As an educator people sometimes recommend sites or programs to me that I find don’t live up to the hype. It’s frustrating and time consuming to wade through the massive amount of new web apps popping up everyday.
What’s The Easiest Way To Get Started?
Then, every once in a while, I’ll come across a site that makes me stop and pause. It sounds amazing. It looks great. But will it work in practice? For the last 4 months I’ve been piloting the website Fishtree. It’s a completely online web app that allows you to create lessons or use lessons that other teacher have made to teach. You can create quizzes, input your own links, and search their catalog of educational media for resources to add to your lesson. Fishtree provides data on how they performed and delivers it to you instantly on their analytics’ page. Once you add your students, they take a quiz that helps Fishtree better understand how your students like to learn. Are they visual learners? Fishtree will give them more videos. Do they learn better from reading text? Fishtree will give them articles on the topic instead.
When I contacted Fishtree to ask for a pilot, I wondered how their user interface would be. Meaning: would it be easy to use? It was! Within 15 minutes I was able to create my first lesson! Time saver? You bet!
My Class Became A Community
What I loved most though were my students interactions with the site. They enjoyed using Fishtree! Students began using it to search for resources to help them with homework! I even noticed a student who used the same resource that a friend had used. They weren’t just a class at school: they were becoming a connected community even at home.
If you’re interested in trying a pilot, I suggest contacting them immediately. It isn’t often that you get to try something that could help change the way you teach for the better.
By Jennifer Dragotta, 3rd grade teacher, South Carolina
This post was originally posted on Tech Cub Hub website.
P.S. Teachers use Fishtree to plan lessons, find standard-aligned teaching resources, create assessments and see students performance, all in one place! If you’re a teacher, use Fishtree to prepare for your class and understand how well each student is learning. What’s more, it’s safe, secure, collaborative and easy! Try the next generation learning platform or contact us for a demo.
