App Smashing "Cam Scanner" with "Show Me"

A teacher wants her students to be able to take a picture of a historical figure and discuss letters that they wrote or literature that they are directly tied to. Her class is composed of mostly English Language Learners (ELL's) so there is great value in her students reading about the historical figure, writing a script to be read, and the actual voice recording of them reading so they can hear what they sound like. This was a GREAT opportunity to put together some apps that would suit the goals of her project perfectly. I decided to show her "Show Me" (Here is the link to the apple app store). The reason I chose this presentation app as opposed to all others is because it is free, and can house multiple drafts at once. This was important because she has about 16 students that will work in partners. So, we needed to be able to begin at least 9 drafts at one time. It was just what we needed, especially since there was a build in voice recorder and ability to take pictures and add them to the document.

As they continued to work I noticed that there were aspects of the picture taking that I would not want in a presentation. I showed them an app called Cam Scanner. This app is amazing for enhancing photos that are taken and making the presentation quality better. For instance, if there is a glare it will remove it. If the picture was taken at a skewed angle and has some extraneous background then it will attempt to correct it and eliminate the undesired background. You can turn a quick snap of a document into presentation grade images. I highly recommend that if you do not have the pdf. of or digital form of a file and only have the physical version and do not have time or the desire to reproduce it then Cam Scanner is your "go to". Needless to say, the kids were pretty impressed.

Twitter Chats

#PersonalizedPD, #edtech, #edtechchat, #haysedchat.... ever wonder, "What's with the hashtags?" There is a good reason other than people trying to be trendy (what is what I always thought).

Not until recently did I understand that power of twitter as a professional. As I slowly began immersing myself in this virtual world of tweets and twitter chats, I finally realized that there is a world of resources and minds that are ripe for the picking. You can find some of the most prominent people in a field on twitter. They are sharing their insights to anyone willing to read 140 characters or less. These "tweets", in and of themselves can be profound, but they can also lead to other great resources and other communities. For example, I began on twitter, which let me to Google+ communities, which also led me to Podcast channels, which encouraged me to register on feedly and begin my own blog which you are reading right now!

I was very fortunate to come across this calendar and chat list managed by:

@cybraryman1

@conniehamilton

@thomascmurray

@cevans5095

@jrochelle

https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-calendar

This page give the time and date of the educational chats registered, as well as a brief description and possible link to a home page for more information. 

Here is a youtube video clip (less than 2 minutes) of how twitter can work for you- the educator.

This clip discussed the value of a PLN formed on Twitter.

Here are a few tips if you decide to participate in a twitter chat.

1) to find a chat, use the search option and enter the #......

2) usually there will be a moderator and they will post questions in the format of Q1 for question one.

3) if you want to respond use the notation: A1 for an answer to question 1, and don't forget to include the hashtag of the chat so your comment will be included in the discussion.

4) have fun, follow and be followed!

I hope that you seriously consider joining twitter and engaging in a twitter chat some time. Being a connected educator is a priceless commodity these day that will inevitably benefit your students in a tremendous way! 

Google Drive

If you are using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in your school you have surely recognized the power of Google Drive. If you have not had a chance to work with it let me give you a little information as to why you should save your files in your very own Google Drive.

Here is a brief youtube clip that will help you better see how you can use Google Drive and what it can do for you. Also, here is a link to a document that was produced by Google to help you with the basic options and features.

When I was introduced to GAFE, it was the first thing that was taught. Rightly so, Google Drive is one of the main selling points for any teacher or school that is considering the implementation of GAFE. Google Drive in a school district allows for unlimited storage capacity. In my district, we have personal drives housed on a server that we could save files. We have limited access to these files through software called stoneware. There were limitations associated with this access. With Google Drive, you can access your files from any computer or any devise with ease.

One of the most powerful tools that is provided to you with Google Drive is the sharing option. If you want to share a document or file with someone the process is instantaneous. There is no need to use email as a means to share files. There are also options with the way that you want to collaborate with the person that you are sharing with. For instance, if you only want the person to be able to view your document, change the share settings. Google Drives inside a district account can also be protected by establishing limitations for who has access to the files in yours or your students drive.

Google Drive is a very powerful tool to help improve work flow, collaboration, and organization. I highly recommend it to any educator!

This is a snapshot of the Google Dive Administrative Options Tool Bar. It enables you to generate a link to a file/folder, view share options, preview the document, remove file, and more actions. You can customize how the file/folders are displayed, organized, and view the actions history, as well as settings of your drive.

  Your Google Drive will have a navigation panel where you can select which part of your drive you want to display. There is a section where you can view all document that have been shared with you, all your photos that are uploaded to your drive, the recent documents that have been uploaded, favorited docs, and trash. Documents are not completely eliminated until you remove them completely from your drive via your trash folder.

Share options are an important consideration because there are times that you may want someone to be able to collaborate and edit the document that you share, and sometimes you do not want them to alter the file. For example, you can share a document with your class and not allow them to edit it. They can make their own copy instead. This link can be used to imbed the URL of the document located on the drive.

There are additional options that you can use to move a file, rename, view details, manage the various versions of a file or document, make a copy, or download to your hard drive.

Todaysmeet

Students work at different paces. Sometimes it is good practice to allow them the ability to answer in their own time. You might want to try Todaysmeet

If there are 23 students and 1 teacher in the classroom there is a potential to have 24 teachers! If you are interested in empowering your students to ask and potentially answer a classmates question you might want to try todaysmeet.

Want to quickly pose a question and check for understanding for all of your students at relatively the same time, you might want to try Todaysmeet.

A student has a question but you can not get to them right away. You want a way for them to post a question, not forget it, and get back to them when you have a chance. Todaysmeet is a great tool for you.

Want to have a remote study session/question and answer session for 30 minutes from the comfort of your living room- without having all your students there with you. You might want to try Todaysmeet.

Todaysmeet can do all these things. The beauty is the simplicity and ease of use of this program. Not only that, the teacher is in control. You can create a "room" that lasts for minutes, days, or up to a year. You decide the lifespan of the meeting room and you can moderate the conversation. Simply invite your students to participate via link or QR code that is generated from the page itself. Here is a peek at some of the setting options:

Once your conversation has ended you can generate a transcript and save it for suture reference.

There is one MAJOR consideration that you need to address if you are going to use this site. Students have the ability to join without a user name, or any name for that matter.

I enjoy using this tool, and I think there is a tremendous value in it for any class! 

iOS Apps for Demonstration

If you are looking for great apps to use in your class right away for demonstration purposes, I highly recommend trying one of these:



Educreations: This app in its free version is great for basic demonstration of processes and ideas. There is a recoding option where you can save a presentation and replay it at any time. The free version will not allow you to share the file. This is an option in the upgrade however. There are options to choose typewritten text, upload pictures, take pictures, customize the the background. You are limited in color options to the basic primary colors (black, blue, red, yellow, and green).












Showme: is another free app that allows you to create presentations using similar features as Educreations. There are a few differences. Showme creates a community and adds your presentation to it. I enjoy the organization aspect of Showme. You have the option to create courses and follow other members.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/showme-interactive-whiteboard/id445066279?mt=8

Explain Everything: has yet even more user options for your demonstrations. I enjoyed being able to zoom in and out as you are viewing your pdf or in app doc. The laser dot option is a great feature to use while a teacher or student is showing their process. Explain Everything give you insert options to add a photo, video or file, existing sound file, math equation, or web page/browser page. What is cools is that you can resize and change the orientation of any of these insertions. The upload option allows for quick access to various locations such as: photos, iMessage, dropbox, Youtube, Google Drive, OneDrive, Evernote, Vimeo, and Mail. You can export as PDF, video, Image, and Project. 

EdcampATX

I would like to recommend to all who are interested in personalized PD to attend an Edcamp! This past Saturday was my first experience, and I highly recommend it to any professional interested in new ideas, collaborating with other professionals, and having fun learning about what YOU want to learn about!

I would like to give a big shout out to Tracy Clark (@TracyClark08), Brian Hill(@BrianPaulHill), and Adam Holman (@AGHolman) for hosting this. The phrase, "Be the change you want to see" kept coming to mind. If we as educators want to change the system for the better, then we need to take responsibility for bettering ourselves. How better than to reach out and have those important conversation addressing how we can implement best practice and innovate together. I look forward to attending more in the future, and I was very happy when my boss suggested the likelihood of us hosting one of our very own in the near future!

When you attend an edcamp, have your thought and questions ready. Tracy and I spoke about the nature of edcamps and she and I agreed that the best way to put it is, "what you put in is what you will get out." We wrote down some of the topics that we were most interested in discussing and those were organized into the sessions that would be available to attend. Here is what our session board looked like:

Educators were free to come and go to any of these sessions.

I attended Digital Badges. My team and I want to see if we can create a system where we can recognize teachers efforts to implement technology into their instruction. We want this to be visible and something that teachers are proud of. The ideas that we heard from other districts were to use credly- a badge builder page. Some other great ideas were to use Google Drawings. I was also happy to hear the suggestion that some of the badging systems also incorporated incentives like a jeans pass, or get your duty covered after a certain number of badges were accumulated. A few considerations were also addressed: how long do the badges last (one year, indefinitely...), who manages the system, how is evidence submitted?

The second session I attended was Digital Portfolios. Since I had just built a system for 1200 middle school students, I thought I could potentially contribute. My system basically entails creating folders for every student in google drive. I shared the three grade level folders containing all the students with administrators and coaches. Then they shared the appropriate folder with the corresponding grade level teacher, who then shared the folders to the students in their advisory class. Once students have access to their folder then can save evidence of learning in various forms into the appropriate content folder. They will have access to this folder throughout their time in public education. 

The third session I attended was about Graphic Tools. I learned about Spruce. This web based program allows you to send tweets with your customized background and superimposed text. I tried it out and I like it!

The final session I attended was "Code Stuff". This session gave me ideas from teachers who teach coding on some free software that I can look into for when I try to support and encourage "Hour of Code" throughout my district. Thimble, Scratch, and Tuxpaint were recommendations I received. I will be busy looking into them this week for sure.

I highly recommend Edcamps to administrators, teachers, and anyone interested in learning!

Digital Learning Coach vs. Traditional Instructional Coach

Today I attended Part 1 of professional development called "Curriculum Boot Camp". This PD is intended to give us, instructional support personnel, tools and understanding to better serve as instructional leaders. I love this and was very happy that our presenter made discussions and dialogue interesting and engaging. He challenged us to take a deeper look into what we perceive as analyzation of standards. Here is a copy of my sketch notes that I wrote using notability.

I have a question that I would love some insight on from others in a similar position as mine. How does your school/district define your role? What is your position description? I would really like to know specifically, how you are involved in the academic side of curriculum. The "Boot Camp" that I am attending has brought this to the forefront of my thoughts lately.

Thank you in advance for your response.

Projecting your iPad

My district has been piloting software called Mirroring360. This software allows the iPad to connect to a teachers PC through the WiFi network. If the PC is wired to a projector then essentially you can move about your class using apps that the entire class will be able to see and interact with from any part of the classroom. This is a very exciting prospect since every teacher now has at least one iPad in the classroom. I was fortunate to be among the first to be able to use this software. I enjoyed downloading a pdf and using apps like notability, showme, or educreations to demonstrate processes and verbalize their understanding. Not only that, but I could record the audio and visual for other classes to see, and then even post the file to my web page so that parents and students could reference the information later.

Some classes/schools will use apple TV, which some of our schools do as well. I have been told that the Mirroring360 software license is a less expensive option compared to outfitting every teachers classroom with an Apple TV. Both work about the same, with about the same functionality. Apple TV will allow the user streaming options which our tech department has completely disabled.

In preparation for this massive roll out of the mirroring software, a colleague of mine and I created this instructional video for teachers to use so they can connect iPad to PC.

Here is a video clip of an art teacher using her iPad to demonstrate how to mold clay to her entire class.

Mirroring360 has greatly expanded possibilities for deeper student engagement and interaction. I am very excited to see what kinds of ideas teachers will create for more dynamic tech integration this year once every class is outfitted with this software.

iBooks Author

First, I would like to give mad props to the Apple Store for having the Hays CISD Digital Learning Team over this morning for a tutorial on iBooks Author. If you would like to set something up for your team or school, contact your districts Apple representative. If you do not have a representative, then I would suggest just contacting your local store and see what they would be willing to do for you. Apple is giving back the (educational) community, and we are very grateful! We worked with Kerry, and he was able to lay the mental foundation for some of the possible uses of iBooks Author.

The team is compiling images and screenshots to write an iBook: "MacBooks for Your Classroom
" for teachers to access as a reference for using Mac carts that will be rolled out soon! So far we have quite a few topics including: "Basics of Macbook Air", "Macbook Air Tips and Tricks", "Tutorials and More". I am very excited to create this for our district. Not only will we have a great resource for our teachers, but I will have more experience with iBooks Authors!

It was recommended that you download the iBooks Author Starter Kit as a guide to get you started. I did and will be reviewing it this evening. Here is the link to our Apple Store's page to get more information about the app. iBooks Author Apple Page



A personal project I am working on is to create an iBook for teachers and students to introduce them to the major Google Apps for Education. So far I have created the cover and a short video to give a brief description of each of the apps. Here is the cover for your perusal. Let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions to make it better!

Google Forms

If you are in education then you have to check out Google Forms!

When you hear the words formative assessment, then Google Forms should be one of the things you think about. It may take a little time in prep, but what you spend in preparation you will save on the back end on getting a good idea about who you need focus your intervention on.

What I love about Forms is that you can create an assessment of various questions types, and varying rigor. This can be a test which tests an entire unit, or a quick exit ticket that you use to see who was able to understand your lesson that day.

I created an intro to Forms using Smore. I love some and will definitely write an entry here about the awesome power of Smore. I have attached the link here: Intro to Google Forms Smore

If you have used Forms before I would love to read your success stories. Please feel free to comment!

p.s. there is an extension called flubaroo that will help you grade all that assessments that your students submit through Google Forms. I will give you the link to my Introduction to Flubaroo here, and make sure that I create a blog entry about it later too! I hope you enjoy!! Let me know how it goes!