MrKremerScience.com

Good morning. I don’t think of myself as someone who promotes or endorses products or services for commercial gain – I’m just a science teacher, after all – but I find myself constantly surprised at the sheer quantity of high-quality, exciting, engaging, and entertaining educational material available online these days. (How’s that for alliteration?)

At the end of the day yesterday I stumbled across Graphite.org, a new website that includes a rating system for different educational apps and programs. According to the Graphite home page, “Graphite is a free service from Common Sense Education that makes it easy to discover the best apps, games, and websites for classroom use.” It’s a pretty intuitive site to navigate, with filters for age groups (K-12), subject areas, platform (iOS, Android, Windows, Linux), and product type (app, online, software). Ratings are based on both content and

One of the things I like as an educator AND as a parent of two school-age children is the “Field Notes” section, where people who are actually using the applications describe what they’re doing and evaluate how well it works.

Here’s a quick list of a few things I found through Graphite that may apply to my classes, and which you may find useful as well:

• The Lawrence Hall of Science: Collections of science activities for exploration at home or in the classroom.
• California Academy of Sciences: Search for activities by grade level and topic, all of which are aligned with California standards.
• Science Update: Quick, one-minute podcasts about current science events.
• Science Buddies: Explore science fair project ideas. (Hint: They don’t have to be just for science fairs!)