I was recently at #oetc12 the edtech conference in Ohio and I was introduced to Adobe’s new products focusing on education. Adobe is making great strides in the education community by offering entry level certifications as well as curating content to be used in the classroom. Lets take a look at the free resource sharing site from Adobe, the Adobe Education Exchange.

To get started head over to http://edexchange.adobe.com/ and create a free Adobe.com account. After you have authenticated you will be see several different lessons on the front page from others who have shared and commented. As I browsed through the content it seemed like a pretty good balance of the different Adobe software offerings as well as several different skill levels. The site is very user friendly and Adobe has made it easy to find the resources that you need.

You can search by age level:

You can also search by product type, resource or subject area:

I think the strongest part of this service is the networking aspect of it. As an Art teacher or tech teacher you can now have direct access to others in your field. You can even earn points by sharing!

Like every other tool, it’s how you use it. I encourage you to share your lessons with the community so more and more people can benefit from your awesome teaching skills!

What do you currently use to find Adobe resources? Does this site make it easier to find content?

So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

Tools:

Diigo: www.diigo.com

Diigo is a tool that allows you to create bookmarks online and tag them so you can easily retrieve them from any computer or device. You can also use Diigo in the classroom for highlighting articles, notating research information or creating a class group to share resources.

For more information check out this Diigo in the classroom Live Binder

Livebinders: www.livebinders.com

LiveBinders is a way to gather all your knowledge, whether it is website links or files, all into one place for easy, elegant sharing.

Here is a brief overview of Live Binders

Here are some examples of Educational Live Binders

Here is the Ipads in Schools Livebinder

Websites:

Teachercast: www.teachercast.net

Welcome to TeacherCast.net, a place where Teachers help other Teachers.  TeacherCast is designed for both the seasoned teacher who is searching for some great resources as well as the teacher who is a unsure how to start incorporating newly developed 21st-Century skills.

(From http://teachercast.net/our-mission/)

Free Tech For Teachers: www.freetech4teachers.com

Richard Byrne has created a great blog with free resources for teachers to use in the classroom. The blog is updated daily with new information and great tools to use in the classroom.

Miller Center Presidental Classroom: millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom

Welcome to Presidential Classroom, a resource for students and teachers providing insight into historic and current events through teachable exhibits and lesson plans. It creates a unique interactive web experience that will teach students about the U.S. presidency and government.  Presidential Classroom aims to bring history alive for all users. (From: millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom)

Theory:

Digital Differentiation: http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2012/02/digital-differentiation-get-wired.html

This article talks about the tools used to effectively use technology as a tool for digital differentiation. Great read!

We also finished up our discussion with talking about Twitter. I showed the teachers several “Chats” such as #edchat, #ntchat , as well as grade level chats like #4thchat #5thchat and #scichat.

To get a Twitter account signup here: https://twitter.com/signup

For information about using Twitter as an educator check out this resource from Edudemic: http://edudemic.com/2011/09/twitter-in-education/

If you have any suggestions for Cyber Monday or tools you share with your staff please let me know!

Thanks

TJ

February 9th was the one year anniversary of this blog. So many things have changed within the last year. I find myself with a new job, new house, and most importantly new friends in education. I wanted to take a few minutes to thank all of YOU! I started with no followers on Twitter, no readers on the blog, and just beginning to understand what this whole #edtech thing even was. Thank you for believing in me and supporting me! As we continue to learn together I look forward to another exciting year full of possibilities! I look forward to working with all of you and collaborating on different projects and ideas. As always if you need anything, let me know!

Here are the top viewed posts from the last year!

Apple Opens a Teachers Only Appstore

Cool App to share Your favorite Ipad apps

20 Apps in 20 Minutes

By Far the Best Browser for EDU

AR Book Finder

Thanks

TJ

As a presenter you learn quickly not to depend on ANYTHING at the venue you are presenting at. This is true for Internet access, computers, projectors and sometimes electricity. One thing I learned in Boy Scouts was “Be Prepared”. I am not suggesting you should bring a generator to your next presentation, but I am saying being as independent as possible is a good thing. Here is a way  for you to save your YouTube videos that you may use in your presentation for offline viewing.

* I will preface this article with two things. Number one, copyright is very important and you should give credit for any videos you will utilize in your presentation.  Number two, there are several sites that offer similar functionality, but in my opinion this is the easiest to remember and super easy to do.

KeepYouTube.com is a site designed to download a copy of a YouTube video for offline viewing. The reason I recommend this site over others is the simplicity of their service.

To get started simply go to the video you want to save on YouTube.com.

When it loads simply type keep before YouTube.com:

This will load your video into the service and redirect you to their website:

Here you can choose your video download options:

Choose the option that works best for your intended use.

Download the clip and save it on your computer!

It is also worthwhile to note this service can be used in the classroom if your school blocks access to YouTube or you don’t want to wait for the video to buffer, taking time away from teaching.

Is there a service you use to accomplish a similar task?  Why do you like it better?

As I am starting to use Evernote more and more, I wanted an easy way to save pdf’s within Evernote for things like helpdesk tickets, PO’s, and other content that I would normally print. In a previous article I wrote about adding “Send to Itunes” to the PDF section of OSX. After some research I realized it was very easy to add Evernote to the print menu.

To get started open your “Applications” folder on your hard drive and locate Evernote:

Right click on the Evernote icon and select “Make Alias”:

After you click “Make Alias” you will see a second Evernote Icon show up.

You need to drag this Icon to /Library/PDF Services:

After you drag the icon into the location you will see Evernote show up in the print dialog box:

Click Evernote in the print dialog box and Evernote will open with your PDF attached:

If you have any issues please let me know!

Thanks

TJ

As you may have noticed in my previous article I am in an automation mood recently. Recently I wanted a way to send things from our copy machines to my Dropbox account. I wanted to eliminate the step in which I emailed a pdf to myself saved the attachement and then put it in my Dropbox. I have found the solution! http://www.sendtodropbox.com

 Send to Dropbox.com is a service that takes a few seconds to setup and allows you to email attachments to an address and have them show up in your Dropbox account. This can be useful for teachers who need a way to collect assignments from students easily without having to sort through email etc.

To get started head over to http://www.sendtodropbox.com and click “Connect to Dropbox”

You will be asked to login to your Dropbox. Sign in with your Dropbox account.

After you click login, Dropbox will make sure that you want the app to use your Dropbox. Click allow.

After you click allow you will be redirected back to the send to dropbox website, you will now create how you want your files named. I left mine as the default.

If the email address is to long or not catchy click the link that says “I want a different address”. After you click the link you can enter a word. ( If your using this in class maybe use your name or your class. Example: houstonmath )

When you click the button you will now see that your email address has changed.

Now when you send attachements to this address they will show up in your Dropbox attachements folder.

How could you use this in the classroom?

When I was recently on the “State of Tech Podcast” Episode 9 – Interactive Whiteboards – Part 1 Eric Griffith shared a great tool which has saved me a lot of time and automated much of my internet tasks that have been deemed repetitive in the passed. This service can be used for simple things like sending you a text message if it is going to rain tomorrow or change your Facebook picture when you change your twitter profile.  Lets check out If this than that!

As you can see from the home page, the ifttt slogan is “Put the internet to work for you!” thats exactly what the service does. The way the service works is based on triggers. If something happens in one service than do something on this service. As an example, every time an event comes up in my Google Calendar I get a text message to alert me of the event. This is great for when I may not have a data connection or a poor data connection I can still get the alert.

To get started create a free account: https://ifttt.com/join

After you create your account check out some of the pre-built recipes to get ideas. Utilizing others recipes saves you time and prevents “Re-inventing the wheel”.

There are several different “Channels” that you can utilize as either trigger. You can see below the available channels (The ones that are grey are ones that I do not use but they are available):

To create a task click “Tasks” when you click tasks.

After you click taks you will get a screen that looks like this:

To get started click “This”. After you choose you will presented with the channels to choose from.

Choose one:

After you select the channel you will see the different triggers that are available:

As you can see from this example you have granularity for the service that you choose. Choose one of the triggers. On the next screen click “Create Trigger”

On the next screen click “That”

You will than see the second trigger. Think of this step as “When this happens what do you want to happen now?” You will now see the different channels you can utilize.

After you choose a channel, select your trigger. In the example below I am sending myself a text message.

Click on the trigger that you would like to use. On the next page you enter in information about the trigger IE how you would like to format the message. You can see below how I setup the information about the calendar event.

After you setup the options click “Create Action”. The last step is to give it a name / description.

Your all done!

I have setup several different tasks, I have a text message sent to me whenever a helpdesk ticket is created (could be sent to multiple techs). I have a weather task to tell me if it will be raining the next day. I also get texts for calendar events like I showed in the example.There are so many possibilities that can make your life easier.

What tasks have you setup? How could you use this in the classroom?

P.S. For fun check out the “Get me out of here” phone call

(I cannot confirm nor deny I have used this )

So I can finally talk about my new App as it is now live on iTunes! This summer after attending some technology education conferences I quickly learned that a lot of information is shared via the backchannel such as Twitter. I also noticed that presenters had to minimize their presentations to bring up the back channel so people could answer questions this seemed like a very cumbersome experience. Thats where Soapbox comes into play!

When I contacted my lifetime friend Ryan Worcester and told him I had an idea for an app he welcomed the challenge. For the next several weeks and about $150.00 in Starbucks (I have the stars to prove it ) we had a finished (or so we thought) product. Every time Ryan and I would meet we would come up with new ideas for the app and ways to improve it.

Soapbox combines your Google presentation (or other web content) and your social media feed so people can ask questions and share content in real time. This is great for conferences in which you are presenting from the device connected via VGA, HDMI, or wirelessly Apple TV.

We look forward to bringing more and more features to the app. Ryan and I have both dedicated a lot of time to this project. I think the most rewarding parts has been bringing together my 2 passions, technology and education. You can find more information about Soapbox here.

Please stay tuned as we bring more and more features to “Soapbox”.

You can find Soapbox for $1.99 in the iTunes App Store:

So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

Today we talked about Pinterest and did a brief overview of how it can be used see my previous article here.

I also showed my teachers @ShellTerrell ‘s Pinterest  pinboard.

With the weather in Ohio forcing recess inside I shared some classroom game sites that they could use:

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/field_day_games.shtml

http://www.dreamenglish.com/kidsgames 

Kids Math Games

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/

We than talked about history pin and came up with different ways to use it in the classroom. You can check out history pin here.

Ipad Spotlight:

TCEA’s List of Recommended Ipad Apps

200 of the best special ed Ipad Apps

Great (HUGE) list of misc classroom  resources:

http://www.boxoftricks.net/internet-resouces-for-education/

So every Monday I meet with my elementary teachers and I share 5-10 resources with them that I have found or we talk about possible ideas they want to implement. I figured I would do a quick blog post recording these so they can go back and see what we went over in case they miss it.

Sites:

Free downloadable posters for your classroom

Flash Monster Creator

Curriki the K12 Open Curriculum Community

Little Bird Tales (Digital Story Telling)

List of lesson plan and educator resources (Via Squidoo.com)