Here are 12 awesome tips to make your iPhone and iPad more useful.
Do You Know All These Useful iOS Features?
Category: iPhone, iPad, iPod
We Remember What We ‘Do’
Feel free to download a full-sized version of this poster for use in your school.
Related Resources
Maker Education: A Quick Introduction
Journey from a Makerspace to a Maker District
Building the Future: Tinkering and Playful Learning
The Maker Movement in K-12 Education: A Guide to Emerging Research
Invent to LearnThe Maker Movement in K-12 Education: A Guide to Emerging Research
Nearpod: Make Your Lectures Interactive
Teachers share a live session, students enter a code (no student accounts needed), and the lesson is synced to all devices.
Why Nearpod?
Nearpod also allows you to add interactivity and instant assessments to your presentation. Interactivity includes quickly polling students, annotating on their screens, completing matching pairs, trying out computer simulations, viewing 3D models, sharing collaboration boards, and more. You can also ask multiple-choice, open-ended, or fill-in-the blank questions. Additionally, Nearpod integrates with LMS’s like Google Classroom, Canvas, and Schoology.
How to use Nearpod?
You can create your lesson from scratch within the program or quickly import existing lessons (pdfs, jpegs, ppts). There are also many lessons available in the Nearpod library. You can choose to show or hide student names as you move through the activities. However, you will have a record of each student’s engagement and can even deploy a student-paced quiz through Nearpod. The program provides detailed analytics and reporting.
Examples of Nearpod.
The following video from Nearpod provides an overview of the program.
Click here to explore lessons in Nearpod’s library.
Guest Blogger: Raina Burditt
Watching the International Space Station Pass Over Us
Our oldest and I enjoyed an early breakfast and watching the International Space Station pass right over our home. It’s amazing to see how fast it’s traveling (about 5 miles per second) as it orbits the Earth about 15 times per day.
I’m really enjoying the apps that make it fun and easy to track and learn about the Space Station. I strongly recommend you give one or more of these a try.
Apps I Use
- ISS Spotter app
- Space Station Live iOS app
- NASA app, especially the HD ISS views
- IFTTT’s ISS Text Alerts
Google’s New Sun Map Indicates Whether Your Rooftop Needs a Solar Panel
“The initiative, which the Mountain View giant initially launched almost two years ago, essentially leverages visual data from Maps and Earth to generate 3D models of the total amount of sunlight that reaches your roof.” – The Next Web
Check out Google’s blog post for full details.
Pokémon Go Automatically Granting Permission to Read Your Gmail
The Verge is reporting that “Pokémon Go has become wildly popular in the days since its release last week, but the app may be hiding a serious security issue. In many cases, users who sign into the app through a Google Account are often inadvertently granting broad permissions over all information linked to the account, including the power to read and send emails. At no point in the sign-in process does the app notify users that full access is being granted” (Source). Read more at The Verge.
Perhaps the app developer will correct this issue in the near future.
Easily Turn Video into Engaging Lessons with EDpuzzle
Larry Ferlazzo describes EDpuzzle as “a new innovative site that lets you take just about any video off the web, edit it down to the portions you want, add audio notes and questions for students, and create virtual classrooms where you can monitor individual student work” (Source). Perhaps the best part is that teachers and students can use it for FREE.
To see an example, view Bobby Barber’s EDpuzzle that he uses in his math classroom.
Getting Started
The following quick demo will help you begin using EDpuzzle.
Flipped Learning and EDpuzzle
“EDPuzzle is a great resource for the flipped classroom, allowing teachers to create and present innovative lectures in a safe environment” according to Education World. Further, iLearn Technology notes that as “students watch, [the teacher] can check understanding and ensure active watching vs. passive watching. In a flipped scenario, this gives you the ability to completely tailor a lesson the next day based on the formative assessment results you get from homework. This is truly utilizing assessment to inform instruction.”
Educational Connections
EDpuzzle can be used:
- In flipped classrooms (as discussed above).
- To make lecturecasts, tutorials, video directions, etc. more engaging and interactive.
- For compiling data and information about students’ performance, and perhaps understanding, which can helpful formative assessment.
- So that students can annotate video reflections, recorded reports and skits, and more.
- To allow students to develop tutorials and quizzes about the current topic of study. Putting students in the teacher’s role can encourage higher-levels of thinking.
EdTech Showcase in Memphis
Join us on Thursday, June 18th, for the EdTech Summer Showcase at the University of Memphis. This event will be hosted by the Instructional Design and Technology Program and will feature outstanding Mid-South teachers demonstrating ways that they effectively integrate technology and learning. You won’t want to miss this fantastic opportunity to gain new ideas for your classroom.
Register soon as seating is limited.
Sounds Good to Me: Learning and Digital Audio
Yesterday, at the Mississippi Educational Computing Association Conference, I had the opportunity to share ideas for integrating digital audio with teaching and learning. One of my doctoral students, Fair Josey, collaborated with me on this workshop. I’m sharing the workshop information and resources here in response to inquiries I received last night via Twitter and Facebook. I hope that you find this useful and invite you to share your ideas for using digital audio in the classroom and at home.
Workshop Description
Enable students to make their thinking visible through the use of digital audio. Learn how recorded tutorials and messages, storycasts, book trailers, audio chatting and commenting, teacher recorded feedback, and more can enable students to engage with course content inside and outside the classroom and better equip parents to help with homework. Several freely available websites and apps will be demonstrated. Strategies for designing lessons and practical tips for implementation will be shared. Connections to special education, foreign language, and ELL classrooms will also be made.
You can view the workshop slides – which include video tutorials, links to examples of student projects, and more – by clicking on the image below. All the workshop materials and resources are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
Sounds Good to Me: Learning and Digital Audio #edtech #mlearning
Yesterday I had the opportunity to teach a workshop as part of our IDT Program‘s Teachers and Technology Thursdays (T3) series. I’m sharing the workshop information and resources here in response to inquiries I received last night via Twitter and Facebook. I hope that you find this useful and invite you to share your ideas for integrating audio with teaching and learning.
Workshop Description
Enable students to make their thinking visible through the use of digital audio. Learn how recorded tutorials and messages, storycasts, book trailers, audio chatting and commenting, teacher recorded feedback, and more can enable students to engage with course content inside and outside the classroom and better equip parents to help with homework. Several freely available websites and apps will be demonstrated. Strategies for designing lessons and practical tips for implementation will be shared.
You can view the workshop slides – which include video tutorials, links to examples of student projects, and more – by clicking on the image below.
