Group items tagged

Updated Cell Phone Agreement--Celly Friendly and Safe for Educators Updating the cell phone agreement for nonteaching school personnel as found on page 122 of "Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning" is a joy due to the use of Celly.  When using Celly there is no exchange of personal phone numbers.  All of the texts go through the Celly site and are documented, which adds a further safety net for educators concerned about texting with students. 

Heartfelt reflections from a student undertaking exams. Not specifically around technology however it does add to the debate and reinforce that notion of exams becoming more and more curious in their present form in modern society.

"In this episode of the November Learning Podcasts Series, Alan speaks with Dr. Mitch Resnick, Professor of Learning Research and Director of the Scratch Team at MIT. The two discuss why coding is such an important element to bring into the educational process, at all ages, and they exchange their ideas on why global publication through an online community add an important aspect into this online, coding tool. In the end, Dr. Resnick also shares an exciting announcement about upcoming developments."

"One of the biggest problems in business development, partnerships, and sales is managing your pipeline. A close second is managing, tracking, and keep up to date with your email inbox. I've tried many tools to help both issues but each has had its shortcomings. About a week ago a friend tipped me off to a company called Yesware, a tool for salespeople that tracks emails, create templates, CRM sync, and more. With his endorsement I immediately added it to my business and personal Gmail accounts."

"eLearning Papers adds a new dimension to the exchange of information on open education, OER and ICT in education in Europe and stimulates research"

Circloscope is a powerful circle management tool that can help you grow an active, engaged following on Google Plus. In this video, you will learn how to add active engagers to your circles as well as how to cleanup your circles by removing those that do not follow you back. https://plus.google.com/+Circloscope/posts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAToULabuMi-FHH1x8MUBBg

If you enjoy being involved in Twitter chats you may sometimes find it difficult to keep up with the discussions - you might find that running a search for the appropriate hashtag and then refreshing the search just doesn't really cut it for you. If that's the case, you might want to explore TWchat They say of themselves: "Our public service allows you to create realtime chat rooms based on twitter hashtag. Invite users and perform the presentations online without any additional software! Add your friends or colleagues to help you with moderation."

A source of useful scripts and add-ons to extend the functionality of your Google apps and geared specifically towards the needs of teachers.

Tom Barret's very useful "Interesting Ways" all in the one spot. Looking for a way to integrate some ICT into your classroom? You should find something here. If you have an idea that you would like to add contact Tom he will be more than happy to give you privileges to do so. Another great resource to pack into the 'old kit bag' 

This neat tool from Google, ChartTool is a simple-to-use chart-making service that lets you simply paste in your data and play around with how it looks. It's never been easier to whip up charts that are actually easy to use and update. In fact, embedding these charts on web pages is quite simple thanks to the embed API. You can even make QR codes in just a few seconds and quickly get an embed code to add it to your website. While ChartTool does not create as many of those fancy 3-D charts that Excel does (it still makes quite a few), it likely will be able to in the future. However, if you're in a rush and need to whip up some exact charts without all the fluff, this is the tool for you.

"At first Snozerr looks like most audio recorders, until you notice the button for the camera. This app gives you the ability to take photos while recording audio; each picture is timestamped to the point in the recording where the photo was taken, and you can easily synchronize the images with the audio for later playback. This combination of features makes Snozerr an ideal app for students recording lectures and workers recording presentations with lots of infographics. You can use the timestamped photos to target the interesting parts of the lecture and ignore the non-relevant parts. All of the voice and photo files created in one session are linked together, so it is easy to share content with your peers. The app also supports nested hierarchical organization, dual cameras, and sending files by email."

"As schools return to session in South Dakota, more than one-fourth of students in the state will only be in class from Monday through Thursday as budget constraints lead school districts to hack off a day from the school week. Larry Johnke, superintendant of the Irene-Wakonda school district, says the change will save his schools more than $50,000 per year. In order to make up for the missing day, schools will add 30 minutes to each of the other four days and shorten the daily lunch break."

Oomfo is a new (beta) add-on site for PowerPoint. Once Oomfo is downloaded users can then create excellent looking, interactive, animated graphs.

"This site will provide you with links, ideas, tips, and much more for supporting the use of infographics as an assessment option in the classroom. The site has three informational pages, linked on the right. The first page provides a list of links to support my infographics presentation. The second page includes a Google Form for you to add your own ideas, practices, or links to information you have found. The third page provides contact information for me, in case you have ideas, suggestions, criticisms, witticisms, or just want to chat!"

"There has been a lot of talk about iBeacons since they launched with iOS 7 last fall, but much of the focus has been on how they benefit retailers and add to the in-store shopping experience. They have a much broader range of potential use, however, and part of that is consumer-focused, too. Placed is a new app that shows you how iBeacons might benefit anyone at home, by tying iBeacons to specific apps and offering quick-launch capabilities."

Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you've visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.

One of the best ways to keep a business strong in spite of the changes in the market is by incorporating B2C (Business to Consumer) capabilities into your existing B2B (Business to Business) business.

"My team wrote an app at a medical hackathon called MedRef for Glass. The app lets you find and create patient folders by voice, add photo and voice notes, view previous notes, and also find patient folders by facial recognition! Very exciting."

"ScratchJr is an introductory programming language that enables young children (ages 5-7) to create their own interactive stories and games. Children snap together graphical programming blocks to make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. Children can modify characters in the paint editor, add their own voices and sounds, even insert photos of themselves - then use the programming blocks to make their characters come to life."

Thanks for sharing this link John. I have recorded my interest with the developers to keep me informed. I love using Scratch with my grade 4s. As you'd know - the new Digital Technologies curric emphasises programming, so Scratch Jr will be a welcome addition. Seems as though currics around the world are picking up on kids programming. Cheers - Chris Trimnell