James Jensen
Educator / Learner
Gallery of Links
Throughout my time as an educator and professional coach for teachers and administrators, I have tested and evaluated numerous educational programs and websites relevant to my practice. Several of these programs and websites stand out to me as being above the rest in terms of their accessibility, design quality, and usefulness.
Below you will find a library of “teacher-approved” programs and websites for you to use for self-directed, lifelong learning.
Common Core State Standards Website
The Common Core State Standards website is a phenomenal planning tool used by educators to inform curriculum design. This easy to navigate, user friendly tool offers educators access to supporting information and supplemental resources organized by grade level and state.
Scratch
Scratch is an MIT-based coding program that teaches students the basics of computer programming in a playful, interactive manner. Through animation, storytelling, and game development, students work through coding lessons at their own pace while creating their own projects. Scratch is also completely free for both school and personal use.
IXL Learning
IXL is one of the largest programs in the online learning space today. As a leader in educational technologies, their system is built on supporting teachers and teaching students. IXL is proven to accelerate learning and provides differentiated, personalized learning experiences for each individual student.
Moby Max
Moby Max is an extremely effective online assessment platform that provides supplemental learning resources in both language arts and math. The Moby Max learning model engages students in rigorous baseline testing and then curates an online curriculum tailored to their specific learning needs. With an emphasis on personalization and efficiency, this is a great resources for students who may be below grade level.
Outschool
Outschool is a new and unique video conferencing program that is designed for remote learning. While other video conferencing programs often provide only video services, Outschool allows teachers to share their screens, quickly send and receive assignments electronically, and teach full lessons from afar. Outschool offers 10,000+ classes taught by certified teachers in 15 languages.
Headspace
Headspace has been a very effective social emotional tool when working with both children and adults in an educational space. In any educational journey, mindfulness and reflection is critically important to mental health. Headspace provides pre-approved meditation and breathing exercises that can be used with both children and adults. The mindfulness exercises they offer are as short as three minutes making them the perfect brain break for a classroom.
Class Dojo
Class Dojo is a communication application that allows for seamless contact with parents and guardians. In addition to being a center for communication, Class Dojo is can also be used for behavior reinforcement, data collection, and hosts an online forum in which parents can collaborate. This application fosters a sense of community and involvement in a virtual setting.
Get Epic!
Get Epic! is an interactive reading platform that gives students access to over 45,000 online books, magazines, and current events with accompanying quizzes and activities. This program progress monitors and levels students based on how they score on performance tasks, making it a great data collection tool.
NEWSELA
NEWSELA is a current event platform that integrates English Language Arts with Social Studies. The program is a fantastic differentiation tool as it takes real news articles and revises the wording to match a student's lexile/reading level. Using this model, educators can have all students reading the same article but with each individual student reading a personalized version.
Raz Kids
Raz Kids is one my personal favorite literacy-based programs that I use within our language arts curriculum. Raz Kids offers leveled online texts across 30 difficulty levels that students can access from school or at home on personal technology devices. One of the most unique features of Raz Kids is that it gives teachers the ability to record themselves reading to students or give audio feedback on reading assessments.
Khan Academy
Khan is a well recognized and distinguished online learning service that is free for all schools to access. Khan offers personalized learning that is progress monitored and leveled for students of all ages and ability levels. A unique feature of Khan is their algorithm, which identifies gaps in student knowledge and informs the teacher on where a student should go next.
Calm Classroom
Calm Classroom is the largest provider of school-wide mindfulness programming in the United States. They offer a step-by-step approach to social emotional health and community building. Using simple research-based techniques to help students and teachers develop self-awareness, mental focus and emotional health, this program has been a huge success for my school.
Image Credits:
Common Core State Standards (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/
Class Dojo (n.d.). Retrieved from http://storiescreekmedia.weebly.com/class-dojo.html
Scratch (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dlpng.com/png/5489040
Get Epic! (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.getepic.com/
IXL Learning (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.zugzwang.in/blog/learn-maths-with-an-ixl-subscription-the-benefits
NEWSELA (n.d.). Retrieved from https://newsela.com/join/
MobyMax (n.d.). Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/222260149
Raz Kids (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/a/yanceync.net/gurley/f-a-q-s/raz-kids
Outschool (n.d.). Retrieved from https://outschool.com/#abk892cedz
Khan Academy (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/khan-academy/9vwgnh0vbzn6?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Headspace for Kids (n.d.). Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getsomeheadspace.android&hl=en_US
Calm Classroom Logo (n.d.). Retrieved from https://calmclassroom.com/