Blended Learning, Domestic, English / Writing, Flipped Classrooms, K-12, Language Learning, Music, Open Source Education, Opinion, Required, Startups - Written by on Monday, April 23, 2012 6:00 - 0 Comments

Guest Column: Powerful Teaching Tools In 10 Categories

What I’m Seeing: 10 Terrific Tools

This blog post (What I’m Seeing: 10 Terrific Tools) by Tom Vander Ark originally appeared in Getting Smart.

This is the fifth in a series of (at least) ten blogs on the exciting startup activity I’m seeing in the EdTech space.  Following are some powerful teaching tools in in ten categories:

  1. Reading for little kidsRuckus Media has a cool family of iPad reading apps, one was recently the winner of the About.com Reader’s Choice; here’s a YouTube video.  We also reviewd Fingerprint Learning which seems to have stitched a bunch of early reading apps together into an iPad platform with nice parent-child communication.
  2. Reading for big kidsStudysync offers hundreds of videos featuring young people modeling the sort of discourse demanded by the Common Core.  Widely used Read180has been updated for tablets.
  3. Writing: Write to Learn from Pearson, Writing Roadmap from CTB, and My Access! from Vantage all provide great standards-based feedback on student writing.
  4. Assessment: MasteryConnect is the place to share Common Core assessments.  Check out their iPad app.  Curriculum Associates released i-Ready, a powerful K-8 adaptive assessment (linked to engaging K-6 instructional units).
  5. LanguageVerbling is a great way to practice a foreign language.  Rosetta Stone will be releasing a new K-12 product this month.
  6. Online PD: Bloomboard has free observation and evaluation tools and a big library of online professional development.
  7. Behavior: ClassDojo looks like the big hit from ImagineK12’s first cohort, it’s a simple and powerful classroom management toolset.
  8. Music: Chromatik is everything you need to practice, perform, and teach music.
  9. Presentation: You can be the next Sal Khan with the Showme presentation toolkit.  Desmos has a cool graphic calculator.
  10. Production: SchoolTube is the leader in student created video


I left a lot out, let me know what you’d add.  We’ll cover platforms and math apps in the next few days.

Disclosures: Chromatik, ClassDojo, Desmos, MasteryConnect, SchoolTube, Studysync, and Verbling are Learn Capital portfolio companies, where Tom is a partner.

About The Author

Tom Vander Ark

TOM VANDER ARK

Tom is author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World and founder of GettingSmart.com. Tom is also CEO of Open Education Solutions and a partner in Learn Capital, a venture capital firm investing in learning content, platforms, and services with the goal of transforming educational engagement, access, and effectiveness.



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