Whenever introducing a new topic to students, I always share all the information by using Notability. Notability is an iPad app that can be used to take notes in much as the name implies. The beauty of it is that you can type using the keyboard, add handwritten notes, upload pictures, record your voice, or use their own in-app tool to create shapes. I set up a template that I use for all math lessons. It includes a section for keywords, an area for review, and then a place to add the main lesson. It can then sync all of your files with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or WebDAV. You can save them as a PDF, a rich text format, or as a “note.” A note can be accessed and edited from another iPad with Notability on it. I save mine in PDF form as it can then be easily opened on any device. I then sync with Dropbox so I have quick access on my computer. From there I can easily upload to Edmodo and share with my students so they have all the notes from the day to look over whenever. You can see a screenshot of Notability directly below. At the end of the post you can see a whole example of a day of notes from a math class.

There are so many incredible resources available now to share videos with students. Between all of the great whiteboard apps such as Explain Everything, Educreations, and Show Me and the many websites such as Khan Acadmey and LearnZillion, there are so many ways to share media with your students.

For whiteboard apps, my personal preference is Explain Everything because of its incredible array of features, as well as the ability to upload videos you’ve created straight to YouTube. However, I’ve heard many others say that they prefer one of the others because of their simplicity. It’s really just a matter of what you’re looking for. No matter what, it’s great having the ability to create video lessons for your students that are personal because they’re made by you and not somebody else. You could even have students create them sharing what they learned in class. And again, as I’m sure you can imagine, these videos find their way onto Edmodo!

As for websites with videos, although Khan Academy may be one of the most talked about, my favorite is LearnZillion. I’ve written about it in a previous post that can be found here. You may think that I’m slightly bias due to the fact that I’ve created videos for them but I truly believe that they are doing an incredible job of sharing quality Common Core aligned videos that are created by educators from around the United States. There are both math and ELA that can be searched for by grade level, standard, or keyword. Although there are no embed codes to directly add videos to other sites, they can still be shared by link, which I like to do in Edmodo, or you can give students their own logins for the site and create playlists for them to watch! You can watch a sample video about finding volume of a rectangular prism by packing it with unit cubes.

These are just a few of so many other tools available to share what you’ve done in class with students. There is no particular right way or wrong way to do so. Do whatever works best for you and your students. Just don’t let absence stand in the way. Let’s redefine absent to “not present in a place but still having equal opportunities to learn as those who are.”

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Now, I know I’ve been very fortunate in the technology that I’ve acquired over the past year or so. I know the desktop is the only option still for most classes. Even having five desktops previously, I’m very fortunate compared to what a lot of other schools have. Other schools within my district have only two or three desktops per classroom. And I know some of those aren’t always fully functional. Just this year, through Donors Choose, I’ve received 14 Chromebooks. Then, through a combination of Donors Choose and the school, I’ve gotten 4 iPads, a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and a iPod Touch. But, it’s not the fact that I now have at least one electronic device per child that really impacted me within a short time of having these, it’s how much easier collaboration has become.

Students can now pick up a Chromebook, move anywhere in the room, and three or four students can easily gather around it to work on a Google Presentation as many recently did as part of their Genius Hour project. Or, students can work together on an iPad to create a Phoster of a math concept we’ve been working on. Or, they could use Foldify to determine surface area of a rectangular prism net, print it out, and construct it. In the process of all of this, they’ll be learning from one another. They’ll be learning how to share ideas. They’ll be learning how to work as a team. Isn’t that what we want in our classroom? Don’t we want our students to gain a deeper understanding of a concept through the collaborative process?

If offered a choice between five brand-new, top of the line desktops or one or two Chromebooks or iPads, I’d choose the latter in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even give it a second thought. I would rather have one or two of these devices where students can share in their experiences rather than five stationary computers. And that’s not what I want from my classroom, I don’t want it to be stationary, I want my students’ experiences to constantly be moving forward.

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Chromebooks are a little bit different than the typical computer that you’re probably used to. They run off of the Google Chrome operating system. You can’t download software to them and they don’t have a ton of storage space. That’s because everything is stored in the “cloud” through Google Drive. That means that it doesn’t get saved on your computer but by the company so that you’re able to access your work from anywhere! Because of this we can turn our Chromebooks on and they’re completely booted up and ready to use in about 10 seconds!

We got to work on our Chromebooks right away. We took some time to learn how to use them, how to change some of the settings, access the Google Chrome Web Store, and how to use many of its great features. We’ll continue to share more information about how we’re putting them to use in class throughout the rest of the year so check back often!

Take a look at some of the pictures below to see us exploring our new Chromebooks!

If you’re curious to know a little bit more about just exactly how Google Drive and the idea of the cloud work, you can check out the video below.

As we use these in class, I’ll start to share some of our experiences with them as well as websites and apps that we find useful, I’ll share them with you here!

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Over the summer, I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to work for a great new company called LearnZillion. LearnZillion is a new website that focuses on having teachers create videos that correlate to the Common Core.

Back in June, 123 teachers from around the United States were flown down to Atlanta for LearnZillion’s TeachFest. Sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this gave teachers an opportunity to collaborate and create videos that will help teach and reinforce ideas that students are expected to know through the Common Core State Standards.

Now that Teachfest and the summer have passed, all of the videos created by teachers have been uploaded and are ready to share with the world. There are over 2,000 videos that are free to teachers, parents, and students! You can search by grade level, concept, or standard to find just what you need for your students.

You can check out a few examples of the videos that I made for LearnZillion down below. You can also check out all the rest of the videos that I made by clicking here.

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I was lucky enough to be able to use Classroom Jeopardy in my class. Now, thanks to Educational Insights it can be brought to your students as well!

With a purchase of Classroom Jeopardy, you’ll find a state of the art scoring system that you can control with a remote from anywhere in your classroom, a USB with software that allows you to create your own Jeopardy games, 3 buzzers that students can use, and 3 handheld whiteboards that can be used for answers. I found the software very easy to use. I was able to create a review game that included pictures and videos from throughout the year in about a half hour. Now I have it saved and it can be used year after year. As great as it was for me, it was even better for the students. They loved it!

One the game has begun, the teacher has complete control over it through a remote that is provided. It allows you to see the answer to the question or question to the answer if you put them in the proper Jeopardy way. It also gives you the ability to choose whether a student answered correctly or incorrectly. Hit the correct button and it automatically adds points to the correct team. Hit the incorrect button and it automatically deducts points. The game also automatically reads which team buzzed in first for you which lights up on both the buzzer and the scoreboard!

With the AV cable that is provided, it’s simple to just connect right through a TV in your classroom. We were able to even hook it up to our projector so that we could have the game up on our SMART Board. The scoreboard had a speaker right in it so we were still able to get the sound of Alex Trebek’s voice and that typical Jeopardy theme music.

The ease of use of this product is incredible. Just use the USB to create the game on your computer. Then, plug it into the scoreboard and select the game you’d like to use. You’ll be playing in no time.

At a price point of $499, it may be a bit on the expensive side but I can promise it will definitely bring excitement to review in the classroom! Click here to check it out and let me know what you think!

One tool that has really changed the face of many classrooms is the interactive whiteboard. It allows for teachers to easily create interactive lessons that allows for students to easily share their learning with the rest of the classroom. From SMART boards, to Prometheans, to Enos, the interactive whiteboard has changed the way many of us teach. Ideally, every school would be outfitted with one of these in every classroom. Again, budgets just don’t lend themselves well to this. We have to search for cheaper alternatives. That’s where the now! Board comes into play. It creates the interactive whiteboard experience and even better than many of these others, it allows you to do so on any flat surface!

Learning Resources has created a tool that allows you to easily set up an interactive whiteboard almost anywhere in your classroom. And all the pieces literally fit into a very small bag. All you need to go along with it is a computer and a projector and you’ll be up and running in no time!

Upon opening up my now! Board package, I noticed how few contents there really were. It came with a small camera, a stylus, a wand and the software CD. After installing the software onto my laptop and reading a few instructions in the pamphlet, I knew anyone could have it up and running in just a few minutes.

As long as your laptop is hooked up to a projector, you just need to hook in the camera through a USB port. When you open up the now! Board program, the camera will send out a red laser that helps you align everything, much like you would do with any other interactive whiteboard. You just have to align the laser with the center point and then use the stylus to touch 9 different buttons that pop up. After that, you’re good to go! Next time you open the software it will even ask if all the settings are still the same so that you don’t have to realign everything. After that, you’re good to go!

One of the first things I noticed was the dashboard that was really easy to navigate back and forth between all of the different tools. At the top it provided a button that would let you easily switch back and forth between a plain whiteboard background and your desktop. You can choose a pen tool which easily allows you to change color and size, a highlighter, and easily erase as well. You can also pull up a keyboard right on screen in case you’d like to type anything in. The stylus was relatively easy to use. It clicked very easily and to go from button to button, any student in any grade could work it pretty simply. It could sometimes be awkward due to the way that you have to hold your hand so that you don’t block the camera from the sensor though so that would have to be something they get used to. The junior wand also worked pretty well to navigate the dashboard. Click on the picture below to enlarge it and see all the different tools available.

Next I wanted to test out the whiteboard feature (even though it also works with any existing software on your computer). I stated by using the wand, which would seem to be the more natural fit for writing using the now! Board. I actually had a bit of difficulty with it. It wouldn’t write well when right against the surface, however it would when a few inches away from it. I eventually switched over to the stylus and found it to be much more effective. I had to be very deliberate with my writing in order to keep it pretty neat. I could see it working well for younger students while working with them on taking their time forming their letters. I think older students could also learn pretty quickly how to work it pretty well. It worked great when circling different objects or drawing lines between different things.

I eventually switched over to the internet to give it in both navigating and labeling. It was easy enough to switch back over to the arrow tool so I could pull up the internet. After bringing up the keyboard to try to type in Google Maps, I found that next time I’d just head back to the computer to type it in. Once it was up though, it was so simple to circle, highlight, and draw lines on the map. It’d be perfect in a social studies lesson such as labeling all the natural resources or landforms on a map.

My final test was to give it a shot on a number of different surfaces. As you can see from the pictures above, I began by giving it a shot right on my SMART board surface itself. Something like this would work perfect if you have something older that doesn’t work as well anymore. I found the surface to be smooth and easy to work with. My whiteboard also worked great and would probably be ideal for most classrooms. Again, having a smooth surface made the stylus very easy to use. I had a bit more difficulty on the wall. The way the walls are built in our school, it wasn’t completely smooth. Writing was a bit of a challenge as the styles would sometimes lose contact with the wall and I’d have to go back to where I had last finished off. If you had an extremely smooth wall, I feel you’d have much more success with it!

At a price point of $499, the now! Board is a much cheaper, much more mobile option than many of the alternatives. Being at a lower entry point into interactive whiteboards, it does have a few drawbacks as compared to some of the alternatives. However, if you’re looking for something extremely easy to get set up, something that’s compatible with any software but works well with it’s own whiteboard feature, and allows you to easily mark up anything on the internet, I recommend that you take a look at the now! Board. Just install the software, hook it up through the USB and you’re ready to get started!

Screencasting is a way to capture what’s happening on your computer screen while allowing you to narrate with your voice. It’s a tool that’s become popular on many sites such as Khan Academy and Learn Zillion. It’s an incredible way to record tutorials for your students or check for understanding by having them create their own!

Screencasting can become extremely expensive if you try to get all the best equipment. For example, Salman Khan uses as Wacom Bamboo tablet ($79+) and Camtasia Studio ($299). Of course, if you have the opportunity to purchase both, I highly recommend it! Many of us won’t have that option though so I’d like to provide you with some options on how to make screencasts for under $100.

If you already have an iPad in your class or will have one coming into your class, that is by far the cheapest option for screencasting. For $3.00 or less, there are a few great screencasting apps that you can use right on the iPad! My only recommendation if you purchase one of those would be to by a stylus to use with it.

Explain Everything would be one of my personal recommendations for an iPad screencasting app. It costs $2.99 in the iTunes store or if purchasing 20+ copies through the education store, they’re $1.50 per. Some of the reasons I love this app is because of the options to upload when you’re finished. You’re able to email it or save it to DropBox, YouTube, Evernote, or your camera roll. You’re also able to use multiple slides during your recording.

ScreenChomp is a free screencasting tool. Free is always great but that also usually means some limitations. With ScreenChomp, you can record audio as you draw. You can also add pictures in that you can annotate. However, when it comes to uploads, the only option is to save to the ScreenChomp site. From there you can use a link to connect to it. You do have the option to download which you can then upload to a video site.

Show Me is another free iPad app. It’s very similar to ScreenChomp. You can add images and can draw on it while you narrate. It’s perfect to share a math tutorial on. It’s great for a basic screencasting app. Again, there is no option to upload it directly to a site like YouTube though. It works great if you’re just looking for a link to share!

As great as iPads are and as much as I’m sure we wish we could all have them in the classroom, that’s just not a reality quite yet. If you’re one of the ones who don’t or even if you have iPads and want new ways to create screencasts in the classroom, there are other great options. In my class, we go the Salman Khan route but only on more of a budget. We use a a Bamboo Connect as our tablet which retails for $79.00 USD. The tablet is great! Not only can you use it for video tutorials but it’s an amazing tool for students to create digital are with. Then, instead of using Camtasia Studio, we use Jing. For $14.95 USD a year, Jing allows you to create screencasts of up to 5 minutes while being able to narrate all of it. Once finished, you can easily save it to your computer or upload to YouTube! The only downfall would be the aforementioned 5 minute limit. For longer tutorials, you may find yourself having to record numerous videos to get through all of it.

After you’ve purchased the basics to begin screencasting for your Mac or PC, you’ll need software to do you work in. The best part about this is that it’s easily found for free! If you do purchase a Bamboo tablet, it comes with software that includes Autodesk Sketchbook Express. This is my personal preference for software. Salman Khan uses SmoothDraw 3 which can be downloaded for free by clicking here. This is available for PC. If you have a Mac, you can use a program like GIMP. I don’t have a Mac but you can find tutorials on how to use both Sketchbook Express and SmoothDraw below.

Video Tutorials

In the videos below, I’ll walk you through how to use two different drawing programs to create video tutorials for your classroom. If you’re interested in Jing, TechSmith provides a great video tutorial on how to use it here.

Examples

Below you’ll find an example of a video tutorial I created with a Bamboo tablet, Sketchbook Express, and Jing. As you can see, I love Khan’s style of the dark background with the bright colors. It really makes everything stand out. If you’re working with pictures though, you may want a white background that the picture stands out against.

Application in Class

There are so many great options for screencasting. Again, I love to use it to create math tutorials or have students create them so that I can easily assess their understanding. You can also use it with pictures to explain science or social studies concepts. With writing, you could have students write a paragraph and explain what they’re doing as they write. They could explain what punctuation they’re using where and why. Or, you could always have students use it for things like showing how to comment on your class blog or how to navigate a website you use often in class! There are so many different options. Give it a try!

Resources and Links

• Capture a Video with Jing
• Screencasting How-To
• Screencast-O-Matic – Free Screencasting
• Screenr – Instant Screencasts

*How have you used screencasts for your classroom?*

*Do you have any other great screencasting resources?*

What is it?

Homestyler is a website that allows you to create floor plans for a home, add furniture, and decorations, and then share it in both 2D and 3D. The best part about the whole site is the ability to have the measurements showing so that you can have students design their own home and then find the perimeter, area, and even volume of each room or outdoor areas. The site is easy to use and provides a perfect opportunity to engage students while teaching these topics in math!

Video Tutorials

I’ll be sharing four different video tutorials with you. The first is just a basic introduction in how to sign up, how to navigate the site and how to start the layout of your house. The second will take you in to more depth to start to add on to your layout. It’ll teach you how to add windows, doors, and furniture. The third video continues showing you how to add on to your design, introducing paint color. The final video will show you how to save and share student work, whether through links or embedding.

Examples

Below you’ll find an example of a finished home created with Homestlyer. You may recognize it as being the same one that I used in the video tutorial. I scaled down the size of mine from 800 x 600 to 480 x 360. I also changed whether it could scroll from “no” to “yes.” So unless you have a wide space to share yours on your wiki or blog, you might also have to scale yours down as well! If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll be able to see how to change the image from 2D to 3D, zoom in and out, and make the image full screen. Play around with it a little bit! You’ll also find a 360 degree panorama of the kitchen in my house that I was able to create using Homestyler!

Application in Class

Our goal as educators is to teach students in an engaging fashion that allows them to make connections between what they’re learning and the real world. This provides the perfect opportunity to do so! It takes minimal instruction to teach students how to use the site. They pick right up on it. Home building is something that all students are familiar with and can realize and understand how it connects to what they’re learning. You could even pull real estate ads that share things like square footage of the home. Allowing students to create and design their own home before finding the perimeter, area, and volume will allow them to take ownership of the project.

Once students are finished with their design, have them use the dimensions to find the perimeter and area of each room. You could even give a standard height for each room, say 8 feet, and have them find the volume if that fits into your curriculum as well! Students could enter the information onto a spreadsheet or on paper in class. Then you can easily share the work by embedding it into your site or printing it out for the students to have!

For younger students, you could even use it for basic shapes by having them create rooms that are different polygons. For older students, you could have them create yards that are in shapes like triangles and have them find the area of something like that. You could even teach students about similar and congruent shapes or proportions by having them create two or three houses that all have the proper relationship to one another.

If teaching descriptive writing, have students describe each of the rooms in their house in a way that would allow someone else to recreate it. You could even have a project where students create a house, describe it in as much detail as possible. They could then switch papers with another student who would have to try to recreate the house based upon the description they received. Be creative! The possibilities are endless!

Resources and Links

• Homestyler Gallery – For Ideas
• Homestyler Features

*How could you use Homestyler in your class?*

*What other information would be helpful so you could use this program?*

What is it?

Time-lapse videos are essentially either a collection of pictures put together to create a quick video or a video that is sped up. The goal is to show a long period of time in a very short period of time. This is an amazing tool for educators as it can be used for so many different experiments and activities in the classroom.

There are a variety of ways to create time-lapse videos. Some will create videos for you. Some will take a group of pictures for you that you will then have to transfer into a video editing program and create a video for yourself. My hope is to provide you with some of the different options so that hopefully you can find one that works for you!

For those of you who follow my class blog, you’ve seen a couple different videos that we’ve done using the document camera. You can find them down below in the example section. We have an Elmo document camera that has a time-lapse feature as part of the ImageMate software that comes along with it. The best part about it, as you can see in the first tutorial video, is that all you have to do is set how often you’d like the document camera to take pictures and then leave it for as long as you’d like it to take pictures for. Once finished, it puts all the images together in a video for you. For my videos, I then just imported that into my video editing software and added a little music to it!

I know many of you probably don’t have an Elmo document camera though. However, many of you probably have access to an iPhone or iPad! There are many great apps that you can use for time-lapse videos (most are paid apps). TimeLapse and Quick Lapse HD are a couple of those apps. TimeLapse comes as a paid app. Quick Lapse HD begins as a free app but you must purchase extra time in the app if you’d like to make a longer video. Both are very simple to use and allow you to save the video to your phone which you could then upload to a site like YouTube. Personally, I prefer TimeLapse. The settings are very easy to manage. It allows you to set how long you’d like to record for as well as how long you’d like the video to be. It also allows you to choose a song from your library to play along with your video.

If you don’t have access to any of the items mentioned so far but you have a computer running Windows XP and a webcam, you can also use WebCam Timershot. Webcam Timershot allows you to set up a webcam on your computer to take pictures at whatever increments you would like. The only issue with this software is that it only saves the pictures, which means that you then have to import all the pictures into your video editing software and create the video yourself.

If you have a Mac (which I don’t unforunately), you may also want to look into Gawker. This is a free program for Mac OS that allows you to use your webcam to create time-lapse videos. It even allows you to have a video showing four locations at the same time!

Video Tutorials

In the two videos today, I’ll be sharing how to use the Elmo ImageMate software as well as the WebCam Timershot program. The first video will cover the Elmo, the settings, and how to use it. The second will cover how to install, setup, and use the WebCam Timershot software. Of course, as always, if you ever have any questions about anything you see in the tutorials, just ask!

Examples

We’ve created a couple time-lapse videos for our classroom. For the first, we had the document camera take pictures of our entire day so that we could look back and see what a day in our room looked like. Unfortunately, because the software was tied in to our laptop, we weren’t able to use our smartboard that day though! Our second video was a time-lapse video of a Technology Night that we hosted for sixth grade students and parents. Parents had no idea we were recording them and then we surprised them with our video at the end!

Application in Class

There are so many amazing uses for time-lapse videos in the classroom. To begin, it’s just fun to be able to look back and see your entire day in such a short period of time. Students love seeing things randomly change, watching the hands on the clock fly around, and seeing what they did throughout the day. It’s also great to be able to go back and watch yourself during a lesson to see how you taught and reacted to students without having to watch through 45 minutes or an hour of video!

There are also a lot of educational uses. If you’re teaching about plants, you could setup a time-lapse video over the period of a couple of weeks to watch a plant grow. You could also watch things like mold grow as well. If you have a class pet, you could take a video of that pet after you leave the classroom so students can see what it does after they leave everyday. You could also set the camera on a puddle to watch it and learn about evaporation as seen in this video. For younger grades, you could record a video of outside your classroom over the course of a day to talk about time. Or, if you have a day that starts out raining and then changes to sun, you could create a video to spark discussion about weather. If you’re really ambitious, you could even take a picture of the same spot outside over the course of the school year that you could use as a video to talk about seasons.

Those are just a few of the many ways that you could use a time-lapse video in the classroom. If you have any other suggestions, I’d love to hear about them in the comment section!

Resources and Links

• Primary Ideas: Evaporation Time-Lapse
• Gawker – Time-lapse for Mac
• Digital Photography Time-Lapse Ideas

*How have you created a time-lapse video before?*

*What other suggestions do you have for ways to use a time-lapse video?*

What is it?

Voki allows you to create your own customized avatar. You can change the appearance of the avatar, pick a background, and best of all, make it talk! You can add your voice by phone, microphone, or use text-to-speech to make it use a computerized voice. When finished, it’s easy to share a link to it or embed it on any site. It makes it so easy to use for both students and teachers!

Voki provides you two different account options. You can register for a single user account for free or a classroom account for $29.95 USD a year. The nice part about Voki classroom is it’s much easier to add student accounts. Without it, you’ll have to add individual accounts, using a different email for each one, or have all students use one account name. The other nice part about the classroom account is that you can add recordings of up to 90 seconds as opposed to 60 seconds with a regular account. Either way, your students are guaranteed to love it!

Video Tutorials

Below, you’ll find video tutorials walking you through the Voki site. The first video will show you how to register for an account. The second video will share how to customize your avatar. The final video will finish up showing you how to customize your avatar as well as show you how to share your Vokis whether through email or embedding.

Examples

Application in Class

Voki is a great classroom tool. If you keep a class blog, student blogs, a wiki, or have a different class site, you can welcome others with a little information about your class by having a Voki in your sidebar. To practice fluency, students could create a Voki and then read short stories or poems they’ve written. I’ve used it before to have students write Valentine’s Day poems and then recite and share in Vokis. You could have students research some of the animals or famous people that are in the Voki program. You could then have them present information through the Voki. You could have students use it to share results of a science experiment or important vocabulary in math. You could have students use it to create math problems that other students would have to listen to and attempt to solve while at a math center. There are so many amazing opportunities with Voki!

Resources and Links

• Voki Classroom
• Voki Lesson Plans
• Teach Web 2.0 – Voki
• Slideshare – Voki

*What are some ways you’ve use Voki in the classroom?*

*How could you incorporate Voki into a lesson?*