Think Different #87
Resources for the Week of Feb 24, 2019
Best handwriting recognition iOS App on the market
But regardless, Nebo is a game changer. Frequently I have students say they prefer to take handwritten notes because they remember things better. I get that. So Nebo may just be a great solution for them. They will need to break down and get a decent stylus. An Apple Pencil is hands down the Rolls Royce of stylus, but does not work on all iPads. Logi teach has a new one called LogiCrayon that is excellent. Crayon Digital Pencil for iPad 6th Generation $69.99 (I was recently in a school with this, I was very impressed)
And these are pretty good too.....
Unbelievably Useful Apple Notes Tips for iPad/iPhone and Mac
Links to apps discussed in the video above
Unbelievably Useful iPad Apps
20 sites for students with free time on their hands
If you haven't tried Wakelet yet, take a look at my collections. It is an awesome tool. https://wakelet.com/@CyndiKuhn9126
Need a writing Coach to help improve your writing?
We all hope to create excellent, flawless and compelling write-ups. But this can’t be done if it has grammatical errors. Lots of grammatical errors create very bad impressions with readers.
Fortunately, there are some good automatic editing tools. Tools such as ProWritingAid and Grammarly were designed to ease the editing burden. As much as they do not fix all the writing and content errors (no robot can do that), they make it easier for you to edit.
I decided to give ProWritingAid a try, just began, so I will let you know in a couple weeks which I like best, Grammarly or ProWritingAid.
A Little About......
ProWritingAid does an in-depth dive into the quality of your writing, it looks at ....
- passive voice
- overused words,
- use of clichés
- sentence variety
You can compose in the tool itself, copy and paste, or upload a document and you’ll get a summary report with all kinds of statistics about the strengths and weaknesses of the piece, plus suggestions for changes when you hover over highlighted places in the text itself.
Here are just a few of the things your summary report will tell you:
- the readability of your piece based on four different reading scales,
- the number of times you used certain words,
- the most unique words in your piece, your average sentence length (along with a graph that actually shows you where sentences of different lengths are placed),
- how often you used adverbs (which can weaken your writing),
- and how often you used weak or passive wording.
It has a free and a paid version, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the free version.
If you’re an English teacher you really need to take a look at this tool—it will reinforce a lot of what you’re trying to teach your students and will draw their attention to individual strengths and weaknesses, which will make it much easier to personalize instruction. Even the FREE version is extremely useful.
YOTEACH, a good replacement for Today's Meet
Set up a free room, give your students the URL, and everyone can chat just like they did on TodaysMeet.
And it has a few features TodaysMeet did not have.
- Password protect your room if you need too
- Participants can add pictures and drawings in the chat,
- The rooms do n’t expire or at least I can't find anything that says they do.
Socratic Seminars - Class Discussions Track & Assess Student Involvement
Not sure about your classroom, but in mine are is like pulling teeth to get my future teachers, yes I said future teachers to discuss something or answer a question aloud when posed. It is a challenge for many teachers to figure out which students participate in a class discussion and how often.
A solution might just be Equity Maps. An iPad app for keeping track of student participation in class discussions.
Select a seating chart based on your room arrangement that shows where students are sitting for a discussion. When the discussion begins, tap each student’s icon as that student contributes to the conversation. Equity Maps keeps track of how long each student talks. You can get a summary of how often each student participated, how many were active participants and whether there was equal gender distribution among those who actively engaged.
Other features add more functionality:
- buttons to record periods of silence,
- pair-shares and small groups,
- a “chaos” button to keep track of times when the formal discussion dissolved into many smaller conversations.
- audio recorder lets you record the whole discussion so that you can review it later with the map, helping you and your students reflect on the quality of their participation.
Equity Maps could be a useful tool for almost any grade level and subject areas—in any class where you want students to actively participate.
Netflix Announces A “Green Eggs & Ham” Animated Series
Think Different Resources
Weekly resources are archived at http://www.cyndikuhn.info under Weekly Resources
Email: cyndidk@ksu.edu
Website: http://www.cyndikuhn.info
Location: Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, United States
Phone: 785-532-5812
Twitter: @cyndidannerkuhn