Edgaged

As a technology integration specialist, I'm a firm believer in utilizing technologies that naturally fit in the classroom that are time efficient and convenient for both the student and the teacher. There are quite a few tools out there that allow students to create custom comic strips. Most of them are either not free or they are too tedious to make it worthwhile recommending to teachers due to time constraints in the classroom...that is unless the teacher specifically asks for it.  Make Beliefs Comix  solves that issue. How to Make a Comic! Publishing There are also fun ways that the students to publish their comics. Students could post on a class blog, share in a class Google Slides presentation, upload to a shared Google Drive folder or even print them to hang around the room. Teachers could also use their class Instagram , Twitter, or Facebook page to share with the community members. Social media provides an exciting opportunity to keep families inform...

@mrskuehnertsclass was rocking Shadow Puppet today for their sea animal project! #edgaged #waynecenterelem A photo posted by Lance Yoder (@edgaged) on May 27, 2015 at 7:16am PDT Mrs. Kuehnert's  kindergarten just wrapped up a sea animal project today! They used a variety of tools over several days to make this possible. I met with Mrs. Kuehnert last week to discuss tools that would work best for her students and followed up this week helping her students place all their images into Shadow Puppet . Throughout the week, Mrs. Kuehnert would read texts and provide information about various undersea animals (roughly one per day). The students found an image and wrote a fact that they learned about the animal on top of the image. After several days, they had four images and four facts written. They later pieced the images together in Shadow Puppet and recorded their voice reading their facts. To wrap it up, Mrs. Kuehnert created a Google Drive folder and shared it with her...

Visit www.gogopp.com  to try out PingPong. It is a free interactive response system that works on any Internet-enabled device. Students can submit multiple choice, true and false, text, and drawing/image responses from a web browser or mobile app ( Android or iOS ). Before beginning, teachers will want to make sure that they have an Evernote account. It is the only way teachers can import images into their presentation or export data. Evernote is free with up to 60 MB of usage per month. Beyond that, teachers will need to purchase more access. If you are not a heavy Evernote user, casual use of PingPong will work within your free limits. I created a video tutorial to give teachers/presenters a feel for how PingPong works. I presented from the web version which has limitations. One major limitation is the ability to download data; the teacher must be using the iPad or Android app. From the iPad or Android app, a teacher can choose to export the data and it will be sent to t...

Educreations  is a free service that has been popular for quite a while. It was mostly made popular for its iPad app . As more of a variety of device types have appeared in the school realm, the web version provides a simple and easy platform for teachers to flip lessons and students to respond. With the free version, the user space is pretty limited. (50 MB.) However, it provides a good platform for casual flipping needs or for those just starting to create instructional videos. It works especially well for teachers that desire for students to create video lessons in a nice convenient manner where the student videos appear automatically in the teacher accounts hassle free. As a teacher, I love having quick feedback about a lesson. How easy would it be to send a quick problem in picture format to students and have them respond in screencast format? This blog post features how to use the web version of Educreations and get students connected to your Educreations class. If you...

OneNote Class Notebook Overview OneNote Class Notebook Creator provides a great opportunity to keep students organized. Through your school's Office 365 account, you can quickly set up a shared notebook on any topic. Students can collaborate in the Collaboration Space, pull classroom content from the Content Library and provide easy access to their work in their own section. I've posted about OneNote in the past from the perspective of students creating their own notebooks to organize research and utilize as reading/writing notebooks. It is a great tool as students can import materials from the Internet into their notebooks and take notes directly on top or to the side of the content. They can do the same with physical materials as they can snap photos from their mobile device or use the webcam on a laptop. I've had teachers use it as digital portfolios as well. Either way, it makes a good choice for students as there are multiple ways to import ...

I recently had a teacher mention to me her frustrations with Youtube . This particular teacher understands the value of Youtube as there are a vast amount of resources on it. However, the advertisements can be frustrating. Some are a little too graphic for elementary students. This can cause your amazingly well-planned lesson to completely derail. I think we've all been there at some point in time.  Julie Becker  introduced Safeshare.TV  to me recently. This is a great resource for displaying ad-free versions of Youtube videos. It eliminates the suggested videos on the side. It also removes the pop-up adds that occur in the middle of a video. In my video, I demonstrate how to use Safeshare and make bookmarks in Chrome with your "safe" videos. Enjoy!

Ms. Abbee's class completed a huge project with their iPads. Lots of #appsmashing going on. #shadowpuppet #gafe #edgaged A video posted by Lance Yoder (@edgaged) on May 13, 2015 at 3:19pm PDT Ms. Abbee's third graders had a blast pulling in all the information they learned about money and currency and putting it into a cool presentation on Shadow Puppet.  The inspiration for this project came from the book Money Madness  by David A. Adler.  Many technology tools were used on the class set of iPads. I want to highlight each of those. Photos for Class Photos for Class  is a great resource if you need school appropriate creative commons photos. The attribution is directly posted on the images, and the images are of high quality. I've been thrilled with this site as I have been waiting for a good image safe search since East Noble began their 1:1 technology journey. Ms. Abbee informed me that the students found a few photos that were not class appropriat...

Kahoot has been a popular choice among teachers as it allows them to create and share assessments, collect data or even drive a discussion. (More information on how to get Kahoot started can be found here. ) It is also popular with students as they love the competitive nature within it. I actually used it for family tech nights when teaching digital citizenship to students and their family members . It works great as a presentation as you can pause between each question. Ghost Mode Kahoot recently added a feature called "ghost mode" where teachers can launch a previous Kahoot game and students can compete against that session. This could be handy for a post assessment scenario or a review for a small group. Here is how to run a ghost mode Kahoot game. Parent Involvement/Home Connections I also envision ghost mode to be something usable for students to use at home. This would be a great way for parents to stay informed about the learning experiences in the ...

Kindergarten Family Tech night was a blast! We had a pretty good turnout as several families were able to see what kinds of fun learning experiences their young ones can have using their school-issued iPad. We even had some students in more advanced grades join us with their iPads from home to try out the activities!  For Kindergarten Family Tech Night, students made a video project using several tools. Here is an example:  Here is a rundown of how they made it:  We first used Photos for Class  to find pictures that match a specific color. I love Photos for Class as it provides students with creative commons photos with the citations directly on the images. For the most part, the search is safe for elementary students. From time to time, a questionable photo appears, but users can press "report photo" so that Photos for Class can review the image and determine the future of it on their site. For the images in this project, the students searched a...

Earlier this school year, I posted some information about Kahoot  and the response from my teachers was great. Teachers and students love it as it spices up the world of assessment. One drawback of the way Kahoot is designed is that it is primarily teacher paced. This is great for discussion, but students tend to look at their neighbor's device when they don't know an answer. The solution to this issue is Quizizz.  Launching a Quizizz Session Quizizz , much like Kahoot, requires that students participate by using a code on the site. Students will access  http://join.quizizz.com . Once the students punch in the code and give their name, they are ready to participate. What makes it different is the fact that it is student-paced. As a student answers a question, they do not have to wait on their peers. The next question will pop up on their own screen and they are free to answer when ready. This helps eliminate the issue of cheating. To add test security, the teacher...

Plickers  is a free resource that works well for classrooms that do not have an abundance of technology. Even classrooms that are in a 1:1 technology scenario can benefit as there are frequent times that student devices fail, aren't assigned to new students, or the teacher just needs to mix things up. In the picture above, Plickers is being used with about 40-50 middle school kids in my church's youth group to review content, as well as drive some discussion. The instant feedback allows issues and discussion topics to arise. This is especially handy in scenarios where you need to get to know your audience. A presenter cannot assume too much. My principal at Wayne Center Elementary, Ms. Karen Gandy, used it to poll staff on their feelings about the progress they have made this year as a staff. These questions helped the entire staff know how they were feeling as everyone had a voice, and it was kept completely anonymous. How a Plickers Session Works Materials you...