I have mentioned before I love TED! They have some of the best inspirational and informative videos available for our profession. So as a little gift to you for Teacher Appreciate Week, I would like to give you a little time! Now, I have not invented a time machine, or an app that will stop time so that you can finish all the work you must do, but we will get Wile on that. I will just give you this video on the 10 Top Time Saving Tech Tips. Some of these you may already know, but if you learn just one new one, which I did, the video is worth it. So when you have time…..
Tag Archives: education
March Madness Day 15: Gooru
This will be just a quick update this evening! Today’s tidbit is Gooru. Gooru is a free search engine that is filled with videos, interactive displays, documents, and quizzes for Math, Science, and Social Studies topics.
You can create an account with Gooru; drag and drop videos and items to your resource folder for safe keeping, and also add outside resources. Searching is made easy as you can search by topic OR media type. Gooru also has a free iPad app called Gooru collections.
March Madness Day 5: The Nasty Effect
Part of our jobs as teachers is to try to help students discern between fact and opinion. Today, I just wanted to give everyone a link to an opinion article from the New York Times. The article discusses the effects the comments section for online articles can have on the reader’s perception of the article. With the disappearing print press due to the increase of online newspapers and magazines, I felt this is important for us to keep in mind AND to discuss as we approach these topics with students.
P.S. I DID NOT read the comments that followed this article.
March Madness Day 4: Snowed In
I went through the 10 minute process of bundling up my two-year old this morning to go play in the snow only, of course, to have him want to come back in after 5 minutes. Who is the only two-year old who DOES NOT like snow? Quick answer: MINE! So after this fiasco, I decided he decided to try to play with my iPad.
Here are the lessons I learned. He is a happy tapper. (Apparently, not waiting for a page to load is instilled in us from birth.) You cannot teach a two-year that the best way to win at Angry Birds is by shooting the birds forward and NOT backward, but he was determined. Finally, no matter what age, people like to draw and play with photos. So today you will get some of the best photo apps that I can find, because that is all the little fellow would let me play with today. I have downloaded the free versions, because most of the good ones I have found have been free at one time and probably will be again. There are also paid versions of some of these as well which can open more features.
Kids are creative. Put simple tools in their hand and they can create. Sometimes you may be surprised what you get with just simple instructions as create something. All of these apps are just that, for creativity.
Photo Layer by Gabriel Dana ($4.99)
This is a really easy app to use and has a lot of features. It also goes on sale often. When I downloaded it to my iPad, it was free for a short time so if you watch for it you can get it a little lower. I am keeping an eye out to add it to the iPads at school. This app allows you to fix photos by adjusting brightness, contrast, crop, straighten and even has a one tap auto enhance. But the best part are all the extras you get with this app. There are tons of effects, stickers, you can even make your own memes. I would love to figure out a way to work making memes into a Language Arts class. (Hint! Hint! Wink! Wink!)
Adobe Photoshop Express (Free)
This is a simple photo editor. Simple and easy to use. The only draw back to the free version is that there is a limited selection of effects. There are a great deal of borders, but if you want more than a few effects you will need to pay.
Photo Shake ($1.99)
This is a collage maker that I downloaded on a day that it was free. Essentially you pick the photos you want added to the collage and then you shake the iPad until they are in a configuration that you like. Once finished you can add frames, text, different photo effects. The pictures then can be save to the camera roll or emailed.
Fotolr HD (Free)
This is the lite version, but it is not lite at all. There was very little that Chunk and I were not allowed to do. We even gave Lindy, our dog, a makeover. See:
Lindy before: 
Lindy After: 
As you can see I was grasping at straws today, but wouldn’t this be a great way to teach the students how to write descriptive pieces. How could you not want to describe THAT?! This app gives you a ton of options and choices. You can edit, crop, and dress up photos and the only items I can find that are left out of the free version are under the portrait choices of the app. Those are minimal compared to the other items you get. Although there could be more choices in male wigs, this was the app we played with the most today, because we could do so much with it.
I hope everyone enjoyed their snow day and that it was way more productive than mine! If you know of any more photo apps available, let me know!!!!
March Madness Day 2: Beating the Monday Blahs…
We have heard and have probably given talks to our students on being a good leader. Don’t follow! I love TED Talks, because they always give a fresh perspective and introduce a lot of new ideas. Here is a short, entertaining video on leadership. It is definitely a different perspective.
Also since I made you watch my video, here is a great app for iPad or iPhone users. It is called Apps Gone Free . This app will give you a daily run down of apps in the iTunes store that are now free. I know as teachers we can’t turn down freebies, can we?
March Madness: Day 1 Getting Our Selves Straight
I spend a lot of time making to do lists. This is one app that I have put on my iPhone, iPad and can bring up on my computer in the morning that helps me keep up with all of those tasks. Astrid comes with four basic categories to file your to do lists, but, of course, you can always add more. You can set reminders, repeats, sync to your calendar and more. This is all in the free version. Astrid is available on the following devices so I am pretty sure that it has all of us covered: iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch; Android Phones and Tablets; Kindle Fire / Kindle HD; Nook Color / Nook Tablets; Windows 8; and Blackberry 10. This app has really helped me keep the items that I have to do between my personal and professional life in order.
March Madness
I have wanted to send out tech tips this year, but I have not wanted to add to the everyday stress of your normal day. I decided to house my tips on this blog and am up for a little March Madness of my own. This way when you want to find a tip that I have given, you do not have to search through your emails to find it, you will just need to find the link to the blog.
So, why March Madness? Besides, the obvious reasons of it being one of the greatest tournaments known to man, it’s March. The period of time in a teachers year where we are burnt out, tired, and basically mad at everything. So I am going to try to bring a little brightness to everyday in March by giving you a small (or sometimes big) technology tip. Here are a few disclaimers for this venture.
1. I am burnt out too! So none of this is original, I just subscribe to a lot of different technology blogs and twitter feeds and have lots of little items to share. It seems I never get the time too.
2. I am going to try to make sure everyone’s content gets covered somehow. Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments on my blog, but as you will see from one of the articles I share with you this month the tone of comments can affect the readers interpretation of an article. Professional courtesy extended, I will delete anyone who invades my happy space with a storm cloud. 🙂
3. I will also present you with a few items that may be for personal use and not just the classroom. We need to take care of us too!
Please enjoy my madness and let me know if you have any ideas or would like to use anything that I have shared!
Grec's Tech 