Resources
Creative Commons and Copyright
A fun video clarifying this great content-finding and sharing resource.
Quick Overview of Digital Portfolios
.Ed Tech Websites
EdTechTeacher
Books
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
What the Best College Teacher Do by Ken Bain
Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashly Merryman
Make it Stick: the science of successful learning by Peter C. Brown
Conscious Business: how to build value with values by Fred Kofman
Drive and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Brain Matters: translating research into classroom practice by Patricia Wolfe
.Conferences
Two TED talks by different educators working with different student groups but coming to a similar conclusion about giving ownership and authenticity to kids:
Don't Call it a Classroom: Kevin Brookhouser at TEDx Monterey
Kids, Take Charge: Kiran Bir Sethi
.Resources for "Feedback Channels and Choices:
Three Modes of Essay Feedback"
Presented at CUE, Napa, CA, October 25, 2013. Comparison of students' and teachers' experience of feedback via PDF mark-up, Google Docs comments, and PDFs with spoken, written, "stamped," and typed comments.
Rob's findings and presentation
"Key findings in evaluating feedback modes" --my summary
iAnnotate
"Reading and hearing voice-annotated PDFs" --my iAnnotate instructions page
"iPadagogy - App Tutorial - iAnnotate PDF Tutorial" --YouTube tutorial
Google Docs
"Tips for Teachers: Power Commenting in Google Docs" --YouTube tutorial
"Docs, Sheets, and Slides" --Google's getting started guide
"Google Docs on iPad and Computer" --My guide to managing iPad-laptop docs workflow
Notability
"Notability Review for Med School" --YouTube tutorial
My Notability cheat sheet --My guide to Notability features
Explain Everything
Explain Everything screencast, iPad to YouTube workflow --my EE workflow page
"Explain Everything Tutorial 1" --YouTube tutorial
Kaizena
"Giving Students Feedback With Kaizena (Voice Comments) Tutorial" --YouTube tutorial for using Kaizena to insert voice comments in Google Docs
Dan Pink's three elements of motivation from Drive:
1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives.
2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters.
3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
Some favorite tools that let students become creators of content while synthesizing their learning
.TouchCast
Embed interactive web pages, videos, maps, images, and more into a video you film on an iPad. My resources page., here is a demo to showcase some ideas for classroom use.
.Annotated Google maps with My Maps
Insert pins, lines, and shapes in Google maps that open to reveal text, videos, and images students have created. Great for novels with various settings, for history classes, science, language--any topic with significant locations.
My Maps Introduction (formerly Maps Engine Lite)
.Thinglink
Thinglink is an easy tool to insert links into any image. Scrolling over or clicking the links opens up text, images, videos, audio, maps, and links the students have created. Here is my resources page.
.Wix
Wix is an amazing, and amazingly free, website creation tool. It has hundreds of templates to pick from with placeholder images and text. I give student pairs an hour and a list of tasks: rename menu tabs, replace images and text, insert links, embed a video, etc. By the end, they have enjoyed making practice sites, have needed zero instruction from me, and are ready to create and share their own sites. Effective help resources here, too. I make and publish this site through Wix.
.HSTRY.co
HSTRY is a great timeline-making web app. It works well on laptops or iPads, and it lets you insert videos, videos, quizzes, and other elements along with your text. It's intended for history students, but it can easily be repurposed for science, literature, language, and more. Here is a project assignment involving hstry's tool.
Screenflow
Screenflow is the application I use to make my screencast videos. With Screenflow 5 and a newer iPad, you can now capture your iPad's screen to create videos as well.
.Haiku Deck
The Haiku Deck iPad app is a quick and easy way to create elegant presentations. There are a limited but effective array of layout options, and it comes with hundreds of free images to use. You can also use pictures that you take or find. This way, the focus is on the content rather than on trying to master a complicated tool. Featured decks
.Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a great way to distribute and collect assignments and student work while keeping all the associated Docs organized. Here is a good screencast explaining set up and use:
Google Classroom Tutorial by Ashley Reisbig
.Curated ideas
My Pinterest board on iPads and Tech --Here I have pinned dozens of articles and resources related to teaching and learning with technology.
.Notability
Notability is a fantastic note-taking and annotating iPad app. You can write legibly with zoom writing, type, record audio, import web content, use your images, write on PDFs, draw, and more. My Notability cheat sheet
.Google Plus
I'm enjoying expanding my use of Google+ professionally, and I'm exploring its use in the classroom. Martin Shervington is a G+ guru with a website full of excellent tutorials and resources. He's more business-focussed, so I use his site for technical learning. Here is a presentation I gave on my first semester using Plus in the classroom.
.Transform your Doc into a webpage
In your Google Doc, go to File --> Publish to the web. It will give you a long URL and the option to have your page automatically updated whenever you change the original Doc. Use the long URL, or shorten it in one of two ways: 1) use Google Shortener, which will abridge the long ugly URL to a short ugly one, and you can also see analytics under "Details" (which can allow you to see how many views a resource has had on a given day). Or, go to Bitly.com, paste the long, ugly URL and have Bitly create a short, still-ugly but editable shortcut URL. It will also provide analytics. Another tip, put your Doc's content in single-cell table in order to control how it will look when published.
Save as a Doc
Turn spreadsheet responses generated by a Google Form into a readable Doc.
A Shared Culture
A nice rationale for Creative Commons
.Google Sites
Sites is Google's free webpage-making tool. Compared to Wix, I find it lacks both elegance and functionality. I can direct pairs of students to Wix, and 87 minutes later, they have all made a site with their own videos, images, text, tabs, etc. I wouldn't feel confident they could do the same with Sites. However, there are a few huge benefits to Sites. One is how powerfully it ties in with content from a student's Google Drive. Another is that a teacher can make a site, then assign editing privileges to specific students for specific pages. That means students can do a group project, yet it's clear who contributed what, so credit can be given where due. For schools using Google, Sites can also allow students to fairly easily create portfolios with choice content from each semester.
My site Working with G Sites has short screencasts that tell you much of what you need to know to make a Site / portfolio.
My Pinewood Portfolio Template can be customized by any student at any school to create a compelling site.
Here is a collaborative website my ninth graders created with mythology resources, including custom Google maps they made: Mythology Resources 2014-15
“The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.”
― Thomas A. Edison