Group items tagged

Drafts is a handy app for those who who use a variety of tools like Evernote and dropbox. For example, you can jot a note and click a button to send it to Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote and more -- (like if you want to save copies of certain tweets, etc. since it is so hard to get things out of Twitter.) I'm not entirely clear on the workflow automation piece of Drafts after watching this video on lifehacker but am going to learn more about this handy app.

I don't really understand all about this project out of MIT but want to learn more about it. Thi s is what they say on their site: "ikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API's support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator. "

In the last few days I have read enough articles about automation in areas one would assume could not be automated to make me wonder where we will draw the line. An article in the latest issue of Inc. magazine...

A super duper Dropbox, google drive, evernote, Facebook Automator. Called "ifttt for Dropbox."

There's an interesting discussion going on over at lifehacker about the best ifttt "recipes." Ifttt is "if this then that" and is an automation program that does amazing, very cool things. I've integrated it with my wemo, for example, and have it turning off and on my lights in the den and logging when there is action or motion in the kitchen. This is one of those posts you'll want to look at the comments.

Phillip's hue is a lighting automation system. I was perusing ifttt.com and noticed some cool things like using hue to match instagram images (not sure why I'd want to do that.) I would, however, be interested in changing lighting in my room depending upon what we're doing. I do think color has a lot of impact as does smell and other environmental factors. What impact would it have -I don't know - but it is something that is now possible.

AlertNow, designed specifically to address school communication needs, supplements conventional school communications and replaces outdated phone trees and automated dialing tools that require staff resources and large blocks of time to deliver messages to multiple recipients. AlertNow is the industry's only rapid communication service that displays the school phone number on caller identification devices (Caller ID) for non-emergency calls and distinguishes urgent emergency calls with a "411" caller ID display.

Interesting article in Journal of Higher Ed with Many Great Points "The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn't the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure. Most students are seeking credentials that graduate schools and employers will take seriously and an environment in which they're prodded to do the work. But neither of these things is cheaply available online. Arizona State University's recent partnership with edX to offer MOOCs is an attempt to do this, but if its student assessments fall short (or aren't tied to verified identities), other universities and employers won't accept them. And if the program doesn't establish genuine rapport with students, then it won't have the standing to issue credible nudges. (Automated text-message reminders to study will quickly become so much spam.) For technological amplification to lower the costs of higher education, it has to build on student motivation, and that motivation is tied not to content availability but to credentialing and social encouragement. The Law of Amplification's least appreciated consequence, however, is that technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities.

Once you set up Skydrive on Windows 8, you'll want to active Skydrive on IFTTT.com if you're using it for automation (I've written about this very cool app before.) It has many cool things that you can do (many like you can do with dropbox.) I'm using Skydrive for some things with school.

If you use Dropbox for automating your assessment and grading there are so many wonderful tings you can do with Sortmy box. For example, if you have a "turnin" folder that all students can access, you could sweep the files out of there and put it in a private folder for grading. Or, you could move all picture folders to a certain place. This is a very cool app for organizing dropbox, expecially if you want to consolidate pictures or videos.

If you are a teacher on twitter, you can "join" this group - which means nothing except your name is added to a list. I like this b/c it helps teachers find other teachers. Wish it let you put a little info but you can look at the twitter id's - I like that it is automated even the excessive ads are a little bothersome, I can live with that -- share your id or make another group.

Kickboard keeps classrooms afloat. Integrated student academic and behavior records highlight trends. Automated classroom management systems save teachers time. Customizable settings mean Kickboard fits your school's existing systems from the start. (Their blurb)

If you use Diigo but are researching a certain topic for a book or term paper and also use Evernote, I recommend setting up an ifttt.com recipe similar to this one I'm using for my collaborative writing book. Everything tagged "collaborative writing" goes automatically to my collaborative writing book. You could use this for a course. You could take everything on Diigo tagged with the course number into a notebook (or into a Google spreadsheet, for that matter.) There are many other sources of information you can use to collect information on a topic in one place. 

Important and well written

One of the things I have as my "big three" this year is the concept of a paperless portfolio using adobe acrobat pro. I'm a member of Adobe ed exchange and am using it to find all kinds of great resources. This page has links to best practices for eportfolios, digital assessment, as well as streamlining admin tasks. Useful resources. The cool thing is you can annotate with video, audio, an text and pdfs move very well onto ipads and devices like that.

Time4Writing provides eight-week online writing courses that help elementary, middle and high school students build writing skills through one-on-one interaction with a certified teacher. Using an easy-to-use online system, teachers assign a weekly topic for study. Students log in and work through automated exercises, lessons, readings, and written assignments. A personal writing teacher reviews and provides feedback on each assignment the day after it is submitted.

Two people tweeted about this website and how student test scores went up with it. Wonder if others have had similar results? Might decide to use it with my own children if that is the case.

This is similar to Google Alerts.

This is a great website for troubleshooting. I can have someone across campus create a share screen and take over their computer and fix it from my desk.