NIS Learning Curve

Subjects & Skills - English Language Arts, Social Studies, Global perspectives, Critical Thinking Learning objectives - Identify markers of verification, transparency, accountability, and independence in news stories. Define and identify problematic news items, and other news-related types of misinformation. Explain a variety of strategies to verify images and information. Evaluate text for bias based on word choices and framing methods. Use third-party information to judge the credibility of a source. Learning Outcomes achieved - Learn tactics to spot fake news, investigate bad reporting, and off-topic stories.  Use independent sources to verify news facts and sources, evaluate articles for bias.  NewsFeed Defenders is a free social media and news literacy simulation that helps students understand the essential qualities of good journalism, how news goes viral, and common tactics employed in news to deceive or manipulate reads and disregard disinforma...

Children love games and stories, and what better way to engage your teen to be more  responsible for their learning than a game-based approach to learning? A little excitement  and competition can motivate learners to engage with what they are working on. Classcraft is an online fantasy-themed behaviour- and learning-management role-playing  game (also available as Chrome, Android, and iOS apps). It's cool graphics and avatars  make this a hit with grade 6 and up. When it comes to content delivery, Classcraft is built around narrative “quests” which  move students through a storyline, while at the same time asking them to complete  various activities, challenges, and/or lessons. Teacher-created Quests can be a unique way  to immerse students in learning or reviewing concepts, and teachers may find they're  worth the extra setup time. It makes things very interactive, you could start the class  with events, and use that as a warm-up activity, ...

  Wizer  can be a great tool for teachers who want to quickly assess understanding of specific concepts. Using Wizer teachers can create meaningful, engaging learning experiences for their students with augmented worksheets.  Multiple activities can be embedded in one place giving students options for visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning modalities. Students can label images, categorize information, respond to open-ended and multiple-choice questions, or respond to video content.  Teachers will have to sign up for an account, to start browsing or creating worksheets. Once logged in, you can choose a template and then add a title along with written and/or voice-recorded instructions (for paid versions) and create their questions based on videos, images, charts, tables, and more. Students can worksheets assigned to them on computers or mobile devices via LMS logins (Google classroom, Edmodo, Microsoft), a class code, or a link to a URL or tea...

If you are looking for a part calculator, part interactive simulation tool, Desmos is a standout example of inquiry-driven math tool with super-smart instructional supports. Desmos is an easy-to-use tool that gives students a visual way to understand expressions. It is a Graphing Calculator app that provides features beyond those of a regular calculator, allowing users to graph functions, create tables, simulations and more.  The site boasts a huge collection of activities in accordance with IGCSE and AS/A level requirements. The tool is free and is available on the web as well as on iOS and Android. In addition to plotting equations, classroom activities are available to help students learn about a variety of math concepts. For example, students can learn how to transform periodic functions by trying to slide marbles through points on a graph. Or they can plug in their own equation and see what kind of graph pops up; sliders allow students to adjust values and see w...