Symbaloo
Symbaloo is a platform for content-integration. They are offering their PRO version to all educators for free for the duration of the school closings due to COVID-19. If you already have an account, you can upgrade to the PRO version for free, and if not, you can sign up free of charge.
If you are a new educator to the platform, Symbaloo actually has several video tutorials that can help you get started. If you aren’t able to make your own content just yet, you will find plenty of open-source digital resources on the Symbaloo marketplace.
If you are using a virtual classroom platform, like Pedagogue, Symbaloo will create video content for your online classes. It is especially useful if you are using the Flipped Classroom model as well.
Hand2Mind
In response to the closing of schools around the world, Hand2Mind launched a new website called Teach@Home: Daily Lessons & Activities for K-5 Students. It offers a series of free daily activities and lessons, created and provided by teachers.
Each week, the website provides the following:
- A schedule that can be followed easily, by grade, for students from kindergarten through to the 5th grade.
- Daily videos, specific to grade, delivered by teachers, on lessons for Literacy and Math.
- Worksheets for the lessons mentioned above
- Special daily activities, like STEM, Art, Social Emotional Learning, and more.
Each of the daily videos is about 10 minutes long and come with appropriate activities and worksheets to enhance student engagement and comprehension.
KinderLab
For teachers, or even parents with children at home, that wish to teach design and engineering, building, and coding without the need for a robot, KinderLab Robotics offers their ‘No KIBO? No Problem!’ booklet for no cost. It includes a series of STEM activities that are genuinely engaging that learners from ages 3 to 7 years can get into straight away.
All of the activities are based on KinderLab’s 160+ hours of standards-focussed curriculum. They each provide clear guidance on learning objectives and the resources that will be necessary for completing the project.
