United Teach is a new EdTech startup that aims to bring an enormous variety of digital guest speakers to classrooms around the country. Through the service, you can find guest speakers on art, math, science, careers, pretty much everything imaginable. It's an excellent resource and a wonderful way to help students make real world connections with the subject matter! Let's check it out!
As many classroom teachers have most likely discovered, finding guest speakers from the local community can often be a challenge. Matching their schedule with your school schedule, finding someone who can even speak on the topic you would like addressed, and, most importantly, finding someone who is willing to volunteer their time. United Teach aims to digitize this process and make it immeasurably easier to find a guest speaker for your classroom, and they have a giant variety of topics and subject areas that guest speakers can address. Let's check out a video to get a short introduction to the site.
Pick a Topic, Any Topic
This review will primarily focus on the teacher side of the site, but if you like the sound of volunteering for a service like this, you should definitely sign up! If you're passionate about education, and you have a subject area you'd like to be a guest speaker about, they are definitely looking for more volunteers!
On the teacher side, it's an incredibly easy system. And if you sign up before October 31st you'll get a free account for the entire 2014-2015 school year (after that it's only $12 a year). When you sign in, you'll first be presented with your dashboard. From here you can see any upcoming appointments and any quest speakers that you have favorited.
The Teacher Dashboard
To find a guest speaker it's as simple as, (you can probably guess...) click the green "find a guest speaker" button! From there, you'll just need to pick what subject are you're interested in, and a collection of guest speakers will show up. You can check out their profiles to find out more information or send them a message if you're interested in scheduling them for your class! It's super easy.
Select a Topic
View the Profiles of Potential Guest Speakers
So, after you've found a guest speaker you like, all you need to do is send them a message and schedule a time where they can "visit" your class. You might only need to chat through messaging, or you might want to set up a video chat with the guest speaker, just to outline the presentation. It's totally up to you! And that's what I really like about this service, it's here to help you connect with guest speakers from around the world, but how you use those guest speakers is entirely up to you.
One other great feature of the site is the forum. Here, teachers can discuss ideas, methods, guest speakers, strategies, whatever they want to, and it's all centered around particular subject areas. I really like this idea because, while forums exist all over the web for specific subject areas, United Teach does a great job of bringing all these areas together in one place. For now, the forums are pretty empty since the site just launched, but I have no doubt that they'll begin filling up soon!
Check Out the Forums for Advice on Topics
And essentially, that's the site! It's a wonderful resource to help teachers connect with guest speakers from around the world. And again, if you sign up before October 31st, you get a free membership for the entire school year!. If you are a K-12 teacher looking to liven up your classroom and help your students make real-world connections, I highly recommend giving United Teach a try.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
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