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https://storylineonline.net/

Summary

Storyline Online is a free resource for teachers, parents, and students that provides free books and read-alouds, as well as teacher and parent activity guides. Created and developed by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, popular actors and actresses come together to record live readings of children's books and to help students hear books read-aloud. Books are organized by title, author, reader, grade level, and run-time. Once a book is chosen, activity guides are provided. Activity guides are organized into teacher guides and parent guides, depending on who is using the resource and for what purpose. Teacher guides connect the books to specific grade-level standards and provide opportunities for individual work and group work. Parent guides offer more activities relating to the book, often including projects that would require more time or more materials that may not be adaptable for every student in a classroom. No matter the purpose Storyline Online is being used for, it can be altered and changed to adapt to unique student needs, and can be used for as long or as little as a student, teacher, or parent may want to use it.

Recommendation

I would definitely recommend the use of Storyline Online in elementary classrooms; all grades, but more specifically K-4. This is because the read-aloud feature is probably best for students who are still working on developing their reading skills. For this reason, I would not rule out 5th-6th grade, but the teacher or parent would need to make the call depending on how much their student or students needed support in that area. K-4 are the grade levels I found to be highlighted by the website, so the activity guides pertain to standards covering these grade levels. Although, when looking through the activity guides, books that are a bit of a younger grade level could easily be adapted to older grades by attaching cognitively rigorous activities to them. More specifically, K-1 could really benefit from hearing texts read-aloud, whereas 3-4 could really benefit from the individual or group activities attached to the text. It is important to note that the book can be used without the activity guide, so the teacher and parent's creative freedom could make these books adaptable to all elementary grades.

Rationale

I would argue that Storyline Online is a great resource for students, teachers, and parents, inside and outside of the classroom. It could be used to support individual work or group work, as well as all DOK levels. Books can be selected by a teacher, parent, or even student, based on grade level, run time, or even genuine interest. The activity guides provided by Storyline Online allow a teacher or parent option, depending on where the book is being used. These lessons provides guides to teachers and parents, but are also broad enough that they can be adaptable to unique student needs. They connect to specific grade level standards, but could be altered by a teacher, parent, guardian, etc to meet the needs of the student or students they are working with in the given moment. For example, if a book was chosen, DOK 1 could be met by having students review and recall important vocabulary in the story. DOK 4 could be met by providing a text about supporting less fortunate communities and asking students in groups to develop a plan to support a less fortunate community near them. These are just two examples, but the choices are endless depending on what book and grade level is selected. It is also important to note that hearing books read-aloud is essential in helping students develop necessary reading, writing, and communication skills, as well as gain a love for reading. Storyline Online provides a quick and easy way for students, teachers, parents, and more to all access a plethora of read-alouds, for free and on-the-go.

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https://nearpod.com/library/
Summary
Nearpod is a free interactive student and teacher resource that allows the teacher to create interactive and engaging lessons. Alongside creating unique lessons, Nearpod also has a library of thousands of pre-made lessons for all grade levels from Kindergarten to 12th grade; some lessons are even applicable for higher education courses. Lessons can be taught in modes such as live participation, front-of-class, or student-paced and can include a variety of engaging features such as polls, games, quizzes, and more. Nearpod also provides insights for the teacher on how the students are doing, class averages, grades, and more. Overall, the ability to edit all lessons, even pre-made ones, allows this website to really target unique student needs, as well as makes it adaptable for all types of classrooms.

Recommendation
I would definitely recommend the use of Nearpod in elementary classrooms; all grades, but more specifically, grades 4th-6th. This is because I think older elementary students would benefit from all of the features, while younger students may struggle to adapt to some of the activities or teaching modes. For example, Kindergarten and 1st grade may be a little too young to follow along with writing or reading tasks on their own devices, but would benefit from using the front-of-class mode. One could argue 4th, 5th, and 6th would be more likely to make sense of all of the activities and lesson features offered.

Rationale
I feel that the versatility of Nearpod would support both individual and group work, as well as all DOK levels. All lessons can be edited or changed, as well as new lessons can be made, so it is completely up to the teacher how they choose to incorporate it. Both engaging activities and media options are offered on Nearpod. For example, one could add a quiz game, matching pairs game, or a drawing pad to their lesson while also including a BBC video, a virtual field trip, or a science simulation. Lessons could also include a discussion board or an open-ended question. Every lesson could include one of these features, or many. Students could work alone, with partners, or with groups. It is in the teacher’s hands to decide how cognitively rigorous they want their specific lesson to be and how they want students to interact with it and each other. A quiz game could support DOK 1, whereas an open-ended question and a drawing pad could support DOK 4. It is also important to note that while Nearpod can be fun and engaging for students, there are also times where it will cause distractions and render students getting off track of the lesson. Different features may not speak to all students, so it is important to know your students as unique individuals when designing or choosing lessons and teaching modes.

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The virtual tool I identified this week was a website called The Kid Should See This. At https://thekidshouldseethis.com, one can find over 6,000 educational videos that not only range over a wide variety of topics, but that are also all kid-friendly. The video topics on the website include science, tech, space, animals, nature, food, DIY, music, history, art, animation, and more. Students or teachers can go on the website to find a video about a topic they probably haven’t learned much about before. The videos dive into topics that are deep and complex, but make them comprehensible and appropriate for kids. I really like this because I feel we as teachers should be promoting cognitively rigorous content and skills for our students. This website helps us do that for our students. For example, we have been using this website in our EDUC-E325 class. Our professor picks a subject and then in our groups, we navigate to the subject on the website and pick a video to watch. While we have the freedom to watch any of the videos, we all come back to the whole class discussion to discuss how all of our videos adapt to the common theme or subject. I feel like this same assignment would work great in a classroom because students have freedom in their learning (picking their own video) which promotes intrinsic motivation to learn. A strength of this website is the fact that there are many videos and more being added each week.  A weakness of this website would be the overwhelming amount of videos, which may push students to take too much time choosing a video and not enough time watching a video. Another strength of this website would be the kid-friendly aspect. This is because it takes a lot of time to review and curate classroom-appropriate videos. Another weakness of this website would be that all the videos may not be deemed kid-friendly to every teacher or parent, leading to the fact that the teacher would still have to spend time reviewing content. Overall, I really love this website and feel that it could be incredibly beneficial to a classroom, to students, to teachers, to parents, and more! I would 100% recommend the use of this website, even outside of the classroom just for one’s own enjoyment. I have already learned many things from the videos that I did not know before!