Android 4 Schools is a new site from Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers. In this site, Richard and his guest authors will be sharing resources and reviews of apps (mostly free) that can be used in K-12 schools, along with ways that those apps can be used in the educational setting by teachers, students, and administrators.
The site is off to a great start with quite a few apps reviewed already. The site will also have information about Android tablets for K-12, books about Android, and tutorials.
If you use Android as an educator, administrator, or student, or your school is looking at using them, you should check out this site.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Android 4 Schools
Skitch for iPad: Annotation using an iPad made easy
Being able to quickly annotate screenshots and images is an essential part of my work.
So it’s exciting to see Skitch, the service that allows you to quickly annotate, edit and share screenshots and images, release their Skitch for iPad app today.
This is an invaluable app, for those like me, looking for fast ways to annotate images on their iPad.
Key features are:
- Similar to the Mac version, Skitch for iPad includes an arrow tool, text tool, drawing tool, shapes tool, crop tool and a cursor tool.
- Ability to import an image, take a photo, create your own drawing, browser a web page and take a screenshot and annotate a map using the inbuilt Google Maps interface.
- Extensive share options including share by mail, Twitter, save to camera role and full integration with Evernote.
- It’s free to download. Read more about Skitch for iPad here.
Skitch has been available for Android users since August and if you’re an Android user you can read more here.
Monday, December 26, 2011
A List of Apps to Install on Your New iPad
We can imagine that a fair share of iPads got unwrapped this morning, and the first thing you’re going to want to do is switch it on and get a few awesome apps on there. Last year, we gave you a long list of apps that will help you get started with all of the popular essentials.
This year, we’ve decided to do the same thing, adding a ton of great apps to the list that you’ll want to get on to your iPad straight away. The list includes apps to handle your photos and videos, music apps, productivity apps, a few essentials to meet all of your social media needs, and of course a few games to keep you entertained......
Monday, December 19, 2011
83 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed Treasure Chest–December 18, 2011 | Tech the Plunge
83 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed Treasure Chest–December 18, 2011
The Top 20 iPhone And iPad Apps of 2011 | TechCrunch
It’s telling that Apple chose an app that debuted more than 14 months ago, Instagram, as its “iPhone App of the Year” for 2011. This should not imply that there was a shortage of quality and groundbreaking apps released this year. Far from it.
From social magazines to music discovery apps to console-quality games that players can hold in the palms of their hands, there are hundreds of new titles in the iTunes App Store that will inform, organize, and entertain virtually anyone who owns an iOS device. As more choices become available to different kinds of consumers, however, it’s difficult to identify the undisputed champions of the app world.......
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Create your own iPad keyboard for less than $10! - iPads in Education
One of the more common complaints among iPad users is that the keyboard is awkward to use. Apple offers a wireless keyboard solution at the prohibitive price of about $70 plus shipping but you can actually create your own simple iPad keyboard for less then $10.
Friday, December 16, 2011
15 Killer Google Chrome Features You Might Not Know About
Google Chrome has been steadily gaining in the browser market share since its launch 2 years ago. It’s not without its flaws but it definitely falls in the “kinda cool” category. Its simplicity and minimalistic, yet feature-rich, interface caused a lot of users to ditch their old and trusted browser in favor of this new tool.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Education Week Teacher: Using Twitter in High School Classrooms
Not long ago, I met a super-motivated team of teachers from Westfield High School (Westfield, Ind.) at my Teaching the iGeneration workshop in Cincinnati. They were particularly interested in the different ways that Twitter can be used in schools. To help, I turned to the teachers in my own Twitter network for ideas—and while the examples shared were as diverse as the digital peers that I learn from, they seemed to fall into three broad categories:......
Thursday, December 08, 2011
15 Schools Using Flipped Classrooms Right Now
Modern technology has spurred on a new trend in education: flipped classrooms. In a flipped classroom, students watch lectures and supplemental materials for their classes at home, usually pre-recorded by their instructors and uploaded to the web.
Classroom time is then used for answering student questions, helping with homework, and other activities that help students apply what they’ve learned.
While there are some obvious drawbacks to this method, more and more teachers are trying it out. Many have found it to be quite successful in improving student grades and comprehension, though many caution it’s not right for every teacher or every classroom.
Whether you love the idea or think it’s crazy, it’s definitely worth learning more about. Check out these stories of schools, from elementary to college, who have given flipped classrooms a go, often with amazing results. It may motivate you to try it yourself or might open your mind to the new possibilities tech offers educators.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Monday, December 05, 2011
A complete guide to web, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus privacy and security!
The digital landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years. The Web 2.0 revolution brought with it the ability for everyone to create content on the web at rates I can’t imagine anyone ever thought possible.....
12 Things You Didn’t Know Facebook Could Do
The designers and engineers who build Facebook are anything but complacent about their success. They face a constant threat from the career-centric LinkedIn, specialized upstarts like Instagram’s mobile photo network and now Google’s fast-growing Google+, an attempt to improve on Facebook’s core design that has picked up tens of millions of users in its first few weeks.
So Facebook has been adding features to make the reigning social network more useful and convenient.
As the number of features grows, though, so does a corresponding problem: Most of Facebook’s 750 million users don’t know these features exist. Some don’t know how to find them, some don’t go hunting for them in Facebook’s ever-growing interface of controls and many don’t even think of them in the first place. A few minutes of exploration can uncover functions that make Facebook not just an addiction but a pleasure to use......
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Teacher Experience Exchange - 5 awesome alternatives to a traditional classroom blog
Blogging is still an excellent educational activity for your students. It provides opportunities for them to develop writing skills as well as an outlet for creative thinking. However, if the "traditional blog" is losing its appeal but you still want your students to focus on writing, we've got a few alternatives to the classroom blog for you.
Let's start with the most "blog-like" site and explore the similarities and differences. Tumblr is becoming a very important social media tool and is gaining popularity in the educational setting. It's not nearly as big as Facebook or Twitter but it is growing fast and teachers are jumping on board.
So, what is Tumblr? Basically, it's a blogging platform for posts larger than Twitter and smaller than a traditional blog. Posts are usually rich with a combination of text and multimedia. A unique feature is the ability to "tumble" blog posts. This takes a post of a friend and posts it on your page. If you use Twitter, this is similar to retweeting.
Tumblr is a nice tool for teachers and older students but everyone will need accounts. Create an account for your class and have your students create accounts as well. Then, follow your students' accounts and vice-versa. Now you are all connected and can interact in numerous ways. Your students have an excellent vehicle for all manner of writing and multimedia projects.
Using VoiceThread to communicate and collaborate
One of the best free Web 2.0 tools available to teachers and students is VoiceThread. Initially defined as a “group audio blog,” VoiceThread allows users to have ongoing digital conversations built from text, audio, and/or video comments added by small groups of participants around any content imaginable. Some teachers upload PowerPoint presentations filled with quotes, charts, graphs, and statistics for their students to study. Others upload Word documents, provocative images, and/or short video clips. Regardless of the kinds of content choices that you make, VoiceThread has the potential to engage your students and — if you’re willing to find professional partners to play with — to connect your class with students across counties, countries, or continents.
VoiceThread has three distinct advantages for teachers interested in making digital communication a part of their professional practice:....
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
100+ iPad Apps Perfect For High School
If you’re a student, teacher, or administrator at a high school looking into adopting iPads for educational purposes, it’s important to know that the iPad is more than just an easy way to browse the web or visit the app store.
There are actually thousands of educational apps hiding in the bowels of the app store.But how do you find them? Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, it is usually pretty tough to find the best apps. Heck, once you may come across an app it may prove to not be worth the time it took to download!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Share your sounds - SoundCloud
Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you’ve already created.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
1:1 Computing is a challange
Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of school administrators who responded to a recent survey said 1:1 computing classrooms where teachers act as a coach for students are the future of education, in a poll that looked at some of the changes, opportunities, and challenges that lie ahead for schools.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Flipping your classroom
..... we began to record our live lessons using screen capture software. We posted our lectures online so our students could access them. When we did this YouTube was just getting started and the world of online video was just in its infancy.
Flipping the classroom has transformed our teaching practice. We no longer stand in front of our students and talk at them for thirty to sixty minutes at a time. This radical change has allowed us to take on a different role with our students. ....
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Using Apps in the classroom
APPitic is a directory of apps for education by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) to help you transform teaching and learning. These apps have been tested in a variety of different grade levels, instructional strategies and classroom settings.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
21 things that will become obsolete in education by 2020
21 things that will become obsolete in education by 2020 - Education - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
It’s nearly two years since Shelly Blake-Plock wrote “21 things that will become obsolete in education by 2020” on his TeachPaperless blog. I’d highly recommend it for a mid-week read - and perhaps use it to stimulate some thinking on where you can help your own organisation as you move into the future - whether you work in an education institution, or you’re a Microsoft partner working with education customers.
Monday, November 07, 2011
25 Tips for taking great photographs
25 Tips for Taking Great Photographs | Prudent Baby
25 Tips for Taking Great Photos This list starts with some general thoughts on photography and gets into the nitty gritty. Stick with it and you will learn something.
Why Johnny Can't Search - a Response
Why Johnny Can't Search - a Response
We're often told that young people tend to be the most tech savvy among us. But just how savvy are they? A group of researchers led by College of Charleston business professor Bing Pan tried to find out. Specifically, Pan wanted to know how skillful young folks are at online search. His team gathered a group of college students and asked them to look up the answers to a handful of questions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the students generally relied on the webpages at the top of Google's results list. But Pan pulled a trick: he changed the order of the results for some students. More often than not, those kids went for the bait and also used the (falsely) top-ranked pages. Pan grimly concluded that students aren't assessing information sources on their own merit - they're putting too much trust in machine. Other studies have found the same thing: high school and college students may be “digital natives” but they're wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the author's credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can't read. Today the question is why can't Johnny search?
Best 107 Websites
Here you go, the best 107 websites for all your needs. We’ve taken the effort to categorize the websites and picked only those we believe to be the best ones and which will most likely be useful to you. Spread the word!
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Tools for learning: Mobile phones and authentic learning tasks | edtalks.org
Keynote speaker at ULearn11, Dr Jan Herrington, explores the use of mobile phones as powerful ‘cognitive tools', where students’ phones can be used to research, produce and publish polished products of learning. Jan is Professor of Education at Murdoch University, and she discusses here some strategies for the design of innovative learning activities and tasks for mobile devices, using authentic learning principles, where whole units of study or projects can be designed around complex and engaging tasks.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Collaborative annotation of images online | SpeakingImage
Collaborative annotation of images online | SpeakingImage
SpeakingImage is an application for creating interactive images and share them with others. You can also create groups, add wikis and set different permissions to manage collaborative work
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
30 Awesome Web Apps for Your iPad
30 Awesome Web Apps for Your iPad
As incredible as it seems, it’s been over a year and a half since the original iPad was released, forever changing what the world thought of tablet computers. The old Tablet PCs were clunky, expensive machines that could run any Windows program, albeit slower and more awkwardly than a full computer. The iPad at first glance looks just like a scaled-up iPhone, but the wide range of apps and number of varied uses it’s found in homes, schools, and businesses has made tablets a permeant part of our computing ecosystem.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Three Alternatives to Clicker Response Systems
Free Technology for Teachers: Three Alternatives to Clicker Response Systems
Using clicker systems is one of many ways that technology can be used to gather anonymous feedback from students in a classroom. One of the problems associated with those systems is the cost of acquiring them. Here are three alternatives to purchasing clicker systems for your school while still gathering anonymous feedback from students.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
50 Serious Games for Social Change | Accredited Online Colleges.com
50 Serious Games for Social Change | Accredited Online Colleges.com
As a college student, you might think that all computer games are meant for procrastinating and letting off steam. But these computer games are especially designed to teach you about social issues, from public health to the environment to human rights to poverty. Here are 50 serious (but still fun) games for social change.
Friday, October 14, 2011
- Web Tools That Every Educator Should Have in the Bag
- Web Tools That Every Educator Should Have in the Bag
There are hundreds of web tools that have been developed educators in mind. Although it is not possible for us to know and use all of them, there are some tools that we should all have in the bag.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
10 Twitter tools to effectively manage your followers
10 Twitter tools to effectively manage your followers
HOME » SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS » 10 TWITTER TOOLS TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR FOLLOWERS PUBLISHED ON MAR 17, 2009 @ 10:23 AUTHOR: +MANI KARTHIK 10 Twitter tools to effectively manage your followers 58 Share Managing your followers and friends on Twitter is not easy. But its a fact that your success ratio and influence power is directly proportional to how active your followers are. I’ve realized that rather than who follows you or how many people follow you, its important to know whom you are following and how active they are. Some of the factors that will determine your influence power on Twitter are - How active your followers are. - Do they ReTweet your tweets. - Whether they are regularly updated and have a good following. - Are those whom you follow, following you back etc. With the default options on Twitter, its not really easy to manage your followers, but here are some interesting web based applications that I found to be of great help. Hope you find them useful too.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Video Dropper
Free Technology for Teachers: Video Dropper - Send YouTube Videos to Your Dropbox Account
Videodropper is a free service for sending your favorite YouTube videos to your Dropbox account. When you link your Dropbox account to Videodropper you'll be able send videos your Dropbox for download. With the two services connected you simply copy the url of a video into Videodropper and it will be sent to your Dropbox account and from there you can download the video to your computer.
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Teacher’s Guide To Using Posterous Spaces - Edudemic
The Teacher’s Guide To Using Posterous Spaces - Edudemic
It’s important to be aware of the latest education technology out there. So let’s say you want to have your students have a personalized blog that reflects their likes, dislikes and style. Where do you turn? There’s Facebook (too regimented and big), Tumblr (a good option but can be pricey for premium themes), WordPress.com (also good but can be a bit complicated for non-tech-savvy users) and many others. But there’s one relatively new service that you should know about.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Meeting the Goals of the National Education Technology Plan
Policy Priorities:Meeting the Goals of the National Education Technology Plan
Meeting the Goals of the National Education Technology Plan
Text for free from your smart phone
WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia and yes, those phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Happy Birthday LibreOffice
The Document Foundation marks the first anniversary of the day developers broke away from Oracle-controlled OpenOffice.org to launch the LibreOffice office productivity suite.
Monday, October 03, 2011
The University of Wherever - NYTimes.com
How should Universites be retooling?
The University of Wherever - NYTimes.com
FOR more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have envisioned a world of virtual campuses and “distributed” learning. They imagine a business model in which online courses are consumer-rated like products on Amazon, tuition is set by auction services like eBay, and students are judged not by grades but by skills they have mastered, like levels of a videogame. Presumably, for the Friday kegger you go to the Genius Bar.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Free Technology for Teachers: Speak It - Text to Speech in Google Chrome
Free Technology for Teachers: Speak It - Text to Speech in Google Chrome
Speak It is a Google Chrome extension that enables you to have the text on most webpages read to you. With Speak It installed just highlight the text on a the page you're viewing then right-click to activate Speak It. Then click the play button to have the text read to you. The voice is very digitized, but it is clear. Installing Speak It takes just a few seconds. To install it go to Speak It's page in the Chrome Web Store and click the install button. Restarting your browser is not required in order to activate Speak It. If you decide that you don't want to use Speak It any longer you can uninstall it by right-clicking on the Speak It icon in your browser and selecting uninstall.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Banned Websites Awareness Day
Happy Banned Websites Awareness Day and 7 Myths - Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog
Banned Websites Awareness Day (BWAD), sponsored by AASL, will be celebrated on Wed., Sept. 28. Check out the BWAD landing page with resources gathered by the AASL Intellectual Freedom Committee. Read the numerous AASL Blog entries [listed below-Doug] supporting the effort to spotlight how filtering affects teachers’ instruction and students’ learning, and cruise through the many resources found in the BWAD Essential Links.
Helen Adams AASL Intellectual Freedom Committee chair
- AASL's Exploratorium to showcase school library best practices | American Libraries Magazine
- Grant Money And Funding Options For Librarians Provided by Mackin at Upcoming AASL Conference
- Welcome! - AASL Essential Links
- AASL Learning4Life Lesson Plan Database | An initiative of the American Association of School Librarians
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Stephen Downes free eBooks
These are book-length collections of my talks, publications, presentations and other writings. Most of them have not been formally published, and may never be, because my priority is to make open-access versions available. Over time I'll make them available in more formats.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Embracing Technology: Are iPads the Future of Learning?
There has already been considerable debate over the value of embracing emerging technology in education, particularly the use of iPads in schools, but is this debate simply over method or is there something more drastic taking place?
If the use of iPads can significantly improve the engagement of students, and increase their ability to explore subjects and develop in their learning, then are we doing them a disservice by being slow on the uptake?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
How to Use Evernote to Organize Your Homeschool
Evernote is a free downloadable program designed to help you remember and organize everything. Jot quick notes. Capture text and images from the Web. Organize "notes" by subject. Find everything in the same place, always available, synced across all devices (PC, Mac, mobile).
The basics: In simplest terms, Evernote is a desktop note-taking, image capture application that can sync your "notes" across all your devices via the Internet. A "note" is any stored item (text, email, captured or scanned image, etc.). A "notebook" is a container for related notes. A note might contain text, i.e., a note you write yourself, an email you received, a photo or image, or some captured content from a webpage.
Slide Six - Easily Add Narration to Slide Shows
Slide Six is a slide show hosting service that offers you the ability to add your voice narrations without having to create, upload, and sync a separate audio file. Slide Six does this by allowing you to record your narration directly through the Slide Six site. To use the feature just upload your slide show and then record your voice as you go through your slide deck. Slide Six also allows you to upload attachments to complement your presentations. YouTube and Vimeo videos are supported within Slide Six.
TubeChop - Chop YouTube Videos
TubeChop allows you to easily chop a funny or interesting section from any YouTube video and share it.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores
In this technology-centric classroom, students are bent over laptops, some blogging or building Facebook pages from the perspective of Shakespeare’s characters. One student compiles a song list from the Internet, picking a tune by the rapper Kanye West to express the emotions of Shakespeare’s lovelorn Silvius.
The class, and the Kyrene School District as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future. Classrooms are decked out with laptops, big interactive screens and software that drills students on every basic subject. Under a ballot initiative approved in 2005, the district has invested roughly $33 million in such technologies.
The Seven Steps to Becoming a 21st Century School or District
Last summer, as I was winding down my eight years as president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I went around the country and met with 30 superintendents, asking them, "What can I do to support your efforts to implement 21st century education in your district?" Together we came up with the idea of creating a professional learning community (PLC) of education leaders committed to 21st century education. A team of us liked the idea so much that earlier this year we launched EdLeader21, a community of education leaders committed to building critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity into their educational system.
Mom This is How Twitter Works
Twitter is an online social networking tool in which users post 140 character updates of what is going on in their lives along with links to things they think are interesting, funny, or useful to their followers (“following” being essentially what “friending” is on other sites). People use twitter in many ways, some as a newsfeed by following prominent people or networks, some as a pseudo-chatroom by limiting their followers and whom they follow to close friends and family, and some as a microblog for updating people about the work they are doing and their personal lives.
Free Technology for Teachers: Draw It Live - A Simple, Free, Collaborative Whiteboard
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Google Sites Adds Page-Level Permissions: First Look
Google has added a much-needed security feature to Google Sites for Apps business customers, giving businesses the ability to enable page-level permissions within the service. The new feature will make it easier for admins to control who can find and edit any given Site page without having to alter site-wide permissions.
Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an internet connection
The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.