Report features 9 educator-reviewed tech tools
Four educators recently evaluated the quality and usefulness of nine free or low-cost digital tools as part of a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Educators considered factors such as ease of use and alignment with college- and career-readiness standards.
Report Assesses ELA Programs In-Depth
Last year, four "all-star" educators sat down to examine nine popular digital resources specifically intended for improving reading and writing in the classroom. The goal, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, was to evaluate the "quality and usefulness" of the programs in an in-depth way. Fordham, which recruited the review team made up of long-time teachers, said it selected English language arts as the subject because educators have emphasized that those are "especially difficult to come by."
Those reviews ran as blog articles on the Fordham site. Now they've been compiled into a freestanding report. According to the recently released, "The Right Tool for the Job: Improving Reading and Writing in the Classroom," the tools also had a few other characteristics in common:
- Many are "free or low cost";
- All provide instructional aids for all grade levels, K-12; and
- Several are "interactive" and "student-facing," which tend to be rare in the ELA space, according to the institute.
The nine tools reviewed were: