Blog Archives

October 28th, 2016

10/28/2016

Brennen's Mac Tips

Brennen's Mac Tips are really easy to follow and very helpful. Here is another spoonful of them. Click Here.

How to Blur Faces in Youtube Videos

Click here to see a quick tutorial on how to blur faces in Youtube videos.

Clyp - Free Tool to record, Upload and Share Audio Clips

Clyp is an excellent web tool that allows you to easily record, upload and share audio. Clyp does not require any software installation and you don’t even need any account to record or upload audio. The process to upload or record a clyp is simple and easy: just drop your audio file anywhere on the site or press the big orange record button. Once your audio clip is recorded/uploaded you can then either make it private and only those with whom you share its link can access it or make it public for everyone to listen to and interact with. You can also share your clyps through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook or use the embed code to embed them in your website or blog.
There is an upload limit of 100mb per a single upload which is the equivalent of an hour if you are uploading an mp3 file. Also, Clyp supports different audio file types including mp3, ogg, m4a, wav, aiff, aif and 3gpp. Besides recording/uploading your own audio, Clyp allows you to join a growing community of creators, check their clyps and bookmark the ones you like to listen to later it. Click here to check it out.

Discovery Education- Virtual Fieldtrip

Don't forget to check out your Discovery Education subscription for their many resources that can supplement your content. Virtual field trips are just one of many types of resources available. These virtual field trips are recorded and archived for those who can't watch them live. On November 14, 12 noon, there will be a virtual trip on Polar Bears as part of the Tundra Connections Virtual Field Trip Series. Click the link and log into your subscription to register for it now.

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Mrs. Bauriedl shares ClassKick as this weeks showcase.

10/26/2016

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Teachers and students can use Classkick to provide more individualized, real-time feedback at the moment the students need it. ClassKick is a free tool that allows students to respond using any device, but Mrs. Bauriedl used iPads and they worked great. Mrs. Bauriedl was giving her students a group test on the day of this visit. Students shared that they liked using this tool because of the immediate feedback they were getting. Mrs. Bauriedl shared that this tool allowed her to continue to move around the room oversee the work and at the same time she can see, on her iPad, when students are ready for an item to be graded or when they need help. She was able to immediately give feedback for the students to improve their responses to the questions. In addition, ClassKick has comments built into it which can be customized and used for additional feedback.
Immediate feedback is a key feature of this tool. Not only can the teacher give instant feedback but, if the teacher chooses, the students can also provide assistance to each other. The really cool thing about this help feature is that the student names are anonymous so students don't know who they are helping. Mrs. Bauriedl shared that her students, on a prior use of ClassKick, were rushing to try to help each other even though they had no idea who they were helping. This was a really engaging, easy to use, and free tool and it was great to see that it was possible to use it in a setting where every student didn't have a device. The students collaborated on the problem solving process and as a group decided on their responses in this group test. It was very powerful to see the engagement of the groups. In talking with a few students, I found that students agreed it will even be more beneficial when every student has a device. This is definitely a tool that I recommend to keep us moving forward on our Road to Relevance. Thank you Mrs. Bauriedl for sharing this great find.
If you have a cool tool or lesson that you would like to showcase, please contact me by email or at extension 1007. Remember the more we learn together, the more we all grow together.

A Web Whiteboard

I just came across what looks to be a great free tool. It is called A Web Whiteboard and it allows interaction by multiple users to a web whiteboard. It's a perfect tool for teachers who are looking for a way to have student interact on a projected screen to the whole class and it allows all students with a device who are invited to participate can see the interaction on their own devices. This tool works on computers, tablets, and smartphones. It requires no installation. In my quick review it appears to be very easy to use. What a great tool for brainstorming or collaborative problem solving. Check out this site, it's in your price range "free". Click Here.

MacBook Tips- Check out more of Brennen's Tech Tips

I hope you enjoyed this Youtube find from last week. I enjoy these videos because they are short and easy to follow. Click here to see another round of Brennen's Tech Tips for MacBooks.

Google Tips

Document Outline
Document Outline allows you to easily structure your documents. Outline is also a great tool to help you quickly navigate the different parts of your documents. Once activated, Document outline displaces a pane to the left of the page featuring all the headers contained in your document. Clicking on each of these headers will jump you straight to its corresponding section. You don’t even have to manually apply headers, Google Docs smartly detects the different sections of your documents and generates an outline accordingly which you can edit as you want.
Here is how to open a document outline in Google Docs:
Open a Google Docs document then click ‘tools’ and select ‘document outline’.

Convert Google Docs to EPUB
Google Docs released another new interesting feature that allows users to download their Google documents in EPUB format. And as you know, EPUB is a file format that you can download and read in different digital devices (smartphones, tablets, computers) and through various apps and e-readers. With this new feature, you will be able to create and share digital content that can be read on a ‘diverse range of screen sizes and devices’. To convert a Google document into EPUB, you simply click on ‘File’, then hover over ‘Download as’ and choose ‘EPUB publication’ as shown in the GIF below.

Voice Commands in Google Docs
This is basically a voice enabled formatting functionality that allows Docs users to easily edit and format their documents using voice commands. This new feature comes to complete the Voice Typing functionality that was added to Google Docs a few months ago. Users of Google Docs are now able to not only compose documents and write down notes without touching their keyboards but are also able to format their documents using speech commands such as “copy,” “insert table,” and “highlight.” You can check the full list of commands from this page.

JoeZoo - Add On for Google Classroom
This weeks Google tip features include an add-on to Google Classroom. I am sharing this for anyone who has an interest in expanding your use of Google Classroom. I will give a caveat in that it's fairly new and there may still some minor issues that need to be worked out, but the reviews were that it does what it says it will. This is an add-on that can be uploaded to everyone, but it's not ready, in my opinion, for us to do that yet, but if anyone wants to play with it, please feel free to download it and give it a try.
JoeZ Express is an excellent feedback and grading tool integrated with Google Classroom and Google Drive. It is available as both an add-on that you can install and use on your Google Docs (best for independent teachers) and also as an app called JoeZoo (best for schools and districts). The app has, besides all of the add-on tools and features, more exclusive features that include student monkey checker, teacher monkey checker and rubric sharing. JoeZoo Express allows teachers to give students better and direct feedback. With the new update, feedback is now visual and colour coded to help students with recall, and to make things even easier for teachers, JooZoo provides over 90 most commonly used comments. Using the assess mode, teachers can easily grade students docs. They can add comments, messages and grades. Another interesting feature from JooZoo is the interactive rubric builder. It allows teachers to create a wide variety of rubrics and share them with others (watch the video in the playlist below to see how to create a rubric).
Monkey checker is another huge time saving tool from JooZoo (available for the app users). Monkey checker is a great language processing engine and automated feedback tool. With a single click, Monkey checker can instantly process a whole essay, highlight writing errors and colour code them in such a way that they are matched with each of the 91 preloaded comments that clarify the error.

Watch the playlist below to learn more about how to use JooZoo.

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October Fest This week I have a variety of items to share!

10/10/2016

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StudyLadder - Halloween Activities

Sometimes you just want to have fun. Check out the activities that Study Ladder has put together. This is an engaging site to share with parents or to utilize for that little bit of transition time for those students who finish before anyone else. Studyladder Halloween Activities.

Google Forms

There were lots of great presentations on October 10. I really enjoyed sharing Google Forms with my participants. If you have an interest in using Google Forms, I created my presentation so that it could be a self-paced tutorial.
For each step of the form development, I have added a screencast to review the information. If you are interest in using Google Forms for polling, surveying, taking a quiz, doing an exit ticket and more, please feel free to make a copy of my presentation and go through it at your own pace. As you know, I am always willing to come out for group or one on one support. Contact me at extension 1007 if you have any questions. This Google Presentation link gives you view rights, you will need to make your own copy to work through it.

If anyone, who presented on October 10, would like to showcase your presentation on the CVSD Tech Tips Blog, please contact me I would love to share with staff members who weren't able to get to your presentation. Let's remember that together we all grow smarter with technology so please share.

Assessment Tools

I am continually on the lookout for engaging ways to assess student learning. Here are more game-like tools to engage students. All are free.

FlipQuiz
Here is a new tool I came across called FlipQuiz . FlipQuiz is a web tool that allows teachers to easily create gameshow-style boards for test reviews in the classroom. All the boards you create can be saved for later use. You can also share your boards up on-screen and have students work on them collaboratively. Watch this demo to show you what a gameshow-style board looks like. The site shows You don't need to be a 1:1 tablet school to get students involved!

PurposeGames
PurposeGames is a website for engaging learners through creating and playing games.As a teacher you can use PurposeGames to create a variety of game-based quizzes. Some of the options you have include:Image Quizzes; Multiple Choice Quiz; Image shape quiz. Click here to check it out.

Riddle
Riddle is an excellent web tool for teachers. It allows them to create their own PlayBuzz and Buzzfeed-style quizzes, lists, polls, and more, often in under a minute. Riddle’s goal is to provide best-in-class tools that making creating interactive content simple, so you can concentrate on the content instead of worrying about the tools.

TestMoz
Testmoz is an excellent web tool that allows you to create auto graded tests and quizzes. This application is designed by Matt Johnson, an undergraduate student at Washington State University, Vancouver.The strength of this application lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness. Testmoz supports 4 types of questions: True/false, multiple choice, multiple response, and fill in the blank. Each test you create has a unique URL which you can use to edit your test later on or to share with others.

JeopardyLabs
JeopardyLabs is an excellent web tool that allows you to easily create jeopardy games without using PowerPoint templates. The process is very simple and does not require any fees, registration or software download. To create a Jeopardy template, click on “ Start Building” button in the home page. Type in a password for your template so you will be able to edit it later on. Next, use the editor to customize your template the way you want. Click here to see a tutorial.

Quizlet
Quizlet is a great website for students and educators. It allows them to have a free access to over 10 million of flashcards and study games that cover almost every possible subject. There are for instance topics such as Math, Geography, History, Languages, Art, Standardized tests, Professional careers,and more.Quizlet can also help teachers create their own flashcards and share them with their students.

Looking for Showcases and Presentations

If you have a student showcase, lesson with tech integration or a technology presentation that you are willing to share, please contact me. I am continually looking for examples of technology in use and tools and resources that engage our students or make teachers use of technology flow smoothly. So, don't be shy and invite me out to see your lesson or talk with you about your tool or to take pictures of your student's at work.

MacBook Tip

I found this short and informative video on Youtube with a handful of Mac tips. Click here to see Brennen's tech bite.

Hour of Code - Coming December 5-11 - Sign up now!

I am now accepting appointments for this year's Hour of Code activities. If you missed the coding fun last year, but would like to participate this year, contact me to schedule your class for an hour of coding. This is an engaging activity and a wonderful free resource that students can participate in beyond the classroom. Here is the link to see what it's all about.

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This weeks features include an update on Google, Math Related Tools, and Specialized Search Engines for Academics and Educators

10/6/2016

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Google Apps for Education Now Called "G Suite for Education"

Google Apps for Education has changed to G Suite for Education. With this name change there are some additional features with the Google Tools.These features use machine intelligence to facilitate and add more functionalities to Google Apps.

1- Google Sheets
Explore in Google Sheets is a new feature added to Google Sheets to allow students to create smarter sheets. Explore makes it easy for students to ‘summarize spreadsheet data with automated charts and insights’. Students who can’t write formulas can now use Explore to instantly convert questions into formula. ‘Students can simply enter a question using natural language and Explore in Google Sheets will use Natural Language Processing to translate the question into a formula and offer an instant answer.

2- Google Docs
Explore has also been added to Google Docs bringing with it a number of features such as the ability to search for and find related documents from Drive, automatic recommended topics to learn about, and for educators, the ability to conduct image searches and get results limited to those that ‘comply with SafesSearch and are approved to use with Creative Commons’. Click here to check out the Explore feature in a Google Doc.

3- Google Slides
Explore in Google Slides brings new features to help students create polished presentations. Explore offers a number of layout suggestions to help students better format their slides. Click here to see what Explore offers in Google Presentation.

4- Google Calendar
‘Google Calendar uses machine intelligence to help you easily find a time when invitees are free, and it also suggests available rooms based on your previous bookings. And, when the list of invitees grows long and no times are available, Calendar will suggest times across the group where the conflicts are easiest to resolve, such as recurring 1:1 meetings’. Click here to see a screencast about machine intelligence features about Google Calendar.

Math apps, sites and teacher tools

While looking through my blogs, I came across a collection of math apps, web-sites and teacher tools. I know that teachers are always on the lookout for apps to use with their students so this is a wonderful find. I have noted if there is a cost, otherwise, the tool, app, etc. appears to be free. Please check them out. They range is age appropriateness for K-12 students.

iPad Math Apps

Motion Math $2.99 Feed your fish and play with numbers! Practice mental addition and subtraction with Motion Math: Hungry Fish, a delightful learning game that's fun for children and grownups. Ages 6-8
Geoboard Geoboard is a tool for exploring a variety of mathematical topics introduced in the elementary and middle grades. Learners stretch bands around the pegs to form line segments and polygons and make discoveries about perimeter, area, angles, congruence, fractions, and more.
Sushi Monster Meet Sushi Monster! A game to practice, reinforce, and extend math fact fluency is completely engaging and appropriately challenging. Ages 9-11
Math Flash Cards Designed for people of all ages, Math Flash Cards Multiplication is an app that allows the user to practice simple basic multiplication facts or extend the users ability to work out complex multiplication problems up to three digit numbers. Users can control the number of digits used to generate the problems.
Math Vs Zombies $6.99 The world is overrun with zombies. You are a part of a squad of highly trained scientists who can save us.
Use your math skills and special powers to treat infected zombies. K-5
Mystery Math Town $3.99 Use your math skills to rescue the fireflies in Mystery Math Town for ages 6 and up. Best Math App 2014 - Tech with Kids
Everyday Mathematics $The Equivalent Fractions game by McGraw Hill offers a quick and easy way to practice and reinforce fraction concepts and relationships. This game runs on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Players try to match equivalent fractions on cards showing halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eighths, tenths, and twelfths. When cards are matched, they disappear and points are awarded. As cards disappear from the array, the cards behind them become accessible. The game ends when all cards are matched or no more matches can be made. Players earn extra points for making two or more matches in a row. To earn all possible points, players must clear the board!2.79
Math Ninja Use your math skills to defend your treehouse against a hungry tomato and his robotic army in this fun action packed game! Choose between ninja stars, smoke bombs, or ninja magic - and choose your upgrades wisely!

✔ Works on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad - download once, works everywhere!
✔ Action-packed strategy in the castle defense genre! You'll have so much fun you won't even realize you're learning Math!
✔ Choose your weapons - from ninja stars to fire magic - and upgrade their power along the way!
✔ Humorous story starring the ever-hungry Tomato-San, who is building a robotic army to steal your tasty math treasure!
✔ Math options are fully customizable - disable/enable operations, or even toggle number ranges to practice!
✔ Great for all age groups, from 6-99.
Elementary School Math $2.99 Based on the classroom hit Middle School Math HD, Elementary School Math HD is a stunningly beautiful and powerfully engaging application built for today's technology-driven elementary school classroom. Emphasizing game-playing and skill development, the eight modules in Elementary School Math HD have been carefully designed by classroom teachers to provide the perfect balance between fun and the practice of fundamental skills
Here's what's included: Ordering Numbers, Data Magnet, Pinpoint Plotter, Place Value, The Patterning Cage, Shape Board,Rounding Numbers
Math Tappers $1.39 While flashcards have some utility in helping people memorize, they are best used after
we have mastered a topic and need to build fluency – they are not magic and won’t support the development of understanding on their own. MathTappers: Multiples isa simple game designed first to help learners to make sense of multiplication and division
with whole numbers, and then to support them in developing fluency while maintaining
accuracy.
SlateMath SlateMath is an iPad app that develops mathematical intuition and skills through playful interaction. The app's 38 activities prepare children for kindergarten and first grade math.
SlateMath forms the foundation of numbers, digit writing, counting, addition, order relation, patterns, parity and problem solving.

Math Games-Web-based

Topmarks Math Games for Ages 3-14
PBS Kids Math Games - There are numerous games on this web-site but this link will take readers to Curious George Hide and Seek.
Fun Brain Math Games - for Grades K-5
Math Magician Games - Covers Addition, Subtractions, Multiplication and Division
Cool Math Games - This site looks like K-5 level. It appears to have some free activities, but there is also a subscription option.

Mac Math Apps

PhotoMath Simply point your camera toward a math problem and Photomath will magically show the result with a detailed step-by-step instructions.
Graphing Calculator by Desmos - This is a Chrome add-on the reviews are good.
Math Drills Lite Graphically rich and fun environment allows a single student to learn basic math skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Explore solutions to problems using number lines, wooden blocks, facts and hints. Solve nine-times problems using your fingers!Math
MathBoard $4.99 MathBoard® is a highly configurable math app appropriate for all school aged children. Beginning in kindergarten, with simple addition and subtraction problems, through elementary school where learning multiplication and division can be a real challenge. MathBoard will allow you to configure the app to best match the abilities of your individual child/student.
iMathematics lite version - iMathematics is your personal maths tutor. It is used by millions of students every day, and it’s the only app about math that includes everything you need to successfully pass your exams. WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH IMATHEMATICS:
• Learn quickly from over 70 topics, thanks to the clear and simple explanation.
• Easily repeat formulas, theorems, definitions and properties, thanks to the effective synthesis.
• Practice with various interactive calculators which you'll find in some subjects.
• Quickly find the topics that matters to you thanks to the advanced search algorithm.
• Save your Favorites arguments to have them always at your fingertips.
• Add your personal notes to topics, to remind you something.
• Solve the exercises with some Utilities, like the Advanced Calculator, the Fraction Approximator and the Equation Solver.
• Download the app now and try the Pro version for free: you'll have all the most advanced features for a few days.

Graphing Calculators for Math Teachers

Scientific Calculator A powerful, programmable calculator for Google Chrome.
GeoGebra - Graphing Calculator for Functions, Geometry, Calculus, Statistics and 3D Math
GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org) is free dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Interactive learning, teaching and evaluation resources created with GeoGebra can be shared and used by everyone at tube.geogebra.org.
Desmos Graphing Calculator This is a Chrome add-on the reviews are good.
Graph.tk - Plot mathematical functions with this graphing utility
Graph.tk is an online and open-source graphing utility. It's very easy to use. Use the "+" button to create a new equation. Use "/" for fractions, "^" for exponentials, and "*" for multiplication. To type special characters use "\name". For example, "\sqrt" yields √, and \pi produces a π.
Desmos -This is the web-based version of Desmos

Search Engines for Academics and Educators

Behavioral Brain Science Archive:
Check out this searchable archive to find extensive psychology and brain science articles.

Social Science Research Network:
In this research network, you can find a wide variety of social science research from a number of specialized networks including cognitive science, leadership, management, and social insurance.

Psycline:
Find a journal with Psycline’s journal and article locator, a tool that offers access to more than 2,000 psychology and social science journals online.

Ethnologue:
Search the languages of the world with Ethnologue, offering an encyclopedic reference of all the world’s known living languages. You’ll also be able to find more than 28,000 citations in the Ethnologue’s language research bibliography.

SocioSite:
Use this site from the University of Amsterdam to browse sociological subjects including activism, culture, peace, and racism.

The SocioWeb:
Check out this guide to find all of the sociological resources you’ll need on the internet. The SocioWeb offers links to articles, essays, journals, blogs, and even a marketplace.

WikiArc:
With this custom Google search engine, you can find open access articles about archaeology.

Encyclopedia of Psychology:
Search or browse the Encyclopedia of Psychology to find basic information, and even translations for information about psychology careers, organizations, publications, people, and history.

Anthropology Review Database:
Through this database, you can get access to anthropology reviews, look up publishers, and find resources available for review.

Anthropological Index Online:
This anthropological online search includes both general search of 4,000 periodicals held in The British Museum Anthropology Library as well as Royal Anthropological Institute films.

Political Information:
Political Information is a search engine for politics, policy, and political news with more than 5,000 carefully selected websites for political information.