WEEK 3 - LessonPaths and Blendspace
This week is a 2-for-1 bonus with two excellent, somewhat similar tools that make it super easy to combine different forms of digital content into a fun, easy to use lesson!
Both LessonPaths and Blendspace are awesome free web apps that make it a snap to combine web content and your own content into a set of organized lesson content. Different teachers may prefer one tool over the other for any number of reasons (or maybe you like to use both, to change it up from time to time!). For example, LessonPaths provides a more linear presentation, while Blendspace presents content in a more of grid layout. Which you prefer, they are both easy to use and produce impressive, slick content that's easy for students to access and consume!
By the way, each of these tools was known by another name at some point in the past - LessonPaths was once MentorMob and Blendspace was once named EdCanvas (each was renamed to better reflect their functionality).
Here's a 3 Minute Tech Tutorial for LessonPaths:
Here's a 3 Minute Tech Tutorial for Blendspace:
Here's what some other teachers and instructional tech folks have had to say about these two tools:
- Instant Blended Learning with Lesson Paths and Blendspace
- Drop Everything and go check out Blendspace
- Tools For Curating the Web: MentorMob/LessonPaths
REMEMBER, AFTER YOU TAKE LessonsPaths or Blendspace for a spin … Please Drop a Comment below and share your experience! What did you use it for? Was it easy? How did students like what you created?
About the Challenge:
The Try-a-Tool-a-Week Challenge started March 1st, and we're now entering Week 3. Every Sunday through the end of May we're publishing a new web page with a new, awesome free tool to try. Everyone who provides their name and email address (click here to open the Challenge introduction page and SIGN UP) will get an email providing the link to the page. The goal is just to have fun and learn about these powerful free web applications for teaching and learning, and along the way you get the opportunity to win some giveaways we'll award at the end of the challenge to randomly selected participants! To have a chance a winning, just participate and share some observations about the tools you each week!
Week 1 was a blast with nearly 500 teachers signing up and dozens of great comments shared about Socrative, our Week 1 tool! Socrative is a popular Student Response System that students can use from just about any device.
For Week 2, more participants kept signing on and we checked out the free functionality of ed.ted.com! Creating a robust, interactive lesson based on any YouTube video or TED Talk, including a simple quiz, is easy-peasy with this outstanding tool from TED.
