About those Apps...

This week I noodled around with some completely new and some not so new apps.  There were a few I loved, a few I disliked, and the rest, well they were okay and I will probably use them at least once in a while.

Let's start on a positive note with the ones I loved: Animoto, Glogster and Screencast-o-matic. They are all simple to use (okay I haven't actually made a screencast yet but I watched lots of how to videos), they have lots of educational uses and the finished product looks professional.  Animoto produces a slideshow that is far superior to Google Slides and much simpler than PowerPoint.  The free version has a large watermark in the bottom right corner which is pretty annoying but is that is the price you pay for getting it free for educators.  Sadly, I couldn't find a plan for educators that gives more options for multiples users--it is the personal at $60/year or the professional for $400. Glogster produces a multimedia poster that has pictures (including 3-D ones), text, links, video, audio and embedded content. You can exhibit your creation online or print it out.  What a much more interesting and creative way to produce a report than gluing picture and text on a posterboard. Like Animoto, there are limitations to the free account: you can only post 6 content items (which is hardly any) to each product. Unlike Animoto, Glogster has a great price for educators which is only $39 for elementary (30 students) and $95 ($125) for high school.  Both Animoto and Glogster have lots of stock photos or it is super easy to upload your own. Did I say already how much I love both these apps?

As for Screencast-o-matic, I'm excited to try it out.  It seems so incredibly useful, both to educators and students; the former can post tutorials and the latter can create video projects. And it's free!

Now on to the apps that didn't wow me:  Voki and Big Huge Labs.  Don't get me wrong--Voki was cute and I can absolutely see that it would be fun to use in an elementary school setting but the options for which avatars you can use are so limited that I think you would need to pay for. Plus, it just seemed kind of low tech and cheesy to me. Speaking of cheesy, Big Huge Labs' website is terrible.  And while some of the products are fun to make, the parameters are quite limited and I don't see that much educational value to many of them. Though that might be because I'm just creative enough.

As for Timeline, BubbleUs, Doodle, Survey Monkey and Zamzar, they are useful for sure but I'm going to keep my eyes open for alternatives. Timeline was too simple--I'd like to find one that is a bit more sophisticated for high school students.  As for Zamzar, I feel like students mostly want to convert pdf into Google Docs which they can already do without using a converter.  I might use it to convert into Word though.

A final word about Flickr: I've had an account forever though just as a place to store photos--I never thought of it as an educational tool.  It is too bad about not being able to annotate photos but you can still insert text and stickers so it still is somewhat useful in that regard.  Plus you can create private groups and download photos from the Commons so it is still a really good resource.

Some Notes on My Exploration of Educational Apps and Tools 

(or Whatever You Want to Call Them)

There's so much out there, it makes my head spin! I poked around and created accounts with the ones that seemed the most useful to both me and students and the ones easiest to learn: Padlet, Feedly and Diigo. Here are my thoughts:

Padlet So simple, so fun and so many possibilities! I didn't do anything fancy with mine other than add a custom wallpaper, but I really like the collaborative aspect.  I talked with a friend who is a middle school social studies teacher about her favorite technology that she uses in the classroom and Padlet was the first one she mentioned.  She showed me a couple of different boards she had students contribute to recently: one was a 45 second advertisement for an everyday object that they had to come up with a unique use for (really funny) and another was a bulletin board where each student had to post a pictures with a description and a link to an article about the Syrian refugee crisis. I love the idea of using it for book trailers and book reviews.  Creative, fun and educational. What's not to love?

Feedly I can be a bit of an information junkie and spend too much surfing various new sites, so the idea of an RSS feeder is appealing to me.  I chose Feedly because it seemed to have good reviews and was very easy to set up. I chose a topics to create folders for (politics and library blogs) and chose websites to add to my feed.  I checked in a while later, and sure enough, there were a bunch of headlines but I can't say I was all that excited. I realized what I really want is a service that will bring attention to things I might otherwise have missed regardless of the source. When I looked up if that was possible, I discovered the keyword filter was the exactly the solution I was looking for.  Unfortunately I need to pay for a premium account to get that service and I'm not willing to do that just yet.

Diigo I took a look at this one because a couple of classmates mentioned on their discussion posts that they liked it. I watch a tutorial and then tried it out myself.  This is one I can actually see using, and I love how simple it is to use with the chrome extension.  I often read things online that I want to save for later or mention to a friend and then can't remember where I read it and I think Diigo is a great bookmarking tool.  I also think it would be very useful for high school students when they are doing research. I also love the fact that they article is archived so that you can retrieve it even if the link becomes broken.  

Random Thoughts On Augmented Reality

Whatever happened to Google Glass? Like the Segue (remember code name Ginger?), it was hyped as a world changing invention.  Well we are not all riding Segues, nor are we wearing Google Glasses. But it does look the technology behind Google Glass has infiltrated our lives, just not in the way originally intended.  

I was reminded about Google Glass when I was read Joyce Valenza's top ten tech trends from December 2014. She predicted that augmented reality would become an educational game changer, but I had never even heard of the term. Admittedly, I don't follow tech trends, so it is not that shocking, but surely if it were that BIG a thing I would have heard of it by now. Intrigued, I looked it up and then, whoosh! down the rabbit hole I went.

My first stop was the AR apps mentioned by Valenza. Zooburst is defunct. ColAR is now owned by Quivervision and it consists of printing out coloring pages and then using the app to choose that page and then you can view what you colored through your phone in 3d and make it move around by turning the colored page. ChromVille works the same way coLar, but its coloring pages topics include science, geography and water. Kind of fun, but not that exciting and probably mostly interesting for 6-8 year olds. Anatomy 4D was okay, but again I was not wowed. The most sophisticated on is Blipbuilder by Blippar which looks complicated to learn so I'm not sure how generally useful it would be.

I then did a search for "augmented reality education apps" and landed on this page from a year and a half ago which list 15 supposedly game changing apps in education. I looked up a number of them and well, most were just meh. The most interesting thing I learned is that you can use the Google Translate app on your phone to view a word in another language and the translation appears over the original word.  I really liked that! It turns out that you can also just use your Google app and click on the Google lens icon in the search bar and do the same thing.  Plus Google Lens has lots of other functions so of all the AR apps I looked at, it is the one I am most interested in.

Looks like there are some pretty cool things you can do with augmented reality. Five years on, is it a big deal in education?  Probably not yet, but maybe one day. 

Top Ten Technology Tips for Teachers 

(in no particular order)

1. Don’t feel like you have to master every product out there. Choose one of each type to know really well. 

2. Exception to tip #1: If you are like most districts which rely heavily on Google: you need to know everything Google.  Take the time to learn it well and keep abreast of new applications.

3.  Most of us have our a particular computer/operating system that we feel most comfortable with, whether it is a Apple product, Windows, Android or Chrome. You need to be able to use them all!

4. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for help from a variety of sources. Within your own school you will find a surprising breadth and depth of technology knowledge. Everyone has their favorite and they just might have the answers you need.  Also, students are a great resource!

5. Don’t exhaust yourself by trying out every new technology as soon as you hear about it.  It is okay to wait to see how others like it before taking the plunge.

6. Remember that technology is supposed to help you to teach and your students to learn.  Don’t fall into the sunk cost fallacy of keeping doing something because you’ve invested time (or money) in it. If it isn’t working, be willing to scrap it and try something new.

7. Do your research and talk to colleagues about what the like and dislike before investing the time into learning something new; remember though that everyone has different needs and skill levels so take theirs and yours into account when evaluating suggestions.

8. Using technology such as a website or blog is a great way to communicate with parents but you need to keep it up to date--nothing is worse than a website that was started with the energy of a new school year and then languishes after a few months.

9.  Model technology use in the classroom.  This means more than just posting assignments and grades online or using a smartboard.  There are lots of applications that enhance learning and are also fun for students. Get them hooked!. 

10. Take advantage of any technology trainings your district offers.  You might learn something you didn’t know that you didn’t know.  There are lots of really cool tools out there--have fun and explore!