Tuesday, July 17, 2012

IPad Resources

 Several of our educators added an IPad to their personal toolbox this summer, some even already had an IPad. Either way, if you own an IPad, here are some great IPad resources. Thanks to the Cool Cat Teacher Blog for these resources. Personally, I plan on adding "Skitch" to my IPad and playing around with it before school starts up again here in a month.

Link to Skitch being talked about in Evernote forum (Evernote is another GREAT resource and App!!)

PDF containing 20 IPad apps for educators and education

Awesome Apps in Education Review and Collection Site click here (If you teach or have kids AND have an Ipad or have kids/students with an IPad, you need to follow this blog. Great stuff!!







Monday, July 9, 2012

Nutrition and Media Infographic for Young People. Amazing!

Thank you to Larry Ferlazzo and his Websites of the Day blog, I found this infographic about the nutrition, or lack of nutrition our young people are getting. It also contains some information about their habits and what media and media advertisements they are exposed to. The "results" section is probably the most alarming.  Click on Larry's blog by clicking here to read and see more.

Here is one part of the infographic, but there is a 2nd smaller infographic on his blog post.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

ShowMe and Educreations: IPad Lesson Creation Tools

I have been using Educreations just for fun for some time now and I know of a few schools and educators who use Educreations for their students and parents. I just learned about ShowMe as an alternative to Educreations. I think both are pretty cool sites with tons of use and possibilities for educators. If you have an IPad (you don't necessarily need one), you can create quick visual lessons and post them to the site, email them, or provide a link for others to click on and then they can view your lessons. So, you could show how to do a few different math problems and explain it out loud while you draw on the "board" and record the whole process. Then, students and families could view your lesson over and over at home, especially while they are doing their nightly homework. So, the lessons you do during the day can now be viewed at home. And students would not need an IPad to view, just access to the Internet. Selfishly, I also love having my own kids draw and talk while they draw and then email them to other family members. But you could have your own students do problems or homework as a "lesson" and you could hear what they are thinking. They could even record their own lessons for other students and become the teacher. Lots of uses. And lots of fun!

ShowMe website click here!

Educreations site click here!

ShowMe Story Video:

Nearly 200 Google Tricks!

Dang....I need to read this list a few times and try some of these. A quick look through and I found a few that I need to try and a few more that I should be doing already but I am not. Great list for both students and educators. In fact, you could probably have students spend some time working with the list and learning some things about their google accounts and just how to use google better in general. And then they can report back to you on some of the cool things they found out and teach you how to do the tricks. Have fun!

181 Google Tips and Tricks!

PicMonkey for Art, Literacy, or Science Collages

Not sure where this might fit in the school curriculum, but maybe art, literacy, or even social studies. If you are looking for a project idea and are thinking of having students make a collage of what they have learned, PicMonkey might be a great site for students to try. No email registration needed and I got my collage started just seconds after getting to the website. Students could make a science collage of an animal or concept they are studying, make an art collage, or even a collage that shows what they learned about a book they recently read. Lots of uses, but play around with it first to see how you might use it. Also, you can use the collage feature to make your Facebook banner picture at the top of your profile page. Another fun feature of this site! Give it a try this summer!





PicMonkey click here!