Apps to use in our LMS: Gooru

PowerSchool Learning, formerly Haiku Learning, is a learning management system where educators can use various tools and apps from the internet as part of their teaching and instruction programs. There are over fifty apps inside our LMS that enable teachers to embed the web into assignments. This posts reviews Gooru, one of the apps inside our LMS.

What is Gooru?

From the Gooru site: “Gooru is a free personalized learning solution that enables teachers to find, remix, and share collections of web resources on any K-12 topic. With millions of open multimedia resources and quiz questions, Gooru organizes all online learning content and connects a community of educators and learners to meet students’ unique needs. Gooru is open-source and free.”

In PowerSchool Learning: Millions of resources come together in thousands of user-generated collections, any of which can be be brought into PowerSchool Learning via LTI. (If you’re a PowerSchool Learning School Edition customer and haven’t started using LTI in PowerSchool Learning, see yesterday’s blog post!)

• Website: goorulearning.org
• Price: Free
• Account Required? You don’t need an account if you’re just searching the Gooru site and grabbing embed codes that you can use with our Embed the Web tool. For LTI integration, you need to reach out to Gooru directly to obtain your account credentials at the admin level.

What does it look like?

As a teacher, when adding an LTI Activity to your class, you can search Gooru’s inventory of resources and collections. Search listings will be displayed in the Activity set-up screen (yay!), then you just select any item to attach it to your Activity. Primarily, their resources and collections will require that they be opened in a new window, and present a link to open in a new tab if embedded. Students can interact with the resource and rate it with stars or smiley faces. Analytics and responses are sent back to the teacher in Gooru.

Why should I try it?

For content that is created by teachers and tagged by subject area, grade level, and even standard, that you can instantly bring into any PowerSchool Learning class, Gooru is the way to go. They also have a great mission—to make quality education available to anyone, for free.

Where can I learn more?

You can watch Gooru in 90 Seconds or watch the more in-depth Gooru Website Walkthrough.

For domain administrators: Learn how to add Gooru as an LTI tool to your PowerSchool Learning school domain.

For teachers at schools where Gooru has been added as an LTI tool: Learn how to add a Gooru content to your PowreSchool Learning class.