Actively Learn is an ereader that allows teachers to keep track of how students are reading and lets students take more of an active role. "Actively Learn is a reading platform for the web where students can highlight, annotate, and discuss text as they read" (Kievlan). Tons of texts are available through the platform, but teachers can also upload their own tests and media. Students can read on their own, in small groups, or as a class. They can share notes and annotations, and key words and questions can come up organically and in the moment rather than waiting until the next meeting time. This leads to deeper thinking as well as deeper connection between the readers.
Actively Learn was founded by two people looking to make a different in how students learn and read. While the program didn't launch until 2012, it was years in the making before that. Acively Learn was a 2019 Codie winner and 2019 Common Sense Media Top Pick for Learning.
There are a lot of features that make this great for the general classroom like scaffolds, choices in reading speed, a read aloud feature, definitions, and more. I can see how this would be extremely useful in a collaboration setting with ELA, Social Studies, or even LOTA teachers.
One of the things I liked most was after signing up, you are given a reading experience from the student's perspective. This made it easy for the educator to understand how this program could help a student engage more with what they are reading. It helped to sell me on trying this with my own students. I also found that you can switch the student mode at any time, which I think is really helpful. Many times we are finding work around to see how something looks or works from the student end, so having that built into a program is really helpful.
I'm planning to propose this program to a few teachers as a collaboration, and perhaps they will find it useful and will want to continue with it. I believe it can be a great tool to help students read and write better, which is the foundation of education.
Kievlan, P. M. (2019, February). Actively Learn Review for Teachers. Retrieved July 27, 2019, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/actively-learn
Team at Actively Learn. (n.d.). Retrieved July 28, 2019, from https://www.activelylearn.com/about-us
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