Read Thoery

Product Description:
This is a website where it will assess student reading levels, comprehension level, and standard achievement.

Glitchy Review:
I found this website via a colleague of mine. I was intrigued at first and decided to try it out with my students. Might I say I am HAPPY to have done it! This website allows teachers to assess student reading and comprehension level; along with standard achievement! Who could argue with that?

This website is super easy to use for both teacher and students to use. All you really need to do is set up your class and then have them go! I signed my class up last week and it began with an initial assessment and results begin. Now to really see information about your students you really want them to take about 2-3 quizzes. As the students take more quizzes the more information the teacher gets. I was able to see grade level performance, Lexile levels, and mastery of ELA standards. You are able to see this overall for your class as well as for individual students. (Hello RTI/SST data!)

The graphs the teacher is able to see are easy to see and read. In addition, should you wonder about something on the graph you can always hover over the information and it will tell you! The graphs are broken down into pre-test results with current quiz results incorporated. All these graphs are great, but when you get to the individual student information THEY GET BETTER! Didn’t think this could happen, but it did!

When you choose a student you are able to see the grade level, Lexile level progression, and the ELA standard performance. The best part is at the bottom of the page where you are able to see the results of each individual quiz the student takes. This is where the product gets better. The breakdown of the quizzes allows you to see the percent and if their reading level changed based on it. PLUS as the teacher you are able to click on the quiz to see the passage given, questions asked with the student’s answer and an explanation of the answers. This allows me so much insight into what my student’s know; don’t know, if they have a skill they are lacking, or if they are struggling with reading and comprehending questions in and of themselves.

Since using this program I have coupled this with Newsela and Front Row to really allow me to alter reading, reading comprehension and lessons to each individual student. I am able to make my small groups and individual work even more effective to aid my students. Needless to say, I am a happy teacher! By the way, did I happen to mention this website is FREE?! Excited yet?

User Rating:
I give this website a level 1 since it is so easy to use. Should you get confused there are multiple help sections and pop-ups. There is no need to watch any videos to use this; which is great for teachers!

Glitchy Rating:
I give this website 4 out of 5. I only give this because I believe there is so much more this website could do.

Go check out Read Theory here.

Easel.ly

Product Description:

Easel.ly is an online program where you can make “presentations.” These presentations are more like digital posters you or your students can make.  https://www.easel.ly/

Glitchy Review:

After playing around with Easel.ly I was able to see the benefit of the program for teachers and students alike. For example, AVID schools this is great to create different types of one pagers or notes pages for students. However there were some reservations I had about the program.

First, the program is difficult to use and understand, so if you are a teacher with not so good technology skills STEER CLEAR of Easel.ly. As an experienced technology user I struggled with the program. With that being said I did have a couple of my students work on Easel.ly to see if they could do it. I did not give them directions, videos, or anything beyond what I wanted them to make. Here are the results: (left picture is start, right is after 1 hour.)

Student A start 

Student A after 1 hour

Student B before

Student B after 1 hour

As you can see the students were able to get something but the amount of time they need to acclimate to the program as well as learn how to do the different things was very time consuming. This is what they were able to do in 1 hour. While I am able to see the benefits of this program the amount of work which needs to go into it is not conducive to a classroom. For teachers it does offer them the ability to make unique posters for their classroom, you still run into the issue of printing them. When I asked the students what they thought of the program both stated it was "kinda easy to figure out, but it was still hard to use." Might I make a note that the students I gave this too are my "technology proficient" students in my class. I can only imagine how confused my other students would have been. This is the other factor to think about when using this program; each student's exposure and experience with technology.

Second, this program does not allow for the teacher to add students to their class. Each student will have to individually sign-up for the program. As a teacher this is difficult because while my district has Google accounts for all students, most do not. This begs the question of how should the students sign up?

Overall, this program has a great start for teachers, but after seeing everything it really is best for businesses. This program has not adapted enough to allow teachers to really use this in their classroom.

User Rating:

This program is a solid level 3 with even some of the most experienced users having issues the first couple of times out. This is not to say you couldn’t figure it out; it would just take you some time to do that. Let’s face it as teachers we do not have a lot of time left for things like this.

Glitchy Rating:

I would give this program a 2 because of the difficulty in use as well as the lack of real use for a teacher.

Kahoot

Product Description:
This is an online quiz or testing system for teachers. Teachers have the ability to create or use quizzes or tests on the program. Students engage by using a laptop, tablet, or smartphone to submit their answers.

Glitchy Review:
I have used Kahoot in my classroom for YEARS! I love it because I am able to test or quiz my students on anything I have taught them in the classroom in the most engaging way possible. They have made tests and quizzes into a game. When my students know they are going to do a Kahoot they get so excited and engaged that their behavior is perfect, they are excited, and are following the classroom rules and procedures better than any other time. This program takes the stress away of testing and replaces it with excitement and fun.

The program allows the teacher to decide if the students should work individually or with a partner (team). The teacher then displays the Kahoot to the class and it will automatically generate an access code for the students to use to log in. Once in the students can choose a nickname for themselves; sometimes I have the students use their name when I know this will be part of their grade the rest of the time they can choose nicknames. "But what if a student chooses a name that is not appropriate for school?" Teachers have the ability to kick a participant out before the game starts and the student can re-log in with a proper name. Once the game has started the students are given 5 seconds to read the question before the timer starts. When the timer starts the students are given multiple answers to choose from and on their device (laptop, tablet, phone, etc) must choose the corresponding color or shape with their chosen answer. When time is up for the question students are shown the answer and where they are in the standings. Please note students get points for clicking the correct answer and how quickly they click that answer in. After the Kahoot is done with all questions you and the class will see "the final results" (the top 5 students in the class.) As the teacher you will have the option to download ALL student answers with a breakdown of correct and wrong answers (I will attach a result to the bottom of this blog) for you to download. The students will also get the chance to rate the Kahoot! I always have my students do this because someone (or you) did spend time on it and would like to see how other students are enjoying it.

I would absolutely recommend this program to every teacher. The best part....it is 100% FREE! That's right you heard me FREE!

Glitchy Rating:
I give this a 5 because you can use it with any grade 1-12th. Student engagement is astronomically high and really shows students how using technology can be a great learning tool!

User Rating:
I give this a level 1 user rating. This program is super easy to sign up and start your first Kahoot. Creating, downloading, and all the perks of this program are user friendly and easy to figure out.

Newsela

Product Description:

Newsela is a website which houses numerous different non-fiction articles for different grade levels. Teachers can either assign articles, quizzes, or writing based on these articles.

Glitchy Review:

Newsela is a decent program. I use the free version with my class and can still do many different things. While with all programs the paid version does give you more information there is still much to do with the free version. When you sign up you get a month of the paid program to check it out. The only flaw with this would be if you like the program you HAVE to be a school or district to get the paid program. There is not option on the site to order for the individual teacher. I am currently looking to find out if you can get Newsela for individual teachers. I will update when an answer is received.

For this review it will be a compare and contrast the free version to the paid.

First, with the free version you have access to all the articles available on Newsela as well as the quizzes and writing assignments. The only difference between the paid and free version is you can assign these to the students online while the free version you do not have that option. For me I just read the questions on type them up for my students. (Paper and pencil is still good!) The only thing you can do with the questions on the paid version and not on the free is customize the prompts.

Second, with the free and paid version you have the ability to change the Lexile level of the article to allow all students to read the same article at their level! (Hello access to the information!) Now students and teachers do not have to worry about students not being able to follow along or not have access to the information! (This is my FAVORITE feature! Yes, even more than the quizzes.)

Third, with the paid version you have access to all articles in SPANISH. Yes, you read that correctly, SPANISH. All quizzes, writing, and articles will be in Spanish as well. No other languages are available, but I am sure they are in the works.

Fourth, is a couple of things. With the paid version you will also have access to a report for each student with a breakdown of the concepts. This breakdown also allows you to see the class average, annotations made by students, organize the questions by CC Strand, view student progress, and compare your students to other students on Newsela. This works great for any teacher’s, schools, or districts looking for RTI information or small group information.

Glitchy Rating: I give this website a 4 simply because you have so much you can do as teacher on the free version. I really wish they would have a way for us to buy the program as the individual teacher and more language options available.

User Rating: This website is a level 1. You can go in there and begin working right away. It will take some “playing around” to figure out where everything is, but still highly user friendly for any of the user.

Here is the website for you: https://newsela.com/

Bloomz

Product Description;
Bloomz is a type of social media for teachers to use for their classrooms. It allows parents to join the classroom and the teacher the control of what happens.
https://www.bloomz.net/

Glitchy Review:
I love Bloomz! This app/website allows me to communicate with my parents quickly and effectively. I am able to create a type of "Facebook" page for my classroom where I can create posts, announcements, alerts, or events. This allows my parents to be informed of what is going on in the classroom whether it is for homework, project, awards, etc. I can even schedule conferences, that's right CONFERENCES! I just post when conferences are, time slot duration and Bloomz does the rest! I can send out reminders to parents of their conference time! In addition you can post for Volunteer Help. This is where you can have parents sign up for items or times to come in and help! Just like conferences you can send reminders to parents!

The app allows you to customize your Bloomz account to either allow or deny inter-parent communication, parents can choose a preferred language from 75 (goodbye to language barrier issues!), even how you want messages between you and parents will be stored!

Hands down the best part of this app is the set-up. This is almost identical to Facebook so user issues are almost non-existent. Parents can download the app on any SMART device and have immediate and up-to-date information about their student, activities, announcements, events and not have to worry about papers coming home from their students. I could go on and on about the awesomeness that is this app/website; but please go check it out for yourself!

Glitchy Rating
I give Bloomz a 5 because it is easy to use and incredibly valuable to teacher/parent communication.

User Rating
This is a level 1 app/website. If you can work Facebook, you can work this app.