Tech Tips
July 2014: Volume 1 Number 8
Summer is in full swing! Hope you're enjoying yours!
Toontastic
"Toontastic is a creative storytelling app that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world... parents and teachers rave about the app... and kids can't stop creating!"
Desmos
"This website enables you to explore transformations, evaluate equations, plot tables of data, graph functions, and much more. Desmos is much more than an online calculator; it has great features and a user-friendly interface that will help you explore math in a whole new way."
BrainFeed
"Videos on Brainfeed are great for children 7 years and older, tweens, teens, and even addictive for adult-kids. Powered by passionate curators, parents and educators."
100 Apps for Education
What's Appening: 100 Apps for Education
The 100 Best Android Apps of 2014
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7 Cool Tools to Ease Your Students Writing
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Google's Cardboard
Description
Cardboard puts virtual reality on your smartphone. Try a variety of immersive demos on Android, and get inspired to build your own using the VR Toolkit athttp://g.co/cardboard.
• Earth: Fly where your fancy takes you on Google Earth.
• Tour Guide: Visit Versailles with a local guide.
• YouTube: Watch popular YouTube videos on a massive screen.
• Exhibit: Examine cultural artifacts from every angle.
• Photo Sphere: Look around the photo spheres you've captured.
• Street Vue: Drive through Paris on a summer day.
• Windy Day: Follow the story (and the hat) in this interactive animated short from Spotlight Stories.
To fully enjoy this app you'll need a Cardboard viewer. You can make your own using the instructions at http://g.co/cardboard. Please check the list of supported Android devices in the FAQ at http://goo.gl/2MzqQa. You might experience issues if your device is not fully supported. Share your experience through our Google+ community http://g.co/cardboarddevs.
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NEWSELA
"Newsela is free for students to explore a world of nonfiction and test their comprehension. Updated daily with real-world news from major publications, students can participate in conversation about the most urgent topics of our time, all while becoming stronger readers."
Fire Ants Article
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What Will the Classroom of the Future Look Like?
What Will the Classroom of the Future Look Like?
"One of the most important things to remember is that today’s kids “are part of the Maker generation, the do-it-yourself (DIY) generation, and this is really driving informal learning,” Kiang said....Today’s students use technology to share their accomplishments and build community, and curriculum should support that by letting students create and build things that matter to them."
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21st Century Assignment Planning
"What types of things do you consider when creating an assignment for your students? As a 21st century teacher there are things you may want to expressly consider when doing your assignment planning."
Depth of Knowledge
Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking
SAMR
Digital CItizenship
Included in the article is a Google Spreadsheet Template
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Want to Kickstart Your Makerspace?
Want to Kickstart Your Makerspace?
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Preschoolers Outsmart College Students In Figuring Out Gadgets
Excerpt: "The scientists also tested 170 college students. "What we discovered, to our surprise, was not only were 4-year-olds amazingly good at doing this, but they were actually better at it than grown-ups were," Gopnik says.
So why are little kids who can't even tie their shoes better at figuring out the gadget than adults? After all, conventional wisdom contends that young children really don't understand abstract things like cause and effect until pretty late in their development. Gopnik thinks it's because children approach solving the problem differently than adults.
Children try a variety of novel ideas and unusual strategies to get the gadget to go....
This is flexible, fluid thinking — children exploring an unlikely hypothesis. Exploratory learning comes naturally to young children, says Gopnik. Adults, on the other hand, jump on the first, most obvious solution and doggedly stick to it, even if it's not working. That's inflexible, narrow thinking."
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"The Digital Lives of Teens: If You Don't Have a Plan for Them, They Will Have a Plan for You"
Excerpt:
"This scene captures the tension that schools and teachers face with technology adoption. Like Jared, teachers are working so hard to get up to speed with technology, apps, devices, networks, and professional development. The pace of change is exponential. Many teachers find themselves in the same position as Jared -- overworked, under-appreciated, and left holding an "old" model in their hands. It doesn't feel good to them.
The kids they are teaching use technology in an intuitive manner, much in the same way that Dinesh responded to Jared in the scene described above. The kids know of no other way to approach a situation, other than to use what they know and have in front of them -- a device or an app. And the immediacy of solving the problem is gratifying.
For schools, the challenge is how to bring together kids' "native" knowledge regarding technology and teachers' pedagogical experience without entering into a tug-of-war battle that teachers will inevitably and invariably lose when technology is in the ring.
A colleague of mine from many years ago gave me sage advice regarding working with middle schoolers: "If you don't have a plan for them, they will have a plan for you."
Strongsville City Schools Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: turner@strongnet.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067