iCivics: Curriculum Specific Tools

Encouraging Interest in Civics with iCivics

101 Days of Free Tech for Teachers, Day 36
iCivics is a resource that makes learning civics fun and meaningful. Students can play a variety of games that deal with important, real-world topics such as voting, knowing their rights, and getting involved in their communities. The games are built to be collaborative and educational. Also available are various challenges for students, easily searchable research content, and a drafting board for arguments and essays. iCivics also offers pre-made lesson plans to help teachers encourage their students' critical thinking skills.

How We Decide Which Free Tech Tools to Feature
Yup, there are thousands of apps, tools, services, websites, and other offerings — many free — designed for teachers and students. So, how do we sort through all of those to feature the ones which are most useful and interesting? Well… we start by sorting through thousands of these things… then we talk to the presenters in the SimpleK12 Teacher Learning Community and watch their videos closely… then we talk to many of the members in the Teacher Learning Community, teachers just like you who are using these apps and tools day in and day out. We've been doing this for over 30 years and have, in that time, developed a sense for what's good and bad. Have we missed something that we should feature here? Most certainly. So, let us know in the Comments section what we should take a look at and we'll throw 'em into the hopper.

Carolina Fransen is the EdTech Apps and Tools Editor at SimpleK12.com. She writes regularly about the use of educational technology in K-12 classrooms. If you have an app, tool, website, or service that you think we should know about, please send your information or tip to editor@simplek12.com.