Magazine
Atomic Learning
2/5/2013 By: Jamie Keller
www.atomiclearning.com • Retail price: $99 for a personal license; significant discounts for district-wide licensing.
With not enough hours
in the day to teach,
let alone satisfy
the Common Core
requirements, it’s
hard for teachers
to keep up with two major demands on
their time—taking on more professional
development and learning emerging
and existing technology. Enter Atomic
Learning. With its 55,000 tutorials on
250 applications, teachers can quickly
and easily stay current on both.
Quality and Effectiveness: Atomic Learning (AL)’s
tutorials are designed to answer questions as briefly and concretely
as possible. Running times range from 3 to 5 minutes, with many
tutorials running under 2 minutes. If you miss something the first
time, catching up is easy. The tutorials offer step-by-step instructions
and a playlist of available clips that allows users to choose just the
ones they want. For example, in iMovie, you can go from the basics
of getting started to the technical details of trimming audio clips to
creating video effects. Plus, if there’s something not covered, you can
ask a member of the AL online support staff, and an answer will be
emailed to you.
Ease of Use: With AL’s new interface, searching and
customizing content is easy. Everything is accessible
from the home page. Users can find answers to tech
questions, browse available trainings and projects,
learn and apply 21st-century skills, concepts, and
themes to the classroom, and keep track of individual
training. Need a quick brush-up? Just enter a specific
question or keyword and choose your application.
Results can be filtered by version and platform and
saved for future searches. Teachers wishing to align their curriculum with the Common Core
standards can also browse trainings
by subject, state standards, or ISTE
NETS-S.
Creative Use of Technology: Atomic
Learning’s biggest asset is its ability
to break down technical information into manageable, easily
digested bites by using clear narration and simple, yet precise, animation
to answer specific questions. While it’s important to understand the
technology, AL shows teachers how to apply it with comprehensive,
adaptable tech-integration projects and new, 21st-century, theme-specific
projects. All tutorials are available in Flash or QuickTime and
can be closed-captioned. Many are also available in Spanish. For PD on
the go, AL is now on the iPad as a free download for members.
Suitability for Use in a School Environment: AL is also a
powerful tool for administrators, who can assign staff trainings, track
results, and create reports. It also helps technology directors gauge
professional development needs at both the site and the district
level. While access to administrative tools is based
on individual permission levels, teachers with
access can also assign tutorials and projects to
their classes, give due dates, and track students’
progress in e-portfolios. Teachers can also assign
tutorials to themselves and mark the most useful as
favorites. As a plus, teachers can earn grad credits
by completing workshops and projects through
Atomic Learning’s partnership with Learner’s Edge
and Augustana College.
TOP FEATURES
• 55,000 tutorials on 250 applications
• Short, step-by step tutorials tailored to
specific how-to’s of applications
• Easily adaptable tech-integration projects
for classroom instruction and student
interaction
OVERALL RATING:
Atomic Learning brings
creativity and innovation
into the 21st-century classroom
by not only modeling the effective
use of digital-age tools in developing
authentic learning and assessment, but by
demonstrating how these concepts look in
practice. In today’s school environment,
technology rules, and with its ongoing
professional development in educational
technology, AL is putting the power
of learning where it belongs—in
the hands of the teachers and
students who use it.