TOO COOL (PERFECT FOR SCHOOL): We've got our favorite edtech teacher and administrator tools for the week right here, as highlighted in our Instruct newsletter. By the way—got a favorite S’Cool Tool you like to use? We would love to hear and share your recommendations! If you’ve got a tool that makes you or your students sing from the proverbial mountaintops, fill out this form to let us know. It might just get featured! Note: We attach privacy flags to tools that collect personal information. If a tool collects personal information, parents or educators should create an account for users under 13.
$100—NBA Math Hoops—A basketball board game and mobile app aimed at struggling middle school math students. Students, divided into teams and coaches, play a game of basketball in turns on a board with dice and a scoreboard. A minimum of two students play the game. The game comes with a Common-Core-aligned curriculum that ranges from winning strategies to the importance of statistics. The fee covers four board games, two player card packs, phone support from the creators and registration as an official chapter, which allows teachers and students to connect to other classrooms playing the game.
Freemium—TapCoding—Released just this week, TapCoding is an app for students to work with Swift, Apple’s mobile programming language. Packaged in bite-sized lessons, the app guides students through the concepts needed to code on Apple iOS. The app aims to take students from beginners to the intermediate level. Privacy flag: We were unable to find a privacy policy on TapCoding’s app store page, website, or the website of its parent company, Flairify, so we do not know what information the app collects.
Free!—Digital Public Library of America—Primary literary, historical and cultural sources for students ages 6-14 curated from archives across the USA. Students can browse letters, photographs, printable posters and sheet music, among other documents. The Library has also created teaching guides with discussion questions and classroom activities.
