Community Review of Trading Cards | Common Sense Education

My Rating

Engagement

Pedagogy

Supports

My Take

I first saw this app when touring a neighboring school district. I was impressed with how engaged the students were in creating their products, but couldn't tell if it was superficial learning or not. So I asked a 5th grade teacher to try it out in her room.

Her response to me was, "It's a great app for SS and biographies. Really focuses the kids' research to summarize what they learned. They also did a project of their choice, but this is good to check understanding at a glance."

These cards are good for a basic understanding check, but I wouldn't base an assessment of a child's learning solely on this tool. I wish there was a way to personalize the template. For example, in the real person template, I want to change the "time period" to say birthdate but I cannot do so. I also would like to see templates that reflect trading cards students are using today, like Pokemon, baseball cards, etc., instead of just the ornate ones offered.

There also doesn't seem to be an easy way to go back if you chose the wrong type of card.

How I Use It

Students in a 5th grade class were researching explorers of the western world. They used the Internet and books to develop notes about their explorer. Using the trading card app, they created a card that included the important points of their research. They had to put the research in their own words, and also include a photo.
When the cards were finished, they were saved to the camera roll and then emailed to the teacher for scoring.

As a follow up, were I teaching the class, I would create a portfolio (or ePub) of all of the cards so that students could use them as reference throughout the rest of the unit.

More community reviews for Trading Cards

Holly S.

September 17, 2014

Great tool for allowing kids to engage with and explore vocabulary across content areas

I'm always looking for tools that can be used across the content areas, with little need for tutorials - this is one of those apps. I would like for there to be other ways for students to customize their cards, but I also appreciate that the limited choices probably keep the focus where it belongs: on developing an understanding of vocabulary terms.

Barbara T. Educational Technology TOSA San Marcos, CA

April 12, 2014

Create Trading Cards about real and fictional people, real and fictional people, objects, events, or vocab

ReadWriteThink's Trading Cards app is great for presenting information about a given subject. Students can demonstrate their understanding of a person, character, or topic. Each card has a series of guiding questions that will summarize a student's learning. One of my favorite features is that a pop-up text box appears next to each field that rephrases the question and gives more information. This has been especially helpful to my ELL students who may not understand the initial prompt. Completed cards can be organized into collections that support a single topic, such as main characters in a book, or European explorers. Each response is limited to 120 characters so students must learn to be concise with their answers. The trading cards can be saved to photos or e-mailed. No log-in is required and the app supports multiple users if you are not in a 1:1 environment. Students can upload images from the camera or photos. I don't like that the cards are not very visually appealing and there is no option to modify or customize the cards.

Susie L.

March 31, 2014

Take traditional activities and trade up with Trading Cards.

Making trading cards for words, subjects, events, and characters studied in the classroom is not new. But due to their relatively small size, the final products are often messy. The Trading Cards app allows students to reflect on what they have learned through a series of higher level thinking questions and produce something that they can be proud of.

See 5 reviews

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