Actively Learn helps learners pay closer attention and make better connections between texts when they read. Teachers can use Actively Learn to help learners to think, write, collaborate, grasp an in-depth knowledge of texts they read and apply that knowledge.

Website: https://www.activelylearn.com/

What Users Love About the App

“This product allows students to engage with text (in our case, in a foreign language) in smaller chunks, and to focus on specifics. It also allows me to choose texts for any level and ask questions that target the grammar we are using/learning.”

“Being able to add new items or documents you type up in Google Docs is helpful; it allows you to have your students answer questions about the meaningful text(s) you select. I like the ability to create questions, the different ways to answer the questions, as well as the ability to highlight a word and use it for vocabulary questions: i.e., what do you think this means? what are your clues/evidence from the text? This is highly useful for a school like mine with a high ELL population.”

“The biggest selling point for me is the discussion element. I love having classroom discussions, especially regarding current events. I think this is so important to a real learning experience that the students will use long after leaving a classroom. I’m also impressed with the way the program monitors student progress and how it makes sure the student is actually engaging with the text rather than just skimming through it.”

“It solves the problem of inappropriate content in real-life publications. It really allows teachers to choose specific, relevant articles, and then enhance the text with video or other content.”

“I really like the fact that this product allows me to have real-time observation of where my students are in their assigned reading(s). I can look at their answers to the questions I posed in the text, and I can also respond to any challenges they are having. I really enjoy the resources they have available in terms of the content I can use and that I can upload my own content for my students. It also allows me to edit said content, which I really enjoy.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“I would like to see a way for the parents to be actively involved in this. There may actually be a way, I just didn’t think to ask about this. I would love there to be a way to guarantee that the students are participating in the discussion. Meaning, for my quieter students in class, the back and forth digital comments with their fellow students would be a great way to get them to actually engage and participate with their peers. What I’d like to see is a way to be sure or have this assigned as a task, almost like the questions that you have to answer in order to move on, but in this case you’d have to leave a comment before being able to finish.”

“Three things that come to mind are: the ability to have the text read to the students, a more visually appealing format that draws the student to desire to read the text, and more concrete data provided to me after the students answer the questions.”

“I would possibly offer an idea bank for teachers and collaborative lesson plans with access to the feedback and content from other students. It would allow my students to know what students from districts across the country are thinking about and learning. It essentially begins the idea of a global classroom.”

“1. More items at the lower Lexile levels. There is not much for the elementary grade bands, and this would be a wonderful tool for that. 2. The ability to add your own text-to-speech option(s).”

“It isn’t the most straightforward or intuitive format to maneuver through, but after clicking around one does figure it out. Perhaps, automatically logging a student out after a period of inactivity would help the accuracy of the “reading time” data. I cannot believe ANY student spent 7 hours (or more) reading a three paragraph letter. It would be nice to have a clear visual distinction between the library and my own workspace. I was really worried about accidentally editing the wrong text/documents/questions and messing up someone else’s items.”