Group items tagged

"Money As You Grow features lesson activities for students from pre-K through college. The interactive site outlines financial literacy milestones for each age group. Click on an age group and milestone to see a short list of activities that you can do with students to help them reach a new financial literacy milestone."

"We recently completed a biography unit for which my students researched famous Americans and wrote five paragraph biographical essays. They attached a photo to their essays to serve as the trigger for their auras. The overlay was a video they recorded speaking in the first person about their famous American. Click the video below to see an aura of Barack Obama."

Over the last ten months since I launched iPadApps4School.com I have reviewed a lot of mathematics apps that are appropriate for elementary school students. These are the ten that have been the most popular over the last ten months (based on total clicks and shares through social media).

"Here is an awesome graphic on 7 degrees of connectedness created by Sylvia. The content of this graphic clicks in with what I have said about the importance of being a connected educator in an earlier post. Creating and being part of learning networks is a requisite for any professional development in the 21st century. You just can not change it. Either you climb aboard the bandwagon or become outdated."

"Timelines are a great way to showcase the development of a certain phenomena over time like, for instance, a historical event, an educational theory, a revolution...etc. As teachers and educators, we can have recourse to these tools to create illustrative timelines to share with our students in class. There are now several web tools that are free to use and which will let you create your first timeline in a matter of a few clicks. "

"The site is a very simple affair, consisting of rows of cards with helpful tips, which range from setting up Gmail on your mobile phone to grabbing your customized birthday Doodle. See also: Get Lost in These 19 Fascinating Maps You can sort the tips by topic or by category such as "On the go," "At home" or "At the office" by clicking on the menu button in the upper left corner. "

"EasyBib helps educators provide students with the tools they need to do credible and ethical research, while allowing them to track student progress and understanding before they hand in their final paper. EasyBib has also been recently integrated into Google Docs allowing students to easily and properly cite their resources with one single click."

"Digital literacy, as a set of skills that students need to develop and master in order to properly use digital technologies , is an essential component of the 21st century education. Being digitally literate should not be confused with being comfortable using certain types of digital media such as social media. And as Danah Boyd argued in her book "Understanding The Social Lives of Networked Teens" teenagers know how how to use Facebook, but their understanding of the site's privacy settings did not mesh with the ways in which they configured their accounts.They know how to get to Google but had little understanding about how to construct a query to get quality information from the popular search engine. Along with learning how to conduct effective online searches comes the the second most important skill which is that of evaluating and assessing the validity of information found online. One of the versatile tools teachers can use to teach students about web content evaluation is called CRAAP . The acronym CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, and Purpose. CRAAP is a test developed by the University of California at Chico to help students evaluate web content ( and any other content) based on those four dimensions. Below is a public domain document, a checklist, that teachers and students can use to evaluate web content. Click here to download it."

"On the Mac, you may know that a right-click on just about anything can bring up a "Search the web" feature. When chosen, the selected term or phrase, whether from an app or from another web browser, gets quickly searched for using your default browser. This is great if you're reading something and you want more information about a mentioned subject or topic, but the iPhone and iPad don't have this ability… or so many thought! "

"Tomorrow at the NCTIES 2014 conference I am facilitating a workshop on creating videos with mobile apps. I designed the workshop to accommodate users of iOS and Android devices. In preparation for the workshop I created this chart that compares the features and costs of eleven mobile video creation apps. The chart can be viewed as embedded below or you can grab a copy through Google Drive (click "File" the "make copy" to save a copy for yourself)."

"When I don't have an image of my own to use and cannot find a public domain image to use in a presentation I turn to searching for Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. Alan Levine developed a browser bookmarklet that helps me quickly formatting Creative Commons licensed images found on Flickr. To use the Flickr CC Attribution Helper drag the bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks bar. (If you're using Chrome, you may have to go into the settings and select "always show bookmarks bar" before dragging the bookmarklet into your browser). Then whenever you're viewing an image on Flickr you can click the bookmarklet to get a pop-up window (make sure your browser allows pop-ups) containing the properly formatting attribution information. "

"Gmail has a very basic feature that is often overlooked by many teachers. This feature allows you to add multiple Gmail accounts to your primary gmail account. For instance if you have two Gmail accounts with two different addresses you can check both of them from one single place with one single click. I have been using this feature for a few years now and I really love it. I have added the email address of this blog to my personal Gmail account and it saved me the trouble of having to open a new window, log off from my primary Gmail account and then log in to my secondary account."

"Folders allow you to organize your files in Google Drive. They also allow you to more efficiently share a collection of documents. If you've switched to the new Google Drive you can create a folder by clicking on the reddish "NEW" button and choosing folder. The "Create" button provides the same options if you have not switched over."

"The following is a list of Google Apps for iOS (from Google, Inc. and third parties). This list is exhaustive and includes several apps that are not on the infographic Guide to Google Apps for the iPad. Some of these have natural classroom integration, and some are more for personal or business use. Some are optimized for both iPad and iPhone, some are only optimized for iPhone. Each app title is linked directly to the App Store so you can click directly from your device to download each app."

"The one hundred or more posts that I've written about Google Maps over the years is indicative of how much I like what can be done with Google Maps in classrooms. That said, when you're ready to move beyond basic placemarks there are more robust mapping tools than Google Maps. One of those tools is ESRI's ArcGIS Online. ArcGIS Online is an expensive product for anyone that is not in a K-12 school. If you work in or attend a K-12 school then ArcGIS Online is free through ESRI's ConnectED program. Click here to apply for a free subscription."

"Imagine being able to connect with one hundred million people anytime you want. With that many people on Twitter each day (and that's not counting the additional 184 million users who are on Twitter at least once each month), a great deal of knowledge, perspective, and news is accessible to you, just by clicking a few buttons. It's no wonder educators are harnessing the power of Twitter to bring cutting edge ideas, trends, research, and best practices to use in their schools and classrooms. But just as Twitter can be a treasure trove of information, it can be overwhelming for new users to figure out how to use it effectively. We've compiled this list of the best ways to make Twitter a social media tool that works for you."

"It's now possible to display your iPad to your class by connecting it directly to your Mac using the lightning-USB cable (the same one you use to charge your iPad).  Once your iPad is connected to your Mac, launch QuickTime Player (in your Applications folder). From the File menu Choose "New Movie Recording".  This will open a movie window and show your web cam.  If you hover your mouse over the window you will see a floating recording palette.  Next to the record button, there is a small white V icon.  Clicking that will let you select your iPad as the camera source!  Of course you can record it if you want to - but you don't have to - you can just use it to show your screen to the class."

""Making the Case" contains resources that demonstrate the impact of the maker education movement and provide inspiration for what's possible. These stories, articles, reports, videos, and other information may help funders, administrators, fellow educators, facilitators, and community members see how making in education affects learning for all. The resources below are listed in alphabetical order, as a default. They are also organized into subcategories, accessible by the tabs at the top of the grid. When hovering over each box, keywords provide a simple description and glimpse into the content of the resource, which is accessible by clicking on the arrow in the upper right-hand corner."

"ve been playing with ways to make a switch or button on my paper circuit artwork appear more integrated and purposeful. The robot I originally played with had a momentary button that I designed over the battery into the belly of the robot. See it here. The button also worked as the mechanism that closed the circuit. This time I bought a button online that was spliced into the circuit and not necessarily near the battery. This meant the connection to the battery was fixed and pushing the button (with a satisfying click noise) completed the circuit. I've been playing with ideas in preparation for the fall since I finally received the Donors Choose grant for supplies to try this with my students."