Steps for Boards of Education

Provide Free, Self-Motivating Learning Opportunities

Join CitySpokes

By joining CitySpokes as a Board of Education, you will be provided with Sign In credentials where you will be able to quickly and easily create your own StudySpokes prize apps, and assign the data entry to a teacher or other designated individual. The interface is ready to go -- all it needs is your data.

The process of entering data is simple. Just follow these steps:

  1. Enter the name of the information (i.e. bones, muscles, anatomy, engines, science, cooking terms, grammar, astronomy, etc.)
  2. Enter the "questions" and the "answers" by typing into the two text areas.
  3. Make the prize app Active by checking the Active box

Your app will then be available to all residents within your county. They can also use it with their students to foster a self-motivated learning environment by setting goals and earning prizes. You might even have local businesses contribute the prizes as well.


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Consider Using A Gold Sponsor

CitySpokes is a free website that will help you become a model Board of Education. However, if you choose to spread the word as quick as you can, you may wish to activate a Gold Sponsorship included at no charge with each Board of Education membership.

A Gold Sponsorship includes a graphic ad on your city or county Home Page, that you manage. The concept is you are able to "reward" a local business that contributes the costs of social media advertising, promotional items, postage, flyers, postcards, or whatever you choose to do. For example, a local radio station could provide PSAs to promote this opportunity in exchange for a graphic ad on your Home Page.

We at CitySpokes are not involved in any agreements or payments you decide upon. Once you want to acknowledge the contributions of local businesses, you ask them to send you a graphic and the URL it should point to when clicked. You then Sign In and upload it. It's very quick and easy. You also determine how long the graphic will be displayed based on the level of contribution. If a business made an in-kind contribution worth $1000, you could display their graphic ad for a year. You have total control over which ad is displayed and for how long.

Your Gold Sponsor can also be further divided down to day of the week. For example, if Gold Sponsor #1 provided a major contribution, you could provide them with an ad that would be displayed to all visitors. But if you had another four or five businesses that wanted to contribute to your effort, you could provide Business A with an ad on Monday and Thursday, business B with an ad on Tuesday and Saturday, and business C with an ad on Sunday. Once daily ads are set up, which is also really quick and easy, the system will display the correct ads on the correct days, and nothing else needs any maintenance until you choose to make changes.

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Unlimited Practice and Go For The Prize Apps

Math for Prizes can easily be configured to match the needs of each individual student. One student can focus on their 9 times tables and another student can focus on their 7 times tables.

Math for Prizes is available in Practice mode without the student having to be registered in CitySpokes, however, if the student wants to race against the clock to see if they can earn their prize, a teacher will have to add each student from their Member Dashboard and set the parameters for earning the prize. A prize could be extra credit, not having to take the quiz on Friday, or a prize offered by a local business.

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Math For Prizes

Math for Prizes is one of the best apps available to learn math. The reason is it creates a self-motivating experience to earn prizes while learning. Imagine being able to tell your parents you have earned a chocolate milkshake, all while learning your math.

To play Math for Prizes, or any other StudySpokes prize app, the parent or teacher needs to join CitySpokes, which is free. As a resident, they can then create student memberships, as well as configure the criteria for practicing and going for the prize. For example, the resident could create a membership for Susan and set the number ranges, the minutes, the number of problems and the prize. The same resident could also create a membership for John and set a different criteria for him.

Now, both Susan and John have memberships in Math for Prizes where they can practice and go for the prize. To get to the Math for Prizes app, the resident or the student would need to go to their city within CitySpokes. From there, they could select Math for Prizes and Log In with their student credentials the resident created. The student could then either practice and not be limited by the clock, or they could see if they could earn the prize established by the resident.

Or, they could check the prizes offered by local businesses to see if they wanted to try for that prize. Typically, a student can earn unlimited prizes from the residents, but can only earn one prize per business per campaign. Businesses can also offer larger prizes where the student would be entered into a drawing, depending on the business and the prize.


Local Business Sponsored Prizes

In addition to parents or teachers providing prizes like a candy bar, an extra hour of TV, skipping a quiz, etc. local businesses can also easily add prize options for the student to select like ice cream, miniature golf, slice of pizza, etc.

Four Templates to Enter Your Own Curriculum

The StudySpokes prize apps in CitySpokes contain four reusable templates that can be used by teachers to provide challenging and rewarding learning experiences for their students. And once a student learns how to use one prize app, they will have generally learned how to use them all. The templates are as follows:

  1. Interchangeable: This template can be used for information where all the questions and answers are interchangeable. For example, all state capitals are interchangeable since they are all cities. So if a state is shown in the app, the student would have to select the correct state capital from the five city choices shown, with no clue as to which answer is correct. This template also enables the student to be tested in either "direction" in that the student can be presented with the state and have to provide the capital, or the student can be presented with the capital and have to provide the state. Some examples of interchangeable problems are airplane parts, car parts, body parts, animal species, tree names, Periodic Chart of Elements, English or math terms, etc.
  2. Interchangeable with Chapters: This template works similar to the above template only the problems are broken down into Chapters. For example, in Spanish, Chapter 1 might be greetings, Chapter 2 might be numbers, Chapter 3 might be colors, etc. The information is broken down into Chapters to serve as an aid in learning, but also because information between Chapters is not interchangeable. If a student was prompted for a number and the choices were two colors, two greetings and a number, the student would be able to select the number without really knowing their foreign language numbers. This template also enables the student to be prompted with a question in English and be required to select the foreign language answer, or the other way around. Finally, when using this app, students can either work on a selected Chapter, or a range of Chapters. Some examples of where this template could be used are for any foreign language, progressive levels of learning or complexity, different systems (Windows versus Apple), American History versus World History, etc.
  3. None Interchangeable: This template is for when the information only works with a supplied question and specific multiple answers to choose from that are related to the question. For example, in First Aid, the student might be presented with a problem and then have to select the correct answer from the displayed choices. It would not make sense to ask a First Aid question about one body part that included unrelated body parts in the answer choices. When loading up this app, more than four incorrect answers can be entered, with only one correct answer, so when the choices are displayed, they will not always be the same four incorrect choices. Some examples where this template would be used are economics, civics, car repair, human resources, grammar, plot analysis, career strategies, science, etc.
  4. None Interchangeable with Chapters: This template is for when the information only works with a supplied question and specific multiple answers to choose from that are related to the question, and it is a complex subject where the information is organized into Chapters. For example, in Real Estate, the student might be organized into Chapters like Residential, Commercial, Rentals, etc.. Problems are then organized into Chapters.similar to above.


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Create Apps that Match Your Local Curriculum

Why be forced to use the pre-programmed data in other national apps when we can customize your apps to match your local curriculum. All our database-driven apps are already created and all we need to do is enter the data from your curriculum into the database and our app and your curriculum will match.