A Great Chart Explaining The Flipped Classroom Concept

4:00 PM    

December 3, 2014
Flipped classroom or flipped learning is a methodology, an approach to learning in which technology is employed to reverse the traditional role of classroom time. If in the past, classroom time is spent at lecturing to students , now in a flipped model, this time is utilized to encourage individualized learning and provide one-on-one help to students, and also to improve student-teacher interaction. While the instructional or teachable content is still available in class, however this content is mainly designed in such a way to be accessed outside class which is a great way for struggling students to learn at their own pace.

  Together with the resources I have been sharing with you on Flipped learning, the resource I have for you today is especially helpful in that it provides a very simple step by step explanation of flipped learning works. This chart is created and shared by the Blended Learning wiki. The page also provides some very good video tutorials on flipped classroom. I invite you to check out those resources and share with us what you think of them. Enjoy.

Check out the original chart HERE.


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Enhance Kids Reading Skills with These iPad Interactive Stories

9:24 PM    

December 3, 2014
Below are three great iPad apps to enhance your kids reading skills through the use of interactive digital storytelling. The apps allow kids to interact with the stories they read using a variety of tools such as colouring, moving items in the story, changing sounds and many more.

1- Story Time for Kids


Story Time is an interactive story telling app that is bundled with beautifully illustrated story books for children. Each story is bundled with original colourful illustrations, narrations and sound effects! With Story Time, reading is so much fun. All the stories highlight the text as its read along. Children not only read but also learn how to read and pronounce the words clearly.



Kids play and interact with Harry as he struggles to find out what’s wrong with his new monster. The multiple games are intertwined with the story so that the player can help push the action forward. Kids sail a pirate sea, target-shoot soup into a monster's mouth, help get Harry and Zub though a maze and more - plus, every screen has hidden activities and surprises!
3- Monster Moogle


Monster Moogle develops creative thinking, artistic ability and skill in children. This app has an interactive storybook and collage maker that inspires kids to engage with their imagination by creating unique characters and short stories.



Education doesn’t have to be boring. It should be fun! Pickatale was made to improve children’s reading skills, to help them learn about animals, cultures, historical figures and more, and to have fun learning through reading storybooks. The app currently has 200+ interactive stories in English!
 

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A Great iPad App to Turn Physical Notes into Digital Notes

9:02 PM    

November, 2014
Post-it Plus is a great iPad app that you can use to digitize your physical sticky notes. The way it works is pretty simple: install the app in your iPad and then use it to snap an image of the physical notes you have. Post-it Plus will then digitize these notes in a format that will allow you to edit, arrange, refine and organize them into different boards.


This is a great app to use when attending a PD session or a conference or even use it in class with students to capture ideas and render physical notes accessible online. Posit-it Plus is also great for organizing your different notes into easily accessible categories and boards. You can group your ideas by thought or simply organize them on a grid. You can also combine notes from different sessions into one single board. And if you work with a team of collaborators, they can also help with the editing, arranging and adding of new notes and ideas.

Post-it Plus also allows you to share your digitized notes in PDF format or to your favourite applications like Dropbox.


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A Handy Google Drive App to Edit, Annotate and Sign PDFs

12:19 PM  ,  

November 2, 2014
PDFzen is a great free web tool that allows you to edit and sign your PDFs online. This app is integrated with Google Drive which means that you can easily edit the PDFs you have in your Drive. When you are done, you can save your edits back to Drive or download the document as a PDF or generate a link to share via email or social media websites.



Some other things you can do with PDFzen include: filling out DF forms, signing documents, highlighting text, leaving comments, and drawing on PDFs. PDFzen is also available for both iPad and iPhone.

"PDFzen is great for when you need to fill out a PDF form, but you are nowhere near a printer. Or if you don't think you should spend hundreds of dollars on PDF software just to use it one time. Or if you need to send your edited document as a fax and your local copy shop charges by the page.

Have PDFs on your desktop that you want to upload to PDFzen? The free deskPDF Reader integrates directly with PDFzen, so its just 1 click to immediately open your PDFs in PDFzen for quick editing & sharing. This is great for quickly publishing to the web, and collaborating with others. (deskPDF Reader is available for Windows & Mac, with Linux coming soon.)"

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Three Powerful Note-taking Apps for Chromebooks

9:37 PM  ,  

November 2, 2014
I received a couple of emails asking about app recommendations to use for note-taking on Chromebook. So I decided to pull up this list and share it with all of you here. The three apps I highly recommend are listed below. I have come across a few other titles but I did not find them really worth sharing here. Have a look and as always share with us what you think of them.

1- Google Keep


Google Keep is an excellent tool to use for creating digital sticky notes. You can use both text and images to capture and share your notes.  You can also use it   to create to-do lists and bookmark content from the web.It has an intuitive and user friendly interface that makes it way simpler to navigate and control than is the case with several other note-taking apps out there.

2- Evernote

This is definitely one of the must have apps for taking notes and recording ideas. Evernote allows you to save all your notes and bookmarks into one single place that you can access across different devices. You can also use it to create task lists and to-dos, attach images and audio to your notes and many more.

3- Quick Note

This is another wonderful note taking app that is specifically designed for lightweight note-taking. There are different ways you can use this tool. You can for instance use it as a simple notepad, scratchpad, or clipboard. Quick Note offers some good features such as the ability to easily search your notes and access them with one click. You can also sync all your notes to the cloud and access them anywhere.

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Great Coding and 3D Design Apps Are now Free

9:08 PM    

November 2, 2014
Autodesk has some very good news to you today. in a statement released earlier, Autodesk announced that it is providing its suite of apps for free for students and teachers  from all around the world. Of course the use of these apps is restricted to only educational purposes and not commercial.


Now both teachers and students will be able to access and use Autodesk's powerful coding and design making apps for free. According to Autodesk, more than 680 million students and educators from over 800,000 secondary and post-secondary schools in 188 countries can take advantage of free access to Autodesk’s professional software and services for use in classrooms, labs, and at home.

Some of the popular apps that students can now use for free to create 3D designs, games, movies, buildings, and many more are :

1- 3ds Max
3D modeling software for games, film, and video content.

2- AutoCad
CAD design, drafting, modeling, drawing, and engineering software.

3- Fusion 360 Ultimate
Integrated tool for collaborative product development.

4- Maya
Innovative tools for 3D modeling, animation, effects, and rendering.

5- Inventor Professional
3D mechanical CAD, visualization, and documentation software.

Check out the education community in Autodesk to learn more about the free software to use with students.

Courtesy of TNW.

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Some Good Primary Source Guides and Resources for Teachers

10:02 AM    

December 01, 2014
Library of Congress is one of the best websites where you can search for and access primary source documents to use with your students in class. It also features an entire section specifically designed for teachers. The teachers' page on Library of Congress contains a plethora of important resources to help teachers make the best use of primary sources. These resources include:



1- Why use primary sources?
In this page you will get to learn about what primary sources are and how they are different from secondary sources. You will also be provided with some tips and ideas on how to engage students with primary sources, promote student inquiry, and assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources.

2- Citing primary source
This is where you get to learn about how to cite primary sources through some useful examples in both MLA and Chicago styles.

3- Finding primary sources
This section features some quick starting points to help you in your search for primary sources in library of Congress.

4- Teachers' guides and analysis tool


This a great resource featuring a number of useful guides and analysis tools that teachers can use when using primary sources in classroom. All of these guides are available for free download in PDF format.

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