From their promotional email....
As a new year begins, a new slate of adventures lie ahead in 2016. To celebrate, PBS LearningMedia has released its
PBS World Explorer video collection, which tells the tales of world-famous explorers- both from centuries ago, and modern times.
Most under 5-minutes long, the videos provide “on-the-go” students,
and adults, with a convenient way to watch and learn in mini “cram
sessions.” Each video includes fun animations and engaging music to
capture the viewer’s interest, in a visually appealing and entertaining
way.
To help bring these videos to life, we’ve included below a few angles that may appeal to your readers:
- How to get your kids interested in history
For kids who have short attention spans, these short videos are the
perfect “cram sessions.” Fun animations and music are used to capture
the interest of kids and tell the stories of the explorers in a visually
appealing way.
- Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Adults can test their “explorer knowledge” to see if they still remember what they learned back in grade school.
- What did explorers do before Google Maps?
Emphasize the awe-inspiring adventures and explorations of these
world-famous explorers, before society was dependent on iPhones and
Google Maps.
These explorers provided countless milestone events including
holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. The World Explorer videos
highlight why these holidays are celebrated.
Some examples of famous explorers who are featured include: Ponce de
Leon, Amerigo Vespucci, Neil Armstrong, Marco Polo, and more. You can
check out the PBS World Explorer online
here.
Seesaw Blogs is the latest feature from Seesaw that is the great digital portfolio tool that educators are using everywhere. This new feature is a simple way for students to share their work to a global audience in a safe/teacher moderated way. Also, teachers can use "Connected" blogs to collaborate w/ classrooms around the world.
Scholar Quest is a fun free iPad app for Game Based Learning. The way this works is a player moves across a tile board answering questions while trying to find a hidden key to unlock the next level. Questions cover a wide range of topics from History to Sports, books, and more. Also, a player collects coins, power-ups, etc while getting help from Leonardo Da Vinci.
Storyboard That the widely popular learning tool for education, has just released a major update to their teacher dashboard. This new polished user interface adds a great "Featured Activity" section as well as links to a wide variety of teacher guides. These teacher guides can are customizable and can be easily integrated into any curriculum while still maintaining the drag-n-drop simplicity of Storyboard That. Another excellent feature for teachers is the detailed reporting section that not only tracks student usage but helps teachers facilitate their use of Storyboard That in the classroom.
Unicorn Glitterluck is a fun iOS app for young kids learning how to count 1 to 20. This app uses a side scrolling platform style game to have users guide a customizable unicorn through a number of magical worlds (i.e. Magic Forrest, Cloud Sky, etc.)
Weo is an excellent new site for mobile learning that reminds me a tad of Pinterest. The way this works is educators create a class and then can manually add students or have them join via a unique "class code" (i.e. ClassDojo), making it ideal for CIPA/COPPA compliance. Once the class is created then educators can then search for assignments and "pin" them to a board similar to the way Pinterest works. Also, they can create their own assignments if they are not finding the ones they want and assign them to a class. Finally, students can then complete their assignments online and educators can get results in assess them in real-time to help differentiate instruction.
