Edgaged

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday in my inbox. It was close to the end of the day and there was a video sent by a student in Mrs. Yoder's first grade class. This is using the 30 Hands application that I recently blogged about in the Presentation Tools section. Here the student took pictures of his math manipulatives, and recorded his voice telling what addition number sentence he was solving. The students not only sent it through email, but also posted it on their Kidblog. The real benefit was when I went home and Mrs. Yoder was able to watch each video. Instantly, she was able to determine how well each student understood the lesson. It was as if she was able to check-in with every student all from one location. Let me know what is working for you. Have a few students send me a sample from time to time. I think all teachers could benefit from seeing the products that our students are capable of doing with their devices. When you share, we all gain.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/5PJ8EDYNFFo] Labelbox is an extremely easy-to-use iPod/iPad application. Students can take pictures or use pictures that you have sent to them, place labels on the image, and save it to their camera roll to either be emailed or posted on Kidblog.org This is much like many of the other applications that I have blogged about in the past that allow students to build their own creative projects. The thing is, it is just as fast for students to use an application like Labelbox than it is to give the students a worksheet. However, which one do you think the kids are going to respond to more? So let's brainstorm some ways that it could be used: [caption id="attachment_252" align="aligncenter" width="430"] Here are some ideas of how it could be used. I used Labelbox to make it. :)[/caption] Please feel free to comment with your own ideas!

I recently visited Mrs. Abbs to work with a small group of first grade students to create a Puppet Pals presentation. If you have not used Puppet Pals before, try checking out these reviews on how it can be used. Here is the review about Puppet Pals . Here is one for Puppet Pals 2 . In this scenario, the students were reenacting their favorite part of Freckle Juice by Judy Blume. It took students roughly about 15 minutes to create the video and publish it on Kidblog . Mrs. Abbs had the students do a walk-through the book. They reviewed important parts, and the students picked which one they wanted use for their project. The students were able to quickly record their voice and move the characters around to best demonstrate the scene. The students were extremely engaged as they using the application for a specific purpose. I believe that is the key to integrating technology. Applications like Puppet Pals holds great potential for all students, if it is used in a manner that is goin...

30 Hands - YouTube .   30 Hands is a very simple and easy presentation tool available on iPod and iPad. The user simply selects pictures or takes pictures directly from the application, and then records their voice over each picture. If you want students to get even more detailed, they could edit photos and annotate them with Skitch . This would allow them to essentially make their photos into presentation slides and record their voice telling about each slide. The applications of 30 Hands is endless. Have students make their own digital story. Have them record about a learning opportunity that occurred in class. Students could take pictures of the books they are reading to tell about them or create book reviews. Basically, if you want your students to share information, this application gives them a quick and easy avenue for making that happen. For our Kidblog  users, the students can upload their 30 Hands slideshow directly to the blog. This provides a great opportu...

Free Technology for Teachers: A Simple Yet Powerful Student Blogging Activity . I do not want to steal Mr. Byrne's thunder here, but I do want to make my teachers aware of his wisdom. So am sharing this to encourage you to look at his blog-post for yourself. One of the most common questions people ask me is, "What do I do with a blog?" That is actually a tough question for me to answer because I there are so many different options that my mind begins to draw a blank when I am put on the spot. However, I will more than likely respond with Richard Byrne's response from this point forward. His suggestion is to use it as a place to perform a weekly reflection upon what they learned. This would give you an opportunity to build your vision as to what you want your class blog to become. I completely understand how difficult it is to visualize prior to having a blog. I think it is something you figure out as you go, learn from your mistakes, and also learn from oth...

TerraClues – Google Maps scavenger hunt game | Teach Amazing! . Mark Brumley  recently posted the above link on Twitter, and I was glad that I was able to come across it. (If you do not follow him...do it now!) T erraClues  is a free resource that utilizes Google Maps to create a virtual scavenger hunt. You can create clues, the students have to figure out the location of the clue, and they move on to the next clue. Mark suggests that this would make a great opportunity to familiarize students with a specific area in the world whenever they are reading a novel or studying history. When I read  Number the Stars by Lois Lowery to my fourth graders, this would have made a great resource to build their schema. To add to his post, I came across a Youtube video that shows how to create your own education accounts so that you can track student progress. [youtube=http://youtu.be/86XQGHpe6lQ] I also came across a video for how to create your own "Terrahunt." If you are one that would...

As we are driving home from the MACUL  conference in Detroit, I thought I would make the most of my time and talk about some of the things that I was able to absorb from some great people doing great things in the EdTech realm. In fact, there are a few great people in the van with me even as we speak. :)  I sat in a session, T is for Tinkering, by Steve Dembo . He spent a little bit of time talking about finding innovated web-tools that you can use with your Brightlink Interactive Whiteboard. Some things you have to consider when looking at these types of web-tools are:  That you can run it without having to right-click on a mouse. It makes using it on a board tedious. That you do not have to type. Here are a few examples: Padlet  - Padlet is virtual bulletin board where you can import weblinks, pictures, videos, and write text all over the board. Along with all those abilities comes in with the interactive whiteboard tools where you are able to actually circle and write directly on t...