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Presenting Knowtes: Flashcards 2.0
Featured Author:
Kelly Tenkely
Kelly Tenkely graduated from Colorado Christian University with a Liberal Arts degree in Elementary Education. She started teaching in 2003 as a second grade teacher in a public school. In 2004 she made the switch to private school and took the only available opening as the technology teacher. Educational technology has since become her passion. She started a web site for her classroom and soon discovered that other teachers were using the site to aid technology in their classrooms.
Kelly also trains teaching staff on integrating and implementing technology into the classroom. Training teachers on the use of technology in the classroom led to her blog, ilearntechnology.com, where she blogs daily about integrating technology into the classroom simply and effectively. When she is not blogging, searching for and playing with new technology, or on theapple.com Kelly enjoys scrapbooking, cooking, and spending time with her husband and dog (Aya).
More articles from this author:
Knowtes is a flashcard based learning community (still in beta) that allows kids to build flashcard decks and study online. When students add a card to a Knowtes deck, it becomes due at optimized interval. The Knowtes Adaptive Learning Engine adjusts how frequently cards should be studied based on how well students know them. They can even watch their cards move from short to long term memory as they study. Knowtes decks can be shared between teachers, students, etc. Each student gets their own study room where they can organize their decks and study their cards. The study rooms have great tips on studying and tutorials on using Knowtes. Cards can be made plain, rich, or with images right now but will have audio and video capabilities coming. This is such a cool idea! Studying has never been this much fun.
How to Integrate Knowtes into the Classroom
Knowtes is a great tool to introduce your students to. Even if you don’t have time to use it on a regular basis in the classroom, spending some time teaching your students to use the program would be worth while. Students can create Knowtes flashcards to study any subject. For younger students, you can create decks for your students to study from. Students can also create decks to share with you or other classmates. If you have an interactive whiteboard (or even just a projector) students can study cards as a whole class. You could easily use Knowtes for a whole class study session/game. Be sure to let parents know about Knowtes too, many times studying is a struggle for families and this can make life easier for everyone.
Tips
Since Knowtes is still in its beta version, click on the signup button and send a request to be a beta tester. The Knowtes team is willing to take suggestions on improving Knowtes so you should send a suggestion for any feature you would like to see available. Happy studying!
