So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

With summer approaching soon I wanted to share some resources that were geared towards summer learning and keeping kids involved and excited to learn.

Reading rockets is a website dedicated to promoting reading amongst young students. Here is an article about getting out this summer and doing educational activities: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/23428/

As I was researching fun things to do over the summer I found PBS has a parent website with ideas for parents to support their student learning. http://www.pbs.org/parents

Read Write Think is a website maintained by the IRA (International Reading Association) and has several lesson plans, activities as well as some parent and after school resources: http://www.readwritethink.org/parent-afterschool-resources/

Sparktop is an interactive website full of learning activities and games. From their website: “SparkTop.org – where no two brains think alike – is a place where kids who learn differently can create awesome stuff … play great games … connect with other kids … and discover new ways to succeed in school and in life.”  http://www.sparktop.org/intro.html

Even though the show is off air now, the website is still live with several activities that students can enjoy over the summer. Take a look at the Zoom website: http://pbskids.org/zoom

Make Take Teach is a website full of lesson ideas as well as ideas for creating games and resources to use in the classroom. http://blog.maketaketeach.com/

Kaboom is an online tool to find playgrounds as well as find grant opportunities for building playgrounds. http://kaboom.org/

Related posts:

1. Cyber Monday Mar. 5 2012
2. Cyber Monday Feb 6th 2012
3. Cyber Monday April 23 2012

So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

Graph words is an online visual thesaurus that helps you understand the meaning of words an show connections to similar words. Graph Words also allows you to save an image so you can easily insert your word webs into your interactive whiteboard files.

(Note* be careful if using this infront of students live as “Adult” words can come up  in the webs)

http://graphwords.com/

The Smithsonian offers several resources for educators (http://www.si.edu/Educators) one of the resources they have is a “This day in History” which you can read about and see illustrations of important events that happened in history.

http://siarchives.si.edu/history/this-day-smithsonian-history/

Searchy Pants is kid safe search engine that keeps all of the rif-raf out of search results.

http://searchypants.com/

Images:

I wanted to find some places where teachers could get clip-art and pictures to use in their lessons. Here are a few:

http://hcmc.uvic.ca/clipart/

http://www.pics4learning.com/

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/index.htm

http://www.nationsillustrated.com/

http://www.sxc.hu/

Edupics is a great resource for images as well as different “activity creators”. Make sure you take a look at the left navigation for the different creators. http://www.edupics.com/

Thats all folks!!!

Related posts:

1. Cyber Monday April 23 2012
2. Cyber Monday Jan. 30th
3. Cyber Monday Feb 6th 2012

Earlier today while playing with Google Drive I noticed they did not display how much room I have left like they do in Gmail. While poking around I did find it. Here is a super quick tutorial on finding how much space you have left in your Google Drive.

To get started open up Google Drive

When your drive opens click on the lower gear / sprocket (Sprocket sounds so much cooler)

When this opens click on settings

On the next page you will see your available space.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks

TJ

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So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

Great resource for Elementary Smart Board Websites/ Interactives:

http://www.ecarter.k12.mo.us/dept/elementary/fourthgrade/ccrites/etipslesson1.html

As we constantly try to utilize the IOS devices in various ways, we try to incorporate other things like audio books. Here is a page all about audio books for the iPad:

https://sites.google.com/a/dcsdk12.org/ipad-user-group/home/audiobooks

Appitic is a IOS review site that is managed by ADE’s (Apple Distinguished Educators) and has great hands on reviews of several different IOS apps:

http://www.appitic.com/index.php?option=com_sobi2&catid=53&Itemid=102

Mathsnacks is just that little games / interactives for IOS devices to help students with basic all the way up to more advanced math topics:

http://mathsnacks.com/atlanteanDodgeball.html

Edshelf is an online site dedicated to all technology tools. Edshelf incorporates user reviews as well as a rating system to base different web tools and how they will affect your classroom. http://edshelf.com/

Related posts:

1. Cyber Monday March 19 2012
2. Cyber Monday Mar. 5 2012
3. Cyber Monday Feb 6th 2012

Recently we needed to display all of our different athletics calendars into one calendar to display on our website. You may want to merge your different building calendars into one calendar or you may have several different clubs or groups that you want to make a “Social” calendar for. Google makes this very easy with their configuration tool.

To get started login to your Google Account and navigate to your calendar. Once you are in your calendar click on the sprocket or gear in the top right corner:

Once in your settings you should see a button that says “Calendars”

You should see a listing of all of your different calendars.

*Note: If you are trying to embed someone else’s calendar they have to be sharing it with you inorder to merge it.

Click on one of the calendars. You will now be presented with the calendar options as well as embed code. There will be a blue ”HTML” icon about halfway down the page. Click on this.

You will now be presented with a dialog box that gives you the direct URL to your calendar. Below that you will see a link that will take you to the configuration tool. Click on the link.

Once on the configuration page make the changes on the left in order to build the calendar how you want it to look on your website. Once you have the calendar the way you want it click the “Update HTML” button.

Copy this code and enter into your website. Note many websites have different ways of handling HTML if you have trouble feel free to contact me and we can figure it out together.

Also if the size does not fit your website how you want it to you can change the height and width variables in the embed code.

If you have any problems or issues as always feel free to contact me!

Thanks

TJ

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1. Syncing multiple Google Calendars with your IOS Device
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This month is Autism awareness month. Kindergarten.com is giving away all of their updated apps for free. You can view the apps on your computer here or on your mobile device search the appstore for Kindergarten.com.

iPhone Apps:

iPad Apps:

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So as always I am trying to use Google Apps / Docs to automate things. I was building our bullying site today and we need to show our bullying numbers on the website according to a new house bill that was passed. I simply created a Google Spreadsheet and embeded it on the site. Here is the walkthrough on how I did it.

To get started create a new spreadsheet in Google Docs:

Now add your fields to your spreadsheet:

At this point I invited the administrators who would be putting the data into the spreadsheet by clicking “Share” in the top right corner. Enter their email addresses and make sure they have “Can Edit” permissions.

Now that the spreadsheet is created we need to create our “Embed Code” to embed on our website. To do this click File -> “Publish to the Web”

On the next screen select what Sheets you would like to publish and check the box that says re-publish when changes are made.

In the first dropdown select “HTML to embed in a page”

When you select this option the embed code will automatically be generated.

*Bonus Tip if you only want to show certain cells on the website, you can enter a range where it says all cells. For example if I only wanted to show the first 2 columns I would enter A1:A2.

Copy this code and enter into your website. Note many websites have different ways of handling HTML if you have trouble feel free to contact me and we can figure it out together.

Also if the size does not fit your website how you want it to you can change the height and width variables in the embed code.

If you have any problems or issues as always feel free to contact me!

Thanks

TJ

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About 3 weeks ago I did a post about using Apple’s new tool called “Apple Configurator”  and I received a lot of questions reguarding how I mirrored my ipad screen onto my computer screen. I thought this tool was well known but I guess not so I figured I would writeup a quick how to on how I accomplished the mirroring.

For a long time I tried several different ways of showing my iPad screen on my computer for trainings, documentation, as well as utilizing different classroom tools in a larger environment. I have tried jailbreaking, the document camera, and I even went as far as trying to install the apps on emulators. This solution is MUCH CLEANER and easier but it does cost some money. The app that I am referring to is called “Reflection” and you can download the trial here.

Note: The trial is fully functioning for 10 minutes. After that it closes.

Requirements:

A Mac Computer running at least 10.6

iPad 2+ or iPhone 4S

To get started download the trial and install the software by dragging the application into your applications folder:

After you copy the application to your computer navigate to the Applications folder and click on it:

It will seem as if nothing happend except the icon showing up in the doc. That is what is suppose to happen.

Tip: I would suggest keeping this in your dock for easy access especially if you are going to use it in the classroom. You can do this my right clicking on the icon, clicking options, and then “Keep in Dock”.

Thats all you have to do on the computer end.

Now to the device, make sure your device is on the same wireless network as your computer. On your IOS device double tap the home button. You should get a little grey box where your running apps will show up.

Slide your finger from left to right until you see the play buttons for iTunes and a square with a triangle on it:

Click on the icon with the square (The one that is blue above). When you click on the icon you will be presented with devices that you can play sound to or mirror to. Your computer should be listed as an option. Simply check the box next to your computer and slide the mirroring switch to on.

You should now see your iPad screen on your computer. Is important to note that you cannot interact with the IOS device through your computer it is simply displaying the content on your screen. It is also important to note that sound will also be played wirelessly with the software. Thats it!

Let me know if you have any other questions or run into issues!

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So its 7:19 and I am sitting at the airport bar with my girlfriend Ashley Clark (@aclark126). We are looking at the pictures I took the other night testing out my new camera (Canon G12) I show her this picture:

I explained how there was a gazebo on the beach and a hall right behind the church. She responded ” Well you haven’t asked me yet?” So I said “Will you marry me?” Yep at the airport bar…. I proposed at the air port bar. When the time is right, the time is right

Here is a short video before we get on the plane to Sin City

Extended Version (New Stuff is at 1:30)

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With services such as foursquare, Facebook Location, and Google Places a gaining traction, social checkin’s have become more popular than ever before. One thing I noticed about my area is I only had to create one location, all of the other locations (schools) have already been added by someone else. This was a good feeling as well as a terrifying one. The purpose of this post is to alert administrators that they are responsible for their building’s image physically as well as online. The good news is it can be controlled in 5 steps.

What is a social check-in?

A social checkin is a service that allows you to “check” into different places such as restaurants, shops, and other locations such as schools. Checking in gives you points, rewards, and badges. Some locations offer different discounts for people who checkin in order to entice people to share  When people checkin, often times it is shared on their social media platform of choice such as Facebook and Twitter. This can be bad for schools if you don’t do something about it. I feel it is best to take control of these services and utilize the platform to share the positive things happening in your building.

Services such as foursquare allow anyone to post pictures from the location. This would be like allowing anyone on the street to change the pictures on your school’s homepage. This raises a lot of issues, do you want this to show up when a parent or board member checks in?

or would you rather have this:

Here are the 5 steps to get started with social check in’s and take control of your school’s image.

• Step 1: Research
• Research to see if your building is already on these social checkin sites:
• foursquare- https://foursquare.com/
• Facebook places- http://www.facebook.com/about/location
• Google Places- http://www.google.com/places
• SCVNGR- http://www.scvngr.com/
• Step 2: Take control of your image
• If your building / school is not on these sites, add them. All of those sites are built with non-techie people in mind and it is very easy to setup. If you need help you know where to find me
• Step 3: Post pictures you want to see.
• What is your brand? What do you want to share with strangers visiting your building?I post pictures of excellence banners, the school sign etc.
• Step 4: Encourage the use of these services
• Encourage people to checkin. You want to encourage people to check in to your buildings. The more your encourage the more buzz you will build about your school. This buzz can be contagious as people compete to be the “Mayor”, get badges, etc. Make it fun!
• Step 5: Engage your community
• Most of these services automatically post to Facebook and Twitter which gives you more reach into your community to share what you are doing in the school. This can be especially good when you want to get community in for a science fair, a fundraiser, or other community activity.

By utilizing these free tools you can take control of your digital footprint. As you know we as professionals need to do our best to protect our personal footprint but not many people think about their district as having a digital footprint.

What are other ways you can control your digital footprint? What services do you use? Does your school have a Facebook page? Do you Tweet to your community? Please share!

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