Category: Reviews

One of the biggest problems facing digital natives as they grow into adults is understanding how to maneuver the vastness of the Internet ethically, safely, and to serve their needs. It sounds simple–log on, search, enjoy–but let’s equate this to a shopping mall. You enter the wide, inviting front doors, find the store with the product you need, and then must pay for it. If you don’t have money, you can’t get the product. Even if you could sneak it into your purse, you don’t because that’s stealing (and besides, someone might see you).

The concept of ‘buy’ and ‘money’ are often blurry on the Internet but the idea is the same: If you can’t follow the website’s rules to acquire the online product, you can’t have it. If you take it, that’s plagiarism and–like stealing from a store–carries drastic penalties.

Me, I don’t want to cheat anyone so when I acquire resources from the Internet, I want to do it legally. That’s why plagiarism checkers are important to me. There are many to choose from but one I recently discovered is PlagairismCheck.org. It requires no installation, is quick and intuitive to use, and covers everything I need at a fair price.

What is PlagiarismCheck.org

PlagiarismCheck.org is an online plagiarism checker that uses a sophisticated algorithm to check content for different types of plagiarism. It can operate as a stand-alone web-based tool or be integrated into an LMS like Google Classroom or Moodle. When you set up an account, you tell it whether you want to access it as a teacher, a student, or an individual owner. Each provides different tools. For example, teachers can collect assignments through PlagiarismCheck.org and track student submittals while checking for the authenticity of assignments. Once you have your account set up, you get one page for free, to see how PlagiarismCheck.org works. From there, you purchase packages depending upon how many pages you’d like to check. If you are purchasing a school subscription with roles like students, teacher and owner, you won’t need to purchase packages as individuals. You’ll pick from two subscription models:

1. per page. School purchases pages for all its members, and members are using pages to run checks.
2. per user. School purchases licenses for users, giving users unlimited access to the software (no page restrictions apply).

The goal of PlagiarismCheck.org is not to catch students plagiarizing (though it does) but to help them succeed in their academic ventures. It’s a subtle difference in interpretation but a big difference in attitude and results.

One more note: PlagiarismCheck.org is an excellent tool not only for students but for writers, entrepreneurial businesses, and teacher-authors. For the purposes of this post, I’ll concentrate on teacher-student uses.

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It’s discouraging to all stakeholders that annually, about 1.2 million students fail to graduate from high school. And “Pathways to Prosperity” reports that just 56% of college attendees complete a degree. Fingers point all directions but nothing changes the stark truth: Something causes kids to hate learning so much that they’d rather face their future without the knowledge or skills to do so successfully.

Solutions to this problem abound but one of the most popular with K-16 educators — because it works — is to gamify learning. Wikipedia defines “gamification” as:

“an educational approach to motivate students to learn by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The goal is to maximize enjoyment and engagement through capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning.”

Games remind kids of days when they chose their own seats, worked at their own pace, and responded to their own interests. Through childhood games, they learned social skills, problem-solving, sequencing, and a whole bunch more while they thought they were doing a puzzle, building blocks, or playing dodgeball.

Fast forward to formal schooling. As early as Kindergarten, kids are stuck into classrooms where play is replaced with rote drills, repetition, and growing boredom. It’s taken the experts decades but finally, the value of applying gameplaying characteristics to learning is being recognized as a formidable approach. I’ve written much about the use of games and simulations but today, I want to focus on the student as maker, where they create the game, troubleshoot problems, and refine the end result — exactly the traits valued by coding and programming.

Here are some of my favorite game creation tools for students:

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Next week, February 17-23, 2019, is DiscoverE’s Engineers Week. Their tagline:

“A week-long event, a year-long commitment”

Do you wonder why anyone would be passionate about engineering? Forbes published three good reasons:

• The U.S. has approximately 1.6 million engineering jobs that pay $42 per hour in median.
• Job growth from 2010 to 2014 was in the double digits in several engineering occupations.
• Since 2007, the number of engineering grads nationwide has shot up 33%.

What is Engineers Week?

For those not familiar with DiscoverE, sponsors of Engineers Week, they are a volunteer-driven online coalition of over one-hundred organizations committed to promoting engineering to the K-16 community. This includes the provision of resources, programs, in-person presentations, classroom assistance, training, activities, videos, books, technology programs, and more. The purpose of Engineers Week is as much to celebrate engineers as to increase public dialogue, in that way bringing them to life for kids, educators, and parents. With the national call for STEM resources and the popularity of programs such as Hour of Code, the talented professionals of DiscoverE are more in-demand than ever.

“93% of DiscoverE educators think an engineer’s presence helps STEM students.”

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The award-winning HUE HD Pro USB camera and visualiser is one of the most versatile, flexible, affordable document cameras I’ve ever tested. It’s plug-and-play, quick to set up and put away, intuitive to use, and adapts to a variety of class screens and video applications (like Apple TV). The camera includes a flexible gooseneck, manual focusing ring, LED lighting, an integrated microphone, and a sturdy base. The resulting picture is easy to read from anywhere in the room and the sound is clear and crisp, never garbled. It can be plugged into a heavy base for free-standing use or directly into a laptop for greater mobility. Because the camera head is attached (firmly) to a flexible neck, you can bend or twist it to view difficult-to-reach places such as the back of a computer (to show students how to plug peripherals in) or to move around oddly-shaped items (like an ant farm).

Curious about the quality of the camera? Take a look:

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Every school I know offers a summer camp. Sometimes, these are for just their students but often, the community is invited in an effort to provide a safe, fun summer learning environment for all kids.

The biggest problem with summer camp has nothing to do with picking interesting subjects or lining up teachers. It’s organizing enrollees. JotForm has the camp registration solution.

If you’re not familiar with JotForm, it is the gold standard for form creation whether on PCs, Macs, or mobile devices. For your summer camp, it can be used to sign up volunteers, get feedback on events, enroll people into classes, collect payments, and more. Its drag-and-drop interface makes building a form intuitive, and quick. With a wide variety of summer camp-themed templates, it’s easily adaptable to your school or camp colors and logo. Once the form is completed, it can be shared via a link or social media, or integrated into DropBox, Google Docs, and many other popular platforms.

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Last Change to vote for your favorite Tech Ed Tool!

Every year, I review a large number of websites, apps, and resources that help educators blend technology into their classrooms. I get lots of feedback from readers sharing their experiences, asking questions, and clicking through to see if a particular tool will serve their needs.

But, I often don’t hear how the product worked in the fullness of time.

Starting last year, I sought out your opinions:

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Math games in the classroom have changed a lot in the last decades. Where they used to be fun ways to drill math concepts (with games like math bingo or math race cars), today’s games focus on higher-order thinking, sharing knowledge about math processes, and understanding concepts.

5 Popular Math Games in the Classroom

And they’re highly effective! Here are five clever approaches to gamifying your math lessons:

Gizmos

A favorite among math games in the classroom is a website called Gizmos. Gizmos offers over 400 math and science Gizmos (like super-charged simulations) that graph, measure, compare, and predict. It is aligned with most educational standards, runs on most digital devices (including desktops, Chromebooks, iOS, and Android), and can be used in whole group scenarios or 1:1. 

Math Science Music

The free MathScienceMusic.org teaches STEM through music, using music to show real-world applications of mathematical or scientific concepts. It is designed for kindergarten through college and uses non-traditional methods to help students acquire STEM knowledge and think creatively. Where the content is somewhat limited, it is unique and may be the perfect approach for a diverse group of learners who might not think they like math.

Manga High

Online Manga High is a gamified math-learning ecosystem that teaches and reinforces a wide variety of math fundamentals from counting and number sense to beginning algebra and geometry. Students play the games at their own pace or work on teacher-assigned challenges. Students can earn medals, badges, and rewards, compete against students across the world, and take part in school-wide challenges against other schools. The content is aligned with Common Core Standards and includes not only math games but hundreds of tutorials and quizzes.

Planet Turtle

Planet Turtle teaches math while individualizing content for each student as they play. An advanced algorithm promotes students from one topic to the next as their learning progresses. Students scaffold math learning as the system continually reacts to their performance and provides additional exposure and review on necessary topics. Since the questions are interchangeable in activities, Planet Turtle provides appropriate content while letting students pick their favorite games. It is aligned with many math programs like Everyday Mathematics and Math Connects, as well as national math conventions.

PolyUp

Polyup is a web-based platform (and app) that provides gamified math challenges for all levels of students. With the help of a friendly avatar — Poly — students explore anything from simple operations  to the Fibonacci sequence and the Birthday Problem. As students work, problems get progressively harder while offering a wide range of operations and functions to choose from. Students can even create and submit their own Poly Machines. Included on the website are teacher-oriented guides on how to use Polyup in the classroom.

Summary

These five only scratch the surface of the amazing world of gamified math lessons. What are your favorites?

More Classroom Math

Want more? Try  5 Math Games in the Classroom.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Data collection and analysis are cornerstones for many STEM and STEAM programs but they’re not just about math. They teach students how to think critically and solve evidence-based problems. Unfortunately, data collection hardware is expensive and setup is complicated–intimidating for many non-tech-minded teachers.

Enter award-winning PASCO Scientific with a commitment to providing innovative, affordable tools for K-12 science and math programs.

What is PASCO Scientific

PASCO Scientific is the global leader in developing technology-based solutions for hands-on science. They provide a wealth of rugged, inquiry-based products to educators in more than 100 countries around the world. Their products are wireless, Bluetooth- and/or USB-connectable, and their SPARKvue software runs on Mac and Windows platforms, Chromebooks, iPads, iPhones, and Android. No matter the technology mix in the classroom, everyone shares the same user experience, with learning focused on the subject matter not the hardware, thus simplifying classroom management for the teacher. They are NGSS-aligned as well as correlated with International Baccalaureate (IB) standards.

Among PASCO Scientific’s many devices, you’ll find:

• a wireless weather station
• a wide variety of sensors and probes
• the Ergobot to teach both Forces & Motion and Programming & Robotics.
• a wireless blood pressure and heart rate sensor
• curricula for Chemistry and Physics that are NGSS-aligned
• bridge building kits
• STEM modules
• lab equipment
• hundreds of free labs for download from their website

Most of these are simple enough for young learners with robust features for advanced applications and many come with K-12 curricular resources and support materials.

If you’ve used probes and sensors in your classes before, maybe have older ones that you struggle to set up and run, do yourself a favor and look at PASCO’s collection. I can’t review all of them in this post (it’s already long!) so let me spotlight one I particularly like: the PASCO Wireless Motion Sensor.

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The High School technology curriculum prepares students for their college-and-career future not by teaching widgets and programs—though that happens—but by showing them how to use the tech they have acquired throughout their education. How do they decide what program works best for what inquiry? How do they acquire the use of tools they have never before seen? How do they self-assess their knowledge, ensuring they acquired what they need? Don’t expect black-and-white answers. Success is more likely predicated on student transfer of knowledge than their ability to check off boxes on a rubric.

Here’s a quick overview of what you will find in this textbook:

• Scope and Sequence aligned with ISTE and Common Core
• Themed units tied into inquiry
• Experiential learning with real-world applications
• Opportunities for students to express and grow in their creativity
• International mindedness
• Articles on tech pedagogy

Each Unit includes:

• an emphasis on comprehension, problem-solving, critical thinking, to prepare for career and college
• Common Core Standards covered
• ISTE Standards covered
• essential question
• big idea
• materials required
• time required to complete
• domain-specific vocabulary
• problem solving
• steps to accomplish goals
• assessment strategies
• ways to extend learning
• project examples where appropriate
• grading rubrics where appropriate

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Study.com is an online distance learning portal that provides over 70,000 lessons in fifteen subjects (including algebra, calculus, chemistry, macro- and microeconomics, and physics) aligned with many popular textbooks. Resources include not only videos but study tools, guides, quizzes, and more. You can read more detail on my Study.com review here.

What a lot of educators don’t know is that Study.com offers thousands of lesson plans for teachers — hundreds of them for free — to simplify lesson preparation and save time that is needed for student guidance. These lesson plans were created by teachers for all different grade levels and subject areas. They include:

• learning objectives
• materials
• length of time
• curriculum standards alignment
• key vocabulary
• instructions
• extensions
• related lessons

Once you select the lesson plan you’re interested in, you’ll see the credentials of the teacher who is providing the lesson as well as where it fits into a bigger course if that’s your interest (Though standalone, lessons often are aligned with a particular textbook). Many lesson plans include a video overview and a quiz to assess understanding of the material (though you can’t grade it without an account).

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