Black History People
by Quikthinking Software
This app has many of the “usual” people one would expect in studying Black History from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, Bill Cosby and Barack Obama. It has the people divided into categories of Authors and Poets, Civil Rights and Politics, Education and Sports, Entertainment-Art-Business, Inventors, Law, Medicine-Science-Aviation, and Music.
The information provided is limited, but does... More →
As a teacher, I am often asked by parents and by other teachers about apps to use with their children. I always recommend ones that encourage children to be creative and allow them to express themselves in a positive way. These are several of my favorite Android apps for Preschool - adult. I have included a variety of types. I also like these because the product can be saved to... More →
If your situation is similar to many I have encountered in multiple school districts around the country, BIP tracking looks different in each school you visit, heck sometimes in every classroom you visit. There are charts, tally sheets, narratives, and every type of tracking mechanism under the sun, but if not every teacher is using the same method it is very hard to turn any of the data that... More →
X Construction is a really fun, but challenging bridge-building simulation game/app. Students construct different length bridges in different settings, but always to allow a train of passengers to cross safely.
Scores are based on the amount of building materials remaining unused, the length of time spent building the bridge, and the amount of stress the bridge withstands.
If the structure... More →
While Dragon Dication by Nuance is not the only dictation application on the market, in this educators opinion, it is the most polished and one of the most widely used. If you are not familiar with this type of program it is simple to explain: you say it and the program types it. For fellow special educators and general education teachers alike, this probably elicits a Scooby Doo-like... More →
One of the most powerful learning tools on the Sony Xperia tablet is its camera. In this video the Sony support team highlights a number of features housed in the tablet's camera application including shooting panoramas, editing photos, and accessing the camera quickly from the lock screen.
Learn the basics of these features and more here.
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In this video Sony Education Ambassador Andy Losik shows some of his fifth graders hard at work and having lots of fun learning seventeen different professional camera angles. Five groups of students are all handled a different device. The Sony Bloggie and Xperia tablet are among those in play. The overall goal is not to create Hollywood masterpieces but to gain tech literacy with many different devices and platforms.
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As a long time leader in the home electronics market, Sony knows that for many watching TV now involves having some type of laptop or mobile in one's lap as well. The Xperia tablet is the ultimate viewing companion because has a universal remote for many household and classroom devices built right into it. Sony takes the viewing experience a step further with an amazing app called Watch Now... More →
You did it! You made the wise decision to purchase a SONY Xperia tablet. Now what? As an educator it can be quite overwhelming to wade through the vast amount of information out there on the best Android apps to use. Let me help you by posting my findings on a Learnist board.
This first post features Wave Recorder, Skitch Evernote, Quixey, and qPDF. These... More →
Well the SONY Xperia created quite a stir in this teacher’s classroom. “Did you get, did you get it?” and “Can we see it?” were repeated by many anxious voices as I unveiled the new classroom learning tool. The live wallpaper of swimming koi, complete with water ripples when you touch the screen, helped up the coolness factor.
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One of the best things about the Xperia tablet is it’s versatility. Not only do you have a content consumption device with apps to interact with, digital reader functionality, and Internet accessibility, you also have a content creation device that can act as a still camera, a video camera, a sound recorder, and a productivity suite.
The challenge in a one tablet classroom is finding ways in which... More →
So I have to admit, I came upon this idea thanks to a colleague of mine who was looking for a fun way to encourage creativity and reward good behavior. We got to talking about wedding receptions we had recently attended at which the hosts had provided a photo booth experience. You know what I’m talking about. You go into the booth, click the button and a camera... More →
The Idea
One great way to use your Sony Xperia in the classroom is to create a class voting booth. This could be done in conjunction with an election unit or simply to instill a little bit of the democratic process into your classroom.
While the act of voting via clicker or via webtools such as polleverywhere.com may be a quick way to gather class information, the act of... More →
Google Apps for Education is Google’s suite of web-based tools that help the busy teacher work more efficiently and effectively for working with students, collaborating with colleagues, and communicating with parents.
Here are some of the most popular Google Apps for Education:
Google Drive: Teachers are using Google Drive to store all of their important documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms. Google Docs is now part of Google Drive.... More →
I live in Minnesota where the weather can be extreme. Thank goodness there are weather apps so that I can stay inside.
If I were planning a unit on weather in my classroom, the first thing I would do is round up resources that I have available, the resources online and the apps on my Sony Xperia Tablet. In my classroom I would have thermometers, a barometer and books. Then... More →
It is here, the Common Core Learning Standards have officially taken over as THE focus. The writing is on the wall as many professional teaching books, pinterest pages, and professional development conferences have quickly switched their focus. With good reason. The standards are guiding all of our decisions as we educate our students to be college and career ready (not to mention that... More →
Sony Xperia Tablet and Second Language Learners from Keri Duncan on Vimeo.
The above video is an example of how the Sony Xperia tablet is used in a one-to-one situation with a second language learner. Each week a volunteer at the school comes and spends the day working with different students. For about 40 minutes she works with this particular student to help him in his fluency for sight words.... More →
As great as it would be to have a tablet for every student, and although it may seem a little more feasible than the one to one computer solution, it still may be a ways off for many teachers and schools. There are still lots of great ways to use the one tablet in the classroom.
For the primary classroom, one option for the tablet is to use it as... More →
In my classroom I am constantly recording what my students are doing and putting it on my class Web site. Finding an easy way to accomplish this feat has been cumbersome at times because there have been too many steps such as loading video onto my laptop, editing the video, converting the video for the Web, and then uploading it to my site. Victory was... More →
There are a lot of apps out there… more than we can even begin to explore. The Google Play Store has tens of thousands… but how do we choose apps for learning? What are some criteria to help us choose apps for our students?
Basic Criteria
Curriculum
First things first, the app needs to provide opportunities for students to learn or practice something we value. This could be... More →
http://Mathsframe.co.uk
This British website is the home to many interactive math tools and resources which run perfectly on my Sony Xperia tablet. Many of these are available free, while an even greater selection is available by subscribing for about $15 per year. While these are described as being “Interactive Whiteboard Resources” they can certainly be used with a tablet with or without a projector. Think about... More →
I was a Facebook late-comer. I was teaching, I had a family and a life, and if I wanted to “connect” with friends and family, I would pick up the phone or email them. I eventually gave in, joined and it’s moderately useful for me, but the ways I’ve seen it used by other teachers is amazing to me. So, if you’re... More →
This post is the first in a monthly series of posts about Google Apps for Education and how it can make an Administrator’s life more efficient, so you spend less time with paperwork and more time in classes, at school activities, and with parents, students and teachers. If you’re not familiar with the power of Google Apps for Education, welcome! Here’s a quick overview:
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Kids Numbers and Math by Intellijoy - paid version - has 8 different activities for children from pre-school through second grade. First there is just the identification of numbers. A number is on the screen, it is said, child repeats it and goes to the next number. The second game is to count the number of flowers and choose the correct number. After 5 correct answers there is a little positive feedback... More →
So you have one tablet, does it have any use in a busy classroom of learners with an already busy teacher? YES!
Having a limited supply of any tool or resource means we need to be even more thoughtful and intentional about how we use that tool. Here are a few ideas for integrating your tablet into the teaching and learning in your classroom, even if you only have one... More →
Using a tablet in physical education or science as a measurement tool for measuring and recording heart rate is easy with Cardiograph by Micropinch, a free Android app. Cardiograph records your heart rate and keeps the data so you can see the rate on various and times. Each data set is automatically time and date stamped and saved into a profile. You can have multiple profiles.
How it works
You... More →
There are lots of ways to create eBooks these days, using lots of different tools. This post focuses on one way to create eBooks that is simple, free, and takes full advantage of the tools available on your Xperia tablet.
The Idea
Have your students author content for a book that can be turned into an eBook, read on digital devices, and shared with others.
The content of the book... More →
Many of us are in classrooms that do not yet have HD connections to our projectors or TVs. In my case, all the classrooms in the school are equipped with a ceiling mounted projector that shows the tv cable shows with the click of one button, and the connected computer with the click of another button but has a VGA cable as the input to the projector.. What if you... More →
Last year, I wrote a blog post titled “11 Things I Think I Know About 1:1 Classroom Management.” In that post, I approached teaching in a 1:1 environment from the perspective of what it takes to teach well in a media-rich environment. The conclusion I came to was that, really, the skills that it takes to be an effective teacher in the Digital Age are the same as the skills it... More →
Throughout the majority of most educators careers augmentative alternative communication devices (AAC’s) have been both limited in number and rather hefty in price. Rigid solutions such as Go Talks could range up to $300 and were toy-ish in appearance without the ability to customize very much at all. More Robust options could literally be thousands of dollars, and while well made, stood out as different from technology... More →
I love to read. Don’t you? I love books, magazines, manuals, blogs, and more. One of the challenges teachers face is how to instill that love of reading in their students. Thinking about the digital students we have today, I thought about what we can do to instill that love of reading with technology. Here are some suggestions.
Connect with other readers online.
Scholastic has a community for... More →
I’ve always felt that one of the goals of a teacher is to help each student feel like a rock star. Thanks to an observant colleague who saw a couple of kids playing with Songify, I think I have the next tool to help realize that goal.
What Is It?
Songify is a simple and free app that you can use on your Xperia tablet to record students... More →
When rolling out the Google Apps for Education Suite to educators, Google Drive is easily in the first three application shared. And why not? It’s different yet familiar, it’s collaborative and you can do some neat tricks with it. Like a puppy. But with less mess.
Google Drive is great to show teachers and they will come up with some great plans to use with their... More →
Many teachers are oppressed, more than anything else, by time. Is everything ready for tomorrow? Is the grading done? Will I ever get a full night's sleep again?
Saving time to be inspired, though, is what can provide the energy not just to keep going, but to enjoy it as you do, and a great source of inspiration comes via the TED app from TED Conferences (when searching, you... More →
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One app that comes with your machine is Movie Studio (please excuse my busy background). If you're looking for the Xperia equivalent of Premiere, this ain't it.
That said, if you need a quick way to bring together a few clips, pictures, and music, Movie Studio can do the job.
The app allows adding any of the items mentioned above, as well as taking pictures and video from... More →
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Ask a 6th grader how many different jobs there are, and you might get, "Well there's (what my mom does), (what my dad does), teacher, police officer, football player, movie star, and the president of the United States. Did I get them all?"
Hopefully not, but more to the point, there are remarkably few opportunities in most curricula to explore lots of different careers in any kind of efficient... More →
Having a tablet or other mobile device that may well be handed among several students as part of an activity can cause problems if the students have multiple accounts they need to access. Imagine, for example, that three students in a group will use one device, and each has a GAFE (Google Apps for Education) account. How do they access their accounts without stepping into each others' mail, files, etc.?
... More →
What Is It?
Class Dojo is a robust behavior tracking and management application designed for teachers and parents which allows a teacher to create a customized icon for each student. These icons can then be used to attribute either positive or negative behavior marks towards individual students or even the entire class. As a I stated previously, this app can be highly individualized, but let’s... More →
The Google Play Store on your Android tablet offers a wide range of educational apps that are great for not only younger writers but writers of all ages as well. There’s likely an app that will help your students with their mobile writing endeavors!
Here are some of my favorite writing apps that are great for your Android tablet. All of these apps are free and all are... More →
One of my favorite ways to curate the web is via Symbaloo, a web 2.0 tool that allows the user to create webmixes of their favorite sites. The tool is easy to learn, and it’s free.
There are all kinds of reasons to like Symbaloo webmixes. First, they are very customizable. You can create custom buttons to represent each URL you would like to add. Also, you can have... More →
Every educator has too many tasks, not enough time and is pulled in a million directions. Here is a quick run-down of my favorite apps to use with my Sony Xperia tablet (or other Android-enabled device) to streamline life, while still staying effective.
Evernote - Take notes on your tablet, add pictures, audio recordings or attachments quickly to your notes, along with sharing “notebooks” to collaboratively edit;... More →
Students love to tell stories. Students love to create stories. There are loads of great Android apps that allow students to capture images and video and do things like make movies, annotate what they capture, and add in their voice.
Check out these great apps that allow students to create stories on the go:
Skitch
With the built-in front facing and rear facing cameras on your Xperia tablet,... More →
Social media has become so prevalent that it seems like our lives are bombarded with bursts of tweets, pins, check-ins, quick links, hashtags, and Instagrams. What too often gets lost is the substance behind all of those short posts...and there is substance. No really. There is.
The cliché knock on social media is that it is just self-absorded nothingness post after post about where someone is eating... More →
Techsmith's Coach's Eye app may have been designed for coaches and athletes to analyze athletic performance but it harbors a lot of potential for any teaching situation. It is also one a very select number of apps on the Android platform that can be used to annotate video or flip learning.
I have been looking long and hard to find an app on the Android platform that... More →
If you are in the classroom like me, then you know that getting a one-to-one reading assessment completed without interruptions is a miracle. I have perfected the art of peripheral vision scanning of the other students as I conduct running records, and my frantic hand gestures to those that would interrupt are unmistakable. What I have not perfected is the art of completing the forms... More →
Newton’s laws of motion help us understand how objects in the world move around us. Through these apps students of all ages can understand the basics of physics and the comprehension skill of cause and effect.
First I would allow students to time to explore and play with the apps. Several are listed below. Then I would introduce Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion. I... More →
Word Ball is a simple game. Letters float on the screen and shrink and eventually disappear as you make as many words as you can. There is no timer, it is a race to make words faster than the balls shrink. Longer words score more points so this is an encouragement to students to add prefixes and suffixes to words as they enter them into the game.
There are three... More →
One of the most powerful tools for administrators is the almighty calendar. I have yet to find a calendar that is as robust and useful for school administrators as Google Calendar, and here’s why:
Google Calendar allows you to embed multiple calendars into a web page and change the way they look and the colors that are used.
You can easily attach documents, or invites to Google+ Hangouts ... More →
By no stretch of the imagination, am I a professional photographer. I like taking pictures of my work with schools, teachers and students and I love taking pictures of school signs.
I also believe in the need to document, in pictures, the fantastic things that are happening in our schools every day. Photos capture moments that will never, ever happen again. So in working with my Sony Xperia tablet,... More →
Being data-informed as a teacher is critical, especially in the Information Age. The more information we have about our learners, the more capable we are of designing lessons that enhance student learning. Finding ways to collect student feedback quickly and with the user-experience in mind is becoming more and more easy. Thanks to web 2.0 and the app culture, we now have the means to take the pulse of any group,... More →
I remember standing in Casa Grande Junior High School with slicked back hair and rolled up jeans on 1950's day in 1985 and telling a classmate, "You know, someday we'll be sending our kids to school on 80's day." Well, those days are here and for those of us who fondly recall the 80's and 90's enjoy the nostalgia of that era the rise of computer and video games are... More →
One of the things that I love about tablet devices like the Xperia is that they are playgrounds for self-motivated, exploratory learning. An Internet-connected tablet offers unlimited possibilities for discovering new, wonder-inducing things to know.
That said, with all of the world at your fingertips, it is hard to know where to begin. As a service to my fellow explorers, I have provided 10 of my favorite places to learn, explore... More →
So it’s day one of a new unit on punctuation and grammatical usage. You have twenty students that you expect to have a working command of commas, periods, quotation marks, and everything in between by the end of the next grading period. Where do you start? What do these kids already know, and what are they totally unaware of? You can craft a pre-test... More →
I love art. I love drawing, painting, and creating art of all kinds. My students usually cheered when I got out the art supplies. Students love art too. One of the wonderful features of the Sony Xperia Tablet is that it allows students to be artistically creative and to share their work. Illustration apps allow students to express themselves through drawing, to illustrate their stories, and to communicate. Their illustrations... More →
People of a certain age remember the days of diagramming sentences for parts of speech. Many bemoan that kids today just do not know how to write using correct grammar and perhaps we should go back to direct teaching of these important English concepts. Have no fear, the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) have it covered.
Specifically, third graders are expected to “Explain the function... More →
I recently came across a handy app on the Sony Xperia that was already there right out of the box. The app is called Scrapbook. If you don’t already see the Scrapbook app on your home screen, press Apps & Widgets in the top right corner to locate the Scrapbook app. To add an app to your home screen, just press and hold on it until you are... More →
So you're a teacher putting together a video or a slideshow, and you want to add some music. What's okay to use?
The rules surrounding copyright are complex, but help is out there. You can find all kinds of good music you can use. Legally. For free. You just need to know where, and how, to look.
Let's start by assuming that you want to be able... More →
I should start by making it clear I know Karen and Gene, the two gifted educators that write the Common Core and Educational Technology blog. They were part of the 2011 cohort of the MERIT program which I directed, and so I can say without any hint of subjectivity that they're amazing people.
So what have they done? They have launched a blog in which strong educational technology resources are... More →
4 Pics 1 Word is a free app from "LOTUM GmbH" which provides 4 pictures and the students are to deduce the word which all four pictures represent and then to use the provided letters to spell the one word which fits all the pictures - thus the name, 4 Pics 1 Word. This kind of word game promotes thinking and discussion in younger students as well as in students still learning or developing English... More →
As a former speech teacher, I can’t tell you how jealous I am that today’s teachers have the ability to provide their young rhetoricians with the tools that the big boys use. When I discovered that tablets like the Xperia can be used as teleprompters, I thought back to all of those student hours spent writing notecards and designing cue cards. I remembered with pain the... More →
As a special educator one of the most easily addressed disabilities I've encountered is visual impairment; however, it is also one the most overlooked. This statement is in no way intended to minimize the challenges students with visual impairments face. It is simply intended to point out the wide range of magnification and access tools available to students in today's technologically advanced world. Despite this, I... More →
PicsArts for Kids (free in the Google Play store), has features that will appeal to all aspiring young artists. Students can draw freely on a blank canvas (which supports multi-finger touch), color a variety of different pre-made pages (your tablet can also be your coloring book!), and students can learn to draw more complex figures by combining different shapes. For a free app, it has a lot of nice... More →
Learning Gems is an educational app development company based in Portage, Michigan and working to produce a number of offerings on the Android platform and for other devices.
At last check the outfit had three pages of apps available in the Google Play Store. Apps range in price from free "lite" versions to $2.99.
I caught up with Learning Gems' Robert Gleasson this week in Detroit at the 2013 MACUL conference.
... More →
With the Google Voice app you can easily put a new spin on formative assessment. By installing the app and then signing up for a free customizable number (I was even able to get my last name in mine.) teachers can create a feedback hotline for students and parents to leave comments, reflections, or questions.
Here is an easy example. A teacher asks her class to read three poems by... More →
Pictures Pictures Pictures. I love taking pictures, looking at pictures, and showing off pictures. Kids love to take pictures too, but quick viewing can sometimes be a hassle in the classroom. None of the desktops in our classrooms have built in card readers, so they have to be checked out from the computer lab.
That’s where the Xperia tablet comes in and one of the reasons I love... More →
In an earlier resource, I discussed how you could use your Xperia tablet as a wireless microphone in order to dictate to text with Dragon. This is still a fabulous speech-to-text program, but it has two distinct drawbacks. First, you can not dictate directly into the tablet, rather it remotely transmits to a desktop or laptop computer which has Dragon Dictation installed on it. Second, Dragon is... More →
If you have spent any time at all in recent professional development sessions for teachers, you have almost certainly run across the term Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The term applies to reaching and engaging all types of learners through the use of innovative and a multi-sensory approach. It’s a great idea that I feel all educators should strive to achieve, but it can be a... More →
MyScript Calculator is a free calculator app with a special feature, it is designed especially for touchscreens, providing handwriting recognition as it does its calculations! This is almost like magic. You can scrall a wide variety of mathematical operations and equations on your tablet and this app quickly translates your handwritten numerals and symbols into digital text and delivers the computations in almost real time.
This calculator... More →
If you teach third-grade boys you know that in their independent reading bag they will at some point have a graphic novel like the books by Dav Pilkey in their independent reading bag. This is not to say that the girls do not appreciate this genre too.
As third-grade teacher, I have observed first-hand how ears perk up whenever... More →
The titles of my blog posts usually begin with Common Core Connections. At first a post on homework planners for the Xperia table might not make sense. However, if you think about it, students will be better equipped to meet the CCSS if they are organized and actually do the reinforcement work and projects teachers assign. I taught first grade for 10 years and homework completion... More →
Not all tablets and computers are created equal. And they don't always play nicely with each other. As an educator, this can be infuriating. I'm trying to teach our kids and their teachers, and I'm constantly running into blockades that prevent me from being able to seamlessly present cross-platform products. I just want to teach and for my students to learn.
Thankfully, I was able to find... More →
We’ve all grown attached to our email programs, but there are some distinct advantages for using GMail as your email client when you’re an educator, and particularly as an administrator.
Here’s my top five reasons to use GMail in an educator’s life:
1. Ability to search all emails - using the search box at the top of the page, I can search... More →
In my role as a curriculum and technology specialist, I often encounter teachers who say things like, “I want to create lessons that take advantage of digital content, but I don’t know what that looks like.” Often, this is because teacher schedules are so hectic, and searching the Internet takes time that many teachers don’t have.
That’s why I was so excited... More →
