Media and Learning 2013

The French website 1jour1actu - Des outils pour mieux comprendre l'info contains hundreds of contents (articles, videos, activities, dossiers, games, interactive sheets) on many different topics, ranging from Art, Literature, History, Biology, Science, to media literacy, sport, actualities.
The contents are aimed at the use in primary education classrooms. Each content is composed by attractive images, clear and short texts and a list of related contents for further deepening.
The teacher section provides them with “The highlights of the week”, files to download for the use in the classroom and an overview of the news and activities of the week.

Zotero is an easy-to-use tool that helps to gather, organize, and analyse research sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects). It works as a reference manager software, allowing to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references, but also integrates some more social features like the ability to interact, tag and share the results of the performed researches in a variety of ways.
Zotero is an extension to Firefox, so it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object through the browser, and —on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. For the same reason, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications. It can also communicate with software running on your computer (such as Microsoft Word) and be used offline (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi).
Zotero's Unicode support allows you to import, store, and cite items in any language. You can change the language of Zotero, and of the citations and bibliographies created by Zotero. Finally, there is an experimental multilingual version of Zotero, which supports storage of item metadata in more than one language (transliterations and translations).
Documentation is completely available in English and most of the pages are also translated in many other languages.

Jog The Web is an engaging interactive tool that allows users to assemble tidy packages of web content. Teachers can use it for providing students with easy access to guided learning activities.
The websites within a Jog can be explored right within the page frame, solving the problems related to students getting lost within multiple windows. Jog authors can annotate pages within the Jog and also create original pages with unique content.
On the website are stored all the packages assembled by others in a library formed by almost 18000 contents that users are free to browse and explore. More than 11000 of them are in the category ‘education’.

Voxy is a language-learning program based on real-life daily activities. Based on leading language learning principles and the latest technology, the integrated Web and mobile platform accelerates learning and creates a highly effective, immersive experience. Location-based language lessons and camera flashcards help learners with useful vocabulary and expressions in context.
The program provides authentic material for homework assignments, including built-in reading comprehension and vocabulary building tools. Lessons are designed in bite-sized increments for maximum compliance with assignments.
The program creates many opportunities for students to collaborate and learn together for it encourages group work and collaboration. Interactive games make language learning fun and keep students coming back for more. It also allows teachers to monitor students’ engagement, success and performance with easy-to-use reporting.
Voxy’s integrated web/mobile/SMS platform uses relevant up-to-date real-world content of a student’s choosing to shape lessons that are accessible anywhere, anytime. This approach is based on the pedagogic theories of motivation and learning. The used method increases frequency of study and accelerates learning by teaching in-context. The system on which the program is based is interactive and adaptive, meaning that each learner can personalize his/her curriculum.
Voxy is currently focused on teaching English to native Spanish and Portuguese-speakers. An expansion for speakers of other languages is planned.

The Concord Consortium Collection consists of hundreds of interactive digital resources. They span across subjects in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and contain materials appropriate for students ranging from elementary grades through higher education. These resources are all highly interactive, involving models, simulations, or the use of probes and sensors to collect and analyse real-time data in the classroom. They have been developed with the highest care for scientific accuracy and research-based pedagogy. All are open source and distributed free of charge.
The Concord Consortium a not for profit educational research and development organization whose work has the objective to stimulate large-scale, technology-based improvements in teaching and learning. Indeed, in other sections of the same website the current projects, research and publications are presented.

Interactive Sites for Education is a website that groups together tens of different K-5 online interactive educational games and simulations for many school subjects such as Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and Music. Each of these sections contains a number of subcategories. Each subcategory directly shows the linked snapshot of external websites. No review, evaluation or other type of data are available. The linked games are generally very entertaining and engaging. It is also possible to suggest new games.
The two sections “Art” and “Teacher Tools” are presently empty: content will be uploaded soon.
Other games can be found in the sections dedicated to Typing, Holidays and Brainteasers.

Ptable is an interactive Web 2.0 periodic table. It provides dynamic layouts, property trend visualization, orbitals, thousands of isotopes, and 5 writeup sources. The application uses no Flash or images, giving all the scalability and accessibility of a normal web page (it can be viewed on any kind of computer and device).
The layout, unless differently specified by the user, automatically switch to fit the width of the screen. Using the check boxes at the top of the page allows to dynamically switch between various configurations (simple, with names, with electron configuration, and inline inner transition metals).
In addition to Wikipedia descriptions in all languages, write-ups, photos, videos, and even podcasts are offered in the first tab's dropdown. Write-up windows can even be torn off or docked to the edges to allow simultaneous use of the table while reading.
Data is acquired from primary sources and curated libraries. Layout and presentation were reviewed by the world's foremost periodic table academic, Eric Scerri. Translations and non-English element names, however, should be considered no more reliable than Wikipedia.
Search (into the box at the top right) can be performed by name, symbol, or atomic number. Advanced searches work, for example, on the atomic weight, number of orbitals, etc.
Most browsers, tablets, and phones can store the site and its data for use offline. Firefox prompts you with a notification bar at the top while Chrome and Safari directly save it.
Full descriptions in 40 languages from Wikipedia.

Thinkfinity is a website that gathers thousands of free lesson plans, interactives, videos, learning games. A Professional Development community has developed around the activity and the material on the website as well as several blogs and a news service about education (also available in RSS feed).
Teaching and learning resources in Thinkfinity are provided by content partners (USA leading education organizations) go through an expert review to check that all the content is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased and appropriate for students.
The website provides a useful research tool to easily find specific resources sorting them by subject, type, keyword, grade level and partner.
Classroom-ready lesson plans and other online learning materials make it easy to integrate Verizon Thinkfinity into the classroom: from the primary source documents you can print for each student to the interactive games students can play in pairs or individually, the resources are rich and varied to meet any teaching style and need.
Members of the online (free) community are provided with tools to organize resources, to network with friends and other teachers and to share ideas, plans and advice with others in the education community.
The website is aimed at students, teachers, library media specialists, parents, afterschool program providers, homeschoolers and anyone interested in teaching and learning.

PerúEduca is the national educational portal of Peru. It is a learning environment providing educational resources and tools for educational use. It is structured as an interactive communication channel aimed at aiding both students and teachers in the teaching and learning processes by quickly responding to demands and needs of its users and by simplifying communication and interaction processes.
PerúEduca contains virtual courses for teachers which that are part of the ecosystem of virtual education provided by the Department of Educational Technology of Peru. The aim of these courses is to integrate and promote skills, knowledge and attitudes related to professional development. The portal also contains other types of material for teachers: articles, official texts, communities of practice.
With regard to the students, the portal offers resources as videos, games, e-labs, images databases, books, animations, audios, simulations, etc., as well as services as the calendar, careers guidance, etc.
Access to all the content on the website is free (although registration is needed). It is covered with a Creative Commons Licence.

Mangahigh.com is one of the first games-based-learning sites, where students learn Mathematics via purpose-built casual games that balance fun and learning. It was founded by an experienced team of mathematicians and game specialists.
The games on this platform are adaptive (they dynamically adapt in difficulty to the ability of the student) and automatic (they have a meta-objective that the players strive to achieve by repeating a simple step (game mechanic) over and over again). They are designed to develop students' ability and curiosity to observe, hypothesize, test, evaluate, conclude and refine ideas. Finally, they provide powerful contexts often bringing out the 'real-world' application of the topic at hand, so increasing the students' interest in the content.
Games are structured with objectives: a bronze medal demonstrates a basic understanding of the key teaching objectives of the challenge. This includes a competence with typical/standard applications of the topic. A Silver and Gold medal demonstrate a secure understanding of the teaching objective and a competence with non typical/extension applications of the topic.
The educational content within Mangahigh is based on the national (UK) curriculum and is delivered through its proprietary educational games.
The site is targeted towards 7-16 year olds but is open for anyone to play. All available games are free to play and enable kids to to develop mathematical knowledge and skills in the context of total involvement. The games are grouped in numbers, algebra and shape and there is a section designed for younger children. There is also a quiz dedicated to the same topics mentioned above, with structured exercises.
Mangahigh also promote school-to-school bilateral competitions. The service is called Fai-To (read more about it on the website).