Tools for Teachers
This is the web app I needed for my high school English classroom: a tool for planning lessons, turning these plans into action, assessing student progress, and, ultimately, revising for better results next time. So I built it. Whether you are new to the field or a master teacher, Winedark Web will make you a better teacher by helping you develop flexible, focused, relevant experiences for your students.
Plan
Our profession has reached a consensus on the importance of planning units with the end in view. Winedark Web helps you plan units backwards from objectives to assessments to the sequences of lessons that will allow your students to meet your expectations. With the curriculum library, you can tailor pre-existing units to the needs of your students, or share your work with your colleagues.
Teach
When you deploy a curriculum unit, Winedark Web automates much of the tedious work between concept and execution. The homework calendar is filled with assignments, links, handouts, and vocabulary lists appear on the appropriate pages, the unit overview shares your broader vision, and announcements keep families up-to-date. Winedark Web functions as a really smart standalone teacher website. Or, if your school already has a learning management system such as Blackboard, you can easily embed these resources into your existing site. In class, Winedark Web provides a lightweight interface to record student data such as attendance, homework completion, and quick notes. This is ideal for teachers who have an iPad!
Assess
Ongoing formative assessment is essential to ensure that what you’re doing in class is working for your students. Winedark Web allows you to ask detailed questions: Whose performance has dropped off in the last week? Who does much worse when the task involves reading comprehension? Who is frequently unprepared for class? You can enable student accounts to share assessment data with students and parents in chronological order, or organized by the objectives you are measuring.
Revise
No teacher ever gets a sequence of lessons right the first time. And we need to be constantly recreating our units to reflect our students’ changing needs and aspirations. Winedark Web makes it easier to revise your curriculum by keeping a detailed record of what you taught, in a form which can be manipulated and shared later.
Can I try it?
Not yet. Winedark Web is currently being used by a small group of (brave) alpha testers. If you're interested in being a beta tester, please join the mailing list or email me at chris@winedarkweb.com
Student Blogs
My students keep blogs to write about their outside reading. I need a tool that will check student blog posts automatically, so I can focus on providing feedback.
Group Projects
I need a site students can use to keep track of who they're working with and how they can contact their peers. When students get to choose their own groups, they should be able to do so without my having to sort 150 little slips of paper, checking everybody off.
Sharing Curriculum
I need a site that lets me plan well-designed units, not just individual lessons. And I want to be able to work with other teachers and share my work. When teachers share their curriculum, it's usually by dumping a folder of poorly-labeled documents onto a thumb drive. There has to be a better way.