Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.
Age:
K-12
Topic:
Educational resources
Address:
Review:
According to its YouTube video (see below), Noodle is a work-oriented social network intranet for organizations. It includes personal profiles and a user directory so people can find expertise within their company that suits their requirements. It aslo includes communication resources such as blogs, shared calendars, discussion forums, and document collaboration. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial before deciding. Check out the video:
What’s that have to do with students and schools? Part of Noodle’s offering is the ability to search their ‘noodlings’ on academic topics. You can search by category–K-12, College, MBA, Law–or topic–tutors, elementary school, middle school. If I select ‘elementary school’, I get topics like ‘Choosing a Tutor’, ‘Decoding Standardized Tests’, and ‘Back to School’. Each article is pithy and to the point. You won’t waste a lot of time reading fluff–just meat.
Plus, Noodle offers a ‘school selection’ tool, to enable parents and high schoolers to search for the right school, from kindergarten through college. Once you’ve set up an account, Noodle allows you to keep track of the schools you’ve applied to or been admitted to, or classify schools based on criteria such as cost, campus setting, etc. You can keep these lists private or make them public so that your friends can see them.
Overall, an interesting twist on the social media frontier. I’d love to hear from people who either use them at their organization or as a school search tool. How’s it work for you?
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.
