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Episode 54 – The one where you hear Anna’s iPhone buzzing
Resources
- 10 Microsoft Word Tricks Every Teacher Should Know – via @brasst, a short list of great productivity shortcuts you might not know about
- 26 Twitter Clients for Mac – Short review of different Twitter clients
- Twitter Resources – From Sports Media Challenge (scroll down and to the right for PDF documents on Twitter Best Practices and Twitter 101)
- Compfight – Find images for comps, inspiration or research. A Flickr search tool
- PBWiki – they’re changing their name!
- Free eBook – Engaging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership
- MapAList – Create maps using location data in a Google Spreadsheet
- raman amplifierReadItLater – Save web pages to read later. Sync between computers and iPhone
- Comments 4 Kids – A hashtag on Twitter for finding students’ work to comment on
iFaves
- AudioBoo (free in iTunes) – instantly publish a podcast with your iPhone
- Ocarina (99¢ in iTunes) – the first true musical instrument created for the iPhone
The Power of Twitter – Math help from over 200 people…
This past Tuesday one of my daughters was working on her Math homework in my office. Two of the problems said for her to collect data from a class. For the first, my tech club was still available so she quickly polled the students and tallied the results for her graph. But for the second of the data collection questions, there were no students in my classroom or office.
My first instinct was to tell her to make up the data – the point of the problem was for her to make a pictograph. But instead, I quickly – as in less than five minutes! – created a form on Google and posted on my Twitter account a request for people to respond to that survey. Meghan, Madelynn and I each entered our own choices into the form. By the time we left my office at 5:10pm, we had 40 responses. That was less than an hour later. By the time she did that last problem at home, there were 188 responses. And they came from all over the world! She and her sister sat slack-jawed watching the spreadsheet continue to populate with answers. I edited her form to show that the question was done, but responses kept coming. I did a search on Twitter and my little request for participation had been retweeted 17 times. As of the writing of this blog posting, there are 258 responses for nearly every state in the Union, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Australia,Thailand, Spain, Germany, Russia, and the middle East!
I had wanted to map the results for my daughter in Google Earth, so she could see where all of the responses came from. I was more than a little overwhelmed, though, at having to manually add in SO many places. As if I wasn’t already tickled enough with my Twitter network, I posted what I thought was a rhetorical question, “wish there was a way to upload list of locations to Google Maps and it would put flags everywhere. Does anything do that?” Within minutes, @glovely had sent me a link to MapAList which pulled the data straight from my Google Spreadsheet! Unfortunately, I had to wait a few hours for our tech services department to unblock the site (*grumble* but at least they were fast about it). In the meantime, @xmath2007 sent me a link to a Google code site that also pulled data from Google spreadsheets. This was awesome too, but I hadn’t recorded location data in a way that would make this one work for me.
Eventually, MapAList was unblocked and I was able to produce a map flagged all responses through the form for which I had location data! And I didn’t even have to go back and reformat any of the entries.
If I had any doubt in the power of Twitter, it would have all been erased by this, but then, I never had any doubt.
Thank you Twitterverse. Thank you for turning a math homework global and making the world a little flatter for my daughter.
Episode 53 – the truce episode ;-)
photo credit: Bob.Fornal
Resources
- Philosophy for Children — Philosophical questions for students based on children’s books. Each book has a link to the philosophical issues covered in the book and another link with discussion questions. Great way to do HOT with younger students!
- HippoCampus — (from the site) HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge.
- Historical imagery from around the globe
- Ocean floor and surface data from marine experts
- Simplified touring with audio and voice recording
- Mars included; still missing Moon
- Cool Math — Lots of math resources–LOTS!
- BibMe — (from site) Free fully automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills. It’s the easiest way to build a works cited page.
- OttoBib — Bibliography by ISBN; several formats; auto alphabetize!
- Lexipedia — Word power visually (definition, antonyms, synonyms, etc)
- Be the Boss! — Blog post from Principal’s Page. Even if you’re not the principal, find some good leadership ideas here.
- iEar – I Education Apps Review
iFaves
- Toddler Teasers — ($1.99 for all four or $.99 each in iTunes store) Learn letters, numbers, shapes, and colors!
- TextLater — ($.99 in iTunes store) Schedule SMS to be sent when you want it sent–need we say more?
Episode 52 – Back from Canada, eh!
In this episode of Tech Chick Tips…
We’re back from Canada and the Teacher2Teacher conference. Love our new friends! We blabber on a bit so if you’re not interested in our trip to Canada, fast forward to about 11:42 :)
Resources
- LookyBook – We say farewell!
- PageKeeper – quickly and easily create a webpage of links to share with your students and parents. Free with no advertising! Best example of its use: DJBecker’s Page
- DrivingKids – Here’s a first – we talk about something we pointedly do not recommend. Listen to the podcast to find out why! Well, okay – it’s because the navigation is clunky, the games aren’t easily discernible to ability level and the chat has very little protection for kids
- SmartPhone Filters – discussion of filtering on smartphones for students/kids and a link to one such application for the iPhone
- Lincoln’s FaceBook Page – what Abraham Lincoln’s Facebook page would look like if he had one
- WebSlides on Diigo – turn a collection of bookmarks (or an RSS feed!) into a slideshow. Look for an example at the end of this, and all forthcoming podcast episode notes
- TweetCall – call in your Twitter updates for free!
iFaves
- GeoLogTag ($4.99 @iTunes) – use your iPhone as a geotagger to snyc up your photos with your location
- The Chemical Touch Lite (free @iTunes) – the Periodic Table of Elements in your pocket!