Group items tagged

Joopz lets you send and receive text messages (SMS) from the Web to any mobile phone for free. A real-time history of all your conversations is included.\n*Group Messaging\n*Text Reminders\n*Scheduled Messages\n

The recent holiday break has reminded me of a number of things - how organised I am at work and with all things digital, yet my working space at home,

"Yesterday was my last class with my 2nd grade GT students. I like them to do some sort of reflection at the end of the year, and we usually spend a lot of time reviewing the events of the past 9 months. (Otherwise, their favorite memory tends to be the very last thing we did.) This year, I decided to try something different. I showed the students how to access the categories of our class blog so they could view all of the posts for 2nd grade for this year. Then they went through the posts, and chose pictures that were meaningful to them. As they were on iPads, I taught them how to hold their finger on an image to save it to the Camera Roll (fair warning - this is a tricky skill for 2nd graders). After about 30 minutes, I showed them the Pic Collage app. They were allowed to add any pictures that they wanted to their collages. Many added text (and stickers, of course!) They loved the activity. When they were finished, each student had a personal poster to remind him or her of the year in GT. If we had more time, we would have made ThingLinks with reflections, similar to last year."

"There are now a wide variety of iPad apps that you can use to organize your life and create an effective workflow. In this regard, I handpicked for you some really interesting apps that you should definitely consider to enhance your productivity. These apps provide a bunch of excellent features such as : easy ways to create to-do lists, scheduled notifications, reminders, notifications of upcoming tasks and events, and many more. Some of these apps are also integrated with Google and Google Apps accounts ."

"Although we can learn a lot of great information from books, articles, interviews, and conversations, we naturally forget a lot of it. Create a system to regularly remind you of lessons you've already learned. Here are three simple ways you can do that. "

"It took just one relentless bout of the flu to remind me of the power of empirical evidence and the importance of shooting data. More than numbers, it was the evidence gleaned from my experiences and the images that I gathered along the way that helped my doctor solve the riddle that was delaying my recovery. My kids thought I was crazy, but I took some photos to save the evidence, and my doctor appreciated this. Gross? Absolutely. Helpful? Definitely! The doctor said that the pictures inspired him to take a different approach in my treatment. "Good data gathering," he joked, and I smiled, recalling one of my greatest pet peeves: educators and parents who rant about their disdain for this very important work. To listen to some, you'd think data are only numbers that shady reformers crunch in order to cash in on imaginary problems created by incompetent teachers. This is a dangerous assumption. The fact is that data are information that matter, and if they don't matter or if the conclusions we reach aren't helping us solve important problems, then we need to change the data we're collecting and the way we approach analysis. After all, isn't it a bit silly to blame data for our own faulty decision making?"

"Family Sharing make sharing iTunes and App Store purchases in a single household easier than ever. It also enables the new "Ask to Buy" feature, which gives kids the ability to ask for any purchase they want, and parents the ability to say yes or no, as appropriate. Family Sharing also makes it simple to set up shared calendars, shared reminders, and shared photo streams, so everyone will get to their appointments on time, remember what to buy, and enjoy magical moments as they happen. If you aren't sure where to start, we can show you not only how to set up Family Sharing but how to master all the features it offers!"

"I have always believed that teachers (and people in general) MUST have an open midset; one that tolerates and celebrates mistakes and errors; one that looks at failure as an opportunity for a better beginning. It is through falling down that we stand up robust and it is through misfortunes that we gather our strength to live the life we want and pursue our dreams. If we want to raise up socially and  emotionally strong students who can face up and overcome  the hardships of life, an important key in this is to teach (and model) them about failure. We need to show them that failure is a healthy sign and a good omen for a healthy life experience. They need to view failure as an attempt for deep reflection and meditation about what work or did not work. They also need to be reminded that failure has been a common denominator behind most of the historical achievements and invention in the history of humankind."

"Consider these words from Peter Gray, author of "Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life:" Free play is nature's means of teaching children that they are not helpless. In play, away from adults, children really do have control and can practice asserting it. In free play, children learn to make their own decisions, solve their own problems, create and abide by rules, and get along with others as equals rather than as obedient or rebellious subordinates. Peter Gray's words remind me of danah boyd's descriptions and analysis of the over-scheduled lives of teens in her recent book, "It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens.""

"Since many people are returning to school during the next couple of weeks, I thought I would re-visit and share some of last year's more successful projects in case you want to try one. Today's post is about something I tried last year with the goal of impressing upon my students how much they matter to others - in this case, their parents. What I did not realize was that I would also develop new and deeper connections with my students and their families with this project. The basic concept was this: ask parents to secretly record videos of themselves telling their children how important they are to them and what they hoped the children would accomplish in school that year. The parents would send me the videos, and I would use Aurasma Studio (here is a link to Aurasma tutorial videos in case you need it) to attach them to still images of the parents. When my students scanned the images with the Aurasma app on the iPad, they would see and hear their parents' videos. They kept the photos in their folders all year so they could scan them whenever they wanted, and as a reminder of their parents' personal messages."

"One of the greatest misconceptions in education today is that certain teachers have a higher natural aptitude in technology than others. This inspirationalgraphic sets out to disprove that notion and remind the audience that external skills are only a function of the internal dispositions that allowed them to grow."

Threats related to Java programming language are increasing day by day. It also reminds about the old whack-a-mole arcade game. With the vulnerable version of Java, your computer becomes prone to malware or other threats.

"In the UK this week, half-term is nearly over and the kids are going back to school - and carting my daughter's schoolbag and gym bag in for her this morning reminded me of the warnings that a growing numbers of children are developing irreversible back deformities because of the weight of the bags they carry to school."

"Evernote is definitely a great utility to have in your EdTech toolkit. Evernote combines a bastion of powerful features all in one single platform: you can use it to create notes, add reminders to your notes, separate your notes into notebooks, clip web articles, snap photos to add to your notes and many other interesting features."

"Evernote helps you remember what's important. And now, it lets you take your Post-it® Notes with you wherever you go. Whether it's a to-do list, reminder, sketch, or big idea, just capture your Post-it® Notes into Evernote, then save, tag, search, and sync them across all of your devices."

"There are lots of great learning opportunities when you use green screen effects in the classroom. I've written about some of those before, but almost all of them involved green screen movies. What about green screen photography? Is that possible on an iPad? It is, because there's an app for that. Recently I was reminded of the ability to do green screen photography when I read a blog post by Dr. Wesley Fryer. He did a green screen photo booth at the Fall Festival of the school he works at in Oklahoma. Great idea. So how do you do it? It all starts with the Green Screen app by DoInk. The rest is easy! Here's how it works."

"It's been a heady first month in Northfield Community Middle School's Technology, Engineering, and Design program. Kids are raving, parents are beaming, and it was a great start. But . . . what assumptions have we made that were valid? Or not? What's going well? What could be better? What adjustments are we making now that "Design Experience Zero" in Digital Shop has wrapped up, and our gamified learning management system, Black Mesa, is in full swing? Finally, what's ahead for the program longer-term? Back when our fantastic new learning space was still all gleaming and ready for kids to experience, compliments started rolling in, but I reminded people that creating the space and even building our LMS had been the easy part. The hard part would be (and is!) creating authentic learning experiences that purposefully engage the kids in mindful exploration (the Manifesto, remember?). Our goal: make the kids "life ready" by challenging them to take charge of their own learning -- something that school had never really asked them to do."