Over the past few years I’ve worked with the folks at Participate. I helped review apps and websites and create collections with favorite resources. The Collections tool from Participate is perfect for keeping track of documents, websites and apps. All the things you love to use when teaching a particular topic. I’ve also used Participate Collections to organize resources around a topic. It can help you easily share session materials after a presentation, and to collaborate with other educators.
Participate Collections gives teachers a space to keep favorite resources organized – and it’s totally free. You can use keywords to search for apps or websites related to a topic you are teaching. Or you can upload a graphic organizer, rubric or other documents you want to put into a collection. Imagine you are teaching a unit on biomes. You can create a collection titled Biomes and search for resources on the Tundra, add a link to a YouTube video you want to show your class, or upload a document like a reading passage.
4 Reasons to Check out Participate Collections
Set up is easy
You can create an account for Participate using your email or with a quick login through a Google-hosted school account. Once you’re logged in you can create a Collection and start adding resources. You might already know which apps and website you want to add to your collection. Or if there is a link you bookmarked that you want to include in your collection. Alternatively you can type in a keyword and find resources vetted by other educators and add these to your collection.
Click here to see a poster of my favorite tools – you can add your favorites to your new Participate Collection!
Collaborate with colleagues
Once you’ve set up a collection you can add a colleague or friend as a collaborator. When you add them as a collaborator they’ll get a notification to either log in or sign up for a Participate account and accept your invitation to collaborate. This gives them the chance to comment on your collection and add additional resources.
Sharing is simple
If you are part of a grade level team of teachers who are all teaching a similar topic, you’ll love how easy it is to share the collections you create with Participate. Sharing is super simple – you can either send a link to colleague for them to check out your collection or you can embed your list of favorite resources into another website.
Connect with families
Have you ever sent home a newsletter with favorite resources for families to explore? Instead of writing up a monthly newsletter with suggestions for families, you can share a link to a Participate collection so they can preview a set of YouTube videos with their children or download one of the apps you suggest. This is great for building a bridge between what is happening in the classroom and what families can do to support this work.
Check out teacher-created collections on Participate, my new course for the folks at Participate, or create your own Collection with Participate by clicking here!
Click here to see a poster of favorite tools – you can add your favorites to your new Participate Collection!