December 12th, 2014 - Holiday Links

Happy Snowy Friday everyone!!

This week, I have a couple holiday suggestions for you, which may be useful in your classroom or as links you can send home to parents to keep students learning over the holidays.

First, NORAD Tracks Santa (http://www.noradsanta.org - also available

as an app for iPhone and iPad).  The North American Aerospace Defense Command has set up Santa’s sleigh with a radar system so they are able to track him as he travels around the world making his deliveries.  This is great fun for students to watch as he travels all the countries of the world and there are even some videos of him visiting important landmarks.  Until he begins his journey, the website lets you watch the Big Countdown, play games and learn more about Santa. 

Christmas Around The World.  (http://www.whychristmas.com/)  This website lets students explore a variety of countries from around the world and view videos and descriptions of their holiday celebrations and traditions.  There are explanations of the customs and symbols of this time.

New Year’s Traditions Around the World (http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm). This website contains brief descriptions of New Year’s traditions from countries around the world as well as how to say ‘Happy New Year’ in many different languages.   What a great way to remember that the world is a much larger space that what we interact with on a day-to-day basis. 

Finally, a reminder that our very own UG2GO has a link to LEARN 360, which has a multitude of holiday videos for both educational and entertainment purposes. A simple search of holiday and the appropriate grade level returns various movies including ‘Holiday Facts And Fun’ for Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Multicultural Christmas.  Other videos include The Polar Express, The Nutcracker and The Night Before Christmas.

Have a great weekend!

                                                       Cheers,

                                                       Stace

November 28th - Quick and Easy with QR Codes

Happy Friday everyone,

Recently, during our daily five rotations my students have been having difficulty accessing (and staying on) the webpages I have assigned for ‘Listen to Reading’.  I often set up the iPad on the Tumblebooks, or other website I wish to have them choose a story to listen to, and once the story is over, they are unaware of how to return to this page to access another book.  As a result, I have begun utilizing QR codes to assist students in accessing the webpages I would like them using.

These QR, or Quick Response codes are popping up all over the grocery and retail stores and now they are making their way into education as well.  They are a type of bar code which allows a ‘reader’ to link to related information in the form of a website.    By installing an app with a QR scanner/generator (such as ‘Qrafter – QR Code and Barcode Reader and Generator’ - free), teachers can create their own codes and have students scan them to access websites quickly and easily.   

By visiting a QR code generator website (http://www.qr-code-generator.com/) and entering the web address of the page I would like ‘coded’, a unique QR code is created which you can download and paste into a document.  Once the document has been printed out, students simply scan the code with the iPad and it takes them right to the page I want them to be on quickly and easily – and with out interrupting the conferences I am having with students.

With December right around the corner, I have decided to begin celebrating the holidays early with a draw for a $25 LCBO or Tim Hortons gift card! To enter simply click on the following link and enter your email address. http://goo.gl/7tzqx4 I will draw a random name on Thursday, December 4^th and announce the winner in next week’s Tech Tidbits.

Good Luck and have a great week!

Stace 

October 17, 2014 – A 'Remind'er To Connect With Parents

Happy Friday everyone!

This week I’d like to highlight a tool, which can assist you in keeping in contact with your student’s family without giving up your privacy and still maintaining a professional relationship.  The app Remind (https://www.remind.com/ formerly Remind 101) allows the parents of your students, or students themselves if you teach more senior grades, to sign up to receive text messages from you without them seeing your personal cell phone number. 

As a teacher, you simply go to the remind.com website and sign up for a free account then begin by creating a name for your class (i.e. My Grade 4s or Language period 2).  When you click create, you will be given a phone number and text message to have parents/students connect with your ‘classroom’.  Send this code and phone number home with students and ask parents to text the message to the number indicated.  To make it even easier, when you log into your classroom, there is a blue ‘Download Instructions’ box on the right hand side and when you click it, you receive a printable page with all of the information you can send home to the families.  If parents are not able to accept text messages, they can receive the same messages via email.  These instructions are available on the handout, which is sent home to parents too.

Messages can be sent from your computer via the remind.com website, or on your mobile device by downloading the free Remind app.  Simply type the message into the indicated text box on the website or app and the message will be sent to all subscribers.  Messages can also be pre-loaded and sent at scheduled times.  There is no option for replying to texts; so all inquiries will need to go through your school email or voicemail.  Finally, you are also able to send photos, files and voice clips through the application, and if students transfer out of your class or when the year is complete, they can unsubscribe to your messages by simply messaging unsubscribe and the class code to the text number (instructions on the downloaded handout).

Personally, I feel this is a great way to keep parents and students up to date with all the events occurring in the class.  I hope you enjoy it as well.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Stace

June 13, 2014 – Story Telling Made Easy

Happy Friday the thirteenth!!

Today I’d like to share a story making and presentation app that offers many 

options and can quickly turn your own voice recordings into animated presentations with just a few taps.  Adobe Voice is a free story making app that is simple to use and walks you through the process step by step to help create animated videos in minutes.

Once the app is downloaded, you can choose from the pre-made templates such as ‘tell what happened’, ‘show and tell’ or ‘explain something’ or take creative license into your own hands and choose to ‘make up my own’.  Once you have chosen your theme then simply

tap and hold the microphone button while you speak into the iPad to record single sentence snippets of your story.  Next, you can match the spoken words with one of the over 25000 images/icons included in the app or choose to use one of your own from the iPad, Facebook, or simply take one with the iPad camera.  Adobe Voice will add in the animation and background music turning your simple story into a work of art. 

I particularly liked the prompts at the bottom of the page which shows the basic steps in story creating (Who, when and where, this happened, how it ended, etc.) There are options to add text to your story, change the layout of the images, and add your own choice of music or even background themes and colours.  Finally, make your story viewable by the public or keep it private and share your story with others via email, Facebook, twitter or share by message. 

Cheers,

Stace

May 9, 2014 - Haiku Deck and a Freebie for our Fabulous Teachers

Happy Friday everyone!!

I am sure that everyone has become tired of the tried and true power point presentations and has experienced the prospective motion sickness when the ‘Prezi’ frames move about too quickly on the screen.   This week I would like to introduce you to a new option which you (and your students) can use to create and edit presentations online and on the web – Haiku Deck.

Haiku Deck is a free iPad/iPhone app (Haiku Deck) and online web tool (haikudeck.com) that lets you create presentations with over 35 million fantastic images and 6 presentation themes.  By creating an account and clicking on ‘New Deck’ you can begin creating your unique and colourful presentation.  The unique feature that Haiku Deck offers is that you can save your presentation on one web tool (i.e. iPad) and retrieve it from your home computer and vice versa.  Additionally, when you are creating your slides, simply type in a key word (i.e. anxiety, books, biology) and Haiku Deck searches the web and locates Creative Commons licensed images for you to use.   If you would rather, you can add your own images or screen shots to the deck from your photo stream, Instagram, Facebook page, Flickr, Picasa or Google Drive, then share your finished presentations on a variety of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Slideshare.  You can even hook your phone or iPad up to a projector and present directly from it, embed the deck in a blog or website, or download a PDF version to use for a handout.  The iPad app version of Haiku Deck allows you to include private notes to guide your presentation or public notes for everyone to view as they follow along.  Decks can be published with three different privacy settings – private to be viewed only by you, restricted to be viewed only by those you grant permission to and public which is available for anyone to view and search out on Google.

One favourite feature of Haiku Deck is the user friendly format.  When you are not sure how to begin or where to go next, simply click on the question mark in the upper right hand corner and you will immediately view an overlay which describes the possible actions available to you.   Once you decide what you would like to do next, simply click on the screen and the overlay disappears to allow you to continue creating.

Finally, in honour of teacher’s appreciation week, Haiku Deck has offered to give teachers ANY OF THEIR PREMIUM THEMES FOR FREE.  Just open up the iPad app tap on Themes, and select any locked theme showing a green $ in the corner, and it’s your for free – but only until May 10^th!!

I hope that you find Haiku deck to be a useful and productive tool for yourself and your students.

Cheers,

Stace