December 18, 2011

Learn Zillion

Learn Zillion is website similar to Khan Academy where teachers can assign video lessons for students to watch in order to learn a concept.  Learn Zillion is a little different however in the fact that the lessons are organized by the Common Core Standards only in the area of Math.  Browsing the site, I noticed that the videos were of excellent quality and each lesson had an accompanying lesson plan in MS Word and MS PPT.  As a teacher on this site you can create a class and invite students (students need e-mail address to sign up).  Once you have a class setup, you can then select one lesson or create a playlist of lessons on a certain topic broken out by the CCS.  At any time you can review your students progress and completion of assignments and even download the data to a .csv file in MS Excel.  In the near future, Learn Zillion will even allow parents to track their child's progress so that they can work with them at home as well.

Now What?

Unlike some other educational bloggers, I don't believe that the flipped classroom is the answer to all of our education issues.  I do however believe that Learn Zillion is an excellent tool to be used in addition to what is already being done in the classroom.  I really like the idea of instruction being differentiated as students fill in their own gaps in learning.  I also see value in the fact that the teacher can create a playlist for students in a certain skill and have them complete the lessons at their pace.  This would be an excellent way for teachers to track their students progress and assign meaningful lessons that match their specific needs.

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