Braingenie is a service that the CK-12 Foundation has offered for free for many years. It provided online practice activities addressing concepts in math and science for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. Unfortunately, CK-12 is ending the Braingenie service. However, there is some good news. Many of the practice activities and services offered by Braingenie are now being rolled into CK-12’s core offerings.
The Braingenie practice activities are now part of the adaptive practice activities offered for free through CK-12. Teachers can create classroom accounts on CK-12 to give their students access to the adaptive practice activities for math and science. Teachers can then use CK-12’s reporting tool to see what their students have done and the areas in which their students might need some more help.
Teachers can share CK-12 activities with their students through Google Classroom, Schoology, Clever, Kiddom, Classlink, and Canvas. Teachers can also create online classrooms directly within CK-12 without using one of the aforementioned learning management systems.
More information about the transition from Braingenie to CK-12 can found here.
CK-12 Concept Maps
One of CK-12’s underrated features is their interactive concept maps. CK-12 concepts maps are webs of related math and science terms. Clicking on the “details” tab below a term in the web will lead students to definitions and explanations, to interactive concept simulations, and to interactive review exercises. To find a concept map on CK-12 simply go to the CK-12 Concept Map page and enter a science or mathematics topic into the search box. You will then see a color-coded web of terms. Terms appearing in green will lead students to science resources. Terms appearing in blue will lead students to mathematics resources.
CK-12 Concept Maps could be a good resource for teachers who are looking for ideas when developing lessons that incorporate mathematics and science around one topic. For example, the inertia concept map provided me with resources that could be used to teach Newton’s first law as well as resources that could be used to teach the calculation of acceleration.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne’s) work include CloudComputin and 711Web.
