Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Free Tools and Resources to Help Students Develop 21st Century Skills


New online tools (from Intel) create active learning environments where students can engage in discussions, analyze information, pursue investigations, and solve problems. You’ll also find teaching resources, including lesson plans, assessment strategies, and technology-enriched project ideas for all K–12 subjects.

Seeing Reason Tool - Help students understand the cause-and-effect relationships of complex systems. This tool allows them to create visual maps that organize their ideas and build their collaborative reasoning skills. 
Showing Evidence Tool - Teach students how to use a visual framework to construct a well-reasoned argument and prove their case with credible evidence.  
Assessing Projects Tool - Develop or create assessments that address your students’ critical thinking and collaboration skills. You can also learn strategies to help make assessment an integral part of your teaching.
Visual Ranking Tool - Help your students identify and refine criteria as they assign rankings to a list. This tool can help them better organize ideas, debate differences, and reach a consensus.

The tools are web based so they will run on any platform.  There are are also tools specifically designed for both Android and Apple mobile devices.