On Friday the 15th of May, I attended a full day workshop with Ruben Puentedura, the man behind the SAMR model. All his slides can be found here.
Continue reading “SAMR, TPACK and the EduTech Quintet, with Ruben Puentedura”
Tag: edtech
bookmark_borderA visit to Botswana
I
n our Year 10 Unit “The Geography of Wellbeing”, we are using Botswana as a case study to investigate responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Since many of my students initially had no idea of where Botswana is (could you point it out on a map right now?) and because none of them had been to Africa, I decided to take them on a virtual visit: Continue reading “A visit to Botswana”
bookmark_borderRevision with “Heads Up!”
In 2013, Ellen Degeneres released an app called Heads Up. It’s a simple app, it works like “Celebrity heads” and it nicely made with some fun features. I used this app to revise key words from our History course, the students loved it.
(https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/heads-up!/id623592465?mt=8)
Here is Ellen playing the game with Owen Wilson:
Continue reading “Revision with “Heads Up!””
bookmark_borderTeachmeet Thursday 6th of Nov, at Wesley
I had the pleasure of hosting a Teachmeet at my school this evening. As expected, it was an inspirational, informative and informal evening, full of great sharing and networking. We had an excellent group of people with very interesting presentations.
Here are the links to the tools and sites that were presented:
- https://realtimeboard.com/education-tool/, a shared whiteboard / collaboration site.
- http://www.nearpod.com/, similar to realtimeboard, great for sharing and collaborating
- https://peardeck.com/, interactive presentations, real time student input
- https://storify.com/MVTeachers/mv-tours-teachmeet-nov-6-presentation, using Twitter for tours and excursions (definitely setting that up for my Year 10 class next year)
- https://www.google.com/edu/classroom/, Google classroom, great functionality, for Google Apps schools
- The smart watch: Samsung Galaxy Gear Fit, http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/04/samsung-gear-fit-review/
- An easy to use Green Screen app for the iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/green-screen-by-do-ink/id730091131?mt=8
And here’s the full Storify, with all tweets and photos: Continue reading “Teachmeet Thursday 6th of Nov, at Wesley”
bookmark_borderA Virtual Excursion to Florence
I created a virtual visit to Florence.
The aim of this activity is to give kids an indication of what this amazing city is like. I purposely did not include very difficult questions or complex activities; this is really about having a wander around and discover some of the places that are so important in the history of the Renaissance.
The outcome of this virtual excursion is “Seven Florence Facts”; students just have to share seven interesting renaissance facts they learnt as a result of this online excursion.
Activities include walking around Florence Cathedral (Il Duomo), going inside the Uffizi Gallery, sliding a photo on History pin to see what the Ponte Vecchio looked like after WW2 and a look inside a Medici villa.
Continue reading “A Virtual Excursion to Florence”
bookmark_borderEvernote in education
Today I learnt about Evernote. I have been using it on and off for a while, but I was aware that I was not using its full functionality. So I attended a free #evernotemeetup, organised by Bec Spink. I came away with many new ideas and I feel inspired to organise myself better. I look forward to using Evernote in the classroom and in my personal life.
Ways to use Evernote in the classroom:
- Create a notebook for each student, keep track of all notes and correspondence etc
- As a digital portfolio, take photos and upload students’ work
- Students upload their homework to a shared notebook
- Work with teachers on projects
- Students can use Evernote for research projects
- Perfect iPad integration, kids organise their own schoolwork in Evernote
- See this site: http://evernote.com/teachers/
Using Evernote in Personal / Professional life:
- Scan paper or take photos of documents. Live paperless. You can use the inbuilt Evernote Document Camera or a purpose built scanner apps (Info here)
- Tag every note and use it to organise your tasks. Great ideas here: http://www.thesecretweapon.org/
I know I’m only scratching the surface with this powerful tool, I’ll share more when I discover more.
Below is my overview of the tweets sent during the Evernote meetup: Continue reading “Evernote in education”
bookmark_borderIf THIS then THAT, or: How to connect Diigo, Twitter, a Blog, Evernote, Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, you name it…
“If This, Then That” (IFTTT, pronounced as IFT) is the best way to automate tasks and connect different parts of your internet social ventures.
I think it’s best explained with an example:
I use Diigo (see earlier post: Why I love Diigo) but also like the functionality that Evernote offers. I did not want to have two separate curating and archiving tools, I want them to talk to eachother. IFTTT can do that:
bookmark_borderUsing a scanner app for resources
I have to share this: Using a scanner app is a great way to collect and share resources with your students.
Sometimes you are not around a photocopier or scanner and you might want to copy text from a book, or a diagram from a textbook. Taking a normal photo with your phone is an option, but particularly when photographing text, it just doesn’t come out very well. In that case, I recommend you download a scanner app for your phone. The result is of a very high quality and it just looks better than a normal photo.
I have tried these two apps: Scanner Pro (my preferred one, $2.99 when I last checked) and JotNot (free when I last checked).
Below are two examples. I use this technique a lot. Perfect for when I’m reading a history book on the train and want to share key quotes or passages with my students. Continue reading “Using a scanner app for resources”
bookmark_borderFun with wordclouds
This post is inspired by @jivespin who runs a fabulous blog full of great teaching ideas. His tweet (below) made me want to play around with Tagxuedo myself, it had been a while.
NEW RESOURCE – Friedrich Ebert’s Weimar Republic Word Cloud http://t.co/Raczv6vVMO #historyteacher #histedchat …. for @Cybotta
— John Mitchell (@Jivespin) September 14, 2013
At the time of writing, importing images in Taxuedo is still in Beta so you can still import images for free. I will soon be doing Weimar and the Rise of Hitler again so I made two Taxuedos, one of Hitler and one of Stresemann. I used the Wikipedia entries as my sources list, but took some Wikipedia specific words such as: Edit, Navigation, pp, Wikipedia out of the word list. It is interesting to see the differences between the two.
A clickable version of the Wikipedia entry on Hitler below: Continue reading “Fun with wordclouds”
bookmark_borderTechnology = Space
I am fascinated by Steve Collis’ idea and proposition that Technology equals a Space. I want to spend more time exploring this and will write more soon, but for now, please read Steve’s blog post, watch the video and read some interesting tweets in my Storify on the topic.
http://www.happysteve.com/blog/2013/3/9/technology-is-space
Continue reading “Technology = Space”