If you've never seen it before, www.RocketSpelling.com is an incredibly fun spelling website. My 3rd graders love it! The idea is that they have instructional videos (also found here: https://www.youtube.com/c/RocketSpelling) that go with practice challenges. Kids can work up to harder and harder levels at their own pace. All of the data is tracked and can be viewed in a teacher account. This can be your entire spelling program or, if you're committed to something else, is a great supplemental resource. Highly recommended!
Isn’t this against forum rules? I was under the impression that advertising and self-promoting are banned topics.
It depends on having the right people seeing the post. Members can always hit the "report" button in every post and simply give the reason, such as self-promoting, advertising, or, spam. I can't tell if the original post of this thread is from the company that sells this program, or is just someone who likes it and perhaps uses it because it is used in the district they teach at. I, too, would not pay to purchase software to use in my classroom - that should be decided, and paid for, by the district.
I can take the post down if people prefer. I've always been willing to pay for anything that made my teacher life easier, and I particularly love tech tools -- IXL.com for math differentiation, Rocket Spelling for spelling, Flocabulary for engaging videos about language arts and math, individual resources on TeachersPayTeachers (*so* much easier than making everything myself), and so on. The only site I love but can't afford to pay for is Reflex Math -- that one is worth taking the free annual trial but then they priced me out of it.
I don't know. I've been reporting them as spam. Sometimes they try to be slick by posting a whole bunch of nonsense that has no value then at the end they slip it "visit my site/blog/etc.
I think something like your program might be helpful and your post isn't as spammy as most but I would definitely check out the rules just in case. There should maybe be a specific subforum people selling things can post in and not in general education which seems spammy.
I do report a lot of things that get posted, often by robots, that are inappropriate, not free, and definitely trolling for those who will click on virtually anything. I am more tolerant of links such as the one in question here, because the link is in a format I am familiar with, and I can quickly check the name to get a rundown on cost, as well as a pretty good idea if the software is considered valuable to many teachers. Because I monitor and contribute on the Free Links! thread, and pretty much check it regularly to weed out noxious posts, I try to keep those posts true to my original goal to be able to post links that many teachers may not normally find, as well as keeping up with a lot of the more technical, timely, and subject specific posts, to try to delete badly outdated material, but if I'm swamped, I just trust that people will understand that the most recent posts are the most current. I would not be opposed to this thread being left as long as everyone knows that the link is to a website that will want to be paid. That is, of course, my personal view and may not be in keeping with the forum rules. Guidance from the monitors can be sought, if so inclined, although I find that they stay pretty much on top of anything that is adamantly against the forum rules.
