Smart Learning Institute

UPchieve, a nonprofit that provides free, online math tutoring to low-income high school students, traditionally asks schools with participating students to pay a small fee to keep its service running. In response to COVID-19 school closures, that fee has been waived through the end of the school year. And any student who creates an account during this period can keep using UPchieve for free, forever, the organization said. The service works on any device; students choose the subject they need help with, and UPchieve matches them with a volunteer tutor in a virtual classroom. Students can get as many free sessions as they want. https://upchieve.org/school-closures

Vernier has produced free remote learning solutions to keep students engaged in STEM during school closures. That includes access to Vernier Video Analysis, which lets students use their mobile devices in video analysis work (through June 2020), and Pivot Interactives for allowing students to vary experimental parameters one at a time (for 30 days), as well 80-plus experiments with sample data covering numerous subjects. https://www.vernier.com/remote-learning/

Wiley has made WileyPLUS, Knewton Alta and zBooks available through the Spring 2020 term. Also, the company has made more than 5,000 COVID-19-related articles freely available on a Wiley Online Library site. https://secure.wiley.com/COVID19OpenWPAccess, https://www.zybooks.com/, https://novel-coronavirus.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Wooclap has made its software free for K-12 educators to use "forever." The program helps teachers inject interactivity into remote lessons through quizzes, polls, wordclouds and other methods. The platform also includes flashcards ("wooflash"), which promote student memorization and comprehension while generating data to help educators track student progress. https://www.wooclap.com/

Zearn has made its K-5 math curriculum available for free to teachers. The content includes 400 hours of digital lessons with on-screen teachers and "supportive remediation," as well as paper-based materials that can be used device-free. The company is running continual webinars for district administrators, teachers and parents to help them get the service set up for their students. https://about.zearn.org/distance-learning

Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on its free basic accounts for K-12 and teamed up with Clever to make Zoom accessible to Clever districts that experiencing closures. Outschool, a marketplace for live online classes, has made available free remote teacher training webinars demonstrating how to adapt teaching practices and curriculum to a live video chat classroom. https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/13/how-to-use-zoom-for-online-learning/

Find more resources for schools during the COVID-19 crisis here.