Common Sense Education

 

Whenever I am researching educational technology, Common Sense Education never fails to pop up. I first found the website through their educational technology reviews. This alone could be an invaluable tool for teachers to utilize when deciding what technology to implement in the classroom. First, teachers can view the overall community rating for the product. The community being other teachers. This is helpful because you get to know how the tech actually worked in other classrooms. Teachers rate the set-up time, whether their students learned from it, whether their students liked it, what it is good for, and who it works well with (ex: ELL, advanced learners, special needs, etc.).

It then has a learning rating. This is done by a common-sense reviewer who is experienced in the field. For example, the Kahoot review page is done by a media specialist/librarian. Common Sense also abides by certain rating criteria. The learning rating encompasses an engagement review, a pedagogy review, and a support review.

Additionally, it explains the subjects and skills it covers as well as what it is great for. For example, Kahoot builds “communication, collaboration, and critical thinking” and it is great for “game-based learning and assessment”. Along with that, it also explains to you what it is, how it works, if and why it is good for learning, and gives you recommendations for how to teach with the tool. Lastly, the site provides a recommended grade range and gives a privacy rating and review.

You can also use their educational reviews to find other great educational technology as opposed to only researching and verifying the quality of the tech you’ve already found. You can search through their reviews by grade level and subject matter. For example, I searched 9^th and 10^th grade English Language Arts and a list of 483 educational technology tools came up. So, overall, I think that Common Sense Education is a great tool for teachers.