Class summary screenshot

Teachers are getting busier all the time and we wanted to help out by putting The Monkey Zone to work for you. So in the next couple of months we will be rolling out a new set of tools that saves teachers time on both prepping and grading assignments. Our goal is to provide both classroom and private teachers with a quick, easy and effective means of delivering learning content directly into the hands of students and getting accurate feedback on student performance as quickly as possible.

At the heart of these new tools are “Class-Links” which are assignments created and stored at The Monkey Zone. Teachers create class-links by selecting learning content on the website and then send them to their students. The Monkey Zone checks each students’ work as they complete the assignment online and reports back to the teacher with a summary of student activity and achievement. There’s no software to download or install, no complicated tools to learn…just jump online and start sending. It’s that simple, really.

This new system will save teachers considerable time in prepping and grading and allow schools to advance further in their use of technology in blended classrooms. With these new tools teachers will also be able to spend more time focusing on student needs and tailoring assignments to individual students or an entire class as needed. Finally, these tools will be available across a number of subjects including Math, Music, Language Arts and Geography, and will include a menu for selecting learning materials by Common Core Standard, making it that much easier for teachers to meet educational goals.

Oh…and did we mention that all this will be completely free for both teachers and students? That’s right. The entire Monkey Zone learning library, along with automated grading and reporting, will be available for free, unlimited use at home, in the classroom, and anywhere else you might find yourself dealing with homework.

We are very excited about these new tools and hope they will make a valuable addition to your classroom and at-home learning environments. Sign up today for a free teacher account at The Monkey Zone and we’ll let you know as soon as these tools are ready.

Thank you for your time and support to The Monkey Zone and we hope to see lots of teachers and students signing up and enjoying these new tools early next year. But first it’s time for a couple weeks of vacation…so happy holidays from The Monkey Zone!

Dallas Bluth - CEO & Founder at The Monkey Zone

This past week our CEO & Founder, Dallas Bluth, presented The Monkey Zone to a group of education technology specialists and enthusiasts in Boulder, CO. The event was the first in a series organized by Dan Carrol and hosted by Boulder Digital Works at the University of Colorado.

Dallas presented an outline of The Monkey Zone’s interactive learning features targeted at elementary age students, as well as the website’s intelligent delivery system and the importance of the user interface in keeping students focused. Attendees also got a sneak-peak at the new educator tools The Monkey Zone has in store for the start of 2012.

The evening’s line-up included a number of other EdTech projects such as Alex Repenning’s Scalable Game Design which teaches students (and teachers) the concepts of computer programming and scientific modeling through hands-on video game development. Alex and his team have pioneered a drag-and-drop interface which allows students to focus on quick game design and development both individually and in teams. Scalable Game Design has been bringing its services to students and teachers for over 15 years and has gathered valuable data in some understudied areas of education technology and the blended classroom experience.

EdTech specialists & enthusiasts

Kirill Kireyev was also on hand to demonstrate a new and innovative way of combining web search with self-motivated learning. His website, instaGrok, crawls the web and creates connections between topics that helps readers more quickly orient and grasp both the scope and details of new materials.

Other speakers included Jon Hanover from The Charter School Growth Fund who presented some valuable insight into the needs of today’s classroom teachers and how technology could be leveraged to meet those needs. Chris Vacek was also there to discuss some technological resources that address the needs of special education, and Morey Bean gave us a glimpse into his ambitious project involving NGOs and merit based mobile learning.

Elementary Number Matching Skills

We’re taking our Math exercises back to the basics and adding in counting exercises for our youngest students.

Try these new number matching problems for zero through nine and pass them along to a youngster just learning to count.These free e-learning games demonstrate how to write all the digits and practice matching them up using both your eyes and ears.

Counting on Number Lines

We’ve also included some number line problems to warm up for more advanced Math skills down the road.

Play for free: www.themonkeyzone.com/play…