Learnist
You can use Learnist to create boards of articles, images, video, and other media for a course, a particular novel, time period, math concept, or anything else to help students explore content (or even to provide them a launching pad for a larger project). Project the board on a screen and you can create a lesson around it. Students who have accounts can then add your lessons to their own boards, share them with friends, and organize them however they wish. You could even ask that students create a Learnist board instead of a bibliography for a research project, citing their sources visually as well as with text. When they finish with assignments, kids can also create "fun" boards that you could also incorporate into class time, allowing them to share their hobbies and interests with the rest of the class (and maybe teaching a little something as well!).
Continue readingEditor's Note: The Learnist website is no longer available. There is an app available for download, but it has not been updated since 2015.
Learnist is a website that lets you create and view boards containing text, images, or video on a particular subject. Using the search feature, you can browse articles, videos, audio files, books, and more by scrolling through a tile-like layout of boards created by other users or content organized into categories like Technology, Education, Science, Health & Fitness, and more. You can create a profile and follow other users; kids must be 13 or older to create an account and curate their own content. Each tile links to a piece of content, which you can "like" to add it to your collection or share the content with your own followers. Plus, you can install a bookmarklet in your browser that allows you to add content from any webpage to any of your boards without having to navigate to the Learnist site. It's a lot like Pinterest, but for learning.
Learnist is primarily for self-directed learners; it's a lot of browsing around, finding the content that interests you, and compiling your own boards. Students can use Learnist to explore and create collections of digital resources revolving around tough concepts, homework materials, or just silly stuff. It can also be used to curate materials for research projects, connect with other users to share resources, or access resources curated by a teacher around a particular course or topic.
However, kids who aren't as self-directed may need assistance deciding on a topic and browsing the Web to find links; once they do, Learnist's page templates make it easy to drop in content to create a simple board. You can also make boards as educational or fun as you like; a board on amphibians could include headings like "My favorite rainforest frogs" and "Watch out for poison!" Kids can personalize the info they've collected with their own commentary, which is fun and helps them to process the content as well.
Kids already familiar with social media sites will quickly pick up Learnist's "like," "share," and "follow" buttons that allow them to collaborate with peers around school-based projects and and more. There's a lot of content, and not all of it is educational; boards run from the oddly simple "Lemons vs. Limes" to "Dangerous and Bizarre Fishing Techniques from Around the World." Alternately, there are a bunch of Common Core-aligned lessons written by teachers available, like "Describing Objects Geometrically."
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