Can You Say Bye Bye To Document Cameras?

Not too long ago I participated in a very insightful conversation about document cameras in one of my LinkedIn groups, which I am beginning to enjoy using as a viable educational technology networking source, and I was amazed and the information given. The initial questions was centered around finding the best document camera to use on a modest budget. I didn't know that there are thousands of document cameras being marketed as the supreme educational tool for the classroom. However, the overwhelming response were that many people, teachers and schools are going away from document cameras and are beginning to use iPads as a replacement. So, I begin to do some research and I found two new tools that would make this not only possible, but a ton of fun.

One of the challenges of using iPads in the classroom so far is displaying content from the teacher's iPad directly to the projector screen. Many are using Apple TV and using AirPlay to mirror the content directly to the screen. AirPlay lets you show exactly what's on your iPhone 4S or iPad screen to everyone in the room. You can display webpages, games, photos, videos, documents and even Skype using your iPad and display it on the big board. All this works wirelessly allowing the teacher to roam around the room and keep the students engaged. 


At the fraction of the cost, a great alternative is the Reflection App. This app is adding to your laptop or desktop attached to your projector and uses AirPlay to mirror not only your projector, but you can also mirror your desktop onto your ipad. What's even cooler is you can screen capture your ipad as your a demonstrating a cool concept or game. Now you have an instructional video that can be loaded to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc. for future educational reference. 

The problem is, holding the darn thing in order to use it as a document camera. Where here lies this neet tool called Justand. Justand is a simple yet powerful tool that adds functionality to your ipad as a document camera. As a matter of fact, that what it marketed as, the iPad Document Camera.  The following video gives you a brief overview of how Justand can be used with the iPad and the Reflection App.

3 Inevitable Changes Coming To A Classroom Near You | Edudemic

3 Inevitable Changes Coming To A Classroom Near You | Edudemic.

Make It Take It

The lazy days of summer are a thing of the past. With the ability for kids to collaborate online, Google+ has come up with a fantastic concept for the summer that could blossom into a project based juggernaut for STEM programs across the country.

Introducing Maker Camp on Google+

Maker Camp is a free online experience where teenagers have the opportunity to participate in a different project everyday from July 16 - August 24. For 30 days, 1 project will be given online to complete for a total of 30. Counselors will provide guidance and support for each project throughout the day to help to make sure teens successfully complete each task. At the end of each day, Maker Camp will host a live Google+ Hangout to display successful projects and allow teens all over the world to chime in on the experience. Each day of the week is themed to appeal to every camper’s unique interests:

 • Maker Monday

 • Tinkering Tuesday

 • Weird Science Wednesday

 • Theoretical Thursday

 • Field Trip Friday

"Now every teen can experience summer camp no matter where they live because it’s online

and it’s free!" Cool thing about it is kids get to talk about their experiences online, and you know how much they love doing that.

Reengaging Students in Research and Reporting

I was having a conversation with a school librarian, excuse me, Media Specialist the other day and we were discussing research projects and how students rarely use the reference materials on the library shelves. With today's digital child, we both understood, but we were prompted to brainstorm ways to spice up research in schools along with how students would present what they learned. Well, I ran across something that I thought would be quite intriguing, Storify. Storify is allows a user to curate social networks to come up with a "Social Story" that brings together media scattered all over the web into a comprehensible piece narrated by the logical understanding of the user. Imagine, students would be able to comb various social sites, congregate meaningful tweets, Facebook post, google+ shouts, and put his/her own voice to convey a meaning to it all. Students can embed video and relative stories while adding headlines and text within. What you end up with is a meaningful, real-life, and engaging research paper and presentation in one neatly put together space and you can even go viral with the finish product to accumulate more knowledge. I truly believe that in order to reach today's student, we have to meet them where they are, I believe this could possibly be a tool that would do just that.

Keeping A Pulse On The Classroom

Teaching students to communicate effectively is very important to my classroom. Hence the reason my students blog so often. The problem for me in the past has been keeping up with everyone's blog for grading and pleasure. Well, I found this great tool that is already in massive use for news related stories, but I figured I could use to compile all my student blogs with. 

Pulse News.  Pulse takes your everyday favorite websites and compiles them into a rich interactive collage of sites that you can easily access. Once you use the easy set template provided, any site that you rss will automatically come to you in this beautiful design. So, I simply put in the addresses of all my student's blogs and voila! As soon as a blogging assignment is complete, it come right to me. No more searching to see who is done. Cool huh! The best part about it is I can do this all from my iPad or iPhone or an Android based phone. Grading on the go! I can then email the student their grade directly from the app. If one of my students writes a particularly fabulous post, I can tweet the link to the class or post the link on our community FaceBook page. Making bragging on the students to the your following public simplelicious. (As one of my students puts it.)

Classroom Communication....?

As we get closer to state assessment time, parents are extremely interested in what is going on in the classroom. They become more nervous than the students, who are still oblivious to the importance of the upcoming assessments. Nonetheless, Parents want a closer look inside the classroom, mainly to ensure that their student passes on to the next level. Therefore, communication is key....so what are the best ways of doing this while using technology? I thought you would never ask.

I'm finding no avenue is perfect for every parent, but if you try to differentiate with your parents, like we all attempt in the classroom, then here are a few areas to dabble in.

Class websites:
There are many website tools out there, but cost is a premium issue. Some I have used effectively are SchoolWorld and Wix. SchoolWorld is an easy website template that comes ready made with interchangeable designs that fit the need of your classroom. There are unlimited pages that you can create and the content is up to you. You also can import class list to create quizes, polls and games to make your site more interactive. The coast is $39 a year for the basis, $59 for the advance version which includes the quiz maker. However, if several teachers sign up at the same time, you can save money with the bulk discount SchoolWorld offers teachers, schools and districts.

The only thing I do not like about SchoolWorld is the inability to embed html. Therefore, no third-party video and sound.

Wix is a flash website building tool that is actually free. You would get basic layouts that are tailored toward certain industry genres, but can be manipulated to fit your style. You can add many animations and flash effects to make your site more engaging. It also works as a drag and drops platform, allowing for easy page building. You also can embed your own polls from third-party website along with video and audio simply by pasting the html code.

The draw back to Wix is that it runs slow for families that have low-speed internet connection at home. Also, the more animation you add, the slower your pages takes to load.


Blogs:
Another popular way to correspond with parents is simply by putting all your information in a blog. Blogger and Wordpress are very simple to use and parents can ask questions or provide feedback easily via commenting and emailing you through the blog.

With blogs you can also, post cool videos to go along with lessons, embed polls, and truly make it an interactive experience for the families that you need to keep in the loop.


E-Magazine:
Many teachers create weekly newsletters to print out and send home. Some make it, some do not. Therefore, I began uploading my newsletter into ezine creators like issuu. I simply create my newsletter using my favorite publishing tool; which Pages, upload to issuu and they publish my newsletter as an online magazine. Parents can rss to your issuu site to receive updates on when the next issue is available each week or whenever you publish a newsletter. You can now be as creative as you want without trying to fit everything on one page. Teachers can even create a grade-level magazine highlighting the weekly events. The best thing is, it's free!

These were just a few ways to keep the families in touch that you have an impact on Monday - Friday during the school year. The key is communicating so find you niche and get your class involved. I guarantee, the more your parents feel involved, the more support you will receive from them.

An iPod In The Hand Is Better Than A Book In A Nook

As more and more district contemplate going BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), attention to what device has the greatest impact in the classroom will rise. In my class the debate is on. We are doing a novel study and I allowed the students to use their own e-reader. We ended up with 2 Kindles, 1 Nook and 9 iPod Touch. Once we downloaded the book on all devices, students were salivating to start reading.

Now, this post is not to compare the devices but to prove a point. I assigned two chapters to read, 10 questions per chapter over inferencing, author's purpose and organizational structure along with a response post on their student blogs. 15 out of 25 students completed the assignment on time, which included all 12 who used a hand held device. What was more interesting, was 11 out of the 12 students with a device held thread conversation on one another's blog about the 1st two chapters.

Is this just a coincidence?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Virtual Zoo Can Enhance Problem Solving Skills

Social Media games can be time consuming and very addicting, however troublesome if you get to caught up. Well, this year I got into a game for my first time and immediately saw how it could impact the classroom in a powerful way. Tap Zoo is a virtual zoo application that allows a player to grow his/her own zoo. The player will manage the animals placed in the zoo and have the opportunity to collect revenue for each animal and revenue generating object used to enhance the decode of the zoo environment. Some animals generate more revenue than others so how you spend your money and calculate your profit determines the success of your zoo.

What I did was download the app to my iPad and found an animal buying guide (http://tapzooguide.com/animals) to post to a Google Doc to create a discussion board. Then we held a discussion surrounding the guide about profit. We looked at the animals in each level that would allow us to make our investment back the quickest. Then we developed a strategy and timetable for making our purchases. Then I let the kids grow the zoo. The students used Google docs to collaborate on ideas and document the expansion of the zoo. As a class they decided on who the buyers would be, who would be in charge of breeding, who would cross-breeding (mixing of the animals to create more exotic creatures and sometimes highly profitable) and finally they chose designers who would be responsible for not only the upkeep of the zoo (you have to clean the zoo), but would also try to make the zoo look good.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Drop it Like It's Hot

Ok, ok... I know it has been a while since I have lade down some technology knowledge for classroom use, but since my MacBook was stolen in October, I've been sort of lost in space and I'm just now finding myself. Sad part about the entire fiasco was loosing so many personal items like photos that I hadn't had the opportunity to upload elsewhere. The cool thing is, I was still able to grab a ton of files, music and important work documents because I use a cloud storage device.

Let me introduce you, if you haven't been already formally acquainted to Dropbox. Dropbox allows you to get rid of the flash drive and always have your information readily accessible on all device that you have it loaded to, or from any computer that has online capability. Folders can be shared with anyone you like, and you and your cohorts can utilize the same documents from anywhere. Here in Mesquite ISD we have a teacher share folder, but the problem is, you can only access the folder from the Mesquite ISD server. With dropbox, you can start working on a project at work, save it to Dropbox, open it at home then share it will a colleague just by dropping it in your shared folder. Your colleagues can see exactly when you upload the document to the folder or even when someone makes changes as soon as it is dropped. Collaboration made easy!

The really cool thing about Dropbox is deleting file. My wonderful thief and new owner of my macbook attempted to delete all my files that were stored in Dropbox. However, I accessed my Dropbox account online and I was able to restore all my deleted files. If an item is deleted from any device, your online account will archive the file just in case you didn't truly mean to delete it in the first place. Hallelujah!

Check out the video for more info, then ditch the flash drive (that you loose so many times anyway) and drop a Dropbox on your device today!

No, I'm Not The Only Apple Enthusiast...

Check out this wonderful short article from one of my favorite people to follow. It puts the reality of where we are in our district. 


A poll of over five thousand consumers aged eight to twenty-four has found that Apple is the most popular electronic brand in America today.

Not that it’s particularly flattering company. In fact, just looking at the companies kids today like, it seems as if most of our nation’s youth spend the majority of their time gorging themselves on junk food. Go figure!


Here are some other brands that also ranked highly in the poll:

• Sprite — purveyors of translucent sugar water capable of melting pennies overnight.

• Oreo — A crumbly, frosting-filled cookie that makes your teeth look like a corpse’s just seconds after eating.

• Capri Sun — Ectoplasmic carotene glop served in a bag of tin foil.

In electronics, America’s youth seemed a bit more savvy. Nintendo ranked high in their favorite brands, and while Apple topped the computer, tablet and smartphone space, HP, the Motorola Xoom and HTC came in second in each category.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, off to a lunch of Hot Pockets, Mountain Dew and Cheetos.
[via Techcrunch]

Seriously...Some Video Games Are Good In The Classroom

While completing my Master Degree at Full Sail, the class that I dreaded the most was Game Strategies and Motivation. I'm not a big gamer... I'm afraid of the addiction, however, I have gotten over the fear and used some games this year in the classroom that created great success in a few Student Expectations in Science. 

Spore is one of the games that I have loaded on the student computers to simulate everything from ecosystems to adaptation. With this game, you create a creature that you take through various stages of survival. You can add traits to your creature to make it a canivore, herbivore or omivore and then teach it to adapt to the different environments that you encounter along the way. As the environments are affected by outside variables, your creature evolves and has to adapt to the changes that are taking place while avoiding predators and consumers. Therefore, you have to teach your creature certain skills in order to compete to avoid extinction. It's a really cool game that goes on and on and can be set up in stations around the classroom. However, the lesson in adaptation becomes a real-life experience for the students...virtually that is!

Another game that I used this year was Angry Birds to teach force and motion. You've all played it, but I used it to demonstrate how speed and trajectory impacts force along with what happens when force is acted upon either by another force or the impediment of another object. I used my iPad...well my wife's at the time to project the game on the Promethean Board and the kids were so engaged. Not only did they have fun, but if I recall correctly, the questions on the Benchmark dealing with force were answered 100% correctly by all my students.

Which leads me to another game I briefly played in class, Cut The Rope. Now, are these questions that keeps floating around like the one above and some of my students were having a difficult time conceptualizing the proper response. So, I once again allowed them to play a game on the iPad, once again hooked up to the projector. Thy physics involved in the question is duplicated throughout Cut The Rope and by playing, students were able to problem solve the question and later, easily visualize how to go about answering the questions.

I know that here in Texas, we don't have time for "fun and games", but in order for this generation to obtain continued success, we have to change what we do and meet them where they are. It works for me.

Poll Polls Everywhere...

Tired of purchasing your own technology because the school/district doesn't have the funds in the budget....I know we can't buy everything new and shiny that comes out, but come on! Sorry...where was I...Oh, a way to poll your audience is something that many of us would like to use technology for, but we don't have the "clickers" or Active Expressions for each class. Well, here is a way to get around the cost, for you personally and yet, get that coveted "exceeds expectation" for technology integration. Introducing, well for some... Poll Everywhere.

Most students have mobile phones that they bring to school, and I know the school policy states no cell phone use on campus during school hours. However, this can save the school mucho $$$$! The service for a single use educator is free to use up to 30 member audience. You create the poll, students use their mobile phones to text in his/her response and you get a live display projected in your classroom in real time. Of course, texting rates do apply (Check with parents first to see who has unlimited texting. All of my students did.) It's that simple!

You can even use Poll Everywhere directly with Keynote on your Mac or Microsoft Powerpoint for Macs. Just download Poll Everywhere to your applications and while you are presenting, you have access to your polls that you can put directly into your presentation. Pretty cool huh! Come on, you use for American Idol, why not use it for your classroom?

I Must Be Out My Mind...What The Kids Are Doing Online

As much as I like to stay up-to-date with what the student culture is immersed in, I must admit this one slipped pass me. Now, you all know how much I enjoy integrating technology in everything I do, especially when it comes to social communication. I blog...of course, but not just for you. I blog personally also. I've gotten more into tweeting and actually socializing via Facebook among other networks. Since I've dawned upon my iPad, I truly enjoy integrating all my social networks in one application. Well, regardless of what we choose to believe, our students as young as 2nd grade are using the same social aspects online as we do, if not more. To prove it, I accidentally, by using the parental controls on my daughter's computer, found a group of young music artist that has successfully collected all the popular social media application and amalgamated them on a single website. The appalling issue is this is a group of young men who are taking the social music world by storm, regardless of their talent, or lack there of and young girls are salivating relentlessly. Because the group is so connected, 24/7 access is given to their lives and the girls are responding. Don't believe me, check out the Mindless Behavior official website.
Am I truly ready for my 10 year old to be a groupie? Ugh!!!

So Easy, Even A Teacher... I Mean A Child Could Use It!

The thing that leaves the worst taste in my mouth when I talk to teachers about technology is how intimidating new products are or I hear that the learning curve is too high. Well, check these students out as they master the iPad.



Now, talking for these kids seems to be a bit of an issue, but imagine how well they could communicate using devices like the iPad.



Now, the little girl above is simply leaning cause and effect, while full comprehension is lacking. However, she is already a problem solver. So is this next little girl. Supposedly, this is her first experience with the iPad, but check out how she figures our how to manipulate the device. Obviously, she has had some exposure to technology as she intuitively swipes through the pages, but her lack of fear creates amazing discoveries.



Forgive the mess in the house on this video. Just check out the excitement that comes with discovery and play.



So, if they can do it, so can you my fellow teachers. Once, TAKS is completely done, I'll spend more time sharing great apps for all your handheld devices that you may be using in the classroom. Don't worry, you'll catch on.

Share and Share Alike

Have you seen this image when opening Keynote on your iMac or Student Macbooks?

 

Well, this Apple's way of allowing PC users to view mac only work online. Many times my students will produce a Keynote presentation/movie or a Pages document and then complain that his/her parents can't see their work because they don't have a Mac. Not any more. With the new way to share in Apples latest update of their iWork software, you and your students alike will be able to publish work from Keynote, Pages and Numbers online and anyone with the link to your project can not only view, but can leave comments about the work. Cool part is, sharing can be password protected, so not everyone with a wifi signal can peek in our student work and you can even view on a PC!

Sharing is simple. Just click the share button on your tool bar and let common sense take over and C'est fait, you did it.

So now you and your students can produce stunning presentation and now everyone can see... that you choose of course. You can also, produce your products as iWork documents, Microsoft Office documents or as a PDF. Cool part is, you can share from either your Mac or iPad. Just thought I'd share!

Check out Apple's site for wonderfully done videos to show how all of this can be done.