Group items tagged

SAMR Explained with Definitions and Application Examples

Describes many apps for specific functions such as making videos, taking notes, etc.

Nice list to get you started on iPad apps based on function, what students can do with it. 

Joli OS is a free and easy way to turn any computer up to 10 years old into a cool new cloud device. Get on the Web and instantly connect to all your Web apps, files and services using the computer you already own. You may never need to buy a new computer again. It's easy. Just download Joli OS. It installs in just 10 minutes.

A superb Apple and Android app from IFTTT which lets you setup one click notes which can be used for many online services. You can send a note to your email, add something to Evernote, or even add something to your Google Calendar by extracting the details from the text. Use it in your ongoing assessment by quickly noting things you notice in class.

Includes educational networks, curation sites, and writing/grammar sites.

By Tina Barseghian ...Fast forward a couple of decades (or more) and we see that the career landscape has changed so drastically that jobs need new definitions. Social media strategist, app developer, mobile web engineer?

I do actually have this and while there are some things I don't like about it (having to enter each student's email one at a time), I do find the concept interesting...and while this is a bookmark for the iPad, there's also a version for Windows and Mac.

Why I Like Prezi In my life, I have given a *lot* of presentations. In high school, they were presentations on group projects. In university, they were presentations on research projects. At Google, they're presentations on how to use our APIs. When I first started giving presentations, I used Powerpoint, like everyone else. But I kept thinking there must be a better way, and I experimented with other options - flash interfaces, interactive Javascript apps. Then I discovered Prezi, and it has become my presentation tool of choice. Prezi is an online tool for creating presentations - but it's not just a Powerpoint clone, like the Zoho or Google offering. When you first create a Prezi, you're greeted with a blank canvas and a small toolbox. You can write text, insert images, and draw arrows. You can draw frames (visible or hidden) around bits of content, and then you can define a path from one frame to the next frame. That path is your presentation. It's like being able to draw your thoughts on a whiteboard, and then instructing a camera where to go and what to zoom into. It's a simple idea, but I love it. Here's why: It forces me to "shape" my presentation. A slide deck is always linear in form, with no obvious structure of ideas inside of it. Each of my Prezis has a structure, and each structure is different. The structure is visual, but it supports a conceptual structure. One structure might be 3 main ideas, with rows of ideas for each one. Another might be 1 main idea, with a circular branching of subideas. Having a structure helps me to have more of a point to my presentations, and to realize the core ideas of them. It makes it easy to go from brainstorming stage to presentation stage, all in the same tool. I can write a bunch of thoughts, insert some images, and easily move them around, cluster them, re-order them, etc. I can figure out the structure of my presentation by looking at what I have laid out, and seeing how they fit together. Some people do this

"I admit this title makes a pretty bold statement for a society that pretty much uses the first five letters of the alphabet to define every child from about age 5 until adulthood. But, I am hearing more and more about the use of badges in the classroom, especially in conversations about gamification and self motivation."

I have been trying out some grading apps and am intrigued by ActivGrade because instead of being focused on a letter grade A-F, I could see students being more concerned with mastering a goal. Their "grade" is a color toward mastery of a standard. Red means I have a lot of work to do to master this, yellow means I'm making progress toward mastery and green means I've mastered this goal at this point. One grading algorithm to choose from in the app is a calculation which puts a 75% weight on the student's most recent assignment for a given concept. This means that as I get better at a skill, my most recent attempt at showing my mastery over the skill is worth more for my grade than my prior attempts. This seems like smart grading practice to me.

"10 Ways To Get To Know Your Students with Technology Guest Blog by, Aditi Rao, courtesy of TeachBytes"

The same techniques could be used to introduce a new unit of study.

Slideshow by Richard Byrne presenting his "Best of the Web" for 2012--most are tools that he used for the first time this year. Includes screenshots.