Group items tagged

backchan.nl is tool for involving audiences in presentations by letting them suggest questions and vote on each other's questions. backchan.nl is intended for conference or event organizers who want a new way to solicit questions from the audience and make better use of question and answer time.

Great List of Tech Tools for teachers that is updated weekly

As we explore these and other new tools, we must ask ourselves; How do we incorporate these into our classrooms in meaningful and useful ways?

This is a great site for getting your head around the common core. A free account allows you access to a lot of the features and Common Assessments. Premium accounts allow you tools to collect assessment on your iPad or mobile device. Download the MasteryConnect FREE app for your iP*d or phone and have every Common Core standard easily accessible at your finger tips.

You can help them think deeper but it takes time and sharpening the saw. Great article. "A common occurrence in classrooms is that the teacher, when he or she sees the students struggle mightily to "think out of the box" will precipitously step in and give the students the answers, or throw the deeper learning activity out all together, thinking that the students aren't ready for it. What these students and the teachers need is to be patient, practice and build those mental muscles over time. One thing that helps teachers and students is a better understanding the nature of the advanced thinking tools."

This permission form has many different tools including weebly, Google dlocs, voicethread, YouTube, Glogster, Xtranormal, Toondoo, and others. I'm not sure that Audacity has to be included as it is a program on the local machine, however. I do like how the teacher asks for permission "I agree to allow my student's work to be used as  a positive example of published work for demonstration or promotional purposes." Some parents are afraid their child will be made to look bad in online examples, this covers that concern although it puts the onus on the teacher to make sure he/she vets examples that are published.

This website discloses the apps that this school will be using and links to the permission form. It is on the Academic Affairs page. I like the face this presents to the public. Here is what we WILL do and how we WILL do it -- with your permission, of course. Parents have a choice but schools do not - we must offer 21st century tools as part of a 21st century school. There are ways to do this. 

This teacher's lesson plan fully discloses the tools that are being used, the standards, and required permissions. This is a very detailed example, but one that you may have to use for large projects to get approval in your district.

Some rules have changed as I've been reading up on having Kindles at schools. (Back in February I read a spate of posts mentioning that Amazon said that having 6 kindles share one account was just for "personal use" and that libraries can't do it.) But Amazon does have information on Whispercast which lets you handle distributing books. It is a "free self-service online tool" and I'm thinking that it is something we need to be using. It looks like you can also distribute many of the free ebooks onto Kindles. 

Very proud of my dear friend Cheryl Oakes from Maine who is on the Official Google blog with her work with those with disabilities. Cheryl is an amazing woman who loves children. My youngest son has met her only once (in San Antonio at ISTE) and still calls her Aunt Cheryl. She has that effect on people. Great post. "One teacher who has taken advantage of the web as an educational tool is Cheryl Oakes, a resource room teacher in Wells, Maine. She's also been able to tailor the vast resources available on the web to each student's ability. This approach has proven invaluable for Cheryl's students, in particular 16-year-old Morgan, whose learning disability makes it daunting to sort through search results to find those webpages that she can comfortably read. Cheryl taught Morgan how to use the Search by Reading Level feature on Google Search, which enables Morgan to focus only on those results that are most understandable to her. To address the difficulty Morgan faces with typing, Cheryl introduced her to Voice Search, so Morgan can speak her queries into the computer. Morgan is succeeding in high school, and just registered to take her first college course this summer."

60 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom By Category

There are so many ways that you can use Twitter in the classroom but even if Twitter is blocked, you'll find many ideas that you can use on Edmodo or whatever educational networking tool you're using with your students. Great read.

Free lesson plans that you can filter by age and how many class periods that you have teach as well as the topics. This is by Microsoft so it is using Microsoft projects. This is perfect for those of you who want cool lessons but are restricted from using a lot of the web 2 tools.

Wonderful, flexible tool that I've used to take my classroom paperless.

Examples of how wolfram alpha can be used in the classroom. From math to physics to research and economics, you can use this data crunching engine in very powerful ways. Another important tool for students and authentic researchers of all ages.

Prezi meeting is a tool that students are using in the brainstorming and planning phase of a project. This presentation shares how this works.

Awesome article on very cool things you can do with Dropbox. Some of these can save teachers a lot of time.

Nominate someone you know NOW. What a great way to share up and coming education technology leaders: "Do you know educators who are passionate about using technology to transform teaching and learning; who can inspire their colleagues to embrace new tools; and who are curious by nature and always looking for how the next innovation can be applied to education? If so, please submit their names by Wednesday, December 18th for consideration as part of the National School Boards Association's "20 to Watch" recognition program. The 2013-14 "20" will be honored in Washington, D.C. during CoSN's Annual Conference, March 19th, 2014 (www.cosn.org) and recognized during the Technology Leadership Network Luncheon at the NSBA Annual Conference in New Orleans, April 6, 2014. Questions? Please email Ann Flynn."

Another software visualization tool. This one is from IBM. The URL is an odd one so you'll have to bookmark this. This is free and is listed as an "experiment". It looks like many educators are gravitating to the site as I've found some nice infographics for literature here as well. On the homepage you can scroll through some of the ideas. There are also some nice articles about how to create effective visualizations on this site that will give you ideas if you are using infographics in the classroom.

Wise words about the purpose of tablets, ipads, and more from Daniel Edwards @syde06 from the UK. It is about people, pedagogy, and purpose... the apps come later. "The power of learning with new technology lies with the teacher and the ability to choose the appropriate tool for the right intention. Moreover, success directly relates to the relationships between learner and educator, and the learner and learning."

Booktrack gives you a way to read a book while listening to a soundtrack. I mentioned the research study in a previous bookmark / link. This is something librarians and literacy leaders should test and try out for themselves as it is a fascinating tool and potential. There are a thousand questions I have about this but plan to try it for myself.