Newsletter January 26, 2015

VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 11 | 01.23.2015 Contributors: Janice Hirst

Kingwood Elementary

The (almost entirely)

Craig Canterbury Brandon Anderson Ripley High School

Logan High School

FREE

Resource Edition!

Carefully mined and curated educational resources from around the World Wide Web.

DONORS CHOOSE: SUPPORTING EDUCATORS NATIONWIDE Do you have a special project that you would like to implement with your students but don’t have the funding?

Then you might want to check out Donors Choose. Donors Choose (www.donorschoose.org) is an online charity that matches donors with K-12 students and schools in need.

Teachers create a free account and post the project(s) that they would like to do with their students on the Donors Choose web site. On the proposal form the teacher lists the exact supplies or

equipment that is needed and tells how it will benefit the students. Donors are able to contribute $1 or more to projects that interest them. If your project is fully funded within the time limits, then DonorsChoose.org buys the supplies or equipment. They are then shipped directly to your school. Teachers and classrooms whose projects are funded send thank you letters to their donors as well as photographs of the project implementation.

West Virginia teachers and students

SIMPLYCIRCLE SimplyCircle (www.simplycircle.com) is a web site that can be used to improve communication between teachers and parents.

Signup is free for both teachers and parents. Teachers can post messages, upload documents such as permission slips, create events, ask for volunteers, share photos, etc. The teacher can communicate simultaneously with all parents on the class roster or message an individual parent for a private conversation.

Features included are morning reminders, Daily Digest Email, and weekly planners.

Creation of an account is free and secure.

Cut and paste parent email addresses and invite them to join your circle. Once they join, their email addresses are hidden to everyone but you unless you designate homeroom parents as administrators.

have benefited immensely from this worthwhile endeavor. West Virginia teachers and schools have had almost 2,000 projects funded and received nearly $890,000.00 in equipment and supplies! So, get your technology project needs and ideas in mind and focus on how they will improve education for our students and check out Donors Choose today!

This issue contains a number of free (or very nearly free) resources, including:         

Source: http://simplycircle.com



Donor’s Choose SimplyCircle Plickers Go Noodle Visme iPad Resources Chrome Extensions EDPuzzle Blendspace Literably

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PLICKERS Does your school lack the funding for a clicker system for engaging students in quick formative assessments? Many students do not have access to Smartphones or tablets for a bring your own device to school initiative that would allow use of applications such as Socrative or Kahoot. Many school districts also do not allow student devices to access school networks. If any of these scenarios apply to you, then Plickers might be right for you.

Plickers (www.plickers.com) is a free app available for both android and iOS devices. Only the teacher needs to

download the app on a mobile device in order to scan student responses.

Students do not need to download anything. The teacher creates a class on the website. Plickers use the teacher’s mobile device in conjunction with a grouping of QR codes to create a response system. Codes are assigned to students and cards should be printed out on cardstock. Cards can be turned to four orientations to indicate an answer choice. Questions and answers are generated under the Live View tab on the site. The cards are scanned by the teacher’s mobile device which must

GO NOODLE

EDPUZZLE

Often it is really difficult to get students to focus and sometimes they just need a “brain break”. A terrific free resource to engage elementary students and get the wiggles out is Go Noodle (www.gonoodle.com). On this web site a teacher registers and creates a class. The class then chooses a “Champ,” a virtual mascot, to guide them through the exercises. As the class earns minutes needed to advance to the next level, their Champ grows in size. There is no setup, equipment, or prep time needed for the activities. Brain Breaks on the site are available for subject transitions, getting the wiggles out, breaks perfect for math practice, morning meeting, review before a test, breaks for the energetic classroom, ELA practice, and the afternoon slump. The activities are from 2-10 minutes long. So, if you are looking for something to get your kids up and moving through the cold, dark, winter months, give Go Noodle a try. Your students will love it as they move and practice subject area content.

EDpuzzle (www.edpuzzle.com) allows an educator to find a video, crop the video, add voice, embed quizzes, and upload the video lesson to the EDpuzzle site.

EDpuzzle could be an ideal tool for blended learning since the videos created can also be posted to sites such as Moodle, Schoology, Edmodo, Blackboard, etc. It is a free site, but teachers must register to create video lessons. Video has become a tool for teaching and learning, but it was missing real time interactivity and formative assessment. Questions can be embedded in the video lesson in T/F, multiple choice, and short answer formats. The site has a search feature to find lesson videos already created by educators that can also be utilized. The app can be downloaded to your Chrome browser and there is a downloadable iOS app for students.

The videos linked below contain more information: http://bit.ly/1A8y1zv http://bit.ly/1vEwpJD http://bit.ly/1x1kp9z

be connected to the Internet.

From the Live View tab on the website, the teacher and students can share the real time responses.

A bar graph of responses is generated to indicate answer choice.

Source: http://teacherluca.weebly.com/ uploads/2/6/3/7/26377971/9448111_orig.jpeg

Source: http://www.gonoodle.com

Source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ iTQpvkQdQOw/maxresdefault.jpg

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Compiled by Brandon Anderson, 2014

Some apps (almost all are free!) for your iPad or other iOS device.

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LITERABLY

IPEVO DOCUMENT CAMERAS

Literably (www.literably.com) administers and scores oral reading fluency passages for elementary students. The teacher may select the reading passages or allow the program to do so. Students read aloud and the program generates an audio recording of the student reading aloud and a running record of errors and words read correctly per minute. Literably will also make recommendations regarding the student’s reading level. This site and the audio recordings could be a beneficial tool for parent involvement and creation of a digital portfolio of student progress on reading during the school year.

An inexpensive document camera to consider for the staff in your schools is an Ipevo (www.ipevo.com) document camera. They have reasonable clarity and are easy to use and set up.

With many document cameras costing $300$500 or more, many districts cannot afford to put one in each classroom for student and teacher usage. Most Ipevo document cameras cost less than $100. And yes, they do accept school purchase orders!

Source: http://www.literably.com

Source: http://www.ipevo.com

WHICH DEVICE? Extra funds laying around? Considering a mobile device (or several)? Here are some things to keep in mind.

Power & Memory: Will it do what you want?

Portability: Is it easily moved to another room or building?

Compatibility: Is it allowed or acceptable to your networks? Will the programs you currently use work on the device’s operating system?

Accountability: If students will be using it, can you monitor or restrict their activity?

Cost: Is it worth the expenditure? If it’s cheap, why is it cheap?

EDUCATIONAL EXTENSIONS FOR GOOGLE CHROME If you’re still using Internet Explorer (IE) as your web browser, let’s get serious for a moment; You need to stop.

Google’s Chrome (chrome.google.com) browser is far faster, consumes less memory, crashes many times less than IE, and best of all, IT’S FREE. There are some amazing extensions for the Chrome Browser that can be beneficial for both educators and their students.

Text to Speech. This Chrome extension allows web page text to be highlighted and read aloud. If you have many students reading below grade level, it is often difficult for a teacher to

utilize web pages that must be read by students. Often a student’s listening comprehension is much greater than their reading level, so this provides an option for using web pages containing text to be used for lessons.

Citelighter. This extension for Chrome is a useful research tool to use when preparing research reports that require documentation of sources used.

It can be used to organize the paper and create online citations. Users create an account and download the Citelighter (www.citelighter.com) plug-in. Users then create a project and begin

researching on the Internet for information to use for the project. Users highlight and capture information to use for the project. The plug-in creates an organized list of facts to be used for the project. It also creates an exportable bibliography and in-text citations list.

These extensions, and many, many more, are available on the Google Chrome webstore (http://chrome.google.com/ webstore).

A sample of Educational Resources on the Google Chrome Webstore. Source: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/app/95-academicresources?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon

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VISME Visme (www.visme.co) [yes, .co] is a browser-based tool that allows you and your students to create banner ads, graphs, infographics, and digital presentations utilizing their templates or a blank canvas. Visme’s intent is to simplify and improve visual content in presentations. Visme is a good alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint and Adobe Illustrator.

Visme has a full suite of icons, images, text, etc. Animation can be applied to both text and images. There are many colorful themes to choose

from in the infographic section of the web site. Elements in the infographics are easy to add, edit, color, resize, and rotate. It has an intuitive interface and within moments one can register and begin creating content. Visme Basic is free with some limitations. With the free account you can create up to 3 projects.

Projects can be published in various forms. Visme projects can be shared online, printed, embedded in web sites or blogs. Visme is HTML5 based, so it is both web and mobile user friendly.

Source: http://www.visme.co

BLENDSPACE Have you ever wished for a simple tool to make your lessons more engaging and allow all resources to be housed in one space? Have you tried Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Schoology, Moodle, and Edmodo and wanted to use a platform that was simpler and easier to navigate for basic lessons to differentiate instruction and personalize learning? Do you have teachers on your staff that would like to try blended learning but are reluctant to begin? Then you might want to check out Blendspace (www.blendspace.com), formerly known as EdCanvas.

Creating multimedia lessons in Blendspace is easy and utilizes a drop and drag format. This format allows the teacher to organize video, links, texts, quizzes, and images into canvases for students to work with. Lessons can be

created in 5 minutes or less.

Teacher accounts are free and classes of up to Source: https://www.blendspace.com 35 students can be created.

Students join the classes with a teacher provided code.

Premium accounts that allow more student collaboration and recording of audio currently cost $4.00/month.

Blendspace has many great features, but it does have limited collaboration possibilities unless you purchase the paid premium account. However, providing links or questions within a lesson for outside collaboration is an option.

AMAZON KINDLE UNLIMITED Many of us teach students who have difficulties with reading comprehension and reading delays. One way to address those difficulties is to utilize audio to supplement classroom materials. But let’s face it: audiobooks are expensive.

To purchase a new audiobook generally costs $30 or more. There are services such as Audible (www.audible.com) as well as a service called Audioobooks (www.audiobooks.com) that require users to pay $15 per month in

exchange for access to one title per month. Extra titles cost more.

Amazon recently announced a new service, Kindle Unlimited (www.amazon.com/kindleunlimited).

Unlimited’s subscription costs $10 per month, and users are able to access up to 10 ebooks from a list of 700,000 titles at any time. There are also over 100,000 titles that also offer “narration” (the audio version of the book), along with the ebook, for no extra charge! With the

Kindle reader app on mobile devices, users can listen to the audio while following along with the text. This could easily be utilized in classrooms, enhancing students’ comprehension and engagement!

Source: http://ebookfriendly.com/wp-content/ uploads/2014/07/Kindle-Unlimited-logo-220x86.jpg

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MORE FREE APPS WITH APPSGONEFREE

AppsGoneFree! Logo, Source: http://bit.do/appsgonefreelogo

Wish there was a way new free apps would come to you, rather than spending hours searching for them?

Your wish has been granted in “AppsGoneFree” from www.appadvice.com, a daily report of selected, previously-paid apps that will appeal to a variety of iOS users. Every day, the AppAdvice staff sort through the App Store to find that day’s bargains (some of which are available for only that particular day) and report their selections to you before noon. To qualify for inclusion in their daily

newsletter, an app must meet the following three qualifications. It must have an average rating of at least three stars, it must not include advertisements, and it cannot have been offered free more than three times in the previous six months. Recent free apps have included several photography apps to personalize your pictures and videos, organization & time management apps, games for all ages, as well as health & fitness applications.

There truly is something for everybody.

FREE GRAPH PAPER PDFS One of the biggest obstacles many teachers find in the daily operation of their classes is where to find the time to create specialty worksheets that meet their specific needs. Often, we just resort to buying something that comes close. As our budgets get tighter and the demands on our time continue to

increase, one possible solution is available at www.incompetech.com. On this site, Kevin MacLeod has made available a large number of FREE graph paper & grid paper PDF generators which can be customized to fit the needs of your classroom. Everything from “traditional” square grids to

diamond & hexagonal patterns can be created in an easy-to-use and easy-to-print PDF format.

Circular patterns, engineer’s paper, Cornell note-taking, and penmanship templates can also be generated quickly and easily.

UPCOMING EVENTS West Virginia Center for Professional Development http://bit.ly/1xAhgMF Date Session Location March 3 Emerging Technologies to Engage Digital Learners Charleston March 9 iPad Basic Training Parkersburg March 18 Emerging Technologies to Engage Digital Learners Bridgeport March 18 iPad Basic Training Bridgeport March 23 Emerging Technologies to Engage Digital Learners Flatwoods March 24 Infusing Technology Showcase Roanoke April 21 iPad Basic Training Beckley June 11 iPad Basic Training Charleston June 11 Emerging Technologies to Engage Digital Learners Charleston The West Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics http://www.wvctm.com March 13-14 WVCTM Conference Roanoke International Society for Technology in Education June 28-July 1 ISTE Conference

http://bit.ly/1BiG78s Philadelphia