Edgaged

TodaysMeet happens to be one of my favorite sites to use when traveling from classroom to classroom. (That and any site that works on all devices is a friend to me.) I typically use TodaysMeet when I want to generate a class dialogue using their devices. It has been about cyberbullying, digital footprints, or even what restaraunt they wish they could have in school. It is a great place to start to train students how to speak online. The reason? You can set the site to last as long as you want. If you want it for a day, you can set it for the day, and it will be gone tomorrow. I do not have to create accounts for all the students. They do not need a password. I can create it, send the link to the site, and be done with it. If you are interested in doing some blogging or online discussion, but do not want to invest the time to setup nor maintain a blog, I would recommend checking TodaysMeet out. [youtube=http://youtu.be/bBym4Jaerqs]

How many ways could you incorporate sending postcards in the classroom? Many teachers already have students write letters or postcards for students to share their knowledge, write to characters, and ultimately produce a product that is usable for assessment. The Bill Atkinson PhotoCard app is intended to be used so that you can have real photo-cards made, however, the user can save their work to their camera roll as well. Since it can be saved to the camera roll, this allows the students to then email the product to their teacher. There is one little hiccup in using the app. I have found that it really likes to suggest that you signup for an account so that you can purchase photo-cards. The students will need to be trained to cancel that action when it comes up. That is the price one pays when attempting to use an app intended for business in the education realm. However, the products are great and might be well worth your time. Here is a YouTube from Bill introducing his app!

So many times I walk into classrooms that have posters or bulletin boards coated with post-it notes. iBrainstorm is a virtual post-it launcher. Students can be using their iPods or iPads and launch their own notes to your devices with the flick of a finger. This would be a fun way during reading to share vocabulary words or demonstrate their reading strategies. In math, students could launch answers to the teacher's device. You as the teacher could choose to do what you wanted with the materials just like you did with your posters/bulletin boards full of post-its. Print it, post it on your website, email to your students, post on Edmodo, blog about it, etc.

ENA Interview East  Noble School Corporation has without a doubt taken advantage of the opportunity to use www.biguniverse.com . ENA contacted me in October wanting to know if they could do a success story on our school district's usage of the site. Apparently our usage is unusually high in comparison to the average school district. Some of that have to do with our being a 1:1 technology school district. Either way, it is exciting to know that we have been recognized.  This week, the CEO of Big Universe (Anil Hemrajani) will be visiting our district to meet teachers and students. He wants to see it in action. This is a great opportunity for our district to shine. 

I have been working lately on quite a few "help guides" that will hopefully make things a little smoother. They can all be found on the Peer Coach Resource page . However, I thought it might be good to blog about it as well. Mrs. Baker at South Side Elementary brought it to my attention that it is often so confusing when a teacher receives a new student. It is hard to remember all the things they might need to include when getting an iPad going. It is often hard to remember how to go about doing all those things that may need included. So I put together a really long document that hopefully will be useful to you. It has quick links to different pages so that you do not have to rooting through the whole document to find answers. I call this document, "The New Student Pack."  The beauty of it all is that since I created it through Google Docs, you will always have the most updated version. I do not have to continually email you new ones. You can view this on your comp...

Teachers that do not have wireless projectors sometimes find that they become frustrated by the inability to be within proximity of their students. All educators have had classes where that proximity was essential in their day to day efforts to manage the classroom. Doceri  is an iPad app that allows the teacher to control their laptop and actually write on the screen. How is this useful? The laptop can remain plugged into a projector while the teacher can remotely control it from their iPad. Thus allowing the teacher to roam the classroom, assist students, and even have students respond directly from their iPad. It also requires a download from doceri.com Please let Zack or myself know if you are interested in using this tool. [youtube=http://youtu.be/MlI2_Rseut8]

ABC Mouse has provided a bunch of free books that would work well for your kindergarten and first grade students. The books are interactive and they also provide some examples of traditional literature. I have nine of them linked on my Pinterest account. (Yes, I am afraid I just said I have a Pinterest account.) https://pinterest.com/mrlyoder/abc-mouse/