BrainRush is an excellent new site that I just found out about from Larry Ferlazzo's blog. BR is a fantastic site for students to create and learn through flashcard style games. Also, these games utilize a "adaptive practice technology" which is ideal for Differentiated Instruction as it tailors learning to each individual student needs.
ClassDojo the popular "web 2.0" site for managing classroom behavior has just released a highly anticipated update, 'class sharing'. This update allows for teachers to share feedback w/ other teachers about students behavior.
Tabtor is an excellent iPad app/program that is ideal for helping educators teach and students learn Math. This is done through a very easy to use iPad interface that allows students to solve equations by actually writing on the iPad. What makes Tabtor "work" is that it allows students to view video tutorials before or after a problem to help them learn the "topic". This is a great way for a teacher to "flip their classroom" and ideal for "differentiated instruction" in that it allows students to learn at their own pace as well as let teachers access student data and adjust their learning to meet their needs. Another great advantage is that Tabtor uses a variety of teaching styles that helps learners of all different kinds such as wether they are a visual, auditory, or kinetic learner.
"Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability." Wikipedia Differentiation, the ability for teachers to meet the needs of a variety of learners, is a key component for successful teaching. While there are lots of ways this can be done and lots of tools that educators can use to accomplish this, there are many sites that can help facilitate the process.
19 Pencils is a site that has appeared on this blog a number of times, but over the last few months has recently undergone a site construction w/ some excellent educational tools. For anyone who is not familiar w/ 19 Pencils, this is a great site for curating the web into a safe environment/web page for students. Also, I like to use 19 Pencils as a "educational" search engine where I know I can find educational content w/out having to worry about inappropriate sites popping up. Recently, 19 Pencils added some nice features such as the ability create quizzes (short answer or multiple choice) and the ability to create puzzle-type games such as crosswords and word searches.
Smart Kit is a nice site for finding safe educational games and puzzles. These games focus on such subjects as: Math, Logic, Physics, and more.
Cram is a nice site that I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers for making flashcards. This is a site where teachers can browse through a wide variety of flashcards on any number of subjects as well as create their own. Also, this is a nice place to find a list of nice mobile apps for creating flashcards.
