Learning Resources

Participate Learning Unveils Collaboration, Collection Tools for Educators

• By Leila Meyer
• 11/04/15

Participate Learning, formerly called appoLearning, has launched Collections, a new curation and collaboration tool for educators.

Participate Learning's Collections feature lets teachers create a digital folder of online educational resources, such as Web sites, apps and videos, and organize them according to subject, unit, lesson, topic or other organizational criteria. They can even add their own files from Dropbox, Google Drive or other cloud storage services. Any resource with a Web address can be added to a collection.

Teachers can then share their collections with colleagues and invite them to discuss items in real time. They also have the option of building collaborative collections on topics of shared interest.

The new Collections feature is distinct from Participate Learning's existing Search feature, which provides teachers with a collection of online educational resources curated by Participate Learning's team of educational experts. While Participate Learning's search engine provides a vetted list of educational sites, iOS and Android applications, YouTube and Vimeo videos and other online resources, Collections lets teachers build and share their own curated lists.

Collections are not included in Participate Learning's search results, but items in Collections are publicly accessible. When teachers add items to their collections, they can add titles and tags to help other teachers find those items when browsing collections. Eventually, Participate Learning's team may vett some of the resources in Collections for inclusion in Search.

According to information on the company's site, Participate Learning plans to add more functionality to Collections in the coming weeks, including "privacy controls, more rating and following options and many other improvements."

Further information about Collections can be found on Participate Learning's site.