As educators ourselves, we know that planning lessons for a regular day in the classroom can sometimes be a challenge. And now with many schools implementing distance learning in the wake of COVID-19, teachers are working overtime to provide communication, instructional materials, and seamless learning for students.
In response to school closings across the country, many companies are providing access to digital resources at no cost. Today, we’re sharing several of these free learning resources that you can share with your students and parents or guardians. We hope that these resources will help support your lessons and assignments. (The list includes content providers like BrainPOP and Discovery Education as well as learning platforms like Nearpod. Scholastic has even created an open-access curriculum hub.)
In unprecedented times, one of the best ways that we can get through the next several weeks is by focusing on supporting your students and helping their parents and guardians. Remember, we are all in this together. If there is anything that PLS can do to support you in the coming weeks or months, do not hesitate to reach out. And to all of the companies below… THANK YOU for supporting teachers, student learning, and parents during this uncertain time in our lives.
Free Online Resources for Your Students
45 Next Generation Learning Tools That Kids Will Love
There’s a wide range of tools designed to support curriculum and help teachers and students achieve their goals. iReviews put together their top picks for school students of every age, due to their impressive functionality and simple integration into the classroom.
Age of Learning
Age of Learning provides schools closed due to the coronavirus with free home access for all affected families to leading digital education programs ABCmouse, Adventure Academy, and ReadingIQ. Programs serve students in preschool / pre-k, elementary school, and middle school.
Alchemie Mechanisms App
Mechanisms is the first app for organic chemistry that allows you to practice and learn reaction mechanisms by moving and manipulating electrons! Mechanisms also provides you with real-time assessment, giving you a measure of your performance and comprehension every step of the way. All content in the Mechanisms App will be free for “the coming months”.
Albert’s self-paced professional development provides educators with best practices and pedagogy to improve student outcomes. From case studies to tutorial videos, these resources help educators hone their craft inside and outside of the Albert classroom. Albert supports grades 6-12 and is providing educators with an extended pilot subscription available as long as schools are impacted.
Book Creator can be used in any subject, with any grade level. They’ve pulled together a list of ideas for using Book Creator for remote learning – ideas that you can put in place today to help keep kids engaged whilst unable to attend school.
This company is offering free, unlimited use of BrainPOP to any school, anywhere, that is closed due to the coronavirus during the period of their closure. BrainPOP’s hosts plenty of animated movies, assessment resources, and creative tools for distance learning, support for projects and homework, and keeping students on track with their studies.
BreakOut Edu — Fun@Home
Follow the link above for a collection of digital games that students can play at home. Students can click on any game and start playing!
With Buncee’s assortment of media options, creating a virtual lesson is quick and easy. Teachers can include text, video, audio, or even links to additional resources. Record your lesson using the video feature, or create an activity template for your student to complete at home.
Canva for Education
Engage your students in rich and authentic learning experiences that reflect the challenges they’ll face in the real world. Our intuitive, drag-and-drop tools make visual communication easy, so students can spend more time interacting and responding effectively to their learning. Canva is optimized for Chromebook and fully cross-platform.
Course Hero has partnered with educators and subject matter experts to create the best free study guides on the internet. Core topics are broken down into digestible sections filled with short videos, detailed infographics, vocabulary words, reading recommendations, and practice problems. They’ve found that students who use the course study guides tend to gain a deeper understand and retain the information better.
Crowd-Decode for Educators
This free tool that provides teachers with free lectures and assignments related to Crowdfunding, offering students the chance to plan out their own entrepreneurship simulation.
For those who prefer pencil and paper, this site offers over 9,000 worksheets to keep students engaged in their learning.
Fortunately, keeping safe, sane, and happy at home is a problem technology can help with. Apps can bring food to your door without exposing yourself to the hordes at the grocery store. YouTube channels can keep the kids occupied while you get your job done. And when you’re not sure what to do next, there’s an online resource for that. We have all the tools you need to keep your homestead humming.
For U.S. schools or school systems that are not currently using Discovery Education resources, but are experiencing closures due to the Coronavirus, Discovery Education is offering free access through the remainder of the school year.
Fluency Matters is offering 21 days of free access to e-books and more.
iCompute is offering free access to their online Learn Programming and Computational Thinking resources for any school (anywhere) that is closed due to coronavirus (COVID-19) during the period of closure.
Kahoot! offers free access to all features to support distance learning in schools affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
Kami is the leading PDF & document annotation app for schools. Improve engagement and interaction in the classroom with Kami as your digital pen and paper.
Kognity aims to support schools by enabling students to continue to learn effectively even outside the classroom; they allow teachers to easily assign homework and organize class assignments – and thus continue and perhaps even enhance the rhythm of teaching and learning.
The ListenWise platform supports distance learning by allowing you to roster your students, make online customized written assignments, and assign multiple-choice autos-cored listening quizzes.
Mammoth Memory is a free website that provides teachers with a resource to help children aged 13 to 16 to remember exam facts utilizing pictures and mnemonics. It uses memory world champions methods of absorbing large amounts of data quickly.
The comprehensive software curriculum spans Math, ELA, Science, and Social Studies for students in grades K-8 and meets the needs of struggling students as well as those working on grade level and beyond. This company will provide its award-winning educational software free to all schools and school districts forced to close to protect against COVID-19.
To help educators during this time of coronavirus, Mystery Science has pulled their most popular science lessons and are offering them for anyone to use for free.
Equip every teacher with ready-to-run K-12 lessons and an easy-to-use instructional platform to drive 100% student engagement. NearPod is offering free access to all impacted schools.
Pronto is a frictionless communication hub that connects people via chat and video so that they can work effectively from anywhere.
Day-by-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing.
SMART Learning Suite Online enables students to connect remotely to live lessons delivered by teachers and engage in real-time with lesson activities. They are offering free accounts for the rest of the school year.
SmartMusic offers an unrivaled repertoire library, game-changing practice tools and helps teachers track student progress.
To support the millions of students, parents and teachers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, TED-Ed is working with expert educators and TED speakers throughout the world to create and share high-quality, interactive, video-based lessons on a daily basis, for free. Age levels served include: Elementary/Primary, Middle School/Lower Secondary, High School/Upper Secondary, and College/University.
Get access to Vidcode’s full computer science curriculum and coding platform at no cost. Teachers and students will have access to courses, lesson plans, and virtual PD resources until May 2020.
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