EdTech Roundup for 12/11/11: Skype Lecturing, Parent Communication, and Art Teacher Tools
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Lecture Hall + Skype = Goosebumps
Think using Skype in the classroom might be difficult? The Edtech Digest blog talks about Professor John Boyer's 3,000 seat lecture hall SKYPING with Burmese democracy leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi in early December. If he can do it, anyone can. You can find more of Prof. Boyer's amazing lectures here. He's also had students use parody Twitter accounts as part of the coursework, and also holds office hours via video chat. It's no surprise there's now a waiting list to take his course.
Delivering Bad News Is Never Easy
If you're in the throes of December conferences, Cindi Rigsbee at TeachHub.com writes about 4 Communication Tips To Use When Confronting Parents. She offers some useful insights into how to see things from a parent's point of view. Keeping these tips in mind will help when things get tricky, like having to deliver bad news about academics or behavior issues.
The Art of Technology
The Teaching Palette Blog has a joyful list of 10 Best Web Tools For Art Teachers, which include surprise like using QR codes, Twitter, WallWisher, Pinterest and even Google Maps. Even if you are not an art teacher, you will be inspired to use some of these tools in your classroom.
App Of the Week: On Air
If you or your students need a teleprompter app to practice public speaking, this FREE app is a handy tool to have on your podium. Its simple interface will let you control font color, font size, scroll speed, background color, and toggle a 3 second countdown. It's currently available only for the iPad, but will be coming soon for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Available in the iTunes store.
EdTech RoundUp 12/4/11: Mid-East Studies, Scale, and Gmail Hand-Ins
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Essential Resources for Teaching About The Middle-East
Teaching the MIddle East, a new online resource for educators who teach Middle Eastern history, strives to provide teachers with "a rich, reliable, and easily accessible resource that draws upon sound humanities scholarship to help build student understanding of Middle Eastern history and culture." Basically an expansive digital library created by the Middle Eastern scholars at the University of Chicago, the site has 18 learning modules, including extensive lesson plans for high school teachers.
That's a Coffee Bean Atom!
The Whiteboard Blog writes about two applications that can be used to help students visualize a sense of scale. The first, the Cell Size and Scale Interactive, provides a zoomed-in look at objects that can go right down to the atom. The second, The Scale of the Universe, allows users to start small and zoom out to the galaxy. Both are useful tools for comparing relative size of objects in our universe.
Put Gmail To Work As Your Classroom Inbox
If you have tablets like iPads in your classroom but haven't found an efficient way to collect work that the students create on those devices, then check out this article from the Learning At Hand blog. Tony Vincent explains how to make Gmail work for your tablet devices in your classroom. You may find this the ideal option for collecting and organizing the work from all of those devices.
App Of the Week: The Multiplication Table App
This app from gives the user a wonderfully visual way to manipulating and exploring the multiplication table. Purely an exploratory tool, it contains no quizzes, badges or timers - a pressure-free way for visual learners to explore groupings. It's available for the iPad only at the iTunes store.
PlanbookEdu's EdTech Roundup 11/27/11: Audacity's Wiki, iPad Changes the Science Classroom, and Classroom Management
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Audacity's Wiki Offer Useful Tips and Tricks
If you are a regular user of the audio recording software Audacity, or if you'd like to get started with it, check out the Audacity Wiki first. It offers a "Getting Started" and "Troubleshooting" Guides, as well as advanced user tips and tutorials. If you need some ideas on how you can use a tool like Audacity in the classroom, check out Keri Lee Beasley's "Ten Great Ways To Use Audacity With Your Students" and this expansive comment thread from Classroom 2.0. You'll be ready to make your first recording in no time.
The iPad Changes the Science Classroom
The Tech Tools 4 Teaching Blog has a roundup of several ways that iPads can enhance a science classroom. The blog discusses how inquiry-based teaching in Earth Sciences is particularly challenging, because there's no way to experience, for example, a live earthquake. However, with certain apps available to the iPad and other tablet devices, students can learn though animated diagrams, videos, overlays, real-time data and other means that would not have been accessible just a few years ago. Something to be thankful for, indeed.
Classroom Management in the Computer Lab
Often, the biggest hurdle to using technology in the classroom isn't the tech tools, but rather the management of the students using the tools. The latest and greatest tech tools are not going to help your students if you do not have basic classroom management and routines down pat. The Cornerstone Blog for Teachers offers super helpful advice for setting up and managing lessons in a computer lab. Even if your students work on a mobile lab, you'll find helpful tips to make the best use of your technology time with any technology device.
App Of the Week: History: Maps of the World
This resourceful and *free* app is a must for every social studies and history student. Instead having to access bulky atlases and oversized archival maps, History: Maps of the World puts them at your fingertips. Zoom in/out, and search by keyword. There are maps for many different eras, all with the sources listed. Find it free at the iTunes store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
PlanbookEdu's EdTech Roundup 11/20/11: Sistine Chapel, iPad Labs, and Scary Lollipops
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
360 Degree Art History
The EdTech Toolbox writes about the virtual tour of The Sistine Chapel that will blow your mind. The 360-degree interactive tour, created by The Vatican itself, will be useful for architecture, religious history, and art history studies. It's easier than traveling there and more fun than looking at photos in books. You can find other Art History resources on Christopher L.C.E. Whitcombe's Art History Resources page, including links to virtual tours of other famous museums and galleries.
Get the Complete Picture On the Cost of iPads
Jeff Dunn at Edudemic writes about the costs of an iPad lab for your school/classroom and gives you links to break down the true cost. For instance, you'll definitely want to get the Applecare extended warranty, and kid-proof cases. Don't forget about the VGA cable to hook them up to a projector, and a cart to house and charge them at night. The article can help you decide if 1:1 tablet-style computing is right for your school or classroom from a budget point of view.
How Can A Lollipop Protect Your Privacy?
Are your students up to date on your Facebook privacy apps? Fractus Learning writes about Facebook app called "Take This Lollipop," designed to show Facebook users, especially younger ones, how much of your personal information is out there for all to see. It's a bit shocking, you've been warned. Good thing "shocking" is a good way to get tweens and teens engaged in the topic!
App of the Week: My Word Wall
Punflay's My Word Wall app is great for emergent readers. It offers a friendly user interface, over 75 sight words, and 12 word families with 65 word family words to say, hear, and speak. It's available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch for $0.99.
EdTech Roundup for 11/13/11: Plagiarism, Audacity, and 39 Clues
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Common Craft's New Video Explains Plagiarism
Lee Kolbert writes about Common Craft's new video on her educator's blog, A Geeky Momma's Blog. The video explains in a way that everyone can understand, what plagiarism is and how to avoid doing it. Common Craft has a wonderful selection of video that explain concepts simply. It's a subscription service that offers special pricing for educators and non-profits, and once you're a member, you can embed videos into blogs,just like Kolbert did.
Audacity: Why Every Educator Should Use It
Beth Crumpler at the adaptivelearnin Blog writes an extensive chronicle on using Audacity, the free (and easy) audio recording/podcasting tool to boost students' literacy skills. She writes for beginners or those who do not think of themselves as tech-savvy. When you're done reading that, if you have ESL students in your class, check out her Sight Word Acquisition Book and MP3 file. This is a great example of teachers helping parents in order to help the students.
39 Clues: The Holiday eBook Release
As if this series couldn't get any cooler, Scholastic will be releasing 7 stand-alone short stories collectively called The 39 Clues: Rapid Fire (authors TBD, but there's talk of RIck Riordan and David Baldacci for starts) between Christmas and New Year's Day, each for 99 cents. The stories will contain codes that unlock exclusive online content. This sounds like a great gift for the holiday break and a fun way make the eBook experience unique.
App of the Week: Famous Quotes
"Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves." ~Abbé Dimnet, Art of Thinking, 1928 50,000 quotes in your pocket? Why not? This free app will let you search and explore by author, or just shake your device and have a new quote delivered randomly. Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. If you have an Android Device, try the Favorite Quotes for free.