Technology Tools
Technology Tools

Educators often take advantage of educational technologies as they make the shifts in instruction, teacher roles, and learning experiences that next gen learning requires. Technology should not lead the design of learning, but when educators use it to personalize and enrich learning, it has the potential to accelerate mastery of critical content and skills by all students.

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Primary Contact Name:
Eric Westendorf
ericwestendorf@learnzillion.com
Award Date:
June 2011
Subjects:
Math, Close Reading, Writing
Availability:
Curriculum free to teachers & school systems; Premium fee provides school systems access to proprietary professional learning platform & national community of instructional leaders

The Innovation: Learning Platform of Common Core Lessons

LearnZillion’s digital Math and English Language Arts lessons help teachers and school systems make the transition to the Common Core State Standards. Its Dream Team, an annually selected group of U.S. educators from district, charter, and private schools, build the lessons directly from the CCSS.

Teachers don’t need to reinvent the wheel to address the new standards’ core concepts; instead they can modify and adapt LearnZillion lessons.

Each lesson includes a short video that highlights the Common Core standard and captures pedagogical content knowledge developed by effective teachers. The lessons reside on a platform that helps teachers plan instruction, assign lessons directly to students, and track student mastery.

Some schools also use LearnZillion as a professional development tool and a strategy for personalizing instruction during class time.

Common Core State Standards: All Grade 2-12 CCSS math and ELA standards

Teacher comments:

"LearnZillion is my new BFFM. That means My Best Friend for Math. I teach multiple grade levels. I am faced with learning numerous Common Core Standards. The teaching videos are excellent in helping me plan math lessons and improving math instruction. I just love it! My students are becoming more successful."
"LearnZillion is great! The math videos include key vocabulary, key ideas, visual models, etc. I'm able to stop the video and have the students complete independent practice, then continue the video and check their work."
"I love the attractive lessons, easy navigation, intuitive organization, ability to customize lessons/presentations, and the ability to share lessons with students/parents who need/desire additional review."

TeachFest: LearnZillion's annual Dream Team event

Results Achieved

Hundreds of thousands of teachers use LearnZillion’s resources:

  • Over registered 600,000 teachers
  • 200,000 unique weekly users
  • 750,000 unique monthly users
  • 32% monthly retention rate

LearnZillion determines the effectiveness of each lesson using student assessment data collected at the end of that lesson.

Long-term Goal: To support teachers and parents in meeting the needs of their students through curriculum reinvention and professional development.

LearnZillion believes curriculum ought to be free and open. School districts should focus their energy and funding on bringing that curriculum to life through professional development, reporting, and customization that wraps around the free curriculum.

The Grant Project

NGLC funding helped LearnZillion to evolve from a prototype into a resource of thousands of high quality lessons, an active community of Dream Team teachers across the country, a staff of 30, and over 600,000 registered teachers on the site.

LearnZillion plans to become a Tier 1 curriculum based on the Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool (IMET) rubric for Math, grades K-8.