Tech Tools for History Jeff Astor – Simon Technology HS

1. Tech Tools for HistoryJeff Astor – Simon Technology HS

2. Brilliant • Free! Brilliant is one way to keep your science and math whiz kids regularly engaged and challenged. Students receive challenge problems each week that they complete and then compare against their peers all over the world. They can see where they match up against others based on country and age, and share strategies with others students. The site also hosts competitions involving game theory, writing algorithms, and other fun shenanigans.

3. Metryx • Free!Metryx is a formative assessment tool that allows teachers to "track, analyze, and differentiate" students across any number of customizable skill sets. Teachers can import class rosters and skill sets, and individually track students across each skill set as they perform various classroom activities. Metryxappears especially useful for project-based learning, skills demonstration, and other activities where multiple-choice assessment data can't fully convey student progress.

4. Curriculet • Free!Curriculet is an online reading comprehension platform that allows teachers to easily create ebooks and seamlessly embed multimedia, checks for understanding, and quizzes into text. This can be used to ensure that students are internalizing what they’re reading, prod thinkers in particular directions, make connections to the real world, and much more.

5. Poll Everywhere • Poll Everywhere creates stylish real-time experiences for events using mobile devices • It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.

6. Screencast-o-matic • Screencast-o-matic is a Java-based web application used to create screencasts on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.  Specific benefits of using Screencast-o-matic over other free screen recorders are the highlighted cursor and click indicators, ease of use, the ability to add captions easily, the ability for creators to add notes and for viewers to add comments, and the fact that there is no application to download.

7. NoRedInk NoRedInk is attempting to make grammar learning relevant to students. The site has a separate login interface for students and teachers. Students can practice good grammar by reading sentences, evaluating them for grammatical errors, and correcting mistakes. NoRedInk makes the sentences relevant to student hobbies and interests by initially asking users to choose interests from a list and input Facebook friend data. The site hopes to engage students through personally relevant content and a cast made of the user's online friends. Teachers are able to create classes, quizzes, and assignments and engage students in these activities via an invite code. Teachers can also chart student progress and assess understanding of each grammar concept. Synopsis by: DemetriLales

8. Educreations • Educreations is a recordable interactive whiteboard that captures your voice and handwriting to produce amazing video lessons that you can share online. Students and colleagues can replay your lessons in any web browser, or from within the app on their iPads. Check out the “showcase” on the homepage or the “Featured” tab in the iPad app to view some great lessons that other teacher have created with Educreations.

9. Flippity • The place where you can easily convert a Google™ Spreadsheet into a set of online flashcards.

10. Wikihoods • Imagine walking around your city and instantly getting historical information about where you are. That's essentially whatWikihoodWorld Browser\ does for students! This free platform allows you to visit different countries across the worlds on an interactive map, and gain little nuggets of history (related to people, geography, the economy, and culture) along the way!

11. Rewordify Rewordify.com helps people read more, understand difficult English faster, and learn words in new ways. Teachers use it to save time and increase learning from any English text. Just paste in a difficult English sentence, paragraph, or more (or enter a web page URL) and click the button. You'll instantly see an easier version, for fast understanding now. No dictionary needed! Plus, the easier version is specially highlighted to help build vocabulary.

12. Subtext • Subtext is an iPad app that enables discussion between teachers and students within the actual pages of an ebook. Teachers can highlight specific passages in the book to start new discussions, meaningfully tied to particular words or phrases. Subtext also encourages teachers to post reading-relevant content from the web and create assignments and quizzes. Students can share ideas and collaborate to understand what they are reading and develop their own ideas about the reading. Teachers can create their own "closed groups" to invite their students to read and interact with a digital book in complete privacy. Synopsis by: DemetriLales

13. Readworks • Nonprofit ReadWorks catalogues hundreds of lesson plans and CCSS-aligned reading passages--for free! It's constantly updating, too: two weeks ago, ReadWorksadded 76 science passages with associated question sets for K-6 classes.

14. ThingLink

15. Word Counter • Wordcounter ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Use this to see what words you overuse (is everything a "solution" for you?) or maybe just to find some keywords from a document. • Wordcounteris useful for writers, editors, students, and anyone who thinks that they might be speaking redundantly or repetitively -- and it's free! Eventually, I'm going to expand it so that you can upload documents, but not yet.

16. NuSkool • Free!NuSkoolprovides hundreds of culturally-relevant lesson templates organized by grade level, subject, and pop culture genres (i.e. music, television, film, video games). Each lesson template includes a media artifact (mostly YouTube videos), description of the lesson, procedural tips, and possible assessment questions. Educators still seeking general lesson plan guidance may find the templates a bit sparse, but those looking for new ways to "hook" students should find the pop culture linkages very helpful.

17. Eyewitness to History • Free! Eyewitness to History s a collection of primary resources and thoughtful commentary covering historical events from ancient history to WWII. The primary resources are largely composed of eyewitness accounts excerpted from diaries, manuscripts, and other historical documents. The 18th century collection, for example, includes nearly 30 events largely centered around the American Revolution. The wealth of resources is free, but banner ads for blockbuster movies and Xbox may prove a distraction for some students.

18. Google Treks • Free! Google Treks is a comprehensive set of web 2.0 lessons built primarily on top of Google Maps. Created by Dr. Alice Christie and a core team of collaborators, Google Treks offers lessons in science, mathematics, social studies, language arts, art, music, and health-- all in the context of geographic locations. Curious about the history of famous earthquakes? There's a map for that. Need to convey the scope and complexity of the Underground Railroad? There's a map for that, too. Looking to demonstrate good accounting practices by planning a vacation? Yup, in fact… well, you get the picture.

19. InstaEDU • Free! Looking for a tutor?. InstaEDU is instant, providing an in-demand tutoring service that connects users with online tutors from top-tier universities. Simply enter in your desired subject for tutoring, and InstaEDU gives you a list of the highest-rated tutors on their site.

20. Coggle • Free!Coggle aims to set itself apart from other mindmapping tools with an ultra-clean interface and user experience. Controls are a cinch -- add an unlimited number of parent/child nodes and watch as colors, grouping, and spacing are updated auto-magically to ensure the map is always easy to read and trace. You can optionally share mindmaps Google Drive-style, giving collaborators read/write privileges, or review the mindmap creation process with a handy timeline slider.

21. Blubbr • Free!Blubbr provides an extremely slick interface that makes it easy for users to create video-based quizzes -- called "trivs" -- similar to those seen on TED-Edand Teachem. The straightforward six-step process is as follows: 1) name your "triv", 2) search videos under a topic of your choice, 3) select a video, 4) use the entire video or crop to a specific section, 5) create at least four multiple choice questions related to the video, and 6) click 'I'm Done'. All "trivs" are made public and categorized so that any user can practice his or her "trivving" skills.

22. Aurasma • Free!Available in the iOS and Google Play store, this app brings the magic of augmented reality to learners. Add a layer of video to an existing image, and voila! Learning comes alive. Aurasma is being used in classrooms to expand vocabulary, deepen conceptual understanding, and engage learners.

23. Mathigon • Free! Looking for a bag of tricks for a math classroom? Mathigon is a website that consists of interactive eBooks, videos, slideshows and apps, with the aim of making advanced mathematics more accessible and entertaining. And better yet--every offering on the website is free. Choose from a variety of activities and slideshows that have been designed specifically for classroom use. A particular favorite?

24. Modern Lesson • Free! Modern Lesson offers video based courses, teaching "real-world skills." What's great for teachers is that they provide beginners guides to things like iPads in Education, infographics, and Twitter. For those too embarrassed to ask, it's a great way to catch up on how to use new tools. Also, specially for teachers, they offer special courses on specific classroom topics like Launching BYOD In Your Class. Each course is broken up into a series of video lessons lasting 10-20 minutes each. This is a great tool for independently brushing up on technology skills over the summer.

25. Newsela • Free!One of the most frequent requests these days is for "leveled texts," or content written to the level appropriate for a specific reader. East coast-based startup Newselais doing exactly that: creating texts that have five different levels of reading complexity. All the text is build around the news. Newspaper writers take a story from a McClatchy paper and rewrite it four times, corresponding to a total of five Lexile levels of difficulty.

26. Slick Write • Free! Slick Write provides instant feedback on style, structure, and flow for any collection of text(s) up to 200,000 characters. The interface could use a makeover, but the feedback is helpful. To get started, copy and paste your text into the textbox under the 'Edit' tab (2nd from right) and click the 'Proofread' tab. Next click through the remaining tabs to view analyses for flow, structure, and grammar usage. Re-write if you fancy! • The statistics are super fun to explore!

27. Mathics • Free!Mathics is a free, online mathematics computing engine built in the same vein as Mathematica, the best-in-class computing engine from Wolfram. The extensive reference library (all the math you can imagine) covers a number of math topics pertinent at the secondary level, and nearly every math or engineering concept covered at the university level.

28. ClassCharts • Free!ClassCharts is a comprehensive classroom management tool that combines behavior management with custom seating charts and activity logs. Perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to tag students by any number of custom fields (the demo includes gender, reading age, target literacy group, and free lunch) which may then be used to optimize group seating charts by whatever ratio you fancy. There’s also a drag-and-drop room creator that allows you to mimic any number of classroom setups, and associate collected data with a real-time physical layout.

29. Teach Your Monster to Read • Free! Teach Your Monster to Read is a collection of four adaptive mini-games aimed at increasing how quickly and accurately students recognize letters ("grapheme" recognition). Young learners begin on Island 1, progressing through each mini-game to properly associate a series of letters and sounds ('s', 'a', 't', and 'p' in this case) until they've achieved mastery. It's a simple and straightforward process akin to leveling up through the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros.

30. Edweb • Free! Want to brush up on blended learning skills or maybe learn more about what game-based learning is all about? EdWeb provides both free webinars and a social networking platform for teachers. Webinars can be viewed both live, or on demand and enable live chatting with the trainer. Teachers can also create their own professional learning communities or join one of the many PLCs already formed.

31. Exit Ticket • Free!ExitTicket is a classroom and feedback system designed to work on any smartphone or tablet that enables students and teachers to get real-time feedback any time during class. Teachers can select questions from a database or choose their own as the basis for quizzes, polls, and other "rich media questions". ExitTicket really shines as a pulse-test of whether most students understood the core of a lesson--before they walk out the door. The tool now offers a Lite version to teachers free of charge. The accompanying student module is available via web or through the iTunes App Store.

32. Algebra Nation • Free! Proclaimed as “A FREE, Powerful Algebra End-of-Course Prep Tool,” Algebra Nation is mostly geared towards Florida State Standards but resources are adaptable for any educator. Great for teacher collaboration and 24/7 interactive online learning.

33. LearnZillion • Free! As of 2013, LearnZillion has employed a team of 11 full-time employees and built up a collection of more than 2,000 video lessons created by teachers and organized by Common Core standard. It operates its learning platform – including short video lessons, assessments, and progress reporting – on a freemium model: teachers get free access.

34. Voxy Free! Voxy is a language learning tool steered by user interest and location to create language lessons that stick. The system consists of a web interface with targeted learning activities and a mobile app for on-the-go lessons and reminders. The system is meant to "follow" the user and create an immersion-like experience that incentivizes learning with interesting content. Voxy works hard to make it fun; users translate popular songs, learn vocabulary based on location, and read real news stories curated by their own interests. In its early stages, the site was aimed at English-learners in the United States, but usage has exploded abroad. Synopsis by: Laura Costello

35. MediaCore Free!MediaCore is a platform for creating branded, professional-looking video sites. Though the site caters to businesses and institutions as well as schools, MediaCore has included a suite of features that could potentially stand alone as a learning management system. The site is free for individual teachers and professors with payment plans aimed at schools and businesses. Synopsis by: Laura Costello

36. DuoLingo Free! DuoLingo hopes to harness the energy of language learning in order to translate the Internet. Luis von Ahn, creator of reCAPTCHA, worked with the amazingly-monikeredSeverin Hacker to produce the tool which, like reCAPTCHA, crowdsources humans to do what computers cannot. DuoLingo has been running in beta since November 2011 and opened to the public this June, with75 million translatesentences already in the bank. One of the few language learning startups aimed at intermediate and advanced language learners, DuoLingo lures language learners to the program with the potential rewards of contributing to the greater good. After a brief lesson that introduces grammar and vocabulary points through a variety of rapid-fire challenges, users are able to put their new skills to work translating snippets from Wikipedia and around the web. Synopsis by: Laura Costello

37. Tech Tools and Commentary Pulled From Edsurge Index! Check out the Resources available! Everything can be found there neatly categorized.

38. Thanks for participating and I hope this helped! Feel free to contact me further with questions, comments, concerns, feedback, or just to get in touch: Jastor@laalliance.org