The BPS Edtech team is thrilled to have Paul Henderson, co-founder of CourseKicker, joining us for our summer Edcamp Series.

Engage Your Students and Build Your PLN with CourseKicker

In the field of education, collaboration is powerful. Now, thanks to social media, it’s possible to connect and share with others globally. Whether you’re searching for suggestions for summer reading, the best MOOCs, or choose to curate resources through Twitter chats, building and maintaining a personal learning network has never been more exciting. But sometimes, when it comes to classroom resources, it can be challenge to find exactly what you’re looking for. With the free and intuitive CourseKicker, not only can you expand your PLN, you can find quality resources; materials that have been vetted by fellow educators. Additionally, you can join the CourseKicker community. Have a new blog post to promote? Then this ISN’T the place for you! The CourseKicker community is designed to help educators solve real problems and challenges, ask tough questions, and provide guidance and support. It’s a space where teachers can share their expertise and experience on topics ranging from lesson design and instruction, to technology integration and professional development.

Built for teachers, by teachers, CourseKicker provides K-12 educators with the ability to discover, build, share, and rate lessons from any device. Once you sign-up for CourseKicker, either through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email, you’ll be able to follow other teachers and receive recommendations from your peers on what really works in the classroom. You’ll have the ability to create playlists, store your favorite lessons in your personal library, and best of all, you can share them with your PLN through Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Each lesson comes with a description and is tagged with keywords. The creator of the lesson is also identified, so you’ll know who created the lesson and where and what he or she teaches. You can follow whomever you choose and “like” lessons created by that specific teacher. For example, Catherine Quinlan, a science teacher from Cliffside Park, New Jersey, has 317 CourseKicker items and has received 128 likes. She has several playlists on mitosis/meiosis which feature animated videos and interactive tours. Catherine is just one example of the many teachers who has discovered the power of CourseKicker. Currently, the site features a wide range of math and science lessons, with social studies and English lessons coming soon.

So what are you waiting for? Summer is a great time to revisit your curriculum resources and discover new ways to truly engage your students. CourseKicker offers lessons, videos, presentations, handouts, simulations, labs, and more. Teachers who were shown CourseKicker at our Edcamp this past Tuesday were excited about this new resource and are eager to sign-up and give it a try. Paul will be at our Edcamp next Tuesday, July 22nd to demo CourseKicker and answer any questions. We hope you will join us!

Take a look at the demo video below to learn more about CourseKicker.