Web 2.0 tools for classrooms

In order to keep up with standards-based grading, the Common Core, and mastery levels, a teacher has to have a way to assess student progress towards mastery of any and all concepts taught. These are quick and easy ways to assess if students understand the content and they are also presented in an engaging way for the 21st century student.

IXL is a partially free website that allows you to assess your student's mastery of each standard and skill within common core. It is broken down into Math and ELA assessments. They are in the form of games, so they keep the kids engaged. The teacher can pull it up to use as a whole class game, divide the kids in teams, and they answer their questions on whiteboards, or you can put the student on the computer by themselves and they can answer the questions one-on-one. The program also allows the teacher to print off reports to monitor their progress towards mastery.

A presentation tool that students can use to create a "Museum Box" of information, videos, timelines, and pictures as a report of a person, event, or any topic. This can be used as a presentation and as an assessment. Teachers could have students select a person or event to research and they can fill their "box" with information geared towards that topic. Then, their museum box can be uploaded to the website for others to view, use, and comment on.

Brainpop is a paid website that has some free access opportunities. It is full of short animated videos to teach students about different math, science, reading, social studies, geography, and writing content. After you view the video, you can take quizzes on the video to check for comprehension and your results can be sent directly to the teacher. These are great introductory concept videos to use as your mini-lessons as you introduce a new topic or concept.

Exit Ticket is an interactive tool to use as formative assessments for students. You can collect data, have immediate formative assessments, they are all common-core aligned, can be shared, and can be accessed on any mobile device or computer. This is a great tool for classrooms with multiple computers, and makes a teacher's job of assessing students quicker and more efficient.

In today's society, people move from place to place transferring ideas, information, notes, documents, and themselves. It is important to be able to have access to all of these things no matter where you go and what you are using.

Free place to drop all of your files, videos, and presentations in one place. Great for sharing large files with other colleagues, and can be a place for students to "drop" their homework for grading. This can be accessed from any smartphone, tablet, or computer from anywhere in the world. Teachers can also have copies of handouts here for students to print off at home if needed.

A free place to organize all of your videos, documents, lessons, etc. You can create documents with colleagues from anywhere in the world by uploading your portion of the document and sharing it with the other inidividual(s) where they can go in and add what they need to create the remainder of the document. This is a great way to increase collaboration without

A free website to save all of your teaching resources and websites onto one organized page. This can then be shared with your classroom if you have special websites that students visit on a daily basis or are using for an assignment. The kids can just go to your page and have all the resources there at their fingertips.

A free website to find pictures, videos, discussions, and information on topics that you search for. When you find something you like and want to save, you can "pin" it to one of your "boards" to save it for future use. This is a great way for teachers to get new ideas for their classrooms, lesson plans, share tools/lessons with other teachers, and collaborate together with people from around the world.

In a classroom, communication between student-teacher-parent has always been important. In the 21st century, teachers need an easier way to be able to quickly and effectively communicate thoughts, ideas, important dates, assignments, etc to parents.

Free behavior management tool that can be used on any smartphone device and computer. The page you set up for your classroom can be accessed anywhere and since it is synced with your phone you can do positive/negative points for students on your phone as you walk throughout the room if you aren't near your computer. This site also syncs with the parents that sign up so that they can see their child's behavior for the day and the parents can send messages to communicate with the teacher.

Free text-messaging service that allows people to create a message and send it out to the people they have on their contact list. The service takes the message and sends it as a mobile text message to any phone (smartphone or otherwise). This would be great for a teacher to remind students about homework, administrators to remind teachers are PD opportunities or event changes, and coaches to remind their teams of games and practices.

Free, noninvasive, form of communication. You can post short updates, share information, provide resources and links for others to view, and private message. Twitter would be great for teachers, coaches, and administrators to collaborate with parents about what is going on and provide brief information that is accessible from any mobile and computer device.

Free website to keep in touch with people from around the world. Many parents in today's society are easier accessible on social media than anywhere else. As an administrator, you could create a page for your school district and post important information, dates, and handouts for your parents all in one place. If you had to cancel an event, you could post that on your page and parents would get immediate updates to their mobile devices.