Noteflight Learn

Noteflight is a robust application for music teachers. They do offer a free trial, but in order to access this, you must contact the company. Their product prices in at approximately $7 per student, and membership allows the teacher to organize classes, create assignment and gives access to a library of musical scores and lessons. Their site specifically states that their application works on Chromebooks.

Their privacy policy is suitable for use in Canada. They state “The only identifying information collected is on the teacher and the school. All students are assigned unique usernames by the teacher; therefore Noteflight does not collect any personal information on students.” This means that teachers can enter students using false (game) names. An easy way to do this is to use the student’s first name and make their last name your school or town name. For example: Jayden Delburne or Laura Beacon.

SeeSaw

SeeSaw

Seesaw is a fantastic tool for Div 1 and Div 2 teachers. There are a host of pre-created resources in their resource library, and the platform itself gives young learners meaningful ways to demonstrate their learning.

Seesaw’s privacy policy requires parental permission for students under age 13. They offer a sample letter for parents to acquire this permission.

Gamestar Mechanic

Gamestar Mechanic

Gamestar Mechanic is an online application to allow people to build a digital game. It also teaches students how to build a game in their application through the playing of a game. The exclusive educational package is priced at $2 per student. 

Teachers using this utility can register their students using a false name (I prefer the term game name). When I was teaching, I used the student’s first name, and then a portion of my school’s name for the last name (all my students had the same last name). The only reason Gamestar even asks for names is to assist the teacher in tracking their students within the tracking features.

Examples of names could be Aidan Grandview or Tessa Fox.

Curious George STEM

Curious George STEM

Using a well-known character from a series of children’s books, PBS has created a fantastic set of lessons to spark curiosity in young learners. The lessons in Curious George STEM include measuring, building and simple machines. Students are asked to think critically, predict outcomes, share observations and formulate theories to build the habits of mind that lead to academic success.