Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Actively Learn: Teaching with Digital Text

During our next Technology inservice day, Spectrum will present a digital reading platform called "Actively Learn." This site serves as both a reader and virtual classroom.

This web tool provides the ability to embed questions, notes, videos, documents, and links directly into digital text. They have a library that is full of free books, articles, book rentals, and pre-made assignments. Teachers can also upload their own material and convert web articles into a book format.  


While reading, students can annotate the text, receive immediate feedback from quizzes, track time spent reading, and engage in discussions.  Meanwhile, the teacher can track both classroom and individual students performance. Diagnostic reports provide information such as how long the student read, how far they have progressed in the text, and additional performance measures. Several member of Spectrum are piloting Actively Learn and plan to offer a workshop during our inservice day in March. In the meantime, we have a free PRO trial account until March 31 and would love to have a few early adopters join us. Let us know if you are interested and what text you want your class to read.