- Remind 101. (Web based or iPhone app) You create a class. Students or parents can subscribe for text or email reminders. Since people must subscribe, you don't keep their email/phone info on your device. It is a one-way communication. Subscribers cannot reply. You can also schedule the messages for specific times. Limit of 140 characters like Twitter.
- At the end of the year, you can remove the subscribers, or you can remove individuals. You can also edit subscriber's names.
- Poll Everywhere. You can create a free account or just create individual polls without an account. You can create inidvidual polls, group them, and even copy and paste questions with multiple choice answers from Word. Free accounts allow up to 40 students without reporting.
- PollEVpresenter is an application that allows you to embed a live poll into a Power Point or Keynote (use icon on the bottom of the screen world/P to insert). To download, go to polleverywhere.com/app.
- Futuba. A four person game. Create games up to 12th grade. Very engaging.
- QR codes. i-nigma is a great QR code reader. You can read QR codes when it's not centered or even on an angle. QR stuff.com was used to generate QR codes. You can generate codes for contact info, websites, videos, etc.
- Quizlet. (Web based or iPhone app) Flashcards. Millions of sets already created. Most sets don't allow you to edit (so watch for spelling mistakes). Allows you to spell the word and it will correct you. The app is more limited, the website has more options. Printing options, you can have a table, glossary, cards, etc. See quizlet.com/teachers for ideas. Not meaningful tracking for the teacher, more for students to use as a practice tool. Has some fun games.
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Prezi. I enjoyed seeing more about Prezi. The article we read this week with the Prezi tips was also very useful. I liked thinking about the Prezi in "frames" and adding the path at the end of the presentation.
Story Jumper. My first year as a public school teacher, my third grade students published a book. I remember the long and laborious process. First there was the rough draft. Then the students typed (or I typed it for them) their pages. Lastly, the students carefully illustrated page after page of the text. Many students had pages with marker smears, fingerprints, or handprints on them. None the less, the pages were dutifully packaged and shipped off to the manufacturer for the treasured books to be published. Story Jumper seems a much simplier process! Prezi. Features presented (that we may have been unaware of) were the ability to:
We did an activity on google docs. I liked how engaging the activity was. We were creating a web page for a travel site and we had specific roles for each individual to play. Since it was a collaborative document, we could each do research, add information, and stay engaged because of our individual task assignments.
We played with Google plus. It's a social networking app that allows us to video conference with several people at once, share your screen, control the other user's screen, and even video conference over You Tube. Live You Tube broadcasts are automatically saved on You Tube. It was entertaining. I can see exciting possibilities with connecting to others long distance. Dropbox on the iPad. Key features: If you make a file a favorite, it will save it on your iPad so if you don't have wifi available, the file will still be on the iPad for your use.
Google Docs. I have used Google Docs extensively so the forms are familiar to me. However, I was reminded of one important thing: You need to make sure that the email addresses you invite people with is the email that they are logged into their Google Drive with. Otherwise, they will have read only rights. Twitter in the classroom. We looked at the blog from Twhistory.org. and read a fake twitter feed about the Titanic. Groups took on the persona of different characters and created tweets as that character. We then created a fake twitter feed for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A google spreadsheet doc was created with all of our character names as tabs. In the doc we listed the date and time of the tweet along with the actual tweet, which included our project hashtag. The instructor would then go to Socialoomph.com, add multiple twitter accounts, then copy and paste the tweets and set a time for them to be delivered.
Fakebook. We did a short look and see on fakebook. I will have to go to class tools and look around at their options at http://www.classtools.net. There seems to be many other tools that are available for students to use without the internet security issues. Wikipedia. We looked at how accurate Wikipedia is. According to Wikipedia, their site is as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. While this seems comical, there are references to numerous citations and studies that verify their accuracy. I really enjoyed the Haiku Deck tool. It was super simple to use and easy to navigate. I enjoyed how user friendly it was and the many ways you could share your presentations with it.
The edCanvas tool seemed very encompassing. There were a plethora of tools available for the slides. You can search multiple formats, insert videos, other media files, and include files from Dropbox or Google Drive. The downside is that you can't include text and other media on the same file. I need to review edCanvas more and try to discover all the different uses for this new tool. We looked at different presentation tools. On the Web 2.0 Cool Tools for School. There were many different tools listed. I will need to review these later. http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Presentation+Tools The same website had information on presentation apps too.
We discussed the Pecha Kucha presentation method. You still create the presentation in Power Point, Keynote, etc. but students are limited to 20 slides that autoplay, with 20 seconds per slide. Any presentation tool that has an autoplay with timings can be used. Slides should use mostly visuals with phrases (not sentences). The idea is to "show, not tell". When presenting, the slides are cues for the speaker, and practice is necessary. Another presentation tool we discussed is Haiku Deck. We created quick Haiku Deck presentations. The tool is simple to use, has preloaded photos that are creative commons licensed, and simple layouts. What is collaboration? Collaboration may be creating a project with multiple users or getting feedback from other users. Collaboration can also be sharing your work with others and having a recipricol relationship. Collaboration is getting and sharing ideas, work, and effort.
I use dropbox so I was very familiar with the utility. However, I had not used the share folder option as a folder owner so it was nice to learn about that. I can see using this to share files with teammates. I could also envision having studfents send files to me that need to be graded, such as a written essay or powerpoint presentation. Google drive is a great tool for collaborative group projects. I've used this quite a bit and really like the flexability, the user friendly format, and collaborative tools. I also like that you can see who edited what. What is creativity? The process of having original ideas that have value.
Interactive collaboration tools were explored. This was brief so I need to view later. http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Collaborative+Tools Dropbox and Dropittome: Dropbox is a file share/storage utility. You can set up folders to organize your files and share folders. Once you have shared a folder, you or other users can add additional users. When you are linked to a shared folder, it takes up space in every users dropbox. You can remove your self from a folder once you've retrieved what you want from the folder. If you are the folder owner, you can still remove yourself, you just need to assign it to a new owner first. Drop it to me is a dropbox utility that allows users to send you files, but they can't access it or see other submissions. The dropittome folder shows up in your dropbox account. Google Drive: This is also a web based storage and collaboration tool. You can create files and multiple users can edit at the same time. Google docs also has documents like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint so you have multiple formats available. |
Notes & ReflectionAuthorErika Bradshaw is an educator with Canyons School District Archives
November 2013
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