Digital Consortium Partners Offers in Response to Vermont School Closure related to COVID-19 (download)
Voicethread
Free for all Vermont Schools for rest of year via Vita-learn Constorium
Vita-Learn and VoiceThread are offering VoiceThread for all Vermont Schools for the remainder of the school year along with free PD on setting up VoiceThread for distance learning.
Please complete the following form to set up VoiceThread for your school or district for the remainder of the 2019 – 2020 school year.
Please complete the following Voicethread VT Consortium Request Form to set up your account or set up free PD.
View recording or workshop on using VoiceThread in school closure planning.
Workshop: Preparing for School Closures with VoiceThread
When: March 19, 2020 1:30 pm (Eastern Time)
Register for March 19 workshop
View recording or this workshop offered last week
Does your institution have a disaster readiness plan in the event of unexpected school closures or quarantine scenarios? Many schools and universities around the world are faced with this very situation today, and it’s important to ensure that students don’t fall behind or lose touch with their learning communities. In this workshop, we’ll show you how to include VoiceThread lessons and assessments into your plans.
Book Creator
Free Collaboration Upgrade for 90 days and Free PD
…we’re supporting you in two ways. Firstly, we’d like to offer everyone the ability to collaborate together on books in real-time. This is a premium feature that is usually only available with a paid subscription, but we’re offering 90 days free use of this tool, to help keep students and teachers connected.
Secondly, we’ve pulled together a list of ideas for using Book Creator for remote learning – ideas that you can put in place today to help keep kids engaged whilst unable to attend school.
Free collaboration upgrade
To claim your free collaboration upgrade, you’ll need to:
- Sign into your Book Creator account. If you don’t have an account yet, create one and we’ll give you 1 library and 40 books for free.
- Start your collaboration trial on your account – you’ll automatically get 90 days free.
Read this Guidance for home learning – how teachers can help parents to get their children signed into Book Creator at home.
Daily webinars – join Jon Smith for daily webinars on using Book Creator for home learning, and simple getting started with Book Creator sessions. These are informal – drop in and ask Jon anything.
WeVideo
Free WeVideo EDU accounts for rest of school year for new accounts or for those who have WeVideo with Vita-Learn and need more accounts.
“We recognize that teaching during this crisis is very trying for educators,” WeVideo CEO Krishna Menon said. “Staying connected and keeping students engaged while they’re home isn’t easy but we recognize a collaboration tool like WeVideo can help and we are ready to do what’s possible during these times.”
WeVideo is ready to offer this resource as a way to enable successful distance learning. K-12 districts and schools of any size are eligible for these accounts. If your school or district is interested, please fill out the form below and we will contact you.
Newsela
Newsela’s entire product suite available to all teachers, free of charge, through the end of the school year, and COVID educational content
During this immensely challenging time, we want to support you and your district partners however we can. In that spirit, we are making Newsela’s entire product suite available to all teachers, free of charge, through the end of the school year.
For free access to Newsela products for Teachers and Administrators:
- Visit our coronavirus resource center
- Teachers will get immediate access to Newsela ELA, Newsela Science, Newsela Social Studies, and The Newsela Social-Emotional Learning Collection in their Newsela account. If they don’t have a Newsela account, they’ll be able to set one up in minutes.
- Administrators can request access and will be contacted within 24 hours for more details.
We’ve also added timely resources that can be accessed via our coronavirus resource center:
- Free professional learning for remote instruction: We’ve assembled a Remote Teaching Toolkit to make sure teachers are fully prepared to use Newsela to support core instruction remotely.
- COVID-19 educational content: We’ll continue publishing content that educators across subjects and grades can use to teach about COVID-19 in a way that’s accurate, responsible and empowering to students.
