FlowReader Makes It Easy To Transfer Google Reader Subscriptions

FlowReader Makes It Easy To Transfer Google Reader Subscriptions

I realize that many of you are already considering transferring your Google Reader subscriptions to Feedly, but I just came across this article and thought I share a little bit about FlowReader.  This of course is a free reader and it sounds like it is extremely easy to transfer everything from your Google Reader account.  What I find very cool is on the home page there is a button that says "Import your Google Reader feeds now."  Wow, can't make it any easier than that.  If you happen to have your subscriptions listed in categories, as I do, it will import those categories as well.  It also gives you the option to connect to your social media too.  So, if you haven't made the transition out of Google Reader yet, this may be a viable option for you.

Using Google Voice to Comment on Google Docs

Using Google Voice to Comment on Google Docs

I just saw this blog and thought that it was a must share with the class.  I know that many of you are using Google Docs with your students and I think that you might find this a valuable resource.  It is a pretty simple option, but like myself, I assume many of you were not aware of it.  Evidently, there is an option to leave voice comments on your students' Google Docs assignments.  I feel that this is an excellent resource and potentially a huge time saver for teachers, especially with projects.  I have linked to the blog that talks about it, but honestly the blog is pretty basic so I have also included a link to the YouTube video that explains how to create voice comments which is what the blog was in reply to.  Hope that you find this helpful and I would be interested in hearing if any of you already use this option.

Classroom Behavior? There's an App for That

Check this article about ClassDojo.  It is an App that lets teachers manage classroom behavior.  I'm still unsure if it something that I would/could use in my classroom but it truly seems amazing to me.  I am definitely going to explore it more this summer.  I really like the idea of parents getting weekly behavior reports.  I had a student this year that was constantly off-task and regularly disrupting others.  Every time I spoke with him, his response was "what, I have an A in this class?"  Obviously there were several calls home, but little changed.  I don't think he or mom made the connection that, yes he has an A but his behavior is distracting to others.  Well, this might be the right tool for that type of student.  Oh, and by the way, he didn't end up with an A.  Must be that off-task behavior finally caught up with him.

Watch2Gether - Watch and Discuss Videos Online

Watch2Gether - Watch and Discuss Videos Online

This sounds like a pretty nice option to give students doing group work or project.  Watch2Gether is a website that allows you to watch videos with other people and host a text chat at the same time.  Awesome, I know!!  Seems pretty easy.  Sounds like you create a username, choose a video using the URL and then invite friends into your chat room to watch and text about it.  Anybody ever use this in their classroom?

VideoANT

VideoANT- Collaboratively Annotate Videos

Check out this article about VideoANT.  It is a downloadable software that allows people to annotate videos. The best part about it is that it can be done collaboratively.  Imagine the use it could have in the classroom.  All you need is public videos, like anything from YouTube and your students are off.  Seems pretty cool.  The video can be annotated while it plays and to get others in on your work all you do is send them a VideoANT link, they don't even need an account.

Feedspot - A Simple Google Reader Replacement

Feedspot - A Simple Google Reader Replacement

So, if you are like me and already looking for options to switch from Google Reader when it ends this summer, I just read an article that you may to check out.  The article is about Feedspot and they compare it very closely to Google Reader.  The article does mention a couple other options like Feedly, Flipboard and The Old Reader but give several reasons why switching from Google to Feedspot may be good option.   Check out the link and you will also find a video explains why Feedspot is a good Google replacement.

Have any of you started a new RSS Reader account?  If so, what are you trying out?

Remind 101 - Safely Text Parents and Students

Remind 101 - Safely Text Parents and Students

I want to share this service with you all that I just read about.  It is called Remind 101.  This is a service that allows you to text reminders and messages to your students and their parents.  The best thing about it is that it is safe and secure.  No numbers for you or students and parents are ever identified.  Another great feature for this service is that you can schedule messages ahead of time to go out for reminders.  The selling point is that we all know how anxious we are to check our texts as soon as we receive them, but not nearly in as much of a hurry to check our email.  So this little text reminder might be the perfect thing to send out the night before a test or a major assignment is due.

It sounds like a pretty cool option to use and the best part is keeping your number private.  I suppose that those of you that are coaches could also set up an account for your teams.  Do any of you currently use this service or one similar to it?

Scrible - Bookmark, Annotate and Create Bibliographies

Scrible - Bookmark, Annotate and Create Bibliographies

I may have just found a competitor for Delicious when it comes to using a bookmarklet on your desktop.  I encourage you to check out Scrible.  While I don't think that I has quite the same social bookmarking capabilities that Delicious has, it does offer some pretty amazing tools that I find useful and that I could encourage my students to use.  Scrible offers the ability to do things like highlight, annotate, use sticky notes and change the font of websites that you bookmark.  The greatest part of all that is once you bookmark it and save it to Scrible, that is how the webpage will look to you the next time you visit it.  Imagine all the research time that is saved when you can highlight and take notes right on a page as you are researching it.  Save it and come back to it later and the notes are still there.  Scrible also has a feature that allows you create bibliographies while you work.  I recommend checking this one out.  It have great potential for our students.

Every Stock Photo

Every Stock Photo - Image Search Engine

For all of us out there struggling to find that exact image that we want that is also legal to use, I just read an article about www.everystockphoto.com.  Every Stock Photo is a photo search engine that searches for images that either have a CC license or that are in the public domain and gets the images from all over the internet.  No longer are we limited to the few photos that we can find using Google images.  While Flickr is a great resource, Every Stock Photo is now another place to look.  In addition, it is potentially a great tool to introduce to our students to show them  the wide variety of images that are available with appropriate licensing, however I did read a couples reviews that questioned the results of some of the searches.  

5 Great Activities from Read Write Think

5 Great Activities from Read Write Think

Have I mentioned how much I love getting the RSS feed from Free Technology 4 Teachers each day?  If you haven't subscribed to it, I highly recommend checking it out.  This article is about the website Read Write Think.  I has a lot of great resources for elementary teachers.  Now I thought that would exclude me, but I quickly found a few useful things and I know that many of you reading this blog will be able to find something useful too.  

The article highlights 5 things that you can do with the website.  Obviously most of them have to do with writing, but one option I found I thought I could really have some fun with.  This was a Trading Card creator.  There are so many things that I can do as a social studies teacher with this program.  Now is the perfect time of year for me to check it out and have my students create some trading cards.

Anyway, hopefully there is something there that you can find useful.  On a separate note, I came across the website Toondoo this morning while searching for a way for my students to create political cartoons.  I recommend checking it out too.  It is not quite as user friendly as something like GoAnimate but it will get the job done and students don't have to be artists to create their own cartoons.

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

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

I read this article found on the Free technology for Teachers blog that I subscribe to.  I s a list of websites used regularly by a school in Rock Valley, Iowa.  This school is has a 1:1 laptop to student ratio.  I am really sharing this article because it has links to 10 plus different technology sites that many of you many find interesting.  Let me highlight a couple of them.  

One site that you might want to check out if you make tutorials for your students is Screencast-o-matic.  This site seems easy to work with and you just record anything that you have on your screen.  Once completed you can upload your videos to YouTube.

Another site worth checking out would be Penzu.  Penzu is a free online journal or diary.  This is something that I thought could be used with student writing and a way that it can be done at school or at home without needing to take home any materials, or forget any materials either.

Again,  I highly recommend that you check out all the sites listed in the article.  As I looked them over I found myself add several of them to my Delicious account.

If any of you already use any of these sites and have any feedback for us, I'd love to hear it.

Play Games or Create Your Own Through YoYo Games

Play Games or Create Your Own Through YoYo Games

Ok, so even I can admit that my last Blog was kind of boring.  I think that some of you are going to love this website.  YoYo Games has a tool that lets you develop your own video games.  It is called Game Maker 8. There are 3 different versions.  A basic free version or a couple different upgrades that aren't very expensive, $50 and $100.  

The website also has tons of different games that you can currently play that have been developed by other people.  This product sounds like it could be a winner for many of us.  No longer will your students complain that assignments are boring and that they only like video games.  Now they can create their own video game based on whatever topic you are covering in class.  Go check it out.

How to Grow Your Own Film Academy

I saw this article Edutopia and it caught my attention.  I think that film making for students is a great way for many to express their creativity and for some to do things in front of students that they would never do in person.  

Actually I was about 1/3 of the way thorugh the article and about to give up on it when I saw these lines.  "Once he recognized the instructional value of digital storytelling, Bentley began taking advantage of local expertise to learn more about the craft of filmmaking." (Boss)  I was then hooked.  can this article give me more about a topic that is being introduced in our class this week.  Well, the answer was not really.  However, I did find a lot of useful information about how to use filmmaking in the classroom and some suggestions as to where to start if you wanted to create some type of after school club.  Several teachers at our building have been pushing our principal to allow our middle school students to produce video announcements.  Maybe this article will convince me to push a little bit harder.  We have talked about making it an elective class for some students to take.  I think if I can come up with a list of educational and informational videos that we could produce for the students body, I might have a case.  

Do any of your schools have student produced video announcements?

eduClipper Is What Teachers Want Pinterest To Be

eduClipper Is What Teachers Want Pinterest To Be

Ok.  So this may come as a shock to you all, but I'm not really a Pinterest kind of guy.  Whatever that means.  But I do know what Pinterest is and I do know several people that get a lot of ideas for both their everyday lives and their classrooms from Pinterest, so I saw this article and thought that I had to share it.  

This idea of eduClipper sounds amazing.  I wonder if it is like a combination of Delicious and Pinterest on steroids.  It seems that the users will be able to bookmark sites like with Delicious but then also add PPT, PDF, images and video to the site.  That sounds great and what an amazing tool to be able to share with colleagues.  The article also mentions that Google Drive documents can be added to eduClipper boards but that the truly amazing part that teachers will love is that you can create classes with class boards and allow students to access these class boards.  Teachers will have control over what can be shared and control over the comments that are posted. 

I can't wait to check this out in more detail.  I guess it is getting added to my long list of things that I want to do with my classes.  By the way, that list is getting so long that I am being to wonder where I should even start.  C'mon technology, slow down!!!!! :)

Nearpod Homework - A New Option for Sharing Lessons Over iPads

Nearpod Homework - A New Option for Sharing Lessons Over iPads

I came across this article on a feed that I subscribe to called Free Technology for Teachers.  It is about a service for iPad users that delivers lesson and polls and other things to your students.  It is called Nearpod.  Unfortunately I do not have an iPad classroom but there are a few that are being piloted in our district and one of my closest friends and colleagues teachers in one.  So this obviously caught my attention and I forwarded the story on to him.  

Nearpod is now available as Nearpod Homework and teachers can send their students presentations and assignments that students can work on at home or in class.  The great thing about it is that a report is also generated for the teacher to see how their students are responding to the assignments.  

I realize that there are plenty of other websites that teachers can use that do similar things but I thought that this is a great way to streamline many of those sites into one neatly delivered service for your iPad classroom.

Any of you that teach in an iPad classroom might want to take the time to check out Nearpod.   

Anybody already using this service and want to give feedback?  

Is the Cell Phone the New Pencil?

Edutopia

This article really grabbed my attention because it jumped out with a statement about the poor writing skills of students today.  I was hooked.  Where are they going with this because cell phones and texting surely are not helping our students become better writers.  I know that I see it all the time in assignments that are turned in to me.  One minute the essay makes sense and the next minute it is like I am reading a text.  OMG did they really just put that in their paper:)  

After the initial "hook" the article went on to say that "the students we teach today write more than any generation in human history." (Grabill)  Where are they going with this?  Ok, I can buy that idea, but they surely don't write the best.  The article gave evidence supporting that our students write nearly as much for their own personal fulfillment as they do for homework assignments.  I can agree with that.  They email, text and Facebook and they definitely do that more than they spend on any of my writing assignments.  The findings were important, but the biggest surprise to the author was that the statistics pointed to how much students use handheld devices as there main writing tool.  Why not allow students to use their cell phones in class.  They might even use them for something worth while like taking notes or writing their papers, as awkward as that may be.  We have a generation of students that have grown up with cell phones.  It is time to use them to our advantage and as a tool of engagement for our students.  

Hi everybody.  This is my first blog and I really don't have much to say.  Just thought I'd give it a shot.  Feeling a little overwhelmed right now with this class.  Just so much new stuff.  I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough.