Classroom PDF A Great iPad App to Annotate, Grade and Present PDFs

June 27, 2014

ClassroomPDF for the iPad is a PDF App tailor made for a teacher's workflow. It is ideal for grading PDF documents and presenting them in class. In addition to a silky-smooth handwritten ink engine, unique One-Tap Covers let you hide answers on the page and reveal them when needed. This is great for impromptu quizzes and motivating in-class discussions.

Annotate PDFs:

ClassroomPDF can open standard PDF files exported from other Apps such as Keynote or Dropbox. You can annotate them in your own handwriting using ClassroomPDF's ultra-smooth digital ink. Annotated PDFs can then be re-exported to other Apps or emailed to others. Use this to grade or give feedback on homework, or to write in answers before or during presentations.

One-Tap Covers:
The feature that sets ClassroomPDF apart from basic PDF apps is the ability to add temporary covers over parts of the page. This is ideal for giving impromptu quizzes and motivating classroom discussions. Cover the answers and tap to reveal them as you walk through the document.

Classroom Presentations:
You can use AirPlay to project the iPad's screen to an AppleTV or other compatible AirPlay receiver, and present wirelessly. Or use a direct cable connection with the appropriate VGA or HDMI adapter. Use the virtual laser pointer feature to call out parts of the page and guide the discussion.

Color-Coded Organization:

ClassroomPDF can store previously opened PDF documents for quick retrieval. Use color- coded categories to easily organize your documents by class or project.

Features include:

+ Ultra smooth ink annotation
+ 4 color inks and variable sized pen
+ Virtual laser pointer
+ One-Tap covers
+ Export annotated PDFs to other Apps or Email

+ Print via AirPrint
+ Organize files under 10 color-coded categories

Classroom PDF is available for the iPad running iOS7 or later. Download it from the App Store.

Here are 4 free download codes for this app.Whoever grab the code first will be able to install the app for free.

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Handy Google Hangout Cheat Sheet for Teachers

June 26, 2014
One of the best features of Google Plus I like so much is called Hangout. Hangout is a great way for teachers to  host group discussions online . Google Plus Hangout allows you to organize video and text conversations with your contacts. Within hangouts, users can share files, documents, and photos. Video calls on Hangouts are limited to only 10 members but using Hangout on Air will let you share your hangout live on YouTube or your website. The hangout will also be recorded and automatically saved on your YouTube channel.

Related: Great web tools to host group discussion online

Here are some ways to use Google Plus Hangout with students

• Develop rich online portfolios.
• Create live shows and talks for broadcast
• Share screens and create collaborative demonstrations
• Inviting remote guests to speak.
• Facilitating group projects after school hours
• Answering student questions about homework and projects
• Group grading sessions
• Host study groups
• Use Whiteboard capabilities to explain lessons
• Connect students with native speakers in language courses

I am also sharing with you this awesome Google Hangout video cheat sheet which is ceated by Leander Independent School District. You can share this visual with you students to let them learn more about the features available on Hangout. This cheat sheet is available for download from this link.

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BoomWriter- A Great Tool for Conducting Engaging Group-Writing Projects with Students

June 26, 2014

BoomWriter is a collaborative writing website that is free for teachers and allows students to create, share, and even publish stories and other original content. BoomWriter’s easy-to-use and interactive group writing platform lets teachers deliver a fun and engaging personalized learning experience, while elementary, middle, and high school age students work online to develop their reading, writing, and peer assessment skills.

Here is how BoomWriter works

The teacher selects a “story start”, either from a database of original first chapters or they can create their own prompt, and students then individually write what they think should be the next chapter/section. The teacher reviews each submission online before allowing the students to read and vote on the anonymous chapter/s that they would like to see included as the next part of the piece. There’s an easily managed voting system that fairly determines the winning chapter, while not requiring students to read all of their peers’ submissions (and they do not see their own during voting). The process continues until the story is completed, which is determined by the teacher. Once finished, BoomWriter will even convert the project into an actual published book containing the names of all of the participating students. Completed books are then made available for purchase from the BoomWriter Bookstore.

Watch this video to earn more about how BoomWriter works

BoomWriter can be used by teachers in a variety roles and educational settings, such as

whole class, small group, before, during, and after school. BoomWriter is also completely

safe for students, since all of their work is created and stored in a closed digital environment.

Some ways teachers can use BoomWriter
BoomWriter is a helpful and effective instructional tool, Teachers can use it to

• Monitor students’ progress, 
• Provide individualized feedback and personalized instruction from anywhere.
• Provide helpful guidance notes to the group prior to each writing phase
• Create relevant practice and application opportunities for specific skills and/or understandings covered in class.

BoomWriter started in a middle school classroom and now has a presence in close to 10,000 classrooms spread throughout more than 60 countries! The more BoomWriter grows, the more ways teachers find to use this approach to writing in their own classroom. One high school teacher in Kansas used BoomWriter with her students to create a modern day version of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible that explores the events of the Salem witchcraft trials. According to the teacher, while collaboratively engaged in a contemporary retelling on BoomWriter the students explored “how the themes and ideas that Miller wrote about are still prevalent in today's world.”

BoomWriter's Educational Programs for Teachers and Schools

BoomWriter has also identified a way to support large urban school districts and inspire students to write using technology through its Technology Heroes Program. Tech Heroes, which “helps teachers be champions of technology in their classrooms”, consists of BoomWriter partnering with larger districts and a third party corporate sponsor to provide every student and teacher with their very own free copy of the book they created using BoomWriter! Tech Heroes programs have taken place within Boston Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, and the Oakland Unified School District, to name a few. In a survey conducted of participating tech Heroes teachers just last spring, 95% found BoomWriter to be an “effective instructional tool” and 97% of teachers would use it again in their classrooms. One teacher raved, “I really enjoyed hearing my students beg to write. Students were thinking at home but writing in class. They were talking about their stories during recess. Students who never wrote full stories, began to write and complete their writing. I am delighted with BoomWriter. It is a valuable asset to my classroom.”

New Features added to BoomWriter
BoomWriter continues to add new free resources and features to support teachers, such as ELA lesson plans, providing teachers step-by-step instructions on how to incorporate elements of personal narrative or literature into their projects. By the start of the upcoming school year, BoomWriter will also feature two new products for use within and beyond the classroom. The first is an interactive vocabulary application called “WordWriter”, that will deliver a technology-based learning experience that is certain to develop greater interest and engagement levels around vocabulary instruction. WordWriter will increase students’ overall vocabulary development by allowing students to apply, share, and assess newly learned words in original content. The second product will facilitate non-fiction group-writing projects around Social Studies/History and Science/Technical subjects, and BoomWriter will support teachers with these efforts by providing free lesson plans as well. Increase the levels of collaboration taking place in your classroom by registering for free at: BoomWriter!

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Three New Important Updates to Google Drive Released Today

June 26, 2014
Google released today a major update to Docs,Sheets, and Slides. With this new update, users will be able to work on their documents across different devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone), anytime and with or without Internet connection. Here is the three main things that come with this new update:

Slide App is now available
Like Docs and Sheets, Google Slide has now a mobile app for both iOS and Android. Using this app, you will be able to create and edit slides on the go, even if you are offline.

Edit and share Office files without having Office
Mobile apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides enable you now to edit Office files without having to convert them. This means that when someone sends you an Office document, you can edit this document in your Google Doc in its original format and send it back .

Suggested Edits
Suggested Edits is a new feature added to Google Docs which makes collaborative work on Docs way better. "Instead of giving your collaborators free reign to edit away, you’d rather they make suggestions that you can accept or reject later. That’s why today we’re excited to add Suggested Edits in Docs. This new feature is now available for anyone with commenting access in Google Docs on the web, and is coming soon to our mobile apps".

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Use Google Docs to Convert Images and PDFs to Editable Text

June 25, 2014
Here is a great Google Doc tip that helps me a lot with my studies in university. As a graduate student, most of my reading assignments and hand-outs come in the form of PDFs and some of these documents are only scanned versions of the original documents. Often times, these PDFs are low-quality as they are poorly scanned which makes reading them a real pain in the butt. Also, scanned PDFs do not allow you to do much on them: You can not annotate or edit text on them. However, there is a workaround to this using Google Docs OCR(Optical Character Recognition).

Optical Character Recognition(OCR) lets you convert scanned PDFs or any image that include text in it into text documents using automated computer algorithms in Google Docs. Once converted, you can then edit and annotate the text as you like. Here is how to activate OCR on your Drive.

1- Log in to your Google Drive
2- Once you are in your Drive's Homepage, click on the gear button at the top right hand side. Under "upload settings" tick the "convert text from uploaded PDF and image files" and " confirm settings before each upload".

Now when you upload a scanned PDF or an image with text into Google Docs, you will be able to see converted text below the image. Watch the video below to see one example of this.

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Teachers' Visual Guide to Twitter Chats

June 25, 2014
In an earlier post here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning I talked about some of the ways teachers can leverage the power of Twitter for their professional development. One of the things I mentioned is the use of Twitter chats. I am a big fan of these chats and though I don't  attend them regularly but I always check the archive to catch up with what teachers discuss and share on them. In fact several of the ideas and tools I share with you here  come from those chats.

Today when I  came across this infographic on Twitter chats I thought it would make  a great follow-up post for my previous article. In this visual, Teamtait ( author of Edutait) provides some practical ideas to help teachers make the most out of Twitter chats. He starts with outlining some of the reasons why teachers should consider taking part in these chats, then moved to the ways to follow a Twitter chat. Next, he features the popular education chats on Twitter together with the time they take place and he concluded with useful tips to effectively use Twitter chats for professional development purposes.

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Learning the old fashioned way; autonomous education, the oldest method in the world

One of the most endearing features of autonomous home educators in both this country and the USA is the way that many of them seem to be convinced that they are doing something daring and revolutionary by leaving their kids to learn what they wish. They apparently believe that this is a radical idea; that they are on the cutting edge of educational theory! Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact there is something rather quaint about those who choose to adopt this antiquated method of educating their children.

Modern humans have been around for at least 10,000 years. Until perhaps 3000 years ago, there was nothing at all like a modern school. For the first 97% of humanity’s existence, home education was the only game in town. Gradually, the idea of sending children to be educated by strangers became popular. It was a slow process. In Elizabethan England, only about one child in eight attended school; all of them boys. In other words, as recently as the 16th century, only one child in sixteen in this country went to school. Things continued in this way for another three hundred years or so. Most children were educated at home. One of the commonest ways of undertaking this was to let the children themselves choose what to learn; or indeed whether they wished to learn anything at all. The best way to see how this worked is to look at a fictionalised account of home education in the early part of the 19th century. Pride and Prejudice is generally reckoned to give a good picture of life among the upper classes at that time. Here is Elizabeth Bennet describing the education which she and her four sisters received;

Such of us as wished to learn, never wanted the means. We were always
Encouraged to read…those who chose to be idle, certainly might.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this sort of education, especially for girls, was very common at that time. As for the ordinary working class child; home education was almost universal.

As a matter of fact, it is universal, compulsory schooling which is the radical alternative in education; not home education, which has been around for at least a hundred thousand years. Those who choose this path are not blazing some new trail, but turning backwards to an older way of life. They put one in mind of the American Amish, who prefer to follow a deliberately archaic way of life. The one thing that radical unschoolers and autonomous educators are not is revolutionary.

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