Have you heard of Frolyc? Here is a quick run down:
Frolyc is a web-based platform for authoring Common Core aligned educational activities and publishing to this app in real-time. You can create reading, writing, drawing and answering activities (from your computer) in any subject area. Who can create & publish? Every educator, teacher, tutor or parent can author activities. Frolyc makes it simple for you to create activities relevant to your lessons for the day & publish in REAL-TIME to this app on your student iPads. What type of activities can you create? You can create simple to complex activities. You can create an activity that requires your students to draw in response to a question, write a paragraph in response to a question, write using scaffolding text that you provide, take quizzes, fill-out visual organizers for concept mapping, sequencing, cause & effect etc. and read/hear multimedia content including specific websites & videos.
Here are a few screenshots from activities that have been created:
You can create simple activities within minutes! I took on the mission of creating a Weathering and Erosion lesson for some 3rd graders. These two terms get confusing and mixed up quite often in elementary school so I wanted to create an interactive activity centered around this topic. I was floored with how easy and intuitive this platform was for creating. My activity starts with {THIS} PDF created by the Virginia Department of Education. Then I embedded {THIS} Scholastic Study Jams video. Next, I embedded {THIS} Google doc I created.
I finished up my lesson with a Cause and Effect activity:
A flow chart:
And Multiple Choice Questions (I LOVED how you could ask for more than one answer!!)
The students who helped test it out really enjoyed the platform:
I asked them to share their thoughts about Froylc and here were some of their responses:
"It was really cool! I like how is acts like another teacher in the room!"
"I actually learned something from this thing. I think I was interested the whole time."
"It was fun!"
"I liked the movie in the beginning."
Does Frolyc support multiple student profiles & differentiated learning? YES! You can create a classroom with student profiles. When you assign activities to students and publish to your iPad(s), your student profiles are automatically synced with the devices. Each student can interact with only the activities assigned to him or her! Is there a catalog of activities? Yes! Frolyc provides a catalog of activities by grade and common core standard authored by teachers. You may select and publish these pre-authored activities to this app from the Frolyc website. For very young readers, the app has built-in voice over for text.
This app does require Wi-Fi to sync content published from frolyc.com. After the sync-up phase, the app can operate without Wi-fi except for playing videos and voice-over. If you choose not to create a Frolyc account, you can still use this app. Frolyc will regularly publish common core standards aligned reading comprehension activities to this app for student/kid use.
Privacy Disclosure: Frolyc believes in kids' privacy. This app has no social media links, no ads or in-app transactions and has an "educator access" area where they will provide a link for you to access Frolyc at http://frolyc.com.
Check it out!