Free Resources to Help with Remote Learning in 2021
As the pandemic continues wreaking havoc in education through the current school year, districts, schools, teachers and parents are being more selective about the technology they choose for instructing and engaging students. While hundreds of education companies, nonprofits and other organizations made their software and services free during the immediate switch to remote learning, many have become more thoughtful about how they help educators master online and blended instruction. We've winnowed through our original collection and sprinkled additions throughout, to bring you this updated set of free resources to help with remote learning in 2021.
If your organization has a resource that should be added to this list, please send a brief message to [email protected] with "free resource" in the subject header and include a link to your offer webpage.
Abre.io has made Abre Hub available free to schools permanently. The program provides a single place to post news and announcements and give quick access to software tools. Sign-up is intended for district representatives. https://abre.io/free/
The Academy of Active Learning Arts and Sciences and the Flipped Learning Global Initiative have published the "Rapid Transition to Online Learning," a roadmap for making the rapid shift to online learning during school closures. The resources include a checklist for administrators, another for IT managers, a transition plan and video tutorial for teachers and access to an international team of volunteers who have stepped forward to answer questions. http://aalasinternational.org/rtol/
Achieve3000 is offering free access to resources for differentiated literacy instruction. Educators and parents can sign their students up for Achieve3000 Literacy at Home, for access to non-fiction articles at three reading levels with topics covering science, social studies and current events. For students without reliable or daily internet, the company is offering "Literacy Printable Packets," a set of text sets with 20 printable articles and questions for grades 1-12.
ACT Academy is offering hundreds of free videos, games, interactive exercises, assessments, lesson plans, homework assignments, audio files and other resources for personalized test practice for the ACT, Pre-ACT, Tessera and Aspire exams. https://academy.act.org/
ActivEd is offering free access to its "Walkabouts," platform with web-based lessons for students in grades pre-K-2 students that integrate movement with language arts, math and reading content and correlate to state learning standards. Students, teachers, and parents can access grade-level content. http://info.activedinc.com/covid
AdGuard is offering a free personal account to its ad- and tracking-blocker program for three months, valid for three devices. The privacy protection software is available for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. https://adguard.com/en/blog/stayhome.html
AI4ALL Open Learning produces a free, adaptable curriculum for high school teachers to infuse coverage of artificial intelligence into their lessons. The organization said its materials can be implemented in any subject and doesn't require a technical background to use. Students will learn what AI and machine learning are, the benefits and risks of AI and how they can be involved in forging its use in the world. Topics cover AI and drawing, AI and the environment and AI and COVID-19. https://ai-4-all.org/open-learning/
Always Ready for Learning is providing free customized coaching specifically to education leaders. Support provided by this nonprofit includes guidance on how to prepare for back-to-school. The process starts when the applicant fills out a questionnaire. https://www.alwaysreadyforlearning.org/
Amazon Future Engineer is providing free access to an online cyber robotics challenge for students in grades 4 and above with CoderZ. The challenge includes curriculum that can be added to computer science, science or math classes. https://www.amazonfutureengineer.com/CyberRobotics
The American Museum of Natural History is sharing a bunch of online content for teachers and families to use during virus days. That includes the "OLogy" science website with lessons on subjects from anthropology to zoology; online science curriculum collections; virtual visits to the museum through its YouTube channel; and massive open, online museum courses delivered through Coursera. https://www.amnh.org/explore
The American Writers Museum has brought its latest exhibit online. "My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today" shares personal stories about topics such as identity, community, language, storytelling and what it means to be an American from contemporary authors. Educational materials are available on the exhibit as well. https://my-america.org/
Amplify is offering free six-month trials of Amplify Reading, a K-5 digital literacy program for educators. Sign-up requires a school or district email address. https://go.info.amplify.com/getintouch-demo-fy20_amplifyreading_amplifyreadingpilot_national_pilot
Ancestry is providing teachers with free six-month memberships to historical records and free lesson plans. Registration required. https://www.ancestry.com/cs/backtoschool
Annenberg Learner is offering free access to 90 K-12 lesson plans and professional development resources for educators and families on Learner.org, the Annenberg Foundation's education division. According to the organizations, many of the projects use items people probably already have (Eggs! Legos!) and include resource guides to help the adults better communicate the learning concepts to the kids. https://www.learner.org/search/
Aperture Education has made a 33-page "Educator Guide to Optimistic Thinking" available as a form of professional development, along with other "take-home" PD activities. The company has also curated a collection of free parent resources to help their kids (and them) develop social and emotional skills. https://info.apertureed.com/archived-resources
Arizona State University has developed numerous free educational resources for K-12. Those include "Ask an Anthropologist" and "Ask a Biologist," where the content includes teacher toolkits with lesson ideas, podcasts with transcripts and videos showing the scientists in action, articles, puzzlers, experiments and the ability for students to ask experts questions. Another is "Virtual Field Trips," which offers numerous virtual trips with photos, explanations, short videos and maps. While the trips can be viewed on a computer, they really come to life through a virtual reality headset that allows for 360-degree viewing. ASU Prep Digital has made online course materials available to any student or school and a library of teacher training videos.
Arizona State University's EdPlus is working with Complexly's Crash Course on a series of entry-level course videos, covering composition, chemistry, data literacy, algebra and other subjects. (Complexly and Crash Course are an initiative of the Green brothers, hosts of a popular vlog and best-selling fiction.) The new content in "Study Hall," won't offer credit or replace any degree programs, but rather will serve as a supplement for high school or college learners. https://www.youtube.com/c/arizonastateuniversity
ASSISTments is already free for use by middle school math teachers. The program allows them to assign homework or classwork and provide students with immediate feedback as they complete their assignments; teachers get a report showing individual student and class progress. There's a library of content that includes open textbooks, lessons and state test practice and skill-building problem sets. The nonprofit also provides professional development training and offers sessions for helping teachers get ASSISTments set up for remote instruction. https://new.assistments.org/distance-learning
AVID Open Access is providing free lesson plans and teaching resources, including standalone STEM activities for four different grade bands, as well as subject-specific and grade-level appropriate examples, to show teachers how to embed digital tools in lessons to meet their learning objectives. This combination of tools, videos and class activities work with whatever curriculum, devices and platforms schools and families use. The organization emphasized that teachers don't need prior knowledge of AVID strategies. https://avidopenaccess.org/
The B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore is offering "B&O Junior Junction," featuring resources for young learners to help families and educators supplement learning with train-oriented content. http://www.borail.org/JrJunction.aspx
Bakpax, which provides auto-grading, is offering free access to teachers and students. The program uses artificial intelligence to do automatic grading of short response questions and math problems. When the answer is "manual," such as a graph, table, open response or diagram, the software shows a clip of the page to the teacher, who can then quickly grade the student response. https://www.bakpax.com/
Belouga and the #SameHere Global Alliance are making recorded versions of events with leading mental health organizations from around the world available for viewing. Basic access is available free to teachers, students, schools and districts. https://belouga.org/mental-health-month
BetterLesson and Adobe have compiled 350 teaching strategies from 35 Adobe "master teachers," to help students develop their creativity and tool skills. Applying them requires the use of Adobe Creative Cloud. https://betterlesson.com/browse/learning-domain/24/adobe-learning-domain?from=instructional_strategies_browse
BirdBrain Technologies, which sells robot kits and components, has developed a free "robotics at home" website with activities for students that allow them to program remote robots and watch them online. https://www.birdbraintechnologies.com/roboticsathome/
Blackboard offers the File Transformer, a free resource enabling students to convert digital course content into alternative formats, to meet their unique learning needs and preferences. An outgrowth of the company's accessibility checker, Blackboard Ally, the new resource lets students personalize their learning experience and choose from several format types (PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX and HTML) to work better with mobile devices, assistive technologies and study tools. https://ally.ac/covid19/
BLM At School is offering curriculum, including lesson plans and other resources, curated by a team of people from around the United States and intended for multiple age groups. Coverage includes disability justice too. https://www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com/curriculum.html
Blockly offers educational games using visual block language, to help young learners progress to text-based programming. It's always free. https://blockly.games/
BombBomb is offering free accounts for its video messaging tool to teachers, professors, counselors and administrators in the United States and Canada. The program allows educators to communicate with students and families face-to-face (virtually, of course) and provide feedback with the help of a screen recording. Video training on the software is available on video. https://bombbomb.com/education/
Book Creator is offering a free account to teachers, which lets them enable their students to collaborate on creating books -- up to 40 for free. https://bookcreator.com/remote-learning/
Boston Children's Hospital has produced free professional development for educators on social-emotional learning and behavioral health in schools. Each course is self-paced and includes tools and strategies to be used in the classroom and overall school environment (because face-to-face school will be back in session at some point). https://www.childrenshospital.org/taponline
BrainVentures, an initiative of the University of Michigan Center for Digital Curricula, is making daily learning adventures free. These are crafted by classroom teachers to give students choices of learning activities; they accommodate different learning preferences and engage the learner in constructing animations, videos, photo albums and stories while taking them on field trips and having them play games and run simulations. https://cdc.engin.umich.edu/daily-brain-venture/
Canva for Education is offering teachers forever-free access to the pro edition of its online design platform. The program, which is optimized for Chromebook, includes drag-and-drop tools to simplify visual communication. Students can create and co-create presentations, infographics, websites, reports, worksheets, posters, flyers and signage. The program includes access to tens of thousands of templates, images, icons, illustrations and fonts. Once teachers fill out the form, the company will verify the application. https://www.canva.com/education/
Carnegie Mellon has reiterated availability of "Computer Science Academy," a free, online, interactive high school CS curriculum. CS1 is the year-long flagship course, with 120 hours of instruction and a "robust introduction" to coding with Python through graphics and animations. This course is available to educators with teacher accounts. CS0 is a "lite" version, which includes about 40 hours of instruction and is intended for middle school, out-of-school programs and summer camp settings. This course is available for both mentor and teacher accounts. https://academy.cs.cmu.edu/coronavirus2020
The Carnegie Science Center has set up an online educator resources page for students in K-12. The page includes links to lesson plans for simple science experiments that early learners can do, videos of behind-the-scene sessions at the Center's field station, do-it-yourself videos for maker science projects, an educator guide for engineering-themed lessons and a "STEM for Social Good" toolkit that can be used by middle and high schoolers who want to spark social change. The resources are being expanded weekly. https://carnegiesciencecenter.org/educators/online-educator-resources/
Carolina Biological Supply Company has curated a series of free science learning resources, grouped by grade bands (K-5, 6-8 and 9-12). In each group are grade-specific instructions, links to multimedia and cross-curricular activities that can provide "backyard" science projects using household materials. https://www.carolina.com/xm/service-updates?intid=hp_hero_serviceupdates
Casio has several resources available to help with math education. The company is providing free access to ClassPad.net, a web-based calculator for calculations, graphing, geometry and statistics. There's also software to emulate Casio's most popular scientific and graphing calculators as well as downloadable calculator activities that teachers can assign for elementary, middle and high schools. The company has also begun posting videos on its YouTube channel to help parents, students and teachers learn how to work through critical mathematical concepts using its calculators. https://www.casioeducation.com/remote-learning
The Charles M. Schulz Museum is offering free resources to enjoy "at home," including lessons and worksheets, treasure hunts and seek-and-finds. https://schulzmuseum.org/museum-at-home/
Chemistry Shorts is a new series of brief films about the role that the chemical sciences play in contemporary life. Each film is accompanied by a lesson plan to incorporate it into the classroom instruction. https://chemistryshorts.org/
Chicken Soup for the Soul, in partnership with American Humane, is promoting a line of free digital books for students, titled Humane Heroes, that share stories of animal rescue, rehabilitation and humane conservation undertaken at leading zoological institutions, as well as literacy-based social-emotional learning lessons and lesson plans, appropriate for young readers, middle school readers and young adults. https://www.chickensoup.com/ah
The Children's Psychological Health Center has developed a set of guided activity workbooks, addressing children's mental health, those who are homeless or face other kinds of trauma, such as the impacts of natural disasters. http://www.childrenspsychologicalhealthcenter.org/resources/guided-activity-workbooks/
Circled In is being provided free to teachers, schools and districts. The program allows students to collect their work in digital portfolios for sharing with colleges and as a private network within the school. https://www.cirkledin.com/students/
Classkick is offering a free version of its course platform to teachers. The software allows educators to upload content and audio, video and image elements tied to a maximum of 20 assignments. As students work on that material using their devices, the teacher can monitor their activities in real time. Students can request help privately and also use the program to seek help from their peers. Teachers give feedback, which students can respond to; auto-grading is also available. https://classkick.com/
ClassTag makes its communication platform free to help districts and schools communicate with their families. The software sends messages through SMS, email, apps and the web and automatically translates them into one of 62 languages. The platform can also be used to post videos, assignments and other resources for students to access at home and allow users to run virtual lessons with a video conferencing tool, such as Zoom. https://home.classtag.com/
Code with Google provides free lessons for K-12 and college, to help students pick up computer science skills. https://edu.google.com/code-with-google/
Code.org is the place where coding for kids lives. The site provides ample teacher resources too. https://code.org/
CodeGym has made its gamified Java course with more than 1,400 practical tasks free for high school and college students. https://codegym.cc/edu
codeSpark Academy has created a path for students to get free access codes from their K-5 teachers to the program, which teaches coding fundamentals and creativity with computer science. According to the company, kids as young as five can design and code their own video games and interactive stories. https://codespark.com/educators
Committee for Children's Second Step has free social-emotional learning resources for educators, students ages 5 to 13 and their families. Those include a five-lesson unit that can be used to help rebuild students' connections to school. https://www.secondstep.org/covid19support
Common Sense has created kits for teachers with weekly learning plans to help them ease their families into digital learning. The contents can be customized, and they're structured around a few themes: digital citizenship; goal-setting; scheduling; and the use of Common Sense for picking apps, websites and games that are appropriate for learning. Packets are available for kindergarten, first grade and second grade. https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/free-distance-learning-plans-for-k-2-students-and-their-families
Common Sense has launched Wide Open School, a compilation of free learning guidance for K-12, intended to help families and educators identify trustworthy resources for distance learning. https://wideopenschool.org/
The Conference Schedule has made its parent-teacher conferencing program free to school and districts through 2021, including setup, service and unlimited support. https://www.theconferencescheduler.com/
Conscious Discipline has compiled a collection of free online tools for educators and parents on managing stress during the pandemic, including videos, games and audio downloads, focused on coping strategies and restoring a sense of normalcy. Registration required. https://consciousdiscipline.com/free-resources/
Cornerstone, a workforce management company, has developed a series of "playlists" to help people--including teachers--adjust to working from home. Topics, including making the transition to online instruction and learning, stress management and working from home, are covered in "bite-sized" videos and downloadable guides. Access is free. Registration is required. https://hr.cornerstoneondemand.com/cornerstonecares
Craft in America is sharing its library of free content, including education guides for K-12 teachers, hundreds of short and long videos and virtual exhibitions. https://www.craftinamerica.org/blog/for-educators
C-SPAN Classroom provides free video-based materials, including lesson plans, for social studies teachers. https://www.c-span.org/classroom/
Curriculum Associates has made assessment resources available for educators and families in English and Spanish. https://www.curriculumassociates.com/teaching-learning-2020
Cybercritics is offering three free civics lessons for download. Those include the "five principles of citizenship," "how to be a good citizen online" and "what kind of citizen will you be?" The company said that the lessons are best suited for students ages 10 to 14. https://www.cybercivics.com/for-families
Dad's Worksheets has 9,000-plus math worksheets available for free download. Site advertising covers the costs. https://www.dadsworksheets.com/worksheets.html
Delphian School, a private school in Oregon, has made its collection of lessons covering a variety of topics available for viewing on YouTube.
Denise Albright Studio has created free digital downloads for families, including a hand-washing checklist for kids and a "gratitude worksheet," to help them remember what's going right in their lives. https://denisealbright.com/collections/free-printables
Digital Promise has compiled a set of free online learning resources intended for educators that can be filtered by resource type, grade level, subject and cost. For those concerned specifically about companies that have taken student privacy seriously, there's also a filter for whether or not the organization has committed to and signed the "Student Privacy Pledge." Another filter identifies companies with products that don't require a student account. https://digitalpromise.org/online-learning/online-learning-resources/
DiscoverE has collected a series of articles with activities and videos for engaging students in engineering. https://discovere.org/at-home-engineering
Dreams for Schools has launched a coding-at-home initiative, with free online resources for elementary students and courses for middle school and high school students with slides and video lessons. The subjects: mobile app development and website development. https://www.dreamsforschools.org/codingathome/
Dropbox has developed free "digital care packages," 25 different folders compiled of activities curated by creators, including artists, designers, foodies, musicians, writers and others. You can send them not just to others but to yourself too. https://www.dropbox.com/care-package
EasyUnitConverter enables conversion of all kinds of measurements. https://www.easyunitconverter.com/
The Economist's educational foundation is producing numerous resources for learners ages 9 to 14, containing stories from its archives and new tasks meant to engage students in critical thinking activities (and provide topics for interesting conversations at home). Both teachers and parents can sign up. https://economistfoundation.org/resources/
edHelper.com, which produces resources for teachers and homeschooling parents is offering free printable worksheets for students in math, English language arts and science. https://www.edhelper.com/
Edmentum is providing free access to its standards-based practice and assessment program, Study Island, for families for a year. https://www.edmentum.com/support2020
Edmodo is continuing its free teacher, student and parent accounts, to facilitate communication within classes, groups and small groups. For teachers, the program can be used for classroom management, professional development, access to free teaching resources and gradebook tracking. Students can post to a class or group, access folders shared by teachers, organize tasks and set alerts with a planner and communicate directly with teachers. https://new.edmodo.com/
Education Elements is providing access to recorded webinars, guides, briefs and ebooks on topics that include leadership, equity, trauma and virtual learning during school closures. https://www.edelements.com/learning-center
Educational Insights has compiled a set of free at-home worksheets for young learners. Those activities cover reading and language arts practice worksheets for grades K-2, spelling riddles for grades 4-6 and math for pre-k-2; as well as coloring, crafts and "brain benders" (word searches, riddles, connect-the-dots and mazes, among other games). https://www.educationalinsights.com/at-home-activities-for-kids
Education Lifeskills is providing free access to "Positive Thinking Pack," its course on social-emotional learning, which students can work on online. Subjects cover leadership, drug use and vaping prevention, positive thinking skills and media awareness, among others. https://www.educationlifeskills.com/athomelearning/
Education Modified has compiled two "bundles" of research-based information and resources to help families of special population students get through the remote learning experience. One covers how to help children do schoolwork at home; the other offers research-based activities for home-based learning. http://educationmodified-4381533.hs-sites.com/at-home-learning-resources
Eduflow is making its lightweight learning management system free. The program allows educators to set up online courses that facilitate discussions, peer review, feedback and other learning activities. For access go to https://www.eduflow.com and reach out on "chat support" (at the bottom of the page).
The Ella Project, with help from Deloitte, has developed four downloadable comic books to introduce girls to engineering, including "The Burping Caper!" "Glitchtown" and "GoPro Hedgehog." https://www.theellaproject.com/deloitte-ella-comic-books
Ellevation Distance Learning is providing free, research-based K-12 activities specifically adapted to support teachers of English learners in distance learning environments. The English/Spanish activities include how-to instructions, tips and tricks, graphic organizers, video examples and more. Registration required. https://distance.ellevationeducation.com/home
Emile is offering free access to its game-based math and literacy programs to schools affected by the virus. Featuring Emile and Aimee (and others), the software takes learners through the universe to help them learn how to solve math problems, spell better and get their grammar right. Requirement required. https://www.emile-education.com/schools-corona-virus/
Emotional ABCs is currently free for teachers and counselors. The "emotional skills" program is designed for children ages 4-11 and gives students practical tools for dealing with impulse control, frustration and acting out. Registration required and there are restrictions on resource usage. https://www.emotionalabcs.com/signup/teacher/.
Encyclopaedia Britannica is offering all schools and students free access to its "LaunchPacks" science and social studies learning content. The sets are intended for students in K-12 and provide articles, images, videos and primary sources of information, presented in an "engaging interface," optimized for smart devices. The resources are translated into multiple languages. https://packs.eb.com/social-studies
Nonprofit Envision Lead Grow is offering free virtual "afterschool" programs for girls in grades 4-6 to learn how to start their own businesses and become "girl bosses." The two-week program teaches participants what it takes to start and run a business based on their passions and how to make and manage money. They'll also compete in a pitch competition for $500 seed money to start their venture. The program blends video lessons, live webinars and small group sessions. https://envisionleadgrow.org/elg-2-0-virtual-immersion/.
Epic! is providing free teacher access to sizable collection of books, videos and quizzes. https://www.getepic.com/
EVERFI is making its online courses free to teachers and students. Subjects include: financial education, social and emotional learning, cultural literacy and health. https://everfi.com/k-12/course-listing/
Exploratorium, in San Francisco, has an online learning toolbox with free science activities for virtual education. Resources include "science snacks," which use "cheap, readily available materials" and can be done at home. The organization has also published a collection of free, Spanish-language science activities, Bocadillos científicos. https://www.exploratorium.edu/learn
EZTexting is providing free emergency text alert services to schools. To quality, people need to sign up using their EDU email address. They'll receive 100,000 free outgoing text messages for six months, access to a set of coronavirus message templates and one-on-one consulting. They also get a free keyword, with a short code to distribute to the community for quick sign-up of text messages. https://try.eztexting.com/free-text-alerts-new
Faber Piano Adventures has an informative and easy-to-read eight-story series for students and teachers on the life and music of Beethoven. https://beethoven.pianoadventures.com/
Family Equality, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ families, has developed a roster of virtual events for young learners, including movement, dance and music sessions and story hours. https://www.familyequality.org/virtual-events-for-younger-kids/
FIRST has compiled a roster of "free and flexible" pre-K-12 STEM activities, divided by grade bands, remote learning resources and career explorations. https://www.firstinspires.org/community/home-learning
Fiveable is promoting access to its free social learning platform for high school students and teachers focused on Advanced Placement (AP) preparation. The program offers live streams, "trivia battles" and Q&A forums where students can connect directly with teachers in 15 different AP subjects in English, STEM, history and social sciences. Registration required. https://fiveable.me/
Flipsnack is offering its classroom plan free to teachers. The program enables classrooms to collaborate on the creation of digital magazines. Besides text, those can include videos, audio, links and other interactive elements. https://www.flipsnack.com/classroom-plan-apply/
Follett has compiled a collection of book lists, lessons and activities on race and ethnicity for classroom use. https://www.pinterest.com/follettlearning/race-ethnicity-resources/
Flinn Scientific has compiled numerous resources for science education, including video labs with teacher and student guides and 130 at-home activities for middle and high school science students. The company is also offering broadcasts of lab experiments conducted by its own scientific staff. https://www.flinnsci.com/athomescience/at-home-lab-series/
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has opened a virtual classroom with a series of STEAM-focused lessons that combine Wright's principles of organic architecture and solutions-based design with hands-on activities that encourage students in grades 1-6 to think critically and creatively. The series includes lessons and corresponding videos, which are meant to be turnkey; parents can turn on the video and have the student watch, learn and complete the activity on his or her own. https://franklloydwright.org/virtualclassroom/
Freckle's free edition allows teachers and parents to build unlimited assignments for students. The program focuses on K-9 English language arts, math, social studies and science content and provides adaptive functionality to enable students to practice standards-aligned material based on their evolving understanding of the concepts. https://www.freckle.com/
The Gemological Institute of America has developed resources for use by teachers. The "GemKids for Schools" educator guide includes four lessons of about an hour each, covering the study of gems in history, culture and nature, for ages nine and older. The website also offers lessons for the same ages in gem and jewelry careers, how diamonds are produced and what birthstones are. https://www.gia.edu/gemkids-resources-for-teachers
General Motors has a YouTube series on electric vehicles for STEM education. The series is intended for students ages 7-13 and was filmed in the homes of GM tech experts. Lessons explore various aspects of electric vehicles – from battery technology to design. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5UWrgmuniqIWKXCnIgtmMUvpLrBkCHHi
George's Dragon, better known as an online clothing and home décor retailer, is making a 300-page "child behavioral" guide available free. Parents will find guidance on dealing with child behavior, setting boundaries, motivating kids, adjusting expectations, improving family dynamics, gaining cooperation and other essentials for getting through the stress of having children at home more than full-time. Use "homehelp" as the promo code during download. https://georgesdragon.com/products/good-puppy-home-super-sidekick-printable-pdf
The Get It Guide math tutorials are always free. Intended as supplement to teacher instruction, the tutorials help students by asking them guiding questions and walking them step-by-step through math problems similar to the ones they're trying to solve. The program identifies which steps they understand and which ones they need extra help on. https://thegetitguide.com/math-topics/
Girls Who Code has created a set of free downloadable lesson plans featuring women in tech for use by teachers, wherever they want to fit them, in math, computer science, history or some other subject. The organization has been publishing free weekly activities--some online, some offline--as virtual curricula for at-home use. https://girlswhocode.com/code-at-home/
Glose Education is offering free access for schools to its social reading and learning platform, where teachers and students in middle and high schools can read and learn together. The program has a collection of 4,000 free ebooks. https://glose.education/covid
Golden Poppy is offering its app, Unicorn Blue, described as a "mobile outdoor augmented reality game," especially for girls, for free. Versions work on Android and iOS. https://store17195558.ecwid.com/Unicorn-Blue-Software-Download-iOS-or-Android-Share-App-on-5-Family-Devices-No-Ads-p139534265
Good Calculators is providing a variety of free online calculators, to do math and statistics, engineering and conversions. The website also offers specialized calculators for financial, date and time, logistics, sales, sports and health. https://goodcalculators.com/
Google's "Read Along," helps children five years and older develop reading skills by giving verbal and visual feedback as they read stories out loud. The free Android app uses Google's speech recognition technology to help develop literacy skills. It was first launched in India (under the name, "Bolo"). Now it's available in 180 countries and in nine languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.seekh
Gravic is offering free teacher subscriptions to Remark Test Grading, a hosted application for grading tests, quizzes and assessments, using an "electronic bubble sheet." For schools that choose to make the software available to teachers, the company is also offering a free connector to Canvas, Blackboard or D2L, as well as training. EDU registration required. https://remarksoftware.com/remark-test-grading-cloud-available-to-all-teachers-for-free/
GSD Network is providing free access for teens to cross-cultural, "real-world" stories of young people from around the globe. The stories explore local history, culture, and teens creating social change in their communities, through videos, music clips, podcasts, images, short texts and other digital content. The company said the program is "best-suited" for students in grades 7-9, but it also works with older high schoolers too. To gain free access, using "VIRTUAL" in the registration process. https://gsdnetwork.net/teachers
The Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation has made 25 free two- to three-minute educational videos available for teachers to use in their online instruction, covering exotic sea wildlife and "the largest predators." There's also a free "Shark Talk" workbook available for download. https://guyharvey.com/pages/ghof-education
Hallo is offering free Android and iOS apps to help students practice English. Hallo is a live-streaming community for English learners and teachers. Students can learn from native speakers through live videos 24/7 and practice speaking in seconds with people all around the world. https://hallo.tv/athomelearning/
Hand2mind produces daily videos on math and literacy content taught by teachers and activities for K-5, to reinforce lessons and downloadable worksheets. The company has committed to posting new content daily. https://www.hand2mindathome.com/
HERA Science is a beta version of an adaptive learning system for helping develop critical thinking skills through a combination of gamified digital activities, scientific phenomena, interactive simulations, real-time feedback and scaffolding tools. https://actnext.org/research-and-projects/hera-science-adaptive-science-learning/
HOMER is offering educators at schools, tutoring centers and daycare programs three months of free access to its reading programs. HOMER Reading, for kids ages two to eight, includes thousands of lessons on phonics, sight words and ABCs. HOMER Stories provides early learners with interactive stories from favorite books. Access is provided to the teacher or school to share, not the individual family. https://www.learnwithhomer.com/educator-offer/
Hooda Math has a bunch of free online math games. The company supports itself with advertising. http://www.hoodamath.com/
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a hub with a collection of learning resources, including multiple subject at-home resources for K-12 and math-specific resources for K-8. https://www.hmhco.com/learningsupport/at-home-learning-resources
IBM is producing Open P-TECH, to help young people and educators pick up the basics in topics including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, as well as soft skills. Up until now, the P-TECH program has been provided as a model affiliated with schools. Now students who are 16 and older can register and participate on their own. https://www.ptech.org/open-p-tech/
iKeepSafe has made six digital books freely available to help elementary students learn safe online practices. The books are available as PDF files, narrated ebook videos and, in some cases, animated videos. Subjects cover sharing of embarrassing videos, online privacy, cyberbullying, balancing screen time with real life, dangerous downloads and making healthy media choices. https://ikeepsafe.org/faux-paw-the-techno-cat/
Impero is offering Impero back:drop, always-free software designed to simplify the recording and management of student wellbeing and safety. https://www.imperosoftware.com/us/impero-backdrop/
Inkshed is offering art, writing, music, and theater video lessons created by high schoolers for elementary school students. Each writing video includes games and prompts for students to follow and questions to spark discussion. Theater videos talk about emotions, body language and how to perform dramatic writing and include games for students to practice their acting skills. Each video is 10-20 minutes long. https://www.inkshed.org/
inquirED has created "Together When Apart," a free inquiry-based lesson that builds over the course of a week and helps explore the question, "How can we stay together when we're apart?" Inquiries are targeted to early learners and intermediate learners. Teacher support includes a virtual lounge and professional learning webinars. https://www.inquired.org/distancelearning
Insight ADVANCE is offering its secure synchronous and asynchronous video platform to schools and districts for free. The program helps with the professional development coaching process, by enabling recording and sharing of videos of teachers in practice for reflection and feedback and peer-to-peer interaction. https://www.insightadvance.com/free-offering
Instructure makes its learning management system, Canvas, free for teachers. The account never expires and offers all course creation and importing, "mastery paths" to lead students through personalized learning, native use on mobile devices, a gradebook, quizzing and other features that teachers need to move their students to online learning. https://www.instructure.com/canvas/try-canvas#free-account
Intelligent Education is promoting the use of its always-free software to help educators create online courseware. Tools let instructors record lectures with slides, images and video clips and add 3D models, quizzes. The company also has 30 courses on in its catalog that various instructors have produced and made available. https://intelligenteducation.com/build-online-courses
IObit is making a utility free to help remote users speed up performance of their Windows devices. "Internet Boost" is a feature included in the company's Advanced SystemCare pro version. According to IObit, the software removes "junk files" to release more space; helps increase internet speed by "taking advantage of your maximum network bandwidth," removes privacy traces left by multiple programs; and dumps start-up processes that are slowing down start-up. https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php
iRobot Education has made virtual and offline coding projects available for elementary students, some of which require no particular technology. https://edu.irobot.com/learning-library
JASON Learning is offering free access to its online STEM curriculum. The nonprofit produces lessons for science, technology, engineering and math. Normally, it charges a per-student fee, which is being currently being waived. Interested schools and districts are asked to fill in a short online form to gain access. https://jason.org/
Just Run is continuing its fitness-at-home initiative to support physical activity in children. The program encourages parents to log miles run or walked by their child in "ways that observe local health mandates," submit their mileage, and then be able to view their child's accomplishments on the website. In addition to tracking mileage, parents are encouraged to celebrate milestone accomplishments by giving their kids "mileage award cards," available on the website. http://www.justrun.org/home-school-program
Kahoot! offers a basic version of its game-based learning software for free. https://kahoot.com/schools/distance-learning/
Kapwing has a free basic version of its collaborative online image and video editor with a cloud storage workspace. Registration required. https://www.kapwing.com/resources/free-kapwing-pro-accounts-for-educators-affected-by-covid-19/
Kialo Edu is a free platform that helps educators encourage thoughtful classroom discussion and assist them in the teaching of critical thinking. The online service lets teachers start private discussions within their classes, provide students with feedback and ask them follow-up questions and create teams within the class. https://www.kialo-edu.com/
KidCitizen, a social studies learning tool for elementary students funded by the Library of Congress, is supplying a free, growing set of interactive episodes where K-5 students work with primary source photographs to explore Congress and civic engagement. https://www.kidcitizen.net/episodes-blog
Kiddom offers a free teacher version of offering math curriculum for grades 6-8. The materials include assessments and practice problems, multiple-choice auto-grading and resources for differentiated learning, English learners and students with disabilities. https://www.kiddom.co/
KinderLab Robotics has developed a "No KIBO? No Problem!" booklet to help teachers and parents teach building, engineering and design and coding without technology. STEAM activities are intended for students three- to seven-years-old and come from KinderLab standards-aligned curriculum. Each activity includes guidance on learning objectives and the resources needed to complete the project. http://resources.kinderlabrobotics.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/03/No-KIBO-No-Problem-v3.pdf
Kiron has a set of free, interactive online lessons to help teachers globally learn how to better teach students online during school closings. The startup, funded and supported by MIT Solve, focuses primarily on refugees worldwide and underserved communities in the Middle East to provide access to high-quality education. However, the course applies to educators making the switch to online teaching anywhere, covering topics such as getting active participation online and creating a learning environment. https://teach.kiron.ngo/
Knowre is making its math service free to all American teachers, schools and districts. Knowre Math is an online core supplement for grades 1-12 that needs only a browser to view or an iPad app. Features include "walk me through" support and targeted assignments to help the student work independently. Teachers receive access to student progress via a dashboard. https://www.knowre.com/school_closure_support/
KwikSurveys is offering its "pro" plan to teachers and schools, to help them engage with and track the progress of students at home. The program enables educators to create online quizzes with automatic scoring, response tracking, segmentation and collaboration features. The offer extends to three months of usage. Company contact is required. https://kwiksurveys.com/coronavirus-free-distance-learning-tools
Labster, which provides virtual laboratory simulations for high schoolers, has made its software free. Some 100 lab experiments cover biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and general sciences, which students can perform "at their own pace." https://www.labster.com/covid-19/high-school/
LabXchange from Harvard University is an always- free resource that provides digital content compiled from multiple sources in the sciences, including lab simulations, which educators can mix into their own learning narratives and share with students. Among the functionality provided are social networking, class groupings, discussion forums and "mentorship" (to bring learners together with educators and researchers around the world). https://www.labxchange.org/
The Lead4Change Student Leadership Program allows students in grades 6-12 to work virtually to lead, create and implement a project to meet a community need. The organization has also developed a virtual learning toolkit with resources to help teachers and students work through lessons and projects remotely. https://www.lead4change.org/how-to-participate/join/
The League of Young Inventors, a Brooklyn-based hands-on STEAM program, has published a series of free online projects and lessons to help students make, build and learn science at home. Each lesson includes a video to guide students through the project, teaching science concepts along the way; a list of household and basic crafting items for families to find and use; and an online guide with optional extension activities. http://yileague.org/online/
LearnToMod is offering free teacher accounts for its Minecraft "modding" software, to help them learn how to teach computer science. Teacher accounts give educators the ability to spin up Minecraft servers for students and enable students to do the same. For students without accounts, there is an in-browser Minecraft simulator. However, for the full experience, students need a copy of the game. https://www.learntomod.com/educators/
Legends of Learning has developed 10 weeks' worth of freely-available standards-aligned game-based activities and offline STEM competitions for grades 1-8. https://www.legendsoflearning.com/summer/
Learning Resources continues to post daily activities for young learners on its website. http://blog.learningresources.com/category/learning-at-home/
LEGO is sharing challenges. The company has assembled LEGO designers, creatives and play experts to produce ways to help families "stay creative, curious and connected" while at home, including daily play challenges, new play ideas and live build-a-longs. Choose the Play Zone. www.lego.com/letsbuildtogether.
LightSail Education is offering schools, districts and parents free access to its K-12 literacy platform, including 6,000 fiction and nonfiction books. The collection includes literature "classics" and short-form books in English and Spanish. https://lightsailed.com/coronavirus-complimentary-literacy-platform-access/
Literal is offering free access to its "classic" subscription books. The program offers multiple modes of reading engagement to "entice, motivate and delight reluctant readers." Teachers can track student progress remotely. Use the promotion code "FreeClassics" during registration. https://literalapp.com/literal-for-education/#CovidClassics
Local Civics is running an on-going series of Zoom workshops to help young people in middle school and high school learn how to take leadership roles in all kinds of professions. Recent topics: careers in entrepreneurship, restorative justice and careers in technology (with a Google product manager). Registration is limited. https://www.localcivics.io/virtual-workshops
Loom is making its quick-response video software free for educators forevermore. The program captures a person's screen, voice and face and allows for editing, "instant sharing" and controlled viewing. Registration with an EDU email required. https://support.loom.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006579637-Loom-Pro-Free-for-Students-and-Teachers
Lumos Learning has made printable math and English language arts state assessment worksheets available free for download. https://www.lumoslearning.com/llwp/resources/free-math-english-worksheets.html
Manticore Games has launched "Core Academy," a destination for free online classes for game creation and design. Courses include tutorials, videos and hands-on examples. https://learn.coregames.com/
MathNook has games and puzzles for students learning at home. The resources can be filtered by grade level, covering K-12, and include worksheets, mobile apps, tutorials and teaching tools. No registration is required for access to the games. https://www.mathnook.com/
Maths Chase, already free, provides online learning games to help students practice their math skills. Games include times tables and problems for addition, subtraction, division, odd and even, sequences, prime numbers and place values. https://www.mathschase.com/
Mawi Learning and ACT Tessera are providing free social-emotional learning resources from ACT's SEL Curricula and Assessment, including SEL home connections worksheets for grades 3-8 and skill building activities for grades 3-12. Resources include hands-on-tools for stress management, goal setting and relationship building. https://www.mawilearning.com/covid-19-help-resources/
McGraw-Hill is providing free access to its "5 Steps to a 5" Advanced Placement test preparation guides in 14 AP subjects. Students can create a personalized study plan based on their test dates and set daily goals to stay on track, through the use of integrated lessons, practice questions, exams, flashcards and games. https://learn.mheducation.com/ap-teacher-resources.html
MEL Science publishes free online science lessons with "practical experiments" that students can carry out at home, such as creating a DIY hand sanitizer, showing how to cool a drink with salt and how to make a simple barometer. https://melscience.com/US-en/articles/
MetaCoders offers coding lessons on YouTube. Curriculum covers computer science concepts, how to think like a programmer and how to code more efficiently. Lessons run between five and 15 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJwcNVM9uG03zUbYrUYeW0g
MeTEOR Education, an education consultancy, is making its MeTEOR Connect library of professional development videos available free. Training is organized by grade band. https://lms.meteorconnect.com/
Microsoft provides schools and districts with a free set of productivity applications--including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote--for those schools that haven't adopted a software suite yet. Office 365 A1 also comes with services, including OneDrive (for storage and file transfer), Teams (for web communications), Forms (for quizzes) and other utilities useful for collaboration. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/office
Mindantix has a set of downloadable brainteasers that teachers and parents can use for warm-ups with their students or that can be worked on independently by students. One example is coming up with a mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets (which includes Pluto!); another suggests creating a new gadget using sunglasses and chopsticks. https://www.mindantix.com/index.php/site/page?view=covid
mindSpark Learning has developed a set of professional learning sessions for educators, including school leaders, focused on remote teaching, supporting and engaging staff remotely and maintaining social and emotional health during physical distancing. The nonprofit is also hosting on-going "coffee chats," Zoom sessions for people to share their specific needs and get feedback from other participants. The nonprofit is working with IBM on hosting a series of free professional development sessions for educators on artificial intelligence, to help them learn the basics and infuse AI concepts into instruction. mindSpark is also working with Project ECHO, at the University of Denver, to deliver a continuing education series on social-emotional learning for teachers, administrators and others who work with children. https://www.mymindsparklearning.org/online-toolkit
Mission US is an educational media project that uses gaming to teach learners about "transformational moments" in U.S. history. Funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, among other organizations and government agencies. The latest game is "Prisoner in My Homeland," set in 1941, in a Japanese-American internment camp. Students take the role of 16-year-old Henry Tanaka. Registration required. https://www.mission-us.org/play/
Move This World has developed a collection of free social-emotional learning activities that families can use at home, including ideas for keeping kids safe online, creating a "kindness tree" and doing an "SEL scavenger hunt." Registration required. https://www.movethisworld.com/category/supporting-mental-health-covid-19/
The National Association of School Psychologists has developed a lesson for middle and high schoolers on race and privilege. https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/diversity-and-social-justice/social-justice/social-justice-lesson-plans/talking-about-race-and-privilege-lesson-plan-for-middle-and-high-school-students
The National Constitution Center has a collection of digital resources available for virtual classroom work, including the "interactive constitution classroom edition" and online courses. https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is continuing to produce professional development webinars, for free. The sessions feature a variety of speakers and topics geared to all grade levels and interests. The webinars are recorded and made available the following day. https://www.nctm.org/online-learning
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame has made a bunch of resources available to keep young wranglers occupied at home. Those include puzzlers, word problems, math activities ("how to measure a horse") and a cowkid-oriented story time on its YouTube channel. http://www.cowgirl.net/education/resources/
National Geographic is continuing to update its classroom collection, which provides lesson plans, maps and reference resources. National Geographic Explorer Classroom is hosting experts online in live events, to allow students and adults to ask questions face-to-face. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/classroom-resources/learn-at-home/
National Geographic Learning has published free lesson plans and resources for teachers, including presentations, worksheets and teacher notes, for use in online classes. https://exploreinside.ngl.cengage.com/index.php/interdisciplinary-k12-resources/
The Natural History Museum of Utah offers an interactive version of its free online education program, "Research Quest," which allows students to have live sessions with professional educators from the museum while schools are closed. Archived versions of each class are also available. A teacher support page explains how to align the materials to their learning standards. https://nhmu.utah.edu/rq-live
NEO is providing a "free plan" edition of its learning management system, which works for schools with up to 400 students. That version includes class templates, content authoring and accessibility features as well as functionality for discussion forums, doing web conferencing, adding gamification and quizzes, taking attendance, tracking grades, building badges, doing bulk import and export of accounts, syncing class content and more. The program integrates with G Suite, Google Drive and OneDrive and offers mobile apps for iOS, Windows and Android. For the free edition, click the "Free plan" button. https://www.neolms.com/
Nepris, which delivers online talks with industry professionals on a wide array of subjects, is making its virtual industry chats available to everyone, including 9,000 already archived. The talks are available online. Registration required. https://www.nepris.com/home/v4
The New-York Historical Society has developed "Tech Scholars ONLINE," a free online program for high school girls to learn coding. They interact with live instructors and a community of other girls, do pair programming and collaboration, build digital projects and get mentoring from female leaders in tech. Coverage includes learning to program HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Donations are accepted but not required. https://www.nyhistory.org/education/teen-programs/scholars-program
The New York Times Company and Verizon have opened free access to NYTimes.com to all high schoolers and their teachers, to help keep students "educated, informed and connected." The digital access continues through Sep. 1, 2021. To sign up, teachers or administrators need a consolidated list of student emails. https://www.nytimes.com/initiative/highschoolaccess
NOVA streams educational and entertaining content and creates education resources available for their shows, including teaching tips, discussion questions and background essays. Coverage includes planet Earth, ancient worlds, space and flight, the body and brain, military and espionage, tech and engineering, evolution, nature and physics and math. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
Numerade is offering its asynchronous teaching platform and video library of 200,000 STEM lessons free. With the platform teachers can record lessons, take virtual attendance and conduct video Q&A with students. Teacher registration required. https://www.numerade.com/office-hours/welcome/
NutriStudents K-12 has made a free set of "COVID-19 Emergency Menus" available to help child nutrition programs meet students' meal needs while schools are closed. The menus and their recipes include cold and hot meals covering multiple five-day weeks. They comply with guidelines for the Summer Food Service Program and the Seamless Summer Option. All the menus comply with USDA nutritional and meal-pattern guidelines and include compliance reports. https://nutristudentsk-12.com/covid-19-mda/
Omni Calculator is continuing to make its 1,528 calculators available free. Each one is targeted to help students and others handle any type of equation or conversion imaginable. https://www.omnicalculator.com/
OpenSciEd, already available for free to teachers in face-to-face instruction, is promoting the use of functionality that works for online teaching. In particular, the organization's simulations allow students to explore scientific concepts. Registration recommended. https://www.openscied.org/openscied-approach/
OpenStax continues making its open source (read: free) digital textbooks in core college and Advanced Placement subjects available. https://openstax.org/
ORIGO Education is providing weekly digital content plans for home use with K-6 students. The plans include activities for each day, along with digitally accessible or downloadable resources, designed for delivery by a caregiver or remote teacher. These resources complement the mathematical concepts and skills students are learning at their grade levels. https://www.origoeducation.com/athome/
OurPact has made its family screen-time management solution free, to help parents manage their child's technology usage. https://ourpact.com/
OverDrive Education is offering free access to the Sora Remote Reading Book Bundle, a collection of 200-plus simultaneous-use digital titles from publishers, including Abrams, Britannica, Bellwether Media, Live Oa, and Orca. The collection also includes classics in the public domain. (Emma and Call of the Wild, anyone?) The books are in digital text and audio formats. https://pub.e.overdrive.com/sorasetup
The Paleontological Research Institution, along with its Museum of the Earth and Cayuga Nature Center venues in New York, has been compiling a list of online STEM resources for teachers and students. Those resources include content for Earth, life and climate science education, such as the Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life, 3D fossil images, "Teacher Friendly Guides to Earth and Climate Sciences" (each covering a specific region of the United States), nature guides, and You Tube videos. https://www.priweb.org/blog-post/learn-at-home
Pantone is offering free access to Pantone Connect. The tool enables designers and artists to build and share color palettes, convert and cross-reference colors and match Pantone colors through Adobe Creative Cloud. https://www.pantone.com/products/digital-apps/pantone-connect-for-adobe-creative-cloud
The Paper Girls Show is a freely available YouTube channel that shares short animated shows with two "best girlfriends" who inspire each other to tackle STEAM challenges. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClipY1UxTXoQY1-qqn-WFBg
Parenting for Lifelong Health has developed a set of tips to help parents cope with learning going on at home. Topics cover one-on-one time, keeping the experience positive, adding structure, dealing with bad behavior, staying calm and talking about COVID-19. Currently, volunteers are translating the resources into 100-plus languages. https://www.covid19parenting.com/
PASCO is providing free access to science lab activities that support distance learning. There are also six-month trial periods for its SPARKvue and Capstone software, which includes Blockly coding capabilities as well as digital curriculum for physics and chemistry. Registration required. https://www.pasco.com/resources/distance-learning
PBLWorks has created a resource site to provide teachers with ideas, examples, and tools to facilitate project-based learning remotely. It addresses teachers' most frequently-cited requests, including projects that can be adapted for remote learning across the grade levels, technology solutions for collaboration and connection and ideas for how families can support their PBL students. https://www.pblworks.org/pbl-remote-learning
PBS has been gaining traction among educators with "PBS American Portrait," an initiative that invites Americans to share stories from their lives, about their families and communities, their joys, struggles and triumphs. As more people upload personal content related to COVID-19, the site has become what PBS is calling "a living archive of how we're all processing this crisis." Teachers are instructing students on storytelling and personal narratives while also allowing them to speak to their mental and emotional well-being, by answering questions posed on the site, such as, "I never expected..." and "What gets me out of bed in the morning..." https://www.pbs.org/american-portrait/
PBS LearningMedia, the original teach-at-home resource, is reminding teachers and families that it provides subject-, grade- and learning standards-specific resources. Those are available in English and Spanish. The media organization is also hosting a "Ken Burns in the Classroom" hub, making this filmmaker's series available in their entirety. Those include The Civil War, Jazz, The War and The Dust Bowl and others. https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/
PCS Edventures is offering 22 free STEM and STEAM activities, to help teachers challenge their learners; many of the activities can be done offline. https://edventures.com/blogs/stem-freebies
PearDeck continues its free, basic version, which lets teachers create, distribute, and manage multimedia content and formative assessments on students' devices. https://www.peardeck.com/
Pencils and Plums, a drawing site, is offering a free 125-page ebook titled, "2,500+ Drawing Ideas," with hundreds of printable drawing pages for elementary and older students. https://pencilsandplums.com/free-ebooks/free-ebook-2500-drawing-ideas/
Pilot Light, a food education center, has created a free family resource page to provide lessons in English and Spanish for parents to do with their students, related to food, cooking and nutrition. New lessons are being added each week and include videos, discussion questions and activities related to the given recipe. So far, recipes have included scones, smoothies, tomato sauce and hummus, among others. https://foodedu.pilotlightchefs.org/family-resources/
PlayPosit is making its interactive video software free for teachers to use. The program includes an editing platform for adding quizzes to videos to heighten student engagement. https://go.playposit.com/
#PLtogether has a webinar series, "Kitchen Table Coaching," to help teachers and instructional coaches adapt to distance learning. Each segment runs for 30 minutes. http://www.pltogether.org
Pneuma Solutions offers Scribe for Education free forever to teachers and school districts with students who need accessible student handouts. The program processes 18 file types into accessible documents, including graphic files. Accessible document formats include HTML, tagged PDF, EPUB, DAISY, RTF, Braille, large print and TTS audio MP3. https://pneumasolutions.com/scribe-for-education/
The Power of Words and Numbers Initiative is providing free tutoring to students via Zoom or Google Meet. Registration required. https://www.thepowerofwordsandnumbers.org/online-tutoring
Practicing Musician is offering forever-free lessons to K-12 students, through short video tutorials created by teachers and volunteer educators. Teacher help includes tools for keeping track of lessons and assessment. https://www.practicingmusician.com/
Project Exchange runs a free 12-week online cultural exchange program to help middle and high school students around the world broaden their worldview and practice English skills. Students are matched with a partner from a different country and practice English and learn about culture together! Currently, the organization works with students and teachers in 23 countries, and it's seeking more students and teachers who want to participate. The program runs on Google Drive, Slack and Zoom and takes two to three hours a week. https://www.myprojectexchange.com/digital-exchange-program
ProjectExplorer has 250-plus free educational videos, curriculum guides and lesson plans for grades 3-12. Topics including history, sustainability and culture. That includes "Crash Test World," hosted by "Mythbusters'" Kari Byron, to take viewers on explorations around the world. https://www.projectexplorer.org/home
Promethean makes its cloud-based lesson planning and delivery software, ClassFlow, freely available to schools, teachers and parents. The program enables users to access K-12 educational resources in marketplace across subjects and share lesson content with students who are working from remote locations. In addition, teachers who currently subscribed to the company's ActivInspire can create and record lessons for students to use in any cloud environment. https://classflow.com/
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) is a free resource for writing tips and assignments, research and citation tutorials, and teacher and tutor materials. Contents include general writing exercises, including sentence-level writing, grammar and editing; common writing assignments, including book reports, bibliographies and research papers; the OWL YouTube channel, which includes lessons on grammar, rhetoric, and professional and technical writing; and online tutoring for Purdue students, faculty and staff. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
Qualtrics offers a free account, which allows teachers or schools to run a single active survey at a time, with up to 100 responses. https://www.qualtrics.com/here-to-help/
The Quantum Prisoner is a free online game developed by French scientists and researchers for students in middle school, that enables them to learn more about science. No advertising, no registration, no commitments or obligations. https://quantum-prisoner.com/welcome.html
QuantumERA is making "Gettysburg" A Nation Divided" available free to students, teachers and parents for a limited time. The virtual reality app uses 360-degree views and avatars of soldiers who fought in the battle to transport users to 1863. Versions available for iOS and Android. https://quantumera.com/app/
Reading is Fundamental, the nonprofit literacy program, is reminding educators of its resources for helping students learn to read, including support materials for specific books and "quick guides" to help families encourage literacy with their kids. https://www.rif.org/literacy-central/educators
Ready Learner One has produced 18 blogs about remote learning, covering a number of topics -- running virtual field trips, assessing learning from a distance, virtual tools for core subjects, and more. https://readylearner.one/remote-learning-resources/
Remind provides free communication tool accounts specifically to teachers. These allow educators to do two-way messaging with students and families; and send documents, files, images and messages to each member of the class, including photos and recorded voice clips. The teacher plan accommodates up to 10 classes for each account with up to 150 participants in each class. The program integrates with Google Classroom, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Flipgrid, SurveyMonkey and SignUp. https://www.remind.com/teachers
Resource Area for Teaching (RAFT) is offering "STEAM learning activity sheets," free online tools that guide parents, guardians and students through hands-on learning activities, taking advantage of common household items. https://raft.net/steam-learning-activity-sheets/
Ringbeller has a series of videos, each about five minutes long, that interview people who use "their imagination to make a difference," including a musician, a chef and an author. Students view them, then discussion questions pop up on the screen to help them connect what they've just seen with their own creative powers, followed by a collaborative activity using objects found around the house. https://www.youtube.com/c/Ringbeller/videos
RingCentral has made its phone, team messaging and video conferencing service free to education organizations. Each video meeting can have up to 200 participants. Those schools that already have the service can get increased meeting participant limits. https://www.ringcentral.com/lp/covid19-offer.html
The Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation has created a free online resource to strengthen students' STEM skills by allowing them to interact with virtual robots. https://www.roboticseducation.org/online-stem-learning-resources-and-activities/
Notebook maker Rocketbook has made downloadable PDFs available free for students and educators. The collection includes graph paper, lined paper, music notation sheets and letter dot-grid sheets, among others. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eqnsm164v0sav3v/AAA-cMxpo8BhBH8sLOFbkUe2a
The Rubenstein Center for White House History has compiled educational resources for learners, including classroom resource packets, reading lists, virtual tours of the White House, short educational videos, historical essays and a digital library of White House and presidential images. Content is grouped for grades K-5 and 6-12.
SAG-AFTRA Foundation's ad-free online children's literacy program, Storyline Online, has produced dozens of read-alouds "by top Hollywood talent who engage young viewers with their animated interpretations of historic, adventurous and fantastical tales that promote imagination and inclusion." https://www.storylineonline.net/
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is used to helping families do remote education, is producing STEM activity ideas and worksheets for educators and families. Registration provides access to an assortment of activities for young learners, including alphabet search and write, math puzzlers and a memory scavenger hunt. https://www.stjude.org/get-involved/school-fundraising-ideas/educators-st-jude.html#activities
SAM Labs is offering free access to several STEAM resources for educators, including lesson plans that can be used without SAM Blocks and free kids' activities using common household items. Registration required. https://samlabs.com/us/digital-and-distance-learning
Sandy Hook Promise has adapted an action kit to include activities students can participate in virtually for boosting social and emotional skills needed during times of social distancing. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/promise/pages/3471/attachments/original/1585257898/Youth_and_Educator_Activity_Guide_for_Times_of_Social_Distancing.pdf
Science Buddies, an always free service, is offering STEM activities that can be done in an hour or less and use materials found around the house; STEM videos; and resources about COVID-19, including an interactive tool that helps students learn how the pandemic evolves. https://www.sciencebuddies.org/
Science News for Students, always free, offers age-appropriate science news for learners and educator resources. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/
Scratch is MIT Media Lab's free programming language for students, which lets them create interactive stories, games and animations and share their creations with others in an online community. https://scratch.mit.edu/
SiLAS has developed free resources for educators, to help students gain social-emotional skills. Freebies include animations, lessons and parent sheets. https://curriculum.silassolutions.com/elearning_resources/
SimTutor has released three free healthcare simulations for infection prevent procedures, covering the use of soap and water, hand sanitizer and personally protective equipment. https://content.simtutor.com/hand-hygiene-and-ppe-procedures
The Smallpeice Trust has created a free program of engineering challenges. Those are linked to the United Kingdom national curriculum and can be tackled using everyday resources around the house. But you don't have to live in the UK to put them to use. Every project includes learning objectives, an instruction sheet and a video. https://www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk/engineering-at-home
Smekens Education, which in normal times provides professional development, is providing always-free video "mini-lessons" for K-12 students on reading, writing and social-emotional learning. The lessons are divided by grade bands, K-1, 2-3, 4-6 and 7-12. Videos are available on both YouTube and Vimeo. https://www.smekenseducation.com/literacy-lessons.html
The Smithsonian has pulled together a collection of distance-learning resources for pre-K-12, including learning standards-based lesson plans and extra support for both teachers and parents. Topics cover English language arts, social studies and science. Various museums are also offering subject-specific learning opportunities. https://learninglab.si.edu/distancelearning
SoloLean is a free advertising-driven platform for learning to code. Topics cover Python, C++, SQL, Java, JavaScript and Ruby among others. The app offers access to 2,000 courses, tailored from people with a range of skills, from beginner to professional. The company also curates lesson tracks, such as "Become a Data Scientist," "Become a Web Developer" and "Become a Full Stack Developer." The app includes quizzes and an online community for help. A paid version removes the ads. https://www.sololearn.com/
The Space Foundation is providing free space-based STEM activities for teachers. These include downloadable lesson plans, grant writing guidance, space expert podcasts and how-to videos, including a professional development series for teachers. https://www.discoverspace.org/
Space Station Explorers is providing free learning activities tied to the International Space Station. Those include online videos, a way to request access to the ISS camera, research opportunities and hands-on projects to understand the basics of the ISS. https://www.issnationallab.org/stem/
SpanishDict has a free, basic version of its Spanish-English program that teachers can integrate into their virtual classrooms. Features include vocabulary and grammar assignments, customizing of lessons, tracking of student progress and story-telling lessons that can teach tricky grammar concepts. The software syncs with Google Classroom. Registration required. https://www.spanishdict.com/classrooms
Special Olympics Unified Champion Program has created a program that provides a package of resources monthly to classrooms, with discussion guides, social media activities and lessons on inclusion. https://www.generationunified.org/unified-classroom/
Start.me has a basic free version of its program that lets teachers create hub for their classrooms, to make it easy for students to access all of their educational resources and tools from one place online. Teachers can also post announcements on the start hub and use it as a bulletin board. The free version is ad-supported. https://www.startme.com/education
STEM Education Works has made a set of 26 3D printing lessons for K-12 available free. Although the lessons were developed to work with the Sindoh 3D printer, the company said they're universal and can be used with any 3D printer. Some lessons offer exercises that students can start at home and finish when they return to school. https://go.stemeducationworks.com/free-3d-printing-success-pack
stemCONNECT is offering a free video library of recorded presentations led by Florida-based experts who talk about the applications of STEM in various high-tech careers. https://www.gotostage.com/channel/flstemconnect.
STEM For Kids is offering free curriculum for grades pre-K through 10. Activities include a glider design lab, budgeting structures (learned through Minecraft), sun printing and nearly a hundred other lessons. Registration required. https://stemforkids.net/register/curriculum
Storypal, a free program for teachers and students, lets people connect with each other via a high-tech version of penpal sharing. Registration required. https://www.storypal.co/
Super Teacher Worksheets is offering free access to its collection of elementary printable teaching resources. Subjects cover grades K-5 reading, math, writing, phonics, spelling, grammar, science and social studies. Free access is offered for people affected by school closures through a shared, public account. Log in with username "temporaryaccess" and password "stayhealthy". https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/
TalkingPoints is providing free access to its school and district communications platforms for Title 1-funded schools and districts. (Teacher accounts are always free.) The software enables educators to communicate directly with English and non-English families through text messages and parent mobile application with two-way translation. The program syncs with class rosters and student information systems. https://talkingpts.org/
Teacher Created Materials has compiled its free parent facing materials and many teacher resources--some 300-plus free lessons--including books, parent guides and daily practice activities. Resources can be searched by grade, subject, product type and language (English or Spanish). https://www.teachercreatedmaterials.com/teachers/free-home-learning/
Technovation runs a robust YouTube channel with videos showing hands-on activities that can be built at home. https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnovationGlobal/about
TGR EDU and Discovery Education have launched a series of free professional development resources, to guide teachers and parents through the online learning shift. The first module in the series, which lasts 30-45 minutes, discusses how to understand the principles of effective STEM teaching and learning. https://tgreduexplore.org/professional-development/
Thames & Kosmos has opened a "science at home" site, with free, downloadable instructions for science activities to do at home. That includes videos, experiments and word finds. https://www.thamesandkosmos.com/index.php/educators/scienceathome
Top Hat offers a basic free version of its education platform, promoting more active engagement by students and greater interactivity. Registration required. https://tophat.com/basic-signup/
TypingDNA is providing its typing biometrics authentication API service free. Schools can run it within their learning management platforms to enable students to prove their identities by simply typing a short text on their keyboards. https://www.typingdna.com/authentication-api.html
The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and TED-Ed, along with other collaborators including National Geographic, have launched "Earth School," a freely accessible website for students ages 5-18. The site provides 30 "quests" for students to help them "celebrate, explore and connect with nature." Videos, reading materials and activities, translated into 10 languages, focus on science and the environment. https://ed.ted.com/earth-school
UnboundEd, for grades pre-K-12, provides thousands of free open educational resources for English and math, lessons that can be filtered by grade level, as well as teaching guides, videos and podcasts. https://www.unbounded.org/
The United States Census Bureau has developed a roster of home and distance learning activities, for students in grades pre-K-12, from coloring pages to statistics studies. https://www.census.gov/content/census/en/programs-surveys/sis/activities/distance-learning.html
Unity Technologies is providing curriculum and Unity licenses to education for teachers who want to help their students learn 3D and game development. https://unity.com/education/distance-learning
The University of Michigan (UMich) has developed a roster of "deeply digital" curriculum curricula for K-5 for English language arts, science, math and social studies, all standards-aligned. https://cdc.engin.umich.edu/
The University of Waterloo Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) offers CEMC at Home, which includes games, problems to solve, videos and other materials to help students with their studies. Developed by Waterloo faculty members and current and retired secondary school teachers, content covers four bands of grade levels: 4-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/cemc-at-home.php
Nonprofit UPchieve is providing free tutoring and college counseling to high school students. The service works on any device; students choose the subject they need help with, and UPchieve matches them with a volunteer tutor in a virtual classroom. Students can get as many free sessions as they want. https://upchieve.org/
Upkey is continually accepting applications for virtual internships, offering high school seniors and college students opportunities to develop their skills. The multi-week program is free to students and lets them learn from expert sources, conduct their own research and complete interactive projects around a specific subject. https://upkey.com/internship
UWorld is offering a free, full-length practice SAT exam to help students get familiar with the format and content of the real test. Each answer provides a detailed explanation of the answer choices to help students review and retain concepts. https://collegeprep.uworld.com/psat/
Valarea, a software company based in the United Kingdom, is making its digital collaboration software free to educators. The program can be embedded in existing collaboration programs, including Microsoft Teams, to provide quick access to a meeting site with a digital whiteboard; screensharing; and audio, video and chat. https://www.valarea.com/getstarted/
Van Andel Institute for Education is providing open access to a project-based learning unit. The virtual version of "Prevent the Spread" is a project where students learn about their unique power to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The project provides everything a teacher needs to conduct the project remotely, including a student-facing slideshow with age-appropriate resources to help students understand the pandemic; a teacher's guide for supporting students as they create public service announcements to encourage people to adopt smart habits to protect against germs; a reflection journal to capture students' thinking; and content suggestions with ties to math, science, English language arts and social studies. The Institute is also curating a list of educational activities that can be done at home. Registration required. https://www.blueappleteacher.org/lp-virtual-pts/
Varsity Tutors is providing students with access to hundreds of free live, online classes. Each class is led by an expert tutor with experience in the course topic, as well as familiarity with virtual instruction. Classes refresh weekly, with age-appropriate options for grades K-12. https://www.varsitytutors.com/classes?f_price_cents=free
Vernier is providing teachers with access to a library of some 300 experiments and sample data, which can be distributed to students at home. https://www.vernier.com/remote-learning/
VEX Robotics has launched VEXcode Virtual Robot (VR), a free web-based tool for delivering computer science lessons for those who don't have access to a physical VEX Robot at home. There are no software installations required, and the program functions on all major devices. https://www.vexrobotics.com/vexcode-vr
Waterford.org, a Utah state-funded family advocate, is producing a thrice-weekly email on early learning, available in English and Spanish. They feature a video and an activity teaching literacy, math or science concepts for three- and four-year-olds. They're intended to enable parents to do these activities once with their children and then allow the children to do the activities by themselves. Registration required. https://www.waterford.org/early-learning-boost/
Wave Learning Festival, a nonprofit, is offering a free online platform for college students to teach courses that they're "passionate about" to middle and high school students. http://www.wavelf.org/
Wiley has made 28 videos, on-demand webinars and blogs available to help teachers tackle all topics education. https://www.wiley.com/network/instructors-students/covid-19-online-teaching-resources-1
Williamstown Communications has produced an 18-minute video about the women's Suffrage movement and a teacher's discussion guide. http://www.willtown.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Womens-Suffrage-Teaching-Aid.pdf
Wonder Workshop, which produces the Dash and Dot robots, offers free home learning toolkits for educators and parents. The toolkits include both offline coding and robotics activities. No robot required for many of the activities. https://makewonder.com/toolkits
WonderStories is offering short chapter books at the second and third grade reading levels, with "interactive mysteries, puzzles and adventures to keep children engaged." The company said the books work "especially well for struggling readers." https://www.wonderstories.app/
Wooclap has made its software free for K-12 educators to use "forever." The program helps teachers inject interactivity into remote lessons through quizzes, polls, wordclouds and other methods. The platform also includes flashcards ("wooflash"), which promote student memorization and comprehension while generating data to help educators track student progress. https://www.wooclap.com/
WorryWoo Monsters, which focuses on social-emotional learning, has compiled a resource page with creative writing and art lessons plans as well as downloadable coloring pages, exploring themes on subjects such as worry, frustration, loneliness, confusion, innocence, insecurity and envy. https://www.worrywoos.com/worrywoo-sel-resources.html
Write the World is a global online community of young writers that invites teens ages 13-18 to write, share and publish their work and enter free monthly writing competitions. Designed by educators at Harvard University to improve student writing and build communication and critical thinking skills, Write the World has become a means for fostering global citizenship and engagement. Educators can create an online private classroom writing space with prompts, assignments, and guided peer review tools. They can also start an online writing club using the platform and free resources. https://writetheworld.com/
Writing Blueprints is promoting free access to "Young Writer's Blueprint," a step-by-step guide for writers ages six to 10. Topics cover gathering ideas, creating characters and settings, writing short stories, writing long works and editing. The course features short, downloadable videos and worksheets to enable students to work offline. https://writingblueprints.com/p/writing-course-ages-6-10
Z-kai has released extensive booklets with math worksheets for students in grades 2-5, selected from the company's Zoom-Up Workbook Math. According to the company, the worksheets contain "challenging problem sets and [are] tailored to develop students' math skills." https://zkaibooks.com/free-resources/#
Zearn has made its K-5 math curriculum available for free to teachers. The content includes 400 hours of digital lessons with on-screen teachers and "supportive remediation," as well as paper-based materials that can be used device-free. https://about.zearn.org/distance-learning
Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on its free basic accounts for K-12, enabling teachers to video conference with students in real time. https://explore.zoom.us/education?_ga=2.72077139.1367144937.1608332028-1229367528.1602722811