Free Technology for Teachers

Five Ways to Digitally Celebrate Your Students' Year

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000

The end of the school year is here or soon to be here which means it's a great time to reflect on what your students have done this year. Here are five ways that you can create some digital celebrations of the year.

Make a video. Animoto makes it very easy to cobble together a set of pictures and add some music in the background to show off what your students have created throughout the year. Try to use pictures from the fall, winter, and spring to show how much your students have changed. If Animoto is too basic for you try WeVideo or Pixorial to create longer videos that include your voice-over commentary.

Create collages about the year. Pic Collage is a free service for quickly creating picture collages on your iPad or Android tablet. The app does not require you to register or connect a social network profile in order to create a collage. If you do connect a social network profile to Pic Collage you can pull in pictures from those accounts. Otherwise you can upload pictures that are stored on your device or take new pictures using the Pic Collage app. The Pic Collage user interface is easy to use. Just tap the blank canvas to import pictures from your device, from a social network profile, or by taking a new picture. To arrange the images in your collage just touch and drag them. You can expand or contract the images by pinching on them.

Collaboratively create a slideshow about the year. If you're working in a school that uses Google Apps for Education create a Google Drive slideshow and have each of your students share one favorite memory of the year on one slide.

Collaboratively create a classroom portfolio. Silk is a free service for creating webpages organized around a theme or topic. Silk is intended to be a place where you can share collections of materials as well as write text directly into your webpages. Your Silk dashboard provides a place to organize your materials into collections and sub-collections. Your collections can include documents, videos, images, charts and graphs, and links to other sites. Take a look at a sample Silk site here. You can create multiple sites within your free Silk account. Your Silk sites can be public or private. Creating collections on your Silk site can become a collaborative activity by inviting others to be editors or administrators on a site.

Invite distant relatives to virtually celebrate with you. As an uncle who lives far away from my nieces I know that I would be thrilled if I was able to virtually attend my niece's preschool "graduation." Skype and Google+ make this possible.

The Dictionary of Numbers - Putting Numbers in Human Terms

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:30:00 +0000

Dictionary of Numbers is a neat Chrome extension that "translates" large numbers into terms that are easy to visualize. When you have the extension installed any time that you encounter a large number on the web you can highlight it and get a simple explanation of just how big that number is. For example, if you came across the number 238,900 you would quickly find out that that is the average distance in miles to the moon. The one minute video below shows you everything you need to know about the Dictionary of Numbers.

Get Creative Commons Savvy With These Activities

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I shared the EFF's lesson plans for teaching copyright. After using those plans you may want to move your students on to understanding Creative Commons. Peer 2 Peer University hosts a four module unit called Get CC Savvy. Each module contains a short video about the topic followed by a suggested activity to complete to help students understand Creative Commons in practice.

Applications for Education
Get CC Savvy from P2PU could be an excellent resource for any high school or college student to use on his or her own to gain an understanding of what Creative Commons licensing means in practice. Don't overlook the discussions that accompany the activities as the comments there add value to the exercises suggested by Get CC Savvy.

How to Use eduClipper

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:30:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a long review of the visual bookmarking service, eduClipper. eduClipper is a great place for teachers and students to collaborate on the creation of visual bookmark boards. It's kind of like Diigo with a very visual element. If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend giving it a go after taking a look at the short how-to videos below.

5 Good Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:30:00 +0000

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a set of comprehensive lesson plans about copyright simply titled Teaching Copyright. Teaching Copyright contains five lesson plans. Each lesson plan includes printable worksheets, readings, and suggested activities. For teachers looking for a little more information than is available in the lesson plans, the EFF has a good list of additional resources including videos on the topics of copyright and fair use. To stay up to date on new developments in copyright and fair use, you may want to follow the EFF blog.

Applications for Education
Copyright can be a confusing topic for adults as well as children. The EFF's Teaching Copyright lesson plans provide teachers with the materials and resources needed for teaching appropriate use of copyrighted materials.

Teacher Turned Entrepreneur - An Interview With Adam Bellow

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago Adam Bellow relaunched eduClipper. Unlike a lot of new ed tech services, Adam comes from a teaching background not a tech developer background. Last week I sent Adam some questions about the transition from teaching to ed tech entrepreneurship, how eduClipper got started, and his plans for the future of eduClipper. Finally, Adam offers advice to those wondering how to take their ed tech ideas to market.

1. Who are you? What’s your background in education?

I am a passionate, creative, curious educator. I, like you and your dedicated following of awesome educators, am a hardworking person who wants to make the world a better place in some way. I grew up in the 80s and was (am) a big nerd before it was cool. In addition to being an educational technologist, I am also a proud father to two wonderfully awesome boys and a loving husband.

I come from a family of educators. My dad was a 30+ year science teacher at Cardozo High School in Queens. My mom was an English teacher who became a High School Librarian for 26+ years at Mepham High School in my home district. When I was young I never thought I would be a teacher. I wanted to be a superhero and then when I realized this was not a feasible career choice I decided to become a filmmaker. But after college I realized a career in film was not likely so I went out looking for a job. I had been a camp counselor and taught several workshops for kids throughout my High School and College years and so I thought I would like to do something to impact young people. I applied to and got a job as an Assistant English Teacher at a wonderful school in New York City for students with language based learning disabilities. It was a truly wonderful place to learn from master teachers and try my hand at helping to craft learning experiences for students. After my first year at the school I went for a dual masters degree in general and special education. During my second semester of classes, I was asked by the Dean of the program to teach the educational technology course (under the radar) as an adjunct. I happily accepted and it was for this class that I created the version of eduTecher. After two years as an HS English Assistant, I got a job working as a “head teacher” at another school for 3 years. It was there that I really started to learn what it was like to be a teacher. In 2007 my two passions collided as I found a job and got hired as a technology training specialist for a school district on Long Island. It was the best job. I worked with over 400 teachers throughout K-12 and helped them create lessons infused with technology, shared great tools for their students, and both modeled and assisted using technology as part of a lesson. I also worked on semester long projects with administrators and students. It was a wonderful job. Budgets were getting very tight and my role was changing in the school so I decided to find another job. I took a role as the Director of Educational Technology for the College Board Schools. This was a job where I got to work with 18 schools across the country and help them plan for and infuse technology successfully. It was a challenging role and led to the opportunity to take a role elsewhere in the company as a Senior Director of Educational Technology and AP Student Services. Basically I was asked to help students who chose to take an AP course have a successful experience. It was a new role for the company and was rife with challenges. I won’t go into details here, but I am glad I had the opportunity to leave and focus on eduClipper full-time.

2. You wrote EduTecher for years before starting EduClipper. When did you decide to build EduClipper?

eduTecher was always a passion project. But as you know, you and I are not the only ones curating the web for great resources. For years I had been posting content that I found and aggregated. But when I started in 2007/2008 it was a different world. It was hard(er) to build a site and share. In 2011 I saw the new crop of community curation tools beginning to gain popularity, like Pinterest, and asked some of my close edtech friends what they would want to see built that they felt was missing in “the space” and it was clear that a visual curation platform for teachers would be a hit. But what has made me so excited about working on eduClipper is to get students to collaborate with their teachers and for students from around the globe to collaborate together to curate, share, and post the best resources. They are sharing the things that they find on the web, but also the great and valuable content that they are creating both for school assignments and out of sheer passion and interest in learning.

3. What did you learn about ed tech while writing EduTecher that you applied to the design of EduClipper?

I think eduTecher taught me a lot of things that went into the design of eduClipper. For example, how to treat users. Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned, which is applicable to edtech as well as many other fields - is to listen. People choosing to explore a site or platform need to know that there is a person listening to and respecting them. There are sites being built by people that think they have a good idea for educators or students and so they build something and throw it out there online hoping that it works. Sometimes it does, which is great. But a lot of these tools don’t really address pain points or build a tool that is of true value to the “customer”.

I spent a lot of time brainstorming with teachers and kids both virtually and face-to-face to talk about what they wanted and needed before even beginning to have the site coded. As for respecting the users, I personally answer all Emails in a timely fashion - even when I am super-busy - because I know what it is like to need that help right now. There are a lot things that I formed opinions around on how to position the tool as well. I am aim to be very respectful when I approach teachers and students. I don’t want to push something on people. It is a great platform and is getting better each day, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect and for me to be successful, it doesn’t mean I have to (nor have the right) to bash others who are working hard on their platforms. Being involved in an education company, my goal is simple - I want to make teaching and learning better. eduClipper aims to enhance the educational experience in and out of the classroom and I think that in order to do this, we must produce a tool of value rather than of distraction.

4. What makes EduClipper different from other social bookmarking services on the web? I’ve described EduClipper as “what teachers wish Pinterest could be” and “like Diigo with a visual element.” Are those appropriate descriptions?

I think both of those descriptions are accurate for part of what we offer now. The homepage does currently resemble the cascading content view that was made popular by Pinterest and does have a “save anything” idea that Diigo and Delicious before it popularized. I aim to keep the social aspect of Pinterest, but make the platform safe and compliant for schools and classrooms of students as young as 5 years old. People say it is the Edmodo version of Pinterest, which may be somewhat accurate as well. We are uniquely positioned in the education space as we are both open as a network of content, but allow educators to control how much of the social features their classes/schools have access to. One difference that will be emphasized by new features we will be rolling out throughout the next few months is our focus on self-curation. I think Pinterest and Diigo mainly grab content from around the web to share. eduClipper wants to support student and teacher created content as they build and share public learning portfolios of content.

5. It seems that every teacher has a story of being burned by a free service that either shuts down or starts charging for use. How is EduClipper funded? How do you plan to keep the service running for the long term?

Being a teacher and having both been burned by sites shutting down while my students were using them and also having to pony up money to get the needed or wanted features for certain sites, I can certainly understand user’s hesitancy to explore the options before digging into a new tool. Especially when it is one that asks you to give it your data. As someone who has experienced this personally I can say that what we have launched at eduClipper thus far (and many new features on their way) will be free. Period.

eduClipper is currently funded by two VC funds, Learn Capital, an investor in Edmodo amongst other big EdTech offerings as well as WTI which was a 1st round investor in Facebook. We are going to be looking to secure another round of funding to help us accomplish a number of our other goals and initiatives.

My personal goal is make eduClipper the best resource it can be for teachers and students. While we have plans to make a profit and sustain our free offering, we won’t be going after teachers and students to make money here. The service will launch new features and grow based on the needs and wants of the users. We are working on a robust dashboard that can aggregate and oversee the usage data of a school and feel that schools may want to implement and that may be at a school or site license. However, teachers will always have the tools they currently to to both set up, monitor, and moderate their students on a class level basis.

We are also exploring partner content relationships with several major educational publishers to see how adding their content to our site may prove to be both educationally and financially enriching for eduClipper.

And while my plans are large in scope for eduClipper - I don’t know the future and can only promise to respect and support the users of our site in any way possible. That is why we launched with a feature to Export My Stuff - where you can click a button and download the content that you posted to the site. Transparency is a big deal for me and I hope the users know that.

6. How much of the design and coding of EduClipper did you do? How much did you outsource? When did you realize you couldn’t do it all?

The first version of eduTecher was built by myself in iWeb. That was when the intended audience was 23 students. As the site grew, my brother-in-law took on more and more of the coding responsibilities and I did all the design and content. When we built the social platform for eduTecher in 2011, I did all the design work, but hired a team to code it. It was tough letting “my baby” go a little. I still did all the design and content for the site, but the code was no longer solely mine. I think there is a lesson in there - know what you don’t know and know when to ask for help.

eduClipper is a much more complicated animal than eduTecher. The MVP (minimum viable product) was mocked up by myself in Keynote and largely coded by an offshore firm in India. I would do some coding and bug fixes, but I was working full-time during this build and also was not proficient enough to do the heavy lifting. When I received funding to build the new eduClipper (which has been completely with different programming languages in addition to the new look and features) I knew I needed and yearned for a collaborative process between a team of developers here in New York City as well as a designer to help understanding user-flow and help create some custom iconography. As it turns out, I wound up doing a lot of the design work myself in the end because I am one of those detail oriented people who wanted it to look a certain way. For example, the emails and a lot of the site’s personality was designed by me. I love doing that work as it let’s me be creative and challenges me, but couldn’t do it all myself. But as I said before, I know what I don’t yet know. And eduClipper required a deep understanding of computer science and helping to build an elastic system that can support more than a million users, which we hope to accommodate by next year.

We are currently looking to expand our team, we need technical and non-technical people that are passionate about positively impacting education to join us and help make eduClipper even better as we take our next steps.

7. What advice can you give to a teacher reading this who has an idea for a new educational technology service/ application that they want to take public?

I think that teachers often times come up with wonderful ideas! After all, teachers are working in the classrooms every day and feeling the pain points of their peers and students. I think that edtech needs better and more genuine ideas to come from need and so I encourage educators to explore ways to build these out. My entrepreneurial side was born while working as a teacher so I know it can be both exciting and challenging to create and explore ideas that matter and can hopefully make things better for the classroom.

Rule number one - don’t do this for the money. I have thought long and hard about why I have found success (measured more in people finding value in my tools than monetary success) and the answer is motive. If you are solving a problem - do that. Try to figure out a way to make things better and not focus on becoming the next big thing. I think that this is helpful to get people started with creating valuable tools.

Rule number two - Work - Life - Balance. Read pretty much any article about people driven to create their own business and there is a common thread that is either explicitly called out as a lesson learned or a word of caution to the people that follow behind them. It is simply to ensure that you know the price you often pay. It’s true that nothing worth doing is without risk and it is seldom easy, but it is worth noting that one ought to prepare themselves (and their friends/loved ones) for fact that they will be working harder, longer, and more hours than they may be used to. I say this not to dissuade people off from doing it, but if you’re about to have a baby or have a lot of stress in other areas of your life it is worth considering before diving in too deep.

Rule number three - Reach out to someone who you trust to think it through and talk about next steps. That can be a close teacher friend who might benefit from the idea, students, or a person from an edtech company or tool you like or respect. You can ask them to sign an NDA if you are worried about them taking your idea and running with it - or can even ask if it is something they would want to develop with you as they might have more experience in that part of the space than you. There’s a lot to learn from people who have been there and done that. Know what you don’t know and when and who to ask for help.

Either way - never stop coming up with ideas to make education better - technology-based or not, that is what makes a valuable educator.

The Story of Photosynthesis and Food

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:31:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I suggested having students use the Crash Course videos as review materials to view before the end of the school year. There are Crash Courses in Biology and Ecology. As a supplement to those videos consider the TED-Ed lesson, The Simple Story of Photosynthesis and Food. The video could make a good review of or introduction to photosynthesis.

Tips for Leading Google Apps Trainings - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I shared a couple of tips for leading successful Google Apps training activities. Here's the third installment in my series of tips on the topic. These tips are based on my experiences gained from leading dozens of Google Apps trainings over the last few years.

A Clean Slate
When I lead a training for people who are just beginning to learn to use Google Apps, I use dummy accounts (my dogs have their own Google Accounts) that are stripped-down to look as if they were just created. I do this so that I will be projecting a screen that is identical to what my training participants see on their laptops. I do this because I already have a bunch of folders, labels, and other customizations applied to the Google Apps products that I regularly use. I know from experience that if I project my personal account, some participants in my training session will be distracted by or at the least be curious about what I've done to my account. That curiosity is good, but it also can lead to questions that delve into advanced options that participants may not be ready to try yet.

The Top 10+ Sites for a Successful 1:1 Laptop Program: Experiences from the Trenches

noreply@blogger.com (rlangenhorst) — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:58:00 +0000

Greetings from Rock Valley, Iowa, the land of cows and corn! As we wind up our school year this week, I have begun reflecting on just how much our approach to educating kids has changed since becoming 1:1 in our middle and high schools. A year ago, I had a classroom of 6th graders. This year, I have transitioned to the role of the district's Technology Integrationist. I was once worried about switching jobs because I might not be busy enough (I'm a type-A, first born). Certainly I must have had a moment of insanity? Some temporary dysphoria? In an exhilarating blur, I look up and our year is done. I have seen teachers completely transform their teaching, provide students with extensive higher order thinking tasks, and offer challenges that weren't possible a year ago. That being said, let's cut to the meat of this post...the Free Tech 4 Teachers! While this in no way covers all of the wonderfully useful free sites we use on a daily basis, here are the top sites we wouldn't be without in a 1:1 environment.

1.This open-source software has been our platform on which each teacher is to put his or her classroom information, coursework, links, etc... Having a common 'playground' for all student academics is easier on everyone. Click here for a link to the Moodle site. Even teachers with other collaborative sites like Edmodo still link back to their district Moodle page. Kids always know where to go for their work first. This, first and foremost, is essential to a successful 1:1 environment.

2.

Google Drive and Google Apps have been a dream. Through the use of the forms, spreadsheets, and docs, our teachers and students have been successfully collaborating like never before. Through Google Apps, students and teachers are issued a school email account with which all correspondence takes place. Teachers can send out work via a link. As that original document gets updated, so does the information contained in the link. Teachers are able to easily assess students in the moment using the Flubaroo script (found in the script gallery). It also seamlessly links with Moodle via the URL uploads. Teachers and administration are also using Google Drive for virtual meetings, feedback, class officer and other voting procedures. I use it to maintain the RVTechPD Google Site for professional development, tutorials, and helpful hints for our teachers. We wouldn't be functioning the same without Drive. Three cheers for Google!

3. This little sweetheart became my new best friend this year. As the only Technology Integrationist for our district, I have a wild schedule that can have me teaching preschoolers one class period and working with seniors the next. This requires a beastly organization system! YouCanBook.Me allows you to sync with your calendar (in my case, a Technology Integration Google Calendar) and share in a wide variety of ways (QR code, link, and embed to name a few). Teachers can then book your time according to your determined "slots". See the screenshot below... (Can you tell which day is our last full day?)

4. Wikispaces has been a gem. Because of its ease of use and versatility, many teachers are using it to create everything from their own personal and student portfolios to entire novel units and ways for students to demonstrate their learning. The possibilities really are endless.

5. I suggest this site for those who are willing and able to help those less tech-y. This is the easiest way to capture your screen and all you're doing in video format that is easily uploaded to YouTube or downloaded to your computer to send to others. This is the site I use for making mini-tutorials for teachers. It sure beats reinventing the wheel when a person asks the exact same question a week later! The free version offers up to 15 minutes of video time, there is no software to install, and it works like a dream.

6. Probably the coolest, free journaling web tool I've run across. Unbelievably realistic, it functions just like a notebook. As a district, we are always looking for new ways to foster the development of writing with our students. Penzu has been a great venue for journal writing, reflection, and curricular writing. Pictures and files can be attached with ease, and notebook pages can be shared with teachers as needed. Penzu is used by myriad teachers in the district.

7. Formerly Wallwisher, Padlet is an incredible site used by many teachers in a wide variety of ways. It is a powerful virtual pinboard, of sorts, that allows you the luxury of making your space into whatever it needs to be: timeline, interactive storyteller, visual book report, assignment planner, and the list goes on. Here you can see just a few samples of things that can be done on Padlet.

8. From Dictionary.com comes Word Dynamo... a vocabulary treasure if ever there was one. We were reaching a stale-mate with vocabulary, being sick-to-death of the rote memorization and regurgitation that was happening with standard vocabulary books. Students weren't learning the words, they were working to be tested over them only to watch them flitter off into oblivion the second the test was over. Word Dynamo is helping to change that. Not only are there quality, pre-made word lists ready at any time for any subject area, there is the built-in ability for students to make their own cards and interact with them. Now students are empowered to create their own curricular word lists in any and all subjects. This serves as an excellent bell-ringer! Instead of the wait time until the bell rings, students are quickly getting to work on relevant material and working daily with "real" words they are seeing and learning about in context. Win-win.

9. What started out as a neat way for me to bookmark sites for my own work quickly became a great way to build and store an on-going library of curricular sites by grade level. We now have an elementary Symbaloo with a tab per grade level. Teachers are given the username and password to the Symbaloo and are encouraged to add sites to their grade-specific tab. Since it is embeddable and user-friendly, even for the youngest on the web, it is now possible for teachers to embed this onto their school webpage as well as utilize them on the iPads that are available for check-out within our district. Teachers are still encouraged to do their own bookmarking of sites for their teaching or personal use on Draggo, my absolute favorite social bookmarking site.

10. Quizlet provides a fantastic place for teachers to create their own quizzes, games and activities to suit their curriculum. Already widely-known by many, Quizlet offers a way to practice skills in a variety of ways. Nearly every teacher uses Quizlet in our building in some way. It is a great means of avoiding the traditional, scary paper study guide and engages kids much like a video game would. By linking specific Quizlet activities to the course's Moodle page, students can begin working on them as soon as the teacher posts it or allows it to be seen by students.

++++++(Just a couple of curriculum-specific sites I couldn't leave out)++++++

Suggested by our foreign language teacher as a must-have for practicing a new language outside of the classroom, Duolingo offers excellent, individualized practice for students studying a variety of foreign languages. Its combination of verbal and written language work makes it a free find worth delving into.

AAA Math is a site recommended by our middle school math teacher as an excellent supplement to her teaching. Compatible with the student laptops, as well as the Smartboard, it serves as a great place to find additional resources for nearly every math concept from kindergarten through eighth grade.

"I couldn't live without this in my science room," was a comment made by one our science teachers about PhET. From the University of Colorado at Boulder comes this fantastic simulation site. It is unbeatable in what it provides to students in an interactive way. As you can see in the screenshot below, however, it strolls down many avenues of science and math curriculum.

I am a big fan of StudyLadder. Many of our teachers in elementary and the middle school are utilizing this excellent resource. It is a multi-subject interactive site that allows you to differentiate for all levels of students through grade six. With the ability to import entire class lists, you can set up individualized, interactive work for your students. What I especially appreciate about this site is the color coded leveling. While teachers are shown which color represents which grade level, the students are not. In addition, StudyLadder is Common Core aligned.

Whether you are 1:1 now or thinking of going that route in the near future, I offer some advice to you. Gather up those who are not afraid to take risks, to try something new, to realize that their device will not spontaneously combust if you push the wrong button. Together, explore the far reaches of the curriculum and how technology can and should be integrated into it. The tech-tentacles of those people are the ones who will light the fires of your other staff members. Provide support, provide an integrationist, and offer solid professional development opportunities. Just know that there will be hiccups your first year. Expect them. Call it version 1.0.

Rachel Langenhorst is the Technology Integrationist for Rock Valley Community Schools in Rock Valley, Iowa and has been in education for 18 years, holding a BA in Elementary Education with a reading emphasis and a M.Ed in Education Technology. As a child and grandchild of former educators, she shares a life-long passion for learning and helping those around her push themselves to reach their full potential. She is a wife to Deric, mother to Alex, Mason, and Ella, and owner of an insane black lab, Howard.

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Website www.rvcsd.net/langenhorst

The History and Meaning of Memorial Day

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Memorial Day is one week from today. Here are a couple of quick resources that you may want to include in a lesson about Memorial Day.

The Meaning of Memorial Day is a two minute video covering the origins of the holiday in the United States. The video is embedded below.

The History of Memorial Day which is an infographic outlining the basic history of Memorial Day and how Americans celebrate the day. The infographic is missing one important thing, links to the sources of the information presented. I would take that flaw and turn it into a quick research activity. Have your students attempt to verify the information presented in the infographic.

For more resources for teaching about Memorial Day, visit Larry Ferlazzo's list of resources.

Tips for Leading Google Apps Trainings - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

As the school year winds-down many of us are planning summer PD sessions. If you're going to be leading a PD session about Google Apps this summer, here are some of my tips for leading a successful session. These tips are based on my experiences gained from leading dozens of Google Apps trainings over the last few years.

Device Choice

Unless your training session is specifically about using iPads or Android tablets, the best way to introduce new users to all of the Google Documents features is to have them use a browser (again Chrome is preferable) on their laptops. You can certainly have people bring their iPads and or Android tablets to your training session, but make sure that they know that not all of the features available in a desktop browser are also available in the iOS and Android apps.

When I have participants bringing iPads or Android tablets to one of my workshops, my preference is to have people try all of the features of Google Documents in their browsers before moving to their tablets. This way they have exposure to all of the functions of Google Docs. Then when they move to their tablets they can clearly see the differences between the browser experience and the tablet app experience.

Tips for Leading Google Apps Trainings - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:30:00 +0000

Not all browsers support every feature in Google Documents. Not surprisingly, Google Chrome does support all features of Google Documents and Google Drive. For that reason it is preferable to have all participants in your training sessions use Google Chrome. Google Chrome automatically updates whenever a new update is released by Google. A day or two before your training session send an email to all participants asking them to install Chrome if it’s not already installed on their laptops.

If getting all participants in your training session to use Chrome is not an option for you, at the very least stress to them importance of having the latest version of their preferred browsers installed. Not only is this a browser security issue (older versions of browsers are more susceptible to security threats) it is a Google Documents functionality issue. The latest versions of browsers support the most functions of Google Documents. For example, as of this writing Google has officially ceased supporting Internet Explorer 8.

Finally, regardless of which browser you ultimately have participants in your training sessions use, have them all use the same browser during your training session. Initially, this might be uncomfortable for some participants, but by the end of the day most people will be comfortable with a different browser. Having everyone use the same browser will make your day easier. When everyone uses the same browser if there are unexpected glitches or problems they will likely be the same for everyone in your training session. Solve the glitch once and you’ve solved it for the whole group for the day.

Vimeo Video School - Storytelling the Stillmotion Way

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:30:00 +0000

Stillmotion is a video production company based in Oregon. Last month they produced a series of videos all about how to tell stories through video. The series takes you through the planning, shooting, and editing of a video. The series isn't a how-to on the technical side of production as it is a how-to plan and think about the process of producing a great video. The first video in the series is embedded below. Below the video I've linked to the other videos and text outlines in the series.

Storytelling The Stillmotion Way: Part 1 from stillmotion on Vimeo.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Study Jams - Elementary Math and Science With Music

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

Study Jams is a Scholastic website designed to help elementary school students learn and review math and science information through songs and videos. To use Study Jams students search for a topic in the math or science category. Each Study Jam offers a short tutorial on that topic in the form of a video, slideshow, or song. When there is a song available Study Jams provides a karaoke format for kids to sing along if they like.

Applications for Education
Study Jams could provide a fun way for students to independently review topics or learn about new topics. To extend the activity you could challenge students to write an additional verse for one of the karaoke tunes. Or challenge them to create their own Study Jam when one doesn't exist for a topic they're studying.

10 Good Sites & Apps for Learning a New Language

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:30:00 +0000

Last summer I took a short trip to Iceland. Before I went I tried to learn a couple of phrases (I wasn't terribly successful, my mouth just wouldn't make some of the sounds). This summer I'm taking a short trip to Costa Rica so I'm brushing-up on my Spanish vocabulary before I go. If you're trying to learn a new language too, here are some free sites and apps that could help you.

Duolingo is a free language learning service and app through which you can learn Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. To learn on Duolingo you read, listen to, and translate words and phrases. For example if I want to learn Spanish I'll be shown Spanish words with translations. I can can hear the words pronounced too. Then to practice I type and or speak translations. The activities start out with simple words and phrases. As I become more proficient, Duolingo gives me more challenging phrases. To help me track my progress Duolingo awards me point and virtual badges.

uSpeak HD is a free iPad app designed to help beginners learn Spanish. The app matches you with word lists and learning activities based on your current level of knowledge of Spanish. Before you even register on the service you take a quick assessment to match you to the appropriate lists and activities. Once you've registered all of your progress is stored in your uSpeak account. uSpeak's word lists are organized in webs of related words. Click on any web to reveal the words. Then click on a word to reveal a web of in-context uses of that word, images associated with that word, and synonyms and antonyms for your chosen word.

Spanish Is Your Amigo is a series of video lessons taught by Kristen Williams. The lessons are designed for beginners. The short, upbeat lessons cover the basics of things like letter pronunciation, numbers, syllabic stress, verb conjugation, nouns and articles, and common Spanish phrases.

iMendi is a nice little site for practicing vocabulary in the languages you're trying to learn. On iMendi you can practice vocabulary in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Russian, Arabic, and Czech. To use iMendi just select the language you speak and select the language you want to learn. iMendi then gives you the choice of choosing a lesson (level 1, level 2, etc) or trying a randomly chosen lesson. The "lessons" are really just simple vocabulary matching exercises with a score and the correct answers revealed at the end.

BBC Quick Fix offers a selection of essential phrases for forty languages. The list of phrases varies slightly for each language, but they all include greetings and other essential polite phrases like "I'm sorry I don't speak Icelandic." All lists can be printed. You can also hear all of the phrases pronounced. The pronunciations can be downloaded as MP3 files to take with you on your iPod or phone.

Hello World provides games and activities for students to develop their knowledge of foreign languages. Hello World has games and activities in nine languages including Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Not all of the games and activities are free, but enough of them are free to warrant listing as a good place for free learning activities.

Vocabla is a service for learning English, Spanish, and Polish vocabulary. The service can be used online or with the free iPhone and Android apps. The concept behind Vocabla is similar to a lot of other language learning applications. In Vocabla you can create lists of words and phrases that you want to learn. Alternatively, you can select a list that was made by someone else and shared to the Vocabla library. You can study each list in a flashcard style until you feel like you're ready to take a practice quiz. You can earn digital trophies and badges for your scores on the quizzes that you complete.

Pictolang is a CAPL service that offers four image-based language learning activities. The Visual Word Trainer is simply a flashcard activity that shows students an image and the word or words that picture represents. The Picture Match Game shows students one word and they have to find the picture to match it. Word Match Game shows students one picture and they have to find the word to match it. The Analyst Game is probably the most challenging of the activities. The Analyst Game shows students a picture and they have to identify where that picture came from.

Forvo can best be described as an audio wiki for word pronunciations. One of the problems with learning to speak a language that is not phonetic is trying to figure out how to pronounce the words. Forvo hosts hundreds of recordings of word pronunciations by native speakers. Along with word pronunciations, Forvo provides some basic demographic information about each language. Forvo's content is user-supported and user-generated. New pronunciations are added on a regular basis.

Surface Languages is a free service offering flashcards and practice activities to help students learn the basics of a new language. Surface Languages supports 38 languages. To use the site simply select the language that you are trying to learn then select a set of words or phrases to practice. After selecting a set of words or phrases you will be able to listen to the pronunciations of those words or phrases. You can also flip through the words and phrases in flashcard format.

The Week in Review - Splashing in the Pond

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:30:00 +0000

Good morning from Greenwood, Maine. This week I had the opportunity to work with teachers at Bridgton Academy just a few miles down the road from the Free Technology for Teachers world headquarters (AKA, my house). It was a great day from both a learning standpoint and weather standpoint. In fact, it was so nice that I didn't even change out of my work clothes before taking my dogs to splash in the pond. Days like that one remind me that the end of the school year isn't too far away. I know that for many of you this coming week is the last week of your school year. I hope it's a great one for you!

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Life On Minimum Wage - A Hands-on Economics Lesson
2. Video - How to Insert Images Into Google Forms
3. Use Clips of Seinfeld to Teach Economics
4. The Ten Blogs I Read First
5. Play Games or Create Your Own Through YoYo Games
6. Depression Quest - An Interactive Story About Depression
7. What My Dog Can Teach Us About Managing 1:1 Classrooms

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Saylor Foundation Launches Independent "Courses" for K-12

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:26:00 +0000

The Saylor Foundation recently announced the launch of one of their new initiatives, independent courses. In the title of this post I put quotation marks around courses because it's a stretch to say that they're actually courses. Rather they're more like big outlines for independent study. The outlines include alignment to Common Core standards, suggested learning activities, and collections of tutorials and reading materials. The Saylor Foundation's courses currently include geometry, calculus, algebra, American Literature, and SAT prep.

Applications for Education
I wouldn't set students off to use The Saylor Foundation's new courses as a replacement for direct instruction. I would feel comfortable having students consult the courses for independent review after going through lessons with a teacher.

Register to be One Of the First To Know When Google Play for Education Goes Live

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:12:00 +0000

Earlier this week Google announced that they will be launching Google Play for Education this summer. Google Play for Education promises to provide many of the features that teachers have wanted to have available through Android for a long time now. If you want to be one of the first to know when Google Play for Education is available, sign up here on the Google in Education page.

I think that the best part of Google Play for Education will be the ability for teachers (or administrators) to purchase apps and push them out to all of the devices in their schools. If the entire school is too big of a group, the option to create smaller groups of devices will be available too. Teachers will also be able to use Google Play for Education to push video and documents out to all of the devices in a group.

Design Squad - Engage Kids in Hands-on Engineering Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Sat, 18 May 2013 01:09:00 +0000

Design Squad from PBS Kids features a great collection of hands-on activities for elementary and middle school students. The activities are designed to help students explore engineering concepts. The collection of activities is divided into ten categories. The categories are technology, structures, sports, space, sound, simple machines, health, green, energy, and electricity. Each activity contains a materials list and directions. Some of the activities also have demonstration videos.

Applications for Education
Having students try the Design Squad activities could be a fun way to get kids interested in engineering.

In addition to the hands-on activities, Design Squad has animations that you can download to use in your engineering lessons.

Still the Best Presentation on Copyright for Educators

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:29:00 +0000

In my previous post I shared Copyright on Campus which is a six minute overview of what copyright means for teachers. For a much more in-depth exploration of what copyright means for educators I highly recommend Dr. Wes Fryer's presentation Copyright for Educators. I've shared his presentation many times over the last four years. I still think it's the best online presentation that you can find on the topic.

Copyright for Educators from Wesley Fryer

Copyright on Campus - A Six Minute Exploration of the Nuances of Copyright

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:18:00 +0000

Copyright and Fair Use are cloudy areas for many students and educators to try to navigate. This evening I found Copyright on Campus which is a six minute cartoon that does a nice job of explaining many of the nuances of copyright as it applies to educators. While the explanations are given for a collegiate setting they could be applied to K-12 too. The video is embedded below.

Copyright on Campus was produced by the Copyright Clearance Center which is a for-profit organization. That is probably why the video lacks a balanced discussion of section 107 of Title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States. Rather than making you go look it up, I've pasted the content of section 107 below.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

The Old Reader - A Google Reader Alternative That Looks A Lot Like Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:37:00 +0000

Ever since Google announced that Reader will be shut-down on July 1 I have been recommending Feedly and Flipboard as alternatives. Both of those services use a magazine-like format to display your RSS subscriptions. Some people like that while others wish that they could stick with the old Google Reader lay-out. If you prefer the old Google Reader interface you might want to try The Old Reader.

The Old Reader is a free service that you can use to subscribe to RSS feeds and read all of the latest content from those sources in one place. So that you don't have to re-subscribe to the blogs that you love, The Old Reader will allow you to import your Google Reader subscriptions. You'll notice that The Old Reader looks and acts very similarly to Google Reader. The Old Reader will allow you to share posts, write notes about posts appearing in your account, and organize your subscriptions into folders.

Applications for Education
You don't need to be fanatical about subscribing to blogs the way that I am, but it is important for personal professional development to have a collection of blogs and websites that you follow for education news. The Old Reader makes it easy to subscribe to blogs and read them at your leisure.

Next Vista for Learning - Videos of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:48:00 +0000

Next Vista for Learning is the first video sharing site that I recommend to teachers looking for alternatives to YouTube. Videos on Next Vista are made by teachers and students for teachers and students. Throughout the school year Next Vista hosts video creation contests for students and teachers. Today, Next Vista announced their Video of the Year award recipients in three categories. The category titles and the winning videos are included below.

Collaboratively created video: Cause and Effect

Student video: Movie Tips and Tricks

Teacher video: Finding the Philosophy In Everyday Life: Existentialism

Google Apps for Education Gets Streamlined Storage Too

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:12:00 +0000

A couple of days ago Google announced that personal Google Accounts will now be able to allocate 15GB of storage however they like across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ photos. Today, Google announced the same will be true for Google Apps for Education too. The bonus for Google Apps for Education users is that you will have 30GB of storage to use between Drive, mail, and Google+ images. This change will be rolled-out over the next few weeks.

Shakespeare Uncovered - Videos and Lesson Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:09:00 +0000

Shakespeare Uncovered is a collection of videos and lesson plans hosted on PBS Learning Media. The collection is organized into twenty-one smaller, thematically collections. Some of the themes are "Shakespeare and History," "The Use of Soliloquy," and "Gender Roles in Shakespeare." Each collection includes short, documentary video clips, reading materials, and discussion questions. And like almost any new U.S.-based education site launching today, Shakespeare Uncovered includes a list of Common Core standards that can addressed through the use of the materials on the site.

Applications for Education
Shakespeare Uncovered is designed for high school students to explore more than just the writing of Shakespeare. The materials in Shakespeare Uncovered can provide a deeper understanding of what influenced Shakespeare's writings.