be able to cast their votes via a designated URL. This means your audience can instantly cast their votes by using their mobile phones, tablets or laptops during a Live presentation session.

Here is an introductory video which explains how Mentimeter works.

4) Swipe

Swipe is a comprehensive presentation web app which can not only allow you to conduct polls but you can also use it as a PowerPoint alternative. You can get started with Swipe by uploading a PDF or image file, and even embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

With Swipe you can design your slide decks and add polls to your presentations. Like most polling systems, Swipe provides a polling URL for the audience to respond to polls.

5) ParticiPoll

ParticiPoll is a PowerPoint add-in which can help you add polls to your PowerPoint slides. You can start using Participoll by signing-up for a free account, picking a polling URL and downloading the add-in to start adding polls to your PowerPoint slides. Your audience will be able to respond to polls using your custom polling URL.

The data gathered via Participoll is logged to your account, which means you can login anytime to your Participoll account to view audience feedback.

If you're looking for a free and easy way of conducting a Live poll during a presentation, you can also use Ask The Room. With Ask The Room you can instantly set up a poll by using options like 'Yes', 'No' and 'Don't Know'. Ask the Room requires no sign-up and you can begin your poll by going to the home page, and clicking on Start Poll. You will be provided with a custom URL to share with your audience where they can poll, and you will be able to see the result in real-time via your browser.

7) ActiVote

If you are looking for a voting system for educational purposes that comes with associated hardware clickers that your audience can use, then Activote can be a good option. ActiVote is a comprehensive polling system by which you can create polls on your computer and allow your audience to respond using ActiVote clickers.

The primary use of ActiVote is for educational purposes and it can be a good option for conducting quizzes or assessing your students using various voting based activities. ActiVote works with Windows, Mac and Linux.

8) OMBEA

OMBEA is an audience response system which can be used to insert interactive slides in PowerPoint to conduct polls during presentations. OMBEA not only works with laptops, smartphones and tablets but is also compatible with remote clickers.

You can conduct polls using open ended or multiple choice questions and enable your audience to respond using remote clickers or internet connected devices. This makes OMBEA easy to use and expands the number of devices that can be instantly turned into remote clickers.

9) iClicker

If you are looking for a clicker based polling system, which also supports clicker devices, then iClicker is an audience response system that you should look into. This clicker based polling system enables you to gather audience feedback by allowing them to poll using smartphones, tablets, or clicker remotes.

To find out all about how iClicker works, see the developer's introductory video given below.

10) ClickAPad

ClickAPad is another comprehensive audience response system which not only provides a polling add-in for PowerPoint but also offers clicker remotes for purchase or rent. ClickAPad has a number of products that you can look into for conducting polls during your events to quickly gather audience opinion regarding a specific topic.

The tools mentioned above include both free and paid tools, with basic to advanced polling options. Whether you are a teacher, business professional, or just someone looking to conduct a survey during a live presentation, the aforementioned polling tools can help you conduct polls and fine tune your presentation in view of live audience feedback.

If you liked this, then you might also like

A conference calling platform which allows you to conduct instant polls: How to Deliver Online Presentations During Remote Meetings

Using audience polls in a webinar : Why Webinars are Great and How to Design Them Effectively

Using audience polls to keep your audience engaged: 7 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Keep Your Audience Hooked
5 More Ways to Get Instant Feedback from your Audience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Get Instant Feedback From Your Audience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Getting your audience engaged is the most important thing you can do when presenting. We previously published an article on Zeetings, a program that lets the audience become part of the story by using an interactive program directly from their smartphones. Here, Farshad has reviewed ten other programs that you can use to make sure your [...]

# data[].attributes.headline
Epidemic Sound | A Music Company Reimagined

# data[].attributes.subject
Epidemic Sound | A Music Company Reimagined

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Epidemic Sound | A Music Company Reimagined

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We work closely with talented musicians, soundtracking stories all over the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.

# data[].attributes.headline
1000+ Beautiful Background Technology Photos · Pexels · Free Stock Photos

# data[].attributes.subject
1000+ Beautiful Background Technology Photos · Pexels · Free Stock Photos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1000+ Beautiful Background Technology Photos · Pexels · Free Stock Photos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find the best free stock images about background technology. Download all photos and use them even for commercial projects.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Podcasting should be stupid easy. The underlying technology isn't much more complicated than blogging. But so far, there's no Blogger or Tumblr of podcasting, to make podcast recording accessible to anyone with a phone. Until yesterday's release of Anchor 3.0 for iOS and Android.

I'd been toying with an idea for a podcast for years, a five-minute show called What Did You Have for Breakfast? But I was always too intimidated to get it started. Thanks to Anchor, I finally did. It's not perfect, but it exists, which is infinitely better.

The podcast craze of the past several years shows no signs of slowing down, and while every...
Read more Read

Anchor started as a social app with its own "ecosystem" of short-form audio. But its new release is centered on a streamlined method for recording, editing, and publishing podcasts.

When you open the app (and once you've made an account), Anchor takes you right to the recording screen. To record, you tap one button and hold your phone to your ear, or drag up to keep recording while you sit your phone down. You can also add segments, including segues and background music.

Anchor also adds a feature that could substantially change how podcasts are made: Easy call-ins. Anyone who downloads the app can call into your show and talk to you like a normal phone call, or leave a voice message that you can respond to, like an audio version of a text convo. The app turns either of these formats into a segment for your episode. It's a pretty elegant solution, compared to making your caller download a generic recording app and send you an audio file.

If you do want to import an audio file, you'll need to use the web version of Anchor; the app doesn't support that feature, and Mignano isn't sure whether it ever will. The app doesn't let you edit specific segments either; if you flubbed a line, you'll have to roll with it or re-record it. As sophisticated as this app feels, most of its features work best if you're just putting out an on-the-fly show, rather than something carefully edited and produced.

Hosting is free-and, says CEO Mike Mignano, will stay free-at every level, which is an industry first. As TechCrunch points out, this is only a great deal if Anchor sticks around as long as its competitors, but if Anchor can establish itself as the best way to make quick and dirty podcasts, it should have a long and successful future.

Once your podcast is published, Anchor pushes it out to all the major platforms and starts delivering analytics to you. You can also listen to other Anchor-produced podcasts in the app. Impressively, the company has built a whole network of partners, including many popular "professional" podcasts.

There's still some work to do. Remnants of Anchor's earlier versions, like clashing terminology and workflows, still clutter up the publication process. Twice, while I was getting used to the interface, I accidentally published an episode before filling out its title and description. (I'm still waiting for the fixed episode to appear on Apple Podcasts.) So don't put your life's work on here just yet; try a more casual show that you can soft-launch while you get used to the process.

Anchor 3.0 | Home page

About the author

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Podcasting should be stupid easy. The underlying technology isn't much more complicated than blogging. But so far, there's no Blogger or Tumblr of podcasting, to make podcast recording accessible to anyone with a phone. Until yesterday's release of Anchor 3.0 for iOS and Android.

# data[].attributes.headline
EdTechTeacher Podcasting - Using Podcasts in the Classroom - EdTechTeacher

# data[].attributes.subject
EdTechTeacher Podcasting - Using Podcasts in the Classroom - EdTechTeacher

# data[].attributes.headline
Ultimate List of Free Music for eLearning Development - eLearning Industry

# data[].attributes.subject
Ultimate List of Free Music for eLearning Development - eLearning Industry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Summary: At the Ultimate List of Free Music for eLearning you will find 34 websites where you can use Free Music for your Online Courses. You can download hundred thousand music files for thousands artist and use it for Free.

34 Site to Download Free Music for Online Courses

Music is an important aspect of the eLearning development. Online teachers, educators, facilitators, instructional designers, and generally eLearning developers are struggling to find Free music for their courses. I hope that with the Ultimate List of Free Music for eLearning Development I will make your professionals lives easier.

If you would like to add your favorite website where you can download Free Music please leave a comment and it will be added at the top of the list!
I highly recommend you to read The use of music and animation in eLearning
34 Websites to Download Royalty Free and Creative Commons Music for Free
Royalty free means that you do not have to pay royalties or license fees. Also, all of the creative commons licenses require that you give credit to the original creator. However, I highly encourage you to take a look at the license that each site has to get a proper idea of which of the Six Creative Commons licenses is in practice.

1. Archive's audio and MP3 library
This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

2. ArtistServer
Free independent music, 11,000 mp3 downloads by more than 10,000 artists.

3. Audiofarm
It´s the best and easiest way to find new and interesting music, audio recordings, people and friends from around the world.

4. Audionautix
All music in this online collection created by Jason Shaw. Released under Creative Commons license 3.0 You are free to use the music (even for commercial purposes) as long as you credit "Music from - audionautix.com"OR provide a link to this website from yours. Music must be part of some other created works. No further permission is required.

5. Creative Commons licenses allow the use of music for free for non-commercial projects, provided that users credit your name in association with their multimedia projects. Thus, we provide music for free for scholastic and socially involved projects, while we require that governmental funded ones pay a licensing fee. For personal use, we encourage our users to buy the albums/EPs from our site. To obtain the download of the required files, all projects must provide us with their name, e-mail and project description, allowing us to control that they are indeed entitle to such uses.

6. Brainy Betty
Free Sound Clips and Music for Presentations!

7. Bump Foot is a non-profit netlabel in Japan. There are two main branches. Bump side : techno and house, or based on them. Foot side : ambient, IDM, or etc... other than bump side.You are free: to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix - to adapt the work.

8. CASH Music is a non-profit organization that hosts digital tools for musicians and labels to share their music. The digital tool allows for uploads and downloads of songs and sharing is made easy.

9. Looking for music for a video, school project, game you're developing, podcast or just for listening in your cubicle or mobile music device? Find exactly the music you're looking for - podsafe, liberally licensed - using dig.ccMixter Music Discovery tool.

10. All showcased music is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. They authorize free music download and enable the artists to promote their music while protecting their rights.

11. Hi, I'm Dan-O and I post my original music as free MP3 downloads here on DanoSongs.com. You can listen to the songs online or download the tracks. It's also legal to use the music royalty free in your video, game, film, presentation, slideshow or website.

12. The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

13. Freeplay Music Library
Freeplay's first product, the Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for download either on-line or via our Portable Hard Drive.

14. Download free sound effects.Stuart Duffield has been creating audio professionally for 18 years. Having worked predominately in the Games Industry, he has produced a wide range of audio for various worldwide clients and numerous high profile projects. Based in the UK, Stuart has a history of synthesising, recording, designing, processing and editing audio of all types. Having worked in-house for a number of major Game Developers, Stuart currently works on a freelance / contract basis. This involves audio design, music composition and voice production in various forms - for Games, Animation, TV and Film.

15. Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse.

16. Free Beats - Download beats, loops, breaks and samples Free beats, loops, and breaks - iBeat.org iBeat - pushing beats, loops and breaks since 2007. Free under Creative Commons licensing.

17. Incompetech
Incompetech hosts a wide variety of royalty free music. You can browse their selection by genre or feel. "Feel" would include things like: Action, Relaxed, Intense or Humorous; you can select a combination of 'Feels' and it will check its database for selection matches. Clips can be played on the website and instantly downloaded as well.

18. Jamendo
370,000 tracks. Free music for all. Enjoy unlimited music, it's completely free and legal.

19. JewelBeat
Free Background Music. Easily search thru over 4,000 free background music and sound effects simply by using keywords. No need to download to preview - just type in keywords, listen immediately then download what you need! Start searching for free background music.

20. Josh Woodward
Yes, you can freely download, share and use all 180+ of Josh Woodward songs.

21. Kompoz is an online community that prides in collaboration between artists from all over the world. Artists post their clips on the website where anyone can download it and use it for their own productions. They can also add their own instruments or creative mix to the original clip and upload it on the website again.

22. LifeSounds
LifeSounds works on the integration of music throughout the curriculum. Their desire is to build each individuals' ability to strengthen their emotional intelligence and to encourage understanding between people.

23. Set music FREE. Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.

24. Orphan Songs
The Orphan Songs website is running by Carl-Otto Johansson. Most of the music here is free to download and use. (Creative Commons).

25. This is a small database of free audio clips organized by mood or emotion such as: Warm, Loving, Serious or Lonely.

26. Partners in Rhyme
Royalty free music libraries for you to download and start using right away in your commercial projects. These high quality music tracks will make your projects more effective and sound more professional.

27. Public Domain 4U
Great Historical Music Recordings, Free to Download, Play, and Share. Our musical heritage is our culture. The Past should be appreciated, not neglected. These artists are so unique, they should never be forgotten. This site is designed for your musical edification. This site can not grant any commercial uses of this material.

28. Purple Planet
Free Collection of Royalty Free Music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn Music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube (see 'Using Our Music' for more info) in exchange for a link to our site. Donations are welcome!

29. Restorm
This is a platform to sell music to the public. Also, you can download some of their free selection of music just by creating an account.

30. Royalty Free Music Library
Royalty Free Music Library is proud to offer one of the largest offerings of online broadcast-quality royalty free music anywhere on the web. Download royalty free music from 3 of the top royalty free catalogs online:

1. Royalty Free Music Revolution - The definitive royalty free music catalog with over 1000 songs from some of the top composers in the industry.

2. Radical Music Library - Royalty free music with cutting edge productions and "indie" attitude. Created by professional composers with a long list of film and television credits.

3. Mojo Music Library - An offering of top- notch royalty free music with broader coverage on each CD for those who need a bit wider coverage for their budget.

31. SampleSwap
Creative Commons Licensed Electronic Music for Commercial and Non-Commercial Royalty-Free use(Free professional-quality MP3s for DJ'ing, film scores, radio, TV, video games, podcasting, etc.). These pre-cleared songs were uploaded by artists at sampleswap.org under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Please be sure to read the licensing information for each track carefully before using any of this music.

32. 40 completely free pieces of music. For each and every single song below, all you have to do is credit the songwriter - Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com) and the music is your to use for free.

33. SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a website where artists share their new tracks to the world. There is a section under Creative Commons license where you can download other people's tracks. You can stream the available clips and it takes just a simple click to get the MP3 file without any registration.

34. Stock Music Boutique
Stock Music Boutique library offers high quality royalty-free production music. All tracks have full music clearance ready for instant buy out. Find a track you like and use it forever at no extra cost.

You may also find the following lists of tools useful:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ultimate List of Free Music for eLearning Development

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Music is an important aspect of eLearning development. Check out this list of free music for educational use educators can download for their courses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Create Smiles and Connections in Minutes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Slideshows, invitations, greetings, collages, greeting cards, and scrapbooks - all from Smilebox. Upload your pics to our slideshows or choose an adorable invitation template. Build a collage with your photos or ours, or customize greeting cards for every occasion. Smilebox provides it all with variety and simplicity

# data[].attributes.headline
Top 11 Storyboard Software of 2018 [with FREE Storyboard Templates]

# data[].attributes.subject
Top 11 Storyboard Software of 2018 [with FREE Storyboard Templates]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Storyboards raise the visual bar. Projects that include a storyboard are more likely to side-step the blunders that can result from miscommunication during production.

More...

In this post, we'll discuss the latest storyboard software, storyboard apps and iPad styli. Plus we'll provide you with a bunch of storyboard templates for free.

There's a variety of storyboard software on the market, ranging from software with preset characters to professional storyboard software that requires drawing skills. You can find everything from traditional licensed software to web-based solutions to mobile apps. There is something for everyone here. Alternatively, you could download your own storyboard templates.

StudioBinder is an intuitive, online storyboard software solution. It provides robustness and ease of use to fit most creatives. Simply upload images and you've got a storyboard!

Customize the layouts, shot list details, and aspect ratios. You can also view your storyboard as a fullscreen slideshow, which makes it ideal for presentations. StudioBinder's storyboard software features are just $20/mo.

Out of the UK comes Moviestorm. Promoted as "a filmmaking tool for everyone," so you don't need to be an artist. You can create everything from storyboards to full pre visualization, and various theme-based add-ons provide additional robustness. Pricing starts at $225.

FrameForge offers various bundles, each with increasing complexity and price points. All levels include optically accurate virtual cameras. The highest-end packages allows users to define exact equipment specs for dollies & cranes, precise lighting, calculations for sun positioning, reports and more. Software ranges from $399-899.

Power Production provides a few storyboard solutions, each with varying complexity. It offers customizable characters and presets for locations and props. They offer script imports, character animations and other integrations. Power Production's software starts at $190 for Storyboard Quick while the more robust StoryBoard Artist Studio sells for $900+.

StoryboardPro is a professional web application from Toon Boom. Tailored specifically for commercial storyboards artists, the software includes animated and live boards with all the bells and whistles a serious storyboard artist would need. They offer permanent access for $999 and a monthly subscription for $58.

This is a combo solution. Boardo is an After Effects plugin for adding cool storyboard animations and effects to existing images, but you'll need to create your images in outside software. We recommend using vector-based drawing apps on an iPad such as Paper (free), Astro Pad ($30) and Noteshelf ($9).
Afterwards, you can combine the finished sketches in After Effects/Boardo to create animated boards you can export as videos. Boardo starts at $30.

No matter the software you go with, there's nothing that can beat the precision of drawing a sketch by hand and importing the results. If you have an iPad handy (no pun intended), we suggest purchasing a stylus for sketching your storyboards by hand. Here's our top 5 picks for best stylus for storyboard artists. All of these stylus were designed for iOS devices and all include palm rejection options.

Here's a video from Indy Mogul, covering the basics and importance of storyboards and shooting boards with examples from a short film script.

Once you receive your storyboard from an artist, make sure to include a copies in your final production wrap binder. Storyboards and revisions can be easily backed up and shared electronically these days with solutions like Dropbox or Hightail.

If you're looking for a more A-to-Z production management solution, StudioBinder makes it easy to manage your production files online, in addition to managing crew, creating schedules, and sending out call sheets. Plus it's free to get started.

Like this post? Share it!

That's the basics on storyboard software and templates. We hope you found this post and the free downloads helpful.

Now, if you have decided the sketching is a little too much and you want to hire a storyboard artist for a more polished presentation, check out our article on 8 Websites to Find & Hire a Storyboard Artist.

What storyboard software do you use? Did we miss anything? Leave us a comment below

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 11 Storyboard Software of 2018 [with FREE Storyboard Templates]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Storyboards raise the visual bar. Projects that include a storyboard are more likely to side-step the blunders that can result from miscommunication during production. More... In this post, we'll discuss the latest storyboard software, storyboard apps and iPad styli. Plus we'll provide you with a bunch of storyboard templates for free.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Finnish teaching method through online video storytelling, for active learning, creativity, co-creation and international collaboration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Create Your Own Comic Strips Online with MakeBeliefsComix

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Create Your Own Comic Strips Online with MakeBeliefsComix

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EXHIBIT YOUR COMIX AND JOURNALING ART IN OUR GALLERY!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth, -the...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're delighted that you want to try Fluency Tutor™ for Google. This is an app which is specifically designed for Google's Chrome Browser. It's free and it can be installed alongside your existing browser!

# data[].attributes.body
Interactive Whiteboard.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying, Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket, Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

# data[].attributes.headline
The 82 Hottest EdTech Tools of 2017 According to Education Experts

# data[].attributes.subject
The 82 Hottest EdTech Tools of 2017 According to Education Experts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you work in education, you'll know there's a HUGE array of applications, services, products and tools created to serve a multitude of functions in education.

Tools for teaching and learning, parent-teacher communication apps, lesson planning software, home-tutoring websites, revision blogs, SEN education information, professional development qualifications and more.

There are so many companies creating new products for education, though, that it can be difficult to keep up - especially with the massive volumes of planning and marking teachers have to do, never mind finding the time to actually teach!

So how do you know which ones are the best?

Well, as a team of people passionate about education and learning, we decided to do a bit of research to help you out.

We've asked some of the best and brightest in education for their opinions on the hottest EdTech of 2020. These guys are the real deal - experts in education, teaching and new tech from all over the world from England to India, to New York and San Francisco. If it's just mobile applications you're looking for, check out our 60 best educational apps.

They've given us a list of 101 amazing, tried and tested tools that they absolutely could not live without as education professionals.

Looking for a new learning management system that fits your needs? Technology Advice have put together an excellent detailed breakdown of the market leaders and what features they offer. Read their trusted LMS reccomendations here.

Their recommendations include a host of free, paid and free-trial options. Ready to take a look?

1. Twinkl - Saving Teachers Valuable Time

Twinkl are the educational publishing company that is revolutionising the way teachers work worldwide, with content creators in the UK, US and Australia.

Experienced, passionate teachers have created over half a million lesson plans, classroom activities and teaching tools tailored specifically to you as a teacher to download as and when you need them. Twinkl takes the stress out of lesson planning, giving teachers more free time and significantly fewer headaches!

Twinkl are pioneering EdTech in the classroom. The Twinkl Go! hub provides interactive educational games and activities for computers, tablets and smartphones. Twinkl are also making exciting strides into the world of augmented reality with their collection of AR education materials.

With an average subscription price of £6 / $8.99 a month, we think it's complete no brainer to sign up to their full subscription package. Alternatively, you can try some free teaching resources by creating a free account.

Their motto is to help those who teach, and with their impressive forays into EdTech, we're sure that they will.

As recommended by Ben Collins

"Wisey is a really clever app that uses AI to generate curriculum aligned questions. You simply type in a topic, and it generates a range of questions, from multiple choice to open-ended, at whatever level your students are at. You can even upload your own resources and the AI will extract questions from it."

I think we're going to see more and more of these sorts of AI tools in future.

As recommended by Jon Corippo - CUE Chief Learning Officer

"GIMKIT- actually designed by a high school student and super popular with older students. Earn money for in-game prizes and even have "boss battles" where one player can take on the entire class."

Gimkit is a super innovative live quiz learning platform in which students answer questions on their own device at their own pace. Gimkit can be used in any classroom to introduce or review concepts; it's like a mashup of Kahoot! and Quizlet. The live gameplay is fast-paced and engaging like a game show, but when it's assigned for independent practice, Gimkit allows students to review on their own with many of the same game mechanics.

As recommended by Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy

Floop is a cloud-based website where students can receive annotated feedback from teachers and peers. Students upload images of an assignment to the platform, and teachers put markers in places where they want to provide written feedback. Students are able to see and respond to comments, creating a feedback loop that allows teachers to see patterns of student learning.

Students get the feedback they need when they need it. Give feedback 4x faster than traditional methods with a digital dropbox and comment banks.

"What makes this tool unique is the mechanism that allows students to point directly to places on their work that they need help with, then get assistance that can also target specific spots on the assignment. We've been able to do that with writing assignments through tools like the commenting feature in Google Docs, but it hasn't been quite as available in other subject areas." Jennifer Gonzalez

As recommended by Yasir Shamim of purevpn.com

"I came across SplashLearn, a great application for teachers and kids. It has lots of useful content and great reporting features. It's great because as you get things correct it increases in complexity - so it continues to challenge even those learners that are ready to move on.
StudyPad's flagship product SplashLearn is transforming the way elementary school children in grades K-5 learn and study math through a highly engaging, and personalized program. SplashLearn is available across all digital platforms (iOS, Desktops, Android) and has been used by more than 30 million students worldwide."

6. Nearpod - Create, Engage and Assess Through Mobile Devices

As nominated by Beth Holland, Katrina Keene of the Teach-In Tech Gal blog, Debbie Sachs from Cult of Pedagogy, Michael Cohen of The Tech Rabbi, Jon Corippo and Courtney Kofeldt.

As a teacher, it can be difficult to create engaging lessons that fully capture the attention of all of your students. Harder still is creating lessons that encourage learning through interactivity and action.

Nearpod is an amazing tool that solves these problems.

First, Nearpod provides a host of pre-made, fully-interactive lessons developed by subject matter experts for all school levels and subjects. Furthermore, Nearpod allows teachers to import lessons from any file type and begin adding interactive elements, web-links or video snippets to them.

Educators can then synchronise their prepared lessons to all students devices, casting the lesson simultaneously to each student and able to monitor their progress throughout the lesson.

What really set's Nearpod out from the crowd is their innovative ideas for further enhancing interactive lessons. Nearpod users have access to Nearpod 3D, providing fully rotatable 3D images to use for teaching, and Nearpod VR, allowing integration with Smartphone VR headsets like Google Cardboard to create virtual field trips for students.

No wonder they were voted into the top spot!

7. Kahoot! - Making Learning Awesome!

As nominated by Michael Cohen of The Tech Rabbi, Bethany Petty ofTeaching With Technology, and Neil Jarrett of EdTech for Beginners.
Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform and one of the world's fastest-growing learning brands with more than 40 million monthly active users in 180 countries. Kahoot! makes it easy to create, discover, play and share fun learning games in minutes-for any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages.

Launched in 2013, with the mission to make learning awesome, Kahoot!'s free game-based platform engages the heart, hand and mind, creating a wildly more social, meaningful and powerful pedagogical experience. Kahoot!'s platform and easy-to-use features not only attract educators and students but reach beyond the classroom to corporate powerhouses, sporting and cultural events, and any social and learning context.

Kahoot! allows teachers to quickly create fun learning games for students based around multiple choice questions. After creating the game, students can use any device to sign-in to the game 'room' using a unique code to complete lessons and compete against their peers.

Displaying the questions and game on a primary display encourages students to use their personal devices only for choosing their answer. This means group engagement and discussion is promoted throughout the session, creating what the Kahoot! team call 'campfire moments'.

Kahoot! then promotes students to proactively pursue their learning goals by creating their own Kahoots, attempting to beat previous scores and inciting class discussions around the learning topic.

Whether used as an attention grabber at the start of a lesson or a re-energising tactic part way through an intense revision class, Kahoot! Is surely a great tool for any teacher.

8. Buncee - Create, Present and Share Engaging Multimedia Lessons

As nominated by Nikolaos Chatzopoulos of Tech Trends for Teachers, Nicholas Clayton, and Shelly Terrell of 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers.

Buncee is a creation and presentation tool which supports educators as they foster the 4 Cs of learning in students: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Some of Buncee's many features include over 10k student-friendly graphics designed by their team to help make learning fun, the ability to record audio and video directly into a Buncee, integration with YouTube and Pixabay images and much more.

Students are able to engage and immerse themselves in what they are learning, be more engaged with the material, and therefore improve their comprehension. Buncee can be used to develop future-ready skills in students of all abilities. Students from as young as six and seven years old are using Buncee to create multimedia presentations which demonstrate learning acquisition, critical thinking and creativity, while also communicating stories.

Teachers integrate Buncee as a tool for individualized, differentiated instruction, language learning and special education, as well as lessons and projects for any subject. It is used as a classroom presentation tool for reviewing and introducing content aligned with curriculum standards. Additionally, Buncee is integrated into modes of expressed student learning including alternative book reports, research projects, digital storytelling, project-based learning, passion projects, and genius hour. With Buncee's easy to use creation canvas making learning fun is just a drag and drop away.

Our experts recommended using Buncee for outside-the-box lessons, such as creating digital posters, micro-movies or simple games as a class activity.

"A powerful, yet easy-to-use creative platform that empowers students" - Nikolaos Chatzopoulos

"Buncee hits all 4 C's by allowing students the opportunity to take a blank canvas and create something amazing. The company has awesome customer support, a content rich blog, and a gallery of ideas. As one of my student's said 'it's the best app we have used all year!' " - Laurie Guyon

As recommended by Quincy Smith of eslauthority.com & Daniel Christian

"One of the biggest adjustments we've seen teachers have to make is figuring out how to grade/mark assignments in an online environment.
As a solution for this, we've been recommending the Canvas LMS for their Speed Grader functionality. Canvas is a platform with a ton of features but we recommend teachers just start with what they need (in this case a solution to online grading) and get everyone familiar with it.
Even better is that Canvas has a free plan for teachers that has a ton of functionality so the only real hurdle is getting students to submit assignments via the platform. Once they do that, teachers have an array of markup tools that allow them to give feedback and suggestions much easier than simply using Preview or Google Sheets.
It's important to note that Canvas is really an enterprise platform for schools and school systems, but we were happy to find they had the perfect solution for one of our biggest pain points." - Daniel Christian

As nominated by Nikolaos Chatzopoulos of Tech Trends 4 Teachers, Jasmin Saab & Vanina Sandel

Founded in 2012, Wonder Workshop is the market-leading platform for children to learn computer science and robotics beginning at elementary school age. The company's first-generation robots, Dash and Dot, are widely recognized in education and have won many major industry awards.

"Dash's Neighborhood is a fun and engaging way for students to continue coding their favourite robot virtually! I have loved utilizing Wonder Workshop robots in my classroom, and Dash's Neighborhood takes everything to the next level! Coding dash virtually, came at the perfect time because I was able to continue working with my student's coding abilities during distance learning without missing a beat! I loved how students were able to complete coding challenges at their own pace, and they were able to get more one-on-one instruction. Students love Dash's Neighborhood because they are able to experiment with their codes and there aren't time restrictions like there normally would be in the classroom. I recommend the integrated virtual puzzles that are included for anyone who would like to learn the basics of computer programming!" - Jasmin Saab, 4th grade teacher from South Carolina

"As a STEAM Coordinator who teaches students from K-8th grade, I look for products that show certain requisites such as;
-Products can "grow with" the students and students can "grow with" the products
-Products are aligned with certain required standards
-Products are reasonable priced
Wonder Workshop products help students from Kindergarten all the way to 8th grade to understand the basic concepts of Computer Science better in a dynamic and fun way. Different disciplines like engineering and math are integrated with simple and complex coding in order to solve different puzzles and problems. Moreover, students are challenged to think outside the box in order to conquer different missions.. From Dot and Dash for the younger students to Cue for middle school students, the robots share with the students their educational journey. To conclude, the addition of Dash Neighborhood elevates Wonder Workshop to a higher level by providing a platform where more students under different circumstances can have access to Robotics" - Vanina Sandel - K-8 Steam Coordinator at the Yavneh Day School

As recommended by Lauren Keys of Math Nation

GoBoard is a free online tool that combines video chatting and a interactive canvas. Students can simply create a GoBoard on the site, share the link with a friend and start learning. GoBoard was designed to help students collaborate one-on-one, on virtually any topic. All in browser with nothing to download

"With no software to download, anyone can start and launch a session in less than 60 seconds. The pro version offers additional features such as unlimited session length and additional participants as well as recording and other compliance needs" - Lauren Keys
12. Classtools.net
As recommended by Leon Hady, Leon is a former Headteacher and now trains thousands of teachers online at Guideteachertraining.com

"As silly as it sounds, one of my favourite pieces for in class Edtech is Classtools.net. It is surely one of the oldest and most primitive tools out there, but it's like a Swiss Army knife for engagement.
It is hugely popular in other countries but didn't catch on as much in the UK. This is a shame as it has wonderful 'use-in-class-tools, like a crossword generator, musical countdown timer, random name picker -, so many little gadgets that can make the mundane in-class activity that much faster and more interesting.
I know it'd be far more fun to mention the new-fangled, fancy bits of tech - but classtools.net is as easy to use as it is hideous to look at. However as a gentle engagement or starter and plenary tool, there is nothing that beats it for simplicity and range." Leon Hady

13. AdmitHub - Free, Expert College Admissions Advice

University Ventures, and Daniel Christian.

Focussing on a different area of EdTech, AdmitHub provides an easily accessible source of expert advice about US college applications - in the form of a friendly online chatbot!

AdmitHub's mission is to provide all students with free, expert guidance along the path from high school, to and through college. Through SMS text and integration with Facebook Messenger, AdmitHub's chatbot Oli mixes artificial intelligence with human guidance coaches from individual schools.

Once a student's goals are assessed, they have 24/7 access to a personal 'virtual campus guide' to help them through application and enrolment processes and embodying each school's' 'unique spirit' and personality.

AdmitHub are currently ahead of the game and applicable to US students only, but the rise of chatbot tech means we should soon start seeing many more innovative bots within the education sector.

14. Remind - School Communication Shouldn't Be So Hard

Alex Corbitt and Andoni Sanz.

Remind is a classroom messaging app that helps teachers, students, and parents communicate quickly and efficiently. By connecting school communities, Remind makes it easy for everyone to succeed together. Based in San Francisco, Remind is used by more than 20 million people in 90% of school districts in the United States.

Whilst many organisations are starting to embrace technology to communicate with school stakeholders, messages typically end up being split across an array of channels. Facebook messages, WhatsApp groups, individual text messages or emails - the list goes on.

Remind removes the tedious process of remembering which message came from which person on which platform. Contacts can reach each other directly, schedule reminders, include attachments and see read-receipts - all with translation in 70 languages!

Remind is a great example of an alternative application of technology to support the wider community involved with schooling and education.

"My coworkers and I use remind to keep students and families updated about upcoming projects, events, and assessments. Our parent outreach is better than ever before and our students have demonstrated significant academic gains as a result." - Alex Corbitt

15. Go Noodle - Get Kids Moving

North Tyneside Learning Trust, and Nicholas Clayton.

Go Noodle gamifies movement and exercise, getting kids out of their seats and allowing them to be energetic, playful and and active - with a touch of silliness mixed in just for good measure.

The platform features hundreds of pre-recorded, custom-created videos designed to get kids moving. There's also a handful of videos specifically made to start introducing children to concepts of mindfulness, including breathing and meditation.

The awesome thing about Go Noodle is how it can be used everywhere. Teachers can use it as an intro exercise to a lesson, a break in the middle of a long class or even as a piece of homework for children to do alongside their siblings or parents at home.

"GoNoodle has inspired many of our schools to promote physical activity in schools using their brilliant videos. We actually had a Mass GoNoodle in July last year where 800 children came together to get active as one big group." - Laura Dickinson

16. Matific - Maths Games and Worksheets For Kids

Cool Cat Teacher, and Danielle Bartram of Miss B's Resources.

Matific is an award-winning primary maths resource which uses common objects in ordinary settings that children can connect to for a deep understanding of maths. Matific episodes were designed to support each other to allow children to master core maths concepts. Encouraging children to experiment and play to foster understanding, Matific provides engagement across all year groups. With long term use, children can reconnect with core maths concepts that increase in difficulty and reinforce previously learned skills.

Matific is aligned to the UK Primary Maths curriculum and popular textbooks such as Maths-No Problem. It promotes inclusive learning through its platform with the ability to choose the language student's view the activities in - fantastic for EAL students and the visual presence in the activities cater well to special needs students."

Matific provides a library of amazing resources for teaching maths to children age 4 - 11. Resources are split across bite-sized, immersive and interactive applications designed for mobiles and tablets.

Their resources are based entirely on the UK mathematics curriculum, making the apps a perfect companion to standard maths textbooks and activities, or to be used as a standalone pillar around which to plan a lesson. A recent research paper by Dr. Catherine Attard "Research Evaluation of Matific Mathematics Learning Resources" found Matific positively impacted on primary students learning.

"Matific is awesome. One particularly amazing thing to me is the ability for Matific to deliver instruction and parent information in a child's native language. That way you can focus purely on the math." - Vicki Davis

17. ThingLink - Annotate Images and Videos

Seymour Educate, and Nikolaos Chatzopoulos of Tech Trends for Teachers.

Amongst the various interactive annotation applications available, ThingLink stands apart. Not only can ThingLink be used to edit, annotate and teach with images and videos in real-time, it also supports 360 degree video and VR/AR content.

Thinglink allows over 70 different tags to be used within content, such as links, videos, maps, images, social media and more. It's intuitive interface allows users to create interactive content in just three steps and using an embeddable sharing link, it's easy to distribute the content to your students wherever they are and whatever device they're using. It even integrates natively with Facebook!

With it becoming increasingly more easy to create 360 and VR content using everyday tools like our smartphones, there are very few barriers to entry to begin trialling tools like Thinglink in your lessons.

"Through our goal of creating more digital projects, we discovered ThingLink. ThingLink has allow our students to take the traditional "create a poster" project to a whole new level." - Brian Seymour

FlashAcademy® is a language-learning platform teaching English curriculum content from 45 home languages to support pupils with English as an Additional Language. Accessible on smartphones, tablet, and PC, the platform delivers learning via lessons, games, and enables teachers to remotely assign work and track progress. FlashAcademy® is a core part of the curriculum at Anderton Park Primary School, and hundreds of more schools, to accelerate learning and help close the gap. Thanks to its accessibility and independent learning style, pupils can continue to advance their English language skills at home during these challenging times. Claire Evans, Deputy Head, commented:

"Attainment for pupils with EAL has doubled since using the FlashAcademy® which is remarkable. Pupils love it and having their own app makes them feel really special."

"We sent all of our 500 children home with their logins for FlashAcademy® and can see from our dashboard that they are logging on regularly which is great; completing lessons, playing the games and using the resources just like they would in school. Based on our data of how much progress children who use the platform make, we know this can only help them - knowing they are having fun but rapidly improving their English language skills at the same time."

FlashAcademy® are currently offering free trials to help schools explore how it can support them to deliver a targeted 'catch-up' intervention for pupils with EAL."

Follow them on twitter at @FlashAcademyHQ

19. Book Creator - The Simple Way To Create Beautiful eBooks

Beth Holland, and Michael Cohen of The Tech Rabbi.

Book Creator is a simple app for making ebooks on the iPad (and soon to be cross-platform). Red Jumper is the team behind Book Creator. Established in 2011, their mission is to empower the next generation of content creators and improve their educational outcomes.

Teachers and educators have the opportunity with Book Creator to develop interactive and evolving teaching resources that can easily be shared with or collaborated on by students. As an e-resource, it's really easy to keep resources up to date for each year group and make edits on the fly during lessons.

Book Creator is also a great tool for students to explore their creative side and produce a tangible piece of content through their learning. Potential applications might include creating a portfolio of learning after each lesson, or a homework assignment to create an interactive story or comic book.

After creation, resources can then be shared online with anyone worldwide. Your students could support the learning of students on the other side of the world, or maybe even collaborate with them on a new project!

"Book Creator gives teachers and students a flexible multimedia creation platform with unlimited potential." - Beth Holland

"BookCreator's ease of use is perfect for young children to apply their speaking, listening, reading & writing skills." - Amy Kingsley

20. Wakelet - The Best Way To Share And Collect Content

Wakelet is a free to use content curation platform that allows you to save and organise all kinds of online content into visual, engaging collections. For example, you can simply copy and paste the address of a Youtube video into a Wakelet collection, and it will embed - allowing viewers to watch it without leaving the site. The same applies to social media posts, podcasts, music, and much more. You can also add articles, online documents, and upload your own content like text, PDFs, images, and even Flipgrid videos. Wakelet has a long list of integrations, layouts and options that allow you to share content and tell stories exactly how you want.

You can also use Wakelet's collaboration feature to create memorable and meaningful learning experiences for your classes. Students can both access and contribute to collections across devices without even needing to sign up!

Educators across the world are using Wakelet to create and share resources, lesson plans, presentations, newsletters, digital storytelling assignments, online portfolios, journals and much more.

Head to learn. wakelet.com to discover how you can get the most out of online content, and enhance learning experiences across the board!"

"I find Wakelet has multipurpose use for education: organizing course materials in one place, recapping Twitter chats, ePortfolios and more. The ease of use is key; you'll be up and running with a new Wakelet account in no time. Finally, the Wakelet support team has been super accessible and supportive. I appreciate and value that." - Kim Fox, Professor at American University of Cairo

21. Times Table Rockstars - Sequenced Programmes to Help Kids Learn Times Tables

Bruno Reddy, and Danielle Bartram of Miss B's Resources.

"Times Table Rock stars is an online learning platform, engaging primary and secondary school students in daily times tables practice. Its adaptive question generator is cleverly sequenced to provide measurable improvements in times tables recall speeds, increasing confidence and enjoyment in maths.

The animated theme and motivational reward system have captivated pupils, teachers and families alike, resulting in widespread success across the UK. Children can practice by themselves, compete against other students and complete homework assignments tailored to their ability, online or using the mobile application.

"Times Table Rockstars is an amazing site for to practise their times table recall skills in both a fun and engaging way. TTRockstars has motivated our students to become proactive in improving their times table recall skills whilst in the pursuit of the 'rock hero' status." - Danielle Bartram.

22. Explain Everything - Collaborative, Interactive Whiteboard App

Beth Holland, and Michael Cohen of The Tech Rabbi.

For a number of years, Bartosz Gonczarek (CEO) and Piotr Sliwinski (CTO) had a hobby of making funny podcasts. They thought about filming them but the budget to make real movies with their ideas (space aliens, large explosions, monsters destroying whole city quarters) would have been too costly. The only plausible way to capture their ideas was to make simple cartoons.

The concept for an app to create these cartoons appeared in Piotr's head in 2008 when a colleague showed him an animation that he had made. After a week, Piotr had a working proof of concept. It was a simple app for the Mac that displayed a funny face that could be moved around a checkered window, while its movement was recorded. Fast forward and on August 19, 2011, Explain Everything made its debut on the iPad App Store.

Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard app with real-time collaboration that lets you animate, record, annotate, collaborate, and explore ideas, knowledge and understanding. Explain Everything provides teachers and students an opportunity to share thinking, reflect upon knowledge building, and assess both products and processes of learning.

23. Quizizz - Fun Multiplayer Classroom Quizzes

CUE, and Bethany Petty of Teaching With Technology.

Quizizz allows you to find amazing quizzes made by other teachers, or create your own quizzes and share them with the world. Start a "Live" game in class, or assign Quizizz as a fun "Homework" task. Teachers can control the competition by toggling the leaderboard, timer and other settings. Thanks to Quizizz being available on all devices, students play together, but each at their own pace. Gamification elements like avatars, leaderboard and funny memes add to the fun! Review your work in the end and use Quizizz' detailed class and student-level reports to understand where your students need help.

"Quizizz is a game changer in formative assessment because it's easy for teachers to adopt. It has just the right visual layout for entertaining kids and getting teachers the actionable data they crave. As a plus, there's no "app" to download - Quizizz works on great on any device!" - Jon Corippo

The Best of the Rest

Each of the following EdTech companies received a single nomination from our education experts, but all of them deserve a mention for being fantastic tools to support teaching, learning and education!

24. Education City - Kids Educational Games and Teacher Resources

Sophie's Nursery.

EducationCity is one of the leading online teaching, learning and assessment resources. It was established in 1999 and now has subscribers in over 70 countries worldwide.

Ideal for children aged between 3-12 years old and children with SEN of all ages, EducationCity's engaging and interactive educational resources cover English, Mathematics, Science, Computing, French, Spanish and English as an additional language. Offering a variety of content types, it lends itself to group and whole-class instruction as well as personalised learning.

It can be used anytime and anywhere on various devices, including interactive whiteboards, laptops and mobile devices, and also includes many time-saving features for the teacher. As a curriculum-based resource, EducationCity is mapped to UK and worldwide curricula.

25. Flipgrid - Video for Student Engagement and Formative Assessment

Alec Couros.

Flipgrid is video platform used in over 50,000 classrooms to empower student voice and ignite discussion. In Flipgrid, teachers post discussion topics to which students respond via video, creating a social learning environment that provides every student an equal voice and increases engagement.

With the advent and increasing popularity of short video based communication a la Snapchat, Instagram Stories and more, allowing students to communicate and learn through a medium they are familiar with can improve engagement and knowledge retention.

Created 'grids' can also be embedded or connected with a variety of other platforms such as Blackboard, Wordpress, Moodle and more.

26. Padlet - The Easiest Way to Create and Collaborate

Teaching With Technology.

Padlet is like paper for your screen. Start with an empty page and then put anything you like on it. Upload a video, record an interview, snap a selfie, add text or upload some documents, and watch your padlet come to life. Invite as many people as you like and watch the page update in real time with the contributions of others. Used by teachers, students, professionals, and individuals of all ages, all around the world, Padlet is the easiest way to create and collaborate wherever you are.

Padlets easy, intuitive interface makes it a breeze to quickly create a new document. You could hold a live collaboration lesson where students can all share and add content to your sheet at the same time, or set a task to create a summer holiday scrapbook before school returns in September.
27. Microduino - DIY Electronics for Makers of All Ages

Tech Trends 4 Teachers.

Microduino designs and manufacturers digital electronic building blocks which are connectable to a large selection of digital input and digital/analog output devices. Compatible with Arduino, the Microduino Series blocks are packaged in multi-piece kits that allow users to build, animate and control objects that they construct. Kits also include interactive components that sense physical attributes and output devices. In its most popular form, mCookies are stackable, magnetically and electronically connectable and colour-coded to easily identify the functional family type.

mCookies are physically compatible with LEGO blocks. Connected in stacks, mCookies are available into the consumer, maker space and educational markets as components and/or in convenient kits such as the Microduino 'Itty Bitty City'.

Microduino recent awards include Time Magazine named Microduino 1 of the top 5 STEM education kits to teach kids engineering and coding, Gold winners of the 2016 IDEA awards by the IDSA. Microduino modules are on permanent display at the Henry Ford museum of Innovation, One of the 'Five Best Things' from the World Maker Faire.

"Microduino is the perfect tool for STEM/STEAM education" - Nikolaos Chatzopoulos

28. TouchCast - Leading the Smart Video Revolution

Brad Gustafson.

At the core of TouchCast are Smart Videos. What makes video smart? Tools to create and stream video that are blissfully simple to use. The means for any file to be shared inside video. Interactive elements that make them more engaging. The ability to collaborate with your team anywhere in the world.

With TouchCast Studio, you have a full-blown TV studio at your fingertips. Use the green-screen feature to place yourself against a background or inside content. Or step inside a virtual set. Read from a scrolling script. Add titles. Annotate. Record your video, edit it, and share securely. Live stream it privately to a small group, the whole company, or publicly to the entire world.

This is smart video creation, where broadcasting is easy.

"We use TouchCast to supercharge school communications and unleash student creativity. TouchCast is like having a free professional recording studio in your classroom." - Brad Gustafson

29. Puzzlets - Make Game Time, Brain Time

Seymour Educate.

Puzzlets is a hardware accessory for your tablet or computer used to play Puzzlets-specific games. Each game focuses on a traditionally "tough" STEAM subject, such as: coding, math, and colour theory. Each game comes with its themed set of physical Puzzlets tiles.

Puzzlets apps use these toy puzzle pieces to control video games for K-2 (ages 6+). This hands-on learning game philosophy starts with fun first and offers endless possibilities to the educational market. Cork the Volcano, the first game for Puzzlets, enriches logic, sequencing, fine-motor skills through physical interaction and gameplay. New Puzzlets games on the topics of Math and Art, releasing Summer 2017, will expand the platform and learning.

30. Ebookadabra - 100's of Children's Books in One App

Sophie's Nursery.

Ebookadabra is the 'Netflix' of kids picture books. Aimed at children aged 3-7, it offers a huge library of picture books from well-known publishers, educational games and rewards - all within an environment that is safe and fun.

For a single monthly subscription that covers the whole family, parents and up to four kids can join in the fun - with everyone being able to access Ebookadabra simultaneously on an unlimited number of devices. Families can message each other, post reviews and record audio books.
31. Smart Feed - Quality Movies and TV Shows for Kids

The Ebookadabra library is constantly growing and new stickers, games, avatars and emoji are added regularly to maintain a fresh and engaging world of reading.

Daisy Dyer Duerr.

SmartFeed is the parents' trusted platform to curate, deliver, manage and connect to their kids' digital media - across all content and devices. Media is increasingly everywhere, especially in front of our children. Kids find and consume it easily, just like junk food. SmartFeed aims to change the paradigm: rather than just filtering out the junk, this tool helps parents feed their kids positive, engaging, healthy content instead.

It's also an incredibly useful tool within schools that provide digital devices to students to use during lessons, ensuring attention is focussed on their learning goals and not on 'junk media'. Additionally, the Smart Feed screening and filtering process mean teachers and educators can be safe in the knowledge that any external media used in their lessons has already been flagged as appropriate for their students age group.

32. TinyTap - Create Games and Learn from Others

30 Goals Challenge for Teachers.

TinyTap is a marketplace of interactive educational games created by teachers. TinyTap empowers students to learn through play, with over 100,000 learning activities from a worldwide community of educators. Master concepts through curated courses and measurable lessons, that you can play on your mobile device or computer. Create interactive presentations for school work, or detailed study guides for tests and quizzes with TinyTap's easy-to-use creation tool. Special needs teachers and caretakers can utilise this simple and powerful platform to come up with new ways to help those in need and personalise activities to fit each person individually.

The TinyTap team also believe that there is no better way to learn than by teaching - which is why they created the TinyTap Market. The TinyTap Market is an online community of millions of kids, teachers and parents that create and share their fun educational games everyday. Created games can be published on the TinyTap Market, giving creators the option to sell their games - whether created by an author, illustrator, educator or just someone full of imagination.

"TinyTap is a wonderful app to encourage children to create interactive games and presentations for others with their own images, sound effects, and much more." - Shelly Terrell

33. EDPuzzle - The Easiest Way to Engage Your Students With Videos

Teaching With Technology.

Edpuzzle allows teachers to easily customize a video by adding questions and audio throughout the video to have more engaging video-lessons. Helping to dispel the classic problem of students dozing off during longer videos, Edpuzzle allows you to add natural stopping points throughout the video. Add pauses at the end of each key video segment to trigger questioning and discussion amongst the class - all while making sure they're still paying attention!

Edpuzzle also allows teachers to encourage self-paced learning by adding their own voice recording on top of the existing video. This means students can watch or review videos individually depending on their level of progress, helping to remove the chance of them becoming bored due to learning something they have already mastered.

34. UpGrad - Online Education Programmes for Professionals

Lightbox VC.

UpGrad was founded with an aim to empower working professionals and individuals to reach their full professional potential by providing them with high quality industry-relevant online programs in upcoming technological areas, which have high demand and increasing job opportunities.

So far, UpGrad has successfully launched programs in new age verticals like Product and Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Digital (including areas in Marketing), and Data Analytics. Merging the latest technology, pedagogy and services, UpGrad offers an impactful and engaging learning experience for the digital world.

In its first year, UpGrad's Start Up India Learning Program has become the single largest online program in India, by enrolment. In addition, UpGrad's Data Analytics PG Diploma Program has become the single largest online program in India, by revenue. With a strong community of 50,000+ students, UpGrad is redefining online education in India, both in terms of enrolment/retention achievements as well as perception.

35. Loop - Student Feedback Made Easy

Loop allows teachers to collect structured feedback from their students about their learning experience and wellbeing. Providing a private, digital setting gives students more confidence to speak out about things that might be holding back their learning.

Teachers can enable anonymous responses, schedule questions, reply to feedback one on one or to groups of students with similar feedback, track changes over time, send announcements, and more. Loop is web and app based, and integrates with Google Classroom.

Loop provides multiple benefits for students and teachers, including giving students a greater voice in their education, especially those who are shy, or fear speaking out in front of their peers. Teachers can more easily spot and support struggling students and g ain insight into what is or isn't working in the classroom for a particular cohort of students.

Loop provides a mechanism for professional development as teachers can refine their teaching style. Replacing student surveys, which can be slow and the results of which typically can only applied once students have finished a semester or learning module. This makes feedback more actionable than traditional student surveys using Google Forms or similar.

36. Quizlet - Improve your grades by studying with flashcards and games

Teaching With Technology.

Quizlet aims to harness the world's knowledge to allow anyone to unlock their learning potential. They do this by making it simple for students and teachers to create and share online learning materials, currently used by more than 20 million students and teachers each month.

Quizlet offers tools for students to make flashcards, practice spelling, play learning games, test their knowledge, collaborate with other students and more, providing engaging, customizable activities with contributions from people everywhere.

37. Tinybop - Toys for tomorrow

As nominated by Terry Heick, Director at Teach Thought.

Tinybop builds elegant, educational apps to spark the curiosity, creativity, and kindness of kids around the world. Tinybop apps inspire kids to learn, create, and grow by diving into big ideas, testing how things work, and making connections about the world they live in. Tinybop's flagship app The Human Body, has reached the #1 spot on the App Store's education charts in 143 countries, and has been downloaded by more than six million families across the globe. Other Tinybop apps have won multiple awards from Children's Technology Review, KAPi, Parent's Choice, and AASL.

Tinybop builds elegant, educational apps to spark the curiosity, creativity, and kindness of kids around the world. Tinybop apps inspire kids to learn, create, and grow by diving into big ideas, testing how things work, and making connections about the world they live in. Tinybop's flagship app The Human Body, has reached the #1 spot on the App Store's education charts in 143 countries, and has been downloaded by more than six million families across the globe. Other Tinybop apps have won multiple awards from Children's Technology Review, KAPi, Parent's Choice, and AASL. Tinybop has recently brought their award-winning collection to the web through their new platform Tinybop Schools.

38. CommonLit - Free literacy resources and progress tracking tools

CUE.

Founded by former teachers, CommonLit is a nonprofit EdTech organisation that operates an award-winning reading and writing platform. With CommonLit, teachers can create a free account to gain access to a host of standards-aligned, levelled, digital library of short texts including news articles, poems, historical documents and more. Their formative assessment tools help teachers target instruction and support struggling readers.

39. Living Tree - The private social network for your school community

Kleinspiration.

LivingTree is your district's own private, social network for family engagement. It replaces public social media, websites, emails, blogs, single purpose apps, paper flyers, etc. LivingTree simplifies engagement for both families and teachers. Each classroom and school has a private network which nests into the broader district network. Within your network, you have all the engagement features you need in one easy to use app (web or mobile) and even two-way translation to 100+ languages. LivingTree was recognised at the 2016 Stevie Gold Award winner for Community Involvement Program of the Year and 2016 Stevie Silver Award winner for Smartphone App of the Year.

40. Diagnostic Questions - Better results, more confidence, less time.

Bruno Reddy.

Diagnostic Questions is a world leading assessment tool that provides detailed insights into student understanding in a fraction of the time, simultaneously reducing your workload and improving student results and confidence.

In just three steps, assign a year's worth of assessments to your students created exclusively by AQA, OCR and EdExcel. Create your own quizzes and assessments or choose from the thousands created by teachers, awarding bodies and publishers.

41. Bloomz - One app for all your parent communications

Cool Cat Teacher.

Bloomz is the mobile and web app that allows teachers to share instant messages, announcements, photos, calendars, volunteer and conference sign-ups, student portfolios and more through one easy-to-use interface. Teachers can control who can reach them and when without shutting down the communication pipeline, and with the recent addition of Robocalling, Bloomz is truly a comprehensive solution to school-wide communication.

Free to use for parents and teachers, Bloomz creates a private and secure environment for their community to thrive in. Online portfolios mean that assignments don't get lost, and make distance learning painless. With the ability to translate more than 100 languages, Bloomz makes sure that even language barriers can't get in the way of school communication.

Administrators use the app to track parental involvement through engagement reports, gain visibility into classroom communications, and target specific audiences for announcements by sending information to individuals, specific classrooms, or the whole school or district.

"Bloomz is my parent connection tool. It is so awesome that grandparents and students are now wanting to join. The biggest advantage is that it's available as either an app or email and parents can set it up in the way they like best. Parents love it!" - Vicki Davis

42. My Simple Show - Create your own explainer video in minutes

Cool Cat Teacher.

The My Simple Show video maker tool allows users to create professional educational explainer videos in minutes. The tool is a great resource to be used inside or outside the classroom, both for teachers and students. To create a video, users simply choose a storyline and write the script, copy the script from a document, or upload a PowerPoint, and My Simple Show will create the video for you, with graphics and voiceover.

My Simple Show is so easy to use and intuitive to learn that it make a great tool for setting homework or assignments. Get students to create animated presentations or explanations of key topics to cement their understanding and allow them to demonstrate their knowledge.

43. Ozobot - Smart toy robots to learn and play

Seymour Educate.

Ozobot launched in fall 2014 with the vision to create an innovative way to play, learn and socially interact in an ever-expanding digital world. Through game applications and creative curriculums, Ozobot introduces interactive robots by blending entertainment and education in the family room as well as the classroom. Their mission is to provide learners as well as gamers of all ages a new option to play, learn and interact as well as inspire them to make the jump from using technology to actively shaping and creating it.

"As we have a K-12 computer science pathway we were looking for CS toys to use at our younger grade levels, and of course students love robots! Ozobot is a fantastic tool for teaching coding as the robot and programs are scaffolded allowing us to use Ozobots at numerous grade and skill levels." - Brian Seymour

44. Airhead - The open cloud desktop for teaching and learning

Learnocracy.

Winner of the prestigious 'Innovation in ICT' award at Bett 2015, Airhead is simply the best cloud desktop for schools, colleges and universities. With Airhead you'll save time, make the cloud more easily accessible and support communication and sharing. Airhead's integration with Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite means you'll also be able to improve collaboration and productivity across one or many establishments. In short, you'll supercharge your journey to the cloud. Airhead is the glue that turns the Web into a meaningful educational service that delivers on the promise of anytime, anywhere, any device learning.

45. Tiggly - Interactive toys and iPad learning apps for kids

Seymour Educate.

Tiggly believes in the power of connected play - the magic that happens when you bring the best of physical play into digital apps. They design fun hands-on toys that interact with engaging learning apps on tablets! Tiggly has three learning systems, Tiggly Words, Tiggly Math, and Tiggly Shapes, and has been featured on TIME, Forbes, BBC, CNBC, Huffington Post and many others.

"Tiggly has been a great addition to our kindergarten classes in allowing students to interact and learn their numbers and letters on the iPad. Students like using the large letters and numbers and seeing the different apps work as they select the correct letters or numbers." - Brian Seymour

46. Canva - Empowering the world to design

I Heart Edu.

Canva makes it amazingly simple for everyone to create professional quality graphic designs. Its online design platform brings together a simple drag-and-drop design tool and a library of more than one million photographs, graphics and fonts, allowing anyone to take an idea and present it beautifully in print or online.

Canva can be used to design almost anything: presentations, posters, blog content, cards, online marketing materials, invitations, flyers and so much more. Since launching, Canva has grown to more than 10 million users in 179 countries around the world. It is now available in 25 different languages, and recently launched on iPhone and iPad.

Because it's so easy to pick up and use, Canva is a brilliant tool for creating educational content. Potential applications include using Canva to create resources for the classroom, or asking students to collaborate on projects like digital posters or infographics.

47. Lithan - On Demand Learning and Mentoring

Red Dot Ventures.

Lithan's mission is to redefine adult education through learning innovation. They provide lifelong career progression and learning to individuals and provide training solutions for enterprises.

Through virtual and blended delivery in the classroom, at the workplace, at home, and even overseas, Lithan allows non-invasive learning without geographic boundaries. Using innovative technology, Just-in-time learning delivery allows individuals and enterprise learners to study at their own pace, anytime and anywhere while still experiencing close mentorship and support.

By providing easy to access learning solution, Lithan is supporting adult learners to skill-up competencies and develop their talents to be future ready within the working environment.

48. Kami - Online PDF and Document Viewer, and Annotation Tool

I Heart Edu.

Kami is an educational technology application that provides educators and students tools to view and edit documents and PDF files.

Kami offers easy-to-use and valuable tools to millions of educators and students needing a document and PDF solution. Kami also enables the increasing number of American K-12 schools to edit and collaborate on worksheets and interact with publisher-supplied PDF files.

Kami is a proud Google Partner, a 2012 The University of Auckland Velocity 100K Challenge finalist, and the 2015 New Zealand Innovation Award winner.

49. Peardeck - Powerful Learning Moments for Every Learner, Every Day

Connect Safely.

Pear Deck was founded by educators on a mission to help teachers create powerful learning moments for every student, every day. Pear Deck's intuitive solutions guide teachers towards best practices in the classroom and are used in flexible learning environments around the world to connect with learners of every age and ability. With Pear Deck, educators can easily assess student understanding in real-time, while facilitating student equity and creativity.

Educators using Google Apps for Education or Microsoft Office 365 apps like PowerPoint Online and Teams can easily add formative assessments and interactive questions to their classroom experience with Pear Deck. Pear Deck's powerful Teacher Dashboard and Student-Paced Mode make it a must-have tool in flexible learning environments. New product enhancements include Add Audio, which allows educators using Pear Deck for Google Slides to record or upload audio files to each slide; and Teacher Feedback, which enables teachers to give students feedback on individual responses, prompting understanding, driving metacognition, and promoting a growth mindset in students.

50. SiLAS Solutions - Avatar animation software for social skills

The Teched Up Teacher.

SiLAS is a browser-based web app that allows students to act out social scenes using video game pads and microphones to control their 3D avatars. SiLAS records the interaction in real-time, then produces a studio-quality animation that teachers and students can re-watch, critique, and assess. Student-performance data is tracked and animations are saved in guardian accounts allowing for crucial carryover year-to-year and outside the classroom. Kids can also create and watch interactions in full virtual reality.

The instructor selects the setting location for where the students will interact. Does the student need help initiating conversation in the cafeteria? The students can now practice the situation in the virtual cafeteria setting before going to eat their actual lunch. SiLAS is a great tool for helping kids who have social anxiety or interaction difficulties and for educating those with SEN about different social situations.

51. Showbie - The heart of your paperless classroom

Connect Safely.

Showbie combines all of the essential tools for assignments, feedback, and communication in one easy-to-use platform.

Showbie's features were designed with teachers and students in mind. Unlike other learning management systems that require extensive training and time to implement, teachers can start using Showbie's powerful platform within minutes. Teachers who use Showbie love how it transforms their classrooms into engaging, collaborative, and organized learning environments. Showbie's suite of tools make it easy to give rich, differentiated feedback to students, so everyone gets the help they need to succeed. Showbie allows students to share files and ideas with each other, ensuring everyone is on the same page and encouraging collaboration.

Showbie lets teachers work with their peers and easily engage with families. Teachers can set up groups to work directly with colleagues, share best practices, or discuss the needs of particular students. Parents can easily be part of the conversation too; teachers can set up groups just for families where they can post class updates and even permission slips.

52. Black Bullion - Opening the doors to financial education

Vivi Friedgut.

The lack of a financial education can have a crippling effect on students' wellbeing. Through empowering students to take control of their financial future, BlackBullion positively impact on the student experience as well as retention, lifelong attainment and employability.

The platform educates users through easy to understand native content and interactive modules that engage but never patronise. Users can then access intelligent insights through smart analytics and reporting for minimum hassle and maximum efficiency, empowering learners to achieve lifelong learning and personal development. As Blackbullion put it, it's more like a chat with a knowledgeable friend than a lecture from a bank manager!

53. Quizalize - The Easy Way to Differentiate Your Teaching.

House of EdTech Podcast.

Trovvit allows you to create a "record" of what you are learning - save school work, maker projects, sports photos, art work, camp crafts, after school certificates. Once you save your record, you'll have it forever.

Trovvit's mission is to help learners at every stage - from toddler to senior citizen - learn, save records of their work, share their passions and grow their network. The team behind the app believe that creating a personal and permanent record of a learning experience is an important part of reflection and growth.

As building a community network is critical to successful learning, so Trovvit encourages learners to share their work and experiences with family and mentors through a private, secure feed and portfolio. Through sharing, they can get feedback, encouragement and ideas, telling their personal development story with an online profile and curated portfolio.

Daniel Christian.

Labster is a company dedicated to developing fully interactive advanced lab simulations based on mathematical algorithms that support open-ended investigations. They combine these with gamification elements such as an immersive 3D universe, storytelling and a scoring system which stimulates students' natural curiosity and highlights the connection between science and the real world.

The labs are being used by California State University, Harvard, Gwinnett Technical College, MIT, Exeter University, University of New Haven, Stanford, University of New England, Trinity College, University of Hong Kong and Berkeley among others internationally.

Kleinspiration.

"ABCya is the leader in free educational computer games and mobile apps for kids. The innovation of a grade school teacher, ABCya is an award-winning destination for elementary students which offers hundreds of fun, engaging learning activities.

Over 125 million users visited ABCya in 2019, playing over a billion games! Apple, The New York Times, USA Today, Parents Magazine and Scholastic, to name just a few, have featured ABCya's popular educational games."

Sophie's Nursery.

Aimed at 4-14 year olds, DoodleMaths system diagnoses a child's strengths and weaknesses and creates a work program that ensures progression (validated by University of Bath studies). By harnessing all that is good about mobile technology, it fosters regular daily use from its users in bite-sized chunks over long periods of time. DoodleMaths is emerging as a popular choice in the home-learning market, and as a homework tool within primary schools, and has been the recipient of many awards including winning at the Duke of York's Pitch@Palace competition.

Josh Murdock.

Founded by educators who are creating solutions to the problems of educators, AspirEDU helps schools help more students graduate. They analyse the data that schools already have, allowing their solutions to identify students that are most at risk of dropping out of or failing courses, and to identify the best practices that instructors can use to maximise the performance of their students. Retaining more students is good for schools and even better for the students themselves.

Bruno Reddy.

Brix believe that every Maths student should have the support they require to fulfill their Mathematical potential, both in the classroom and at home. Brix is the only Maths learning platform in the world engineered around a deeply researched pedagogy designed to deliver impact. Their approach is focussed on increasing student engagement, confidence and enjoyment in order to drive achievement.

App ed review is an online database of in-depth educational app reviews designed to support teacher's use of apps in the classroom. In addition, they have also gone a step further and started to build a bank of lesson plans designed around certain apps that are different, fun and engaging for students.

Aavishkaar.

Butterfly Fields was founded by people with a passion to create more 'doers' in India. They felt that the Indian educational system, with its emphasis on theory and exams, was taking the joy out of learning and more importantly, its very purpose. As with many great journeys, Butterfly Fields began its journey by asking some simple questions that challenged the status quo:

Shouldn't education be more about understanding and less about marks?

Shouldn't schools be training children in improving intelligence rather than memory?

Shouldn't learning be about solving real-life problems rather than answering some questions in a paper?

The ButterflyFields Innovative DIY kits have been designed indigenously by their in house R&D team comprising of highly qualified engineers and designers from top institutions. These products have been tried and tested as part of school programs by over 5000 children.

The Daring Librarian.

Since 2005, Edublogs has grown into the largest educational blogging network in the world

The team believe that blogging transforms the educational experience of students and have seen first hand how Edublogs increases ownership of learning, engages students, and becomes a source of pride in the classroom. Edublogs is a project of the prominent WordPress company Incsub; the same team behind CampusPress and WPMU DEV.

Ben Collins, Instructor at General Assembly.

Flubaroo is a free tool that helps you quickly grade multiple-choice or fill-in-blank assignments. More than just a grading tool, Flubaroo also computes average assignment score, computes average score per question and flags low-scoring questions. It can also display a grade distribution graph, gives you the option to email each student their grade and an answer key, and finally provides the facility to send individualised feedback to each student.

Beth Holland.

Formative was born out of research during the founding team's time as UCLA graduate students. Prototyped in the Startup UCLA program, vetted by teachers in the 4.0 Schools incubator, and turned into a company in the Imagine K12 accelerator, Formative was launched for educators in January 2015. The company is now partnered with the Jefferson Education Accelerator and schools around the U.S. in an effort to bring "formative teaching" to educators everywhere, eroding the need for assessments after the fact.

Formatives goal is to help all stakeholders have more recent and actionable data by using its platform both for formative assessments and daily activities, such as lab reports, homework, and more. A teacher can use previously created materials, share with colleagues, or create something on the fly. All responses are served back to the educators in a clean and helpful dashboard that helps them see overall and individual trends. Very soon, those same educators will see the students' progress on standards as they go through the year, getting ahead of their summative assessments.

Revision Buddies - GCSE Revision Apps

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tutorful - The 101 Hottest EdTech Tools According to Education Experts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you work in education, you'll know there's a HUGE array of applications, services, products and tools created to serve a multitude of functions in education. There are so many tools, though, that it can be difficult to keep up - especially with the massive volumes of planning and marking teachers have to do, never mind finding the time to actually teach!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Create

Design your digital twin and build a gorgeous, photo-realistic environment

Customize

Brand your experience and add immersive, full-motion camera movements and custom actions

Interact

Stream your interactive metaverse experience straight to the browser

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Design your digital twin and build a gorgeous, photo-realistic environment Brand your experience and add immersive, full-motion camera movements and custom actions Stream your interactive metaverse experience straight to the browser

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Desmos offers best-in-class calculators, digital math activities, and curriculum to help every student love math and love learning math.

# data[].attributes.headline
WeVideo | Online Video Editor for Web, Mobile, Windows & OSX

# data[].attributes.subject
WeVideo | Online Video Editor for Web, Mobile, Windows & OSX

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Online Video Editor | Interactive Video | WeVideo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The #1 video editor for schools, businesses, and solopreneurs. Create professional-looking multimedia projects with powerful, easy-to-use tools. Try free today!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Make your images come alive with private video, notes, or even music from YouTube.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The fastest, easiest way to build a great looking mobile website in minutes. Includes hosting, site analytics, click-to-call, mobile maps and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Logo Collection - 2016/2017 on Student Show

# data[].attributes.headline
Weebly - Create a free website and a free blog

# data[].attributes.subject
Weebly - Create a free website and a free blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Weebly - Create a free website and a free blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a free website or blog in minutes by using a simple drag and drop interface. No ads. One of Time's 50 best websites of the year.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fast and Fun Resources for Hidden Figures | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.subject
Fast and Fun Resources for Hidden Figures | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fast and Fun Resources for Hidden Figures | Scholastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read on for the best sites to teach women in STEM using either the book or movie, Hidden Figures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Flipgrid is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last Fall, Synth was shut down

Thank you for believing in the power of audio, from podcasting in the classroom to building relationships asynchronously.

We've turned our attention to Focusable, a new tool for students, teachers, and those seeking to improve their ability to focus.

If you need help getting access to your content please reach out by June 14th, 2023 at support@gosynth.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last Fall, Synth was shut down Thank you for believing in the power of audio, from podcasting in the classroom to building relationships asynchronously. We've turned our attention to Focusable, a new tool for students, teachers, and those seeking to improve their ability to focus.