Free, personalized online tool makes high-quality resources available to all
SAN FRANCISCO – In a move to make high-quality educational content easily available all in one place, the Girard Education Foundation announced today the migration of its high-quality, teacher-created resources on Activate Instruction to Gooru.
As the public education system evolves toward supporting students’ personalized needs, online learning tools have emerged that allow teachers to customize instruction. Often the tools available either meet some of the teachers’ needs or are prohibitively expensive. Through the migration, users will be able to access Activate’s resources via Gooru, which will give educators a free platform to find high-quality resources as well as the ability to run real-time analytics on student performance and engagement.
“Every student is unique and learns differently. When school starts this fall, teachers can use Gooru to easily personalize lessons for their students,” said Michele Hansen, President of the Girard Education Foundation. “Gooru’s enhanced, free K-12 content will support a variety of innovative educational models and facilitate the growth of competency-based learning.”
Content migrating from Activate has been largely built and published by high-performing public charter schools, such as Summit Public Schools and High Tech High. Summit, for example, will contribute more than 16,000 comprehensive Common Core-aligned resources for students in sixth through 12th grades in October, and High Tech High has already contributed over 4,000 resources. Teachers and students using Gooru can now adapt these high-quality resources for their classrooms. In addition, Gooru offers a wiki-assessment system with millions of questions teachers can use to assess student learning. Gooru’s resources are contributed by credible online sources and educators from over 60 public school districts, including Riverside, Santa Ana and Val Verde.
“At Gooru, our goal is to empower teachers and students with the tools they need to access high-quality resources and real-time data analytics,” said Gooru CEO and founder Prasad Ram. “By adding Activate content to Gooru, we’re increasing the strength of our community. This partnership adds quality resources to Gooru, giving all educators more digital options to meet students’ unique needs.”
In recent years, K-12 education has moved toward competency based education which focuses on supporting students to learn at their own pace, which requires highly personalized and technology-supported instructional methods like Gooru. Around the country, schools using this approach are documenting student success. And this approach is growing. Over 100,000 lessons have been shared on Gooru, with thousands created by the community every month.
Throughout the summer, the Girard Education Foundation will work closely with educators to transition Activate’s educational resources to Gooru, with the goal of having most of Activate’s content on Gooru by mid-August. In addition to the free assessment capabilities Gooru offers, school systems that use learning management and student assessment tools from companies such as Agilix, Illuminate Education, Canvas and Haiku Learning will be able to close the feedback loop and support personalized learning with data analytics on Gooru by mid-August.
Migrating content is the first step in transitioning Activate users to Gooru. Free online training will be offered to familiarize Activate users with Gooru. Dates and times for these trainings will be announced in the summer and posted on Activate and Gooru’s websites.
About the Girard Education Foundation
The Girard Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that aspires to advance K-12 education through innovative educational initiatives. The foundation is based on the belief that meaningful change requires commitment, passion, and risk-taking. Working with partners who share this belief, the foundation takes a collaborative, goal-oriented approach to advancing education.
About Gooru
Gooru (www.goorulearning.org) believes education is a human right. We are building an open and collaborative online community of educators, learners, partners, and developers to facilitate personalized learning for every student. To empower educators everywhere, Gooru provides tools to discover standards-aligned K-12 resources, customize content, and monitor student progress with data analytics to adapt the learning experience for each student. Founded as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, Gooru has and always will be a mission-focused organization whose products are free of cost and ads.
