Pin to Win an iPad Mini from MasteryConnect

Last month MasteryConnect launched a new Pinterest-like feature called Resource Boards. This is a free feature that teachers can use to create collections of resources that are aligned to Common Core standards. You can add materials to your MasteryConnect Resource Boards through the MasteryConnect browser bookmarklet available here.

At the end of this month MasteryConnect is going to give away an iPad mini to the teacher who has pinned the most resources. Resources must include alignment to Common Core standards. Second prize and third prizes are $100 and $50 Amazon gift cards. You can learn more about the contest here.

Disclosure: MasteryConnect has been an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers since 2011.

MasteryConnect Releases a New Science Standards App and Resource Pins

MasteryConnect, a popular Common Core standards assessment tracking service, recently released a couple of helpful new tools. First, the new science standards app (available for iOS and Android) puts all of the new National Science Teachers Association standards on your mobile device. You can search through the standards by topic and or keyword. The app will also provide correlations to Common Core standards. You can get the app on MasteryConnect's resource goodies page.

Resource Pins is a new browser bookmarklet from MasteryConnect. The bookmarklet allows you to pin things to your MasteryConnect account. From there you can quickly add Common Core standards alignments to your pinned resources. You can get the Resource Pins bookmarklet on the MasteryConnect resource goodies page.

Disclosure: MasteyConnect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Win an iPad Mini from MasteryConnect

Do you use MasteryConnect to plan lessons and keep track of your students' progress toward meeting Common Core standards? If so MasteryConnect would like to hear from you. Create a short about how you use MasteryConnect and submit it to the MasteryConnect video contest. The person submitting the winning video will receive an iPad Mini. Click here for more information from MasteryConnect.

Learn more about MasteryConnect in the video below.

Disclosure: MasteryConnect helps feed me and my dogs every month through their advertising payments.

MasteryConnect Helps You Map Curriculum to Common Core Standards

MasteryConnect is a service that offers a few products that I think teachers in U.S. public schools should know about. First, they offer a good system for tracking your students' mastery of Common Core standards. Second, they provide a great community of educators who are connecting and sharing lesson ideas. And third, MasteryConnect now offers a curriculum mapping tool that allows you to easily connect your current lessons and curriculum to Common Core and or state standards. You can see the MasteryConnect curriculum mapping tool in the video found here.

Disclosure: MasteryConnect helps feed me and my dog every month through their advertising payments.

Creating Awesome Assessments - Free Webinar

Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Last month Mastery Connect offered a free webinar about creating assessments aligned to Common Core standards. The webinar was so popular that they have decided to offer it again in November. Creating Awesome Assessments will be held on November 13 at 6pm MST. The focus of this webinar will be on the Language Arts standards. 

Mastery Connect is also offering webinars for school administrators in October, November, December, and January. You can find the full schedule of webinars here.

MasteryConnect Partners With Solution Tree

Full Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Mastery Connect provides a free community for educators to share and discuss their plans around Common Core standards. As a member of the community you can browse and download the materials shared by other educators. There are currently more than one hundred pages of shared materials. Of course, as a member of the community you can share your own materials. You can also follow and have threaded Twitter-style discussions with other members of the community. All materials found in Mastery Connect are tied to specific standards in the Common Core. Click here to join the community today.

This summer MasteryConnect partnered with Solution Tree and presented at Solution Tree's Professional Learning Communities at Work institutes. Solution Tree's Rick Dufour endorsed MasteryConnect's community in this video.

Creating Awesome Assessments - Free Webinar

Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Next week on September 18 at 6pm Mountain Time Mastery Connect is hosting a free webinar titled Creating Awesome Assessments Aligned to Common Core Standards. The webinar will be facilitated in part by Cindi Dunford a grade 6 teacher and peer reviewer in the Mastery Connect community. Click here to register for the event.

Mastery Connect offers a variety services related to Common Core. Mastery Connect offers a free Android and iOS app that allows you to access the Common Core standards at any time. Use the app to have the standards for your grade and content area at your fingertips whenever you need them. The same features found in the Android and iOS apps are also available online whenever you need them at MasteryConnect.com.

Mastery Connect provides a free community for educators to share and discuss their plans around Common Core standards. As a member of the community you can browse and download the materials shared by other educators. There are currently more than one hundred pages of shared materials. Of course, as a member of the community you can share your own materials. You can also follow and have threaded Twitter-style discussions with other members of the community. All materials found in Mastery Connect are tied to specific standards in the Common Core.

The Mastery Tracker is a free service for individual teachers for tracking students’ progress. Mastery Connect also offers Bubble Score which is a fee-based service that schools can use for grading and analyzing the assessments your students take.

A Few Good Minutes With MasteryConnect

This afternoon after my presentation at The Literacy Promise conference here in Salt Lake City I stopped in at the offices of Mastery Connect who has helped to pay my bills for the last seven months. After accidentally crashing a meeting, I sat down with some of the team to talk about what they've been up to.

First some numbers about MasteryConnect, their free mobile app has been used by educators 5.6 million times to look up the Common Core standards for the grades and topics that they teach. You can get the app for iOS here and for Android here. MasteryConnect's web-based products are now used in more than 4,000 U.S. school districts.

I was able to get a hands-on demonstration of the parent view of MasteryConnect. One of the cool things about the parent view is that parents can see how their students have done on specific assessments tied to specific standards. Not only do parents see the assessment title, they can see the actual assessment activity itself (provided that the teacher has uploaded it). For math standards Khan Academy and Learn Zillion videos are linked to each standard so that parents and students can watch the videos that are connected to the standards the student needs to work toward meeting.

Here are a few posts that I've previously published about MasteryConnect:
Khan Academy Videos Mapped to Common Core Standards
Put Common Core Standards on Your Blog or Website
Try Mastery Connect for Lesson Materials Tied to Common Core Standards

Disclosure: MasteryConnect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers. 

Khan Academy Videos Mapped to Common Core Standards

Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.


Last month Mastery Connect added LearnZillion videos to the resources available in the Mastery Connect teachers' community. On Friday they added more videos in the form of Khan Academy videos. All of the videos from LearnZillion and Khan Academy are mapped to Common Core standards.

By request, here's a screenshot of how to find the videos once you've signed into your Mastery Connect account. Open the "common assessments" tab in Mastery Connect to see this screen.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for some videos that could help your students learn a concept that is a part of the Common Core standards that you have to teach to, the Mastery Connect community could be a great place to start your search.

LearnZillion Math Videos Now Available in Mastery Connect

Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Among other things related to Common Core standards Mastery Connect hosts an active community of teachers who are sharing lesson ideas built around the Common Core standards. Now you can also find more than 300 LearnZillion videos in the Mastery Connect community. LearnZillion videos provide math lessons tied to Common Core standards for grades three through nine.

Applications for Education
If you would like to include a video element to your classroom lessons, take a look at the LearnZillion videos found in the Mastery Connect community. If you're not familiar with the Mastery Connect community, here are a few highlights: As a member of the community you can browse and download the materials shared by other educators. As a member of the community you can share your own materials. All materials found on Mastery Connect are tied to specific Common Core standards. You can also follow and have threaded Twitter-style discussions with other members of the community.

Put Common Core Standards on Your Blog or Website

Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers. 

Back in June, Mastery Connect launched a free Android and iPhone app that enables you to locate any and all of Common Core standards for math and language arts with just a couple of clicks. Now you can put that same app functionality directly into your blog or website with the Mastery Connect Common Core widget. Try it out as embedded below.

Applications for Education
If you have a section of your school's website dedicated to faculty resources the Mastery Connect Common Core widget could be a helpful addition to that site.

Try Mastery Connect for Lesson Materials Tied to Common Core Standards

Full Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers.

Even if they haven’t been adopted in your area yet, you’ve probably heard plenty about Common Core standards. The question then is how do you plan, teach, and assess with Common Core standards in mind. Mastery Connect is an organization whose mission is to help you answer that question.

Mastery Connect provides a free community for educators to share and discuss their plans around Common Core standards. As a member of the community you can browse and download the materials shared by other educators. There are currently more than one hundred pages of shared materials. Of course, as a member of the community you can share your own materials. You can also follow and have threaded Twitter-style discussions with other members of the community. All materials found in Mastery Connect are tied to specific standards in the Common Core.

The user community isn’t all that Mastery Connect offers for free. They also offer a free Android and iOS app that allows you to access the Common Core standards at any time. Use the app to have the standards for your grade and content area at your fingertips whenever you need them. The same features found in the Android and iOS apps are also available online whenever you need them at MasteryConnect.com.

For users looking for a little more than a community and app, Mastery Connect does offer some fee-based services. These services include the Mastery Tracker for tracking students’ progress. They also offer Bubble Score which is a service for grading and analyzing the assessments your students take.

If Common Core is a part of your professional life, I encourage you to join and explore the Mastery Connect community. Then start sharing and learning with other professionals.