Passwords

Thanks to my friend Sara Isbell, who sent this email recently to her staff. I thought it was great, so I stole it with her permission :)  The top 25 worst passwords, in order (and their current rankings compared with the previous year's rankings) 1.  password (unchanged) 2.  123456 (unchanged) 3.  12345678 (unchanged) 4.  abc123 (up 1) 5.  qwerty (down 1) 6.  monkey (unchanged) 7.  letmein (up 1) 8.  dragon (up 2) 9.  111111 (up 3) 10. baseball (up 1) 11. iloveyou (up 2) 12. trustno1 (down 3) 13. 1234567 (down 6) 14. sunshine (up 1) 15. master (down 1) 16. 123123 (up 4) 17. welcome (new) 18. shadow (up 1) 19. ashley (down 3) 20. football (up 5) 21. jesus (new) 22....

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ClassBadges.com

Well! A new, fun thing has inspired me to create a new blog entry! There has been a movement, gaining momentum over the last few years, regarding the use of online "badges". A badge is something that you can earn for completing a set of requirements. There is a Mozilla badge project, which is attempting to standardize the use of badges across communities. The great thing about this project, if it works, is that students could earn credit for skills not necessarily taught (or tested) in your average classroom. Let's say a student is an awesome programmer. That is a pretty marketable skill! One that colleges might be interested in! But how will they know? It isn't covered on a state test. And a programming class in one school might be extremely different than a programming class in another. That's...

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NearPod

NearPod is a fantastic app for the ipod/iPad, designed to help teachers during instruction. Teachers create a presentation onthe computer using the Nearpod site. Then during class, they control the presentation through the Nearpod App on an iPad. Students can use the Nearpod Student App on either an iPad or an or an iPhone or iPod Touch Device. What makes this unique is that this app allows students to interact with the presentation. The teacher can ask students to draw something on their devices, and then can see all of their drawings on the Teacher App.  The teacher can even share a drawing with the whole class (without a student name attached). There are even polls and quizzes that can be added to a presentations,...

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Vennage

It seems that everywhere you look these days, you see infographics. They are a great way to display information because they are so visual and easy to read. Now there are tools to help you create infographics. Vennage is an easy to use tool that allows you build an infographic quickly and easily. You can add charts and graphs, pictures, and text. Easel.ly and Piktochart are other examples of Infographic creators.  This video gives you a preview of Easel.ly so you can see how it works! Source: easel.ly via FISD on Pinteres...

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Google Research

Something new is available in Google Docs! This is groovy. Once you open your document, you can go to Tools>Research and a search window will pop open on the right side of the screen. You can search right there, while you are working on your document! Then hover your mouse over the source on the right and you will see options to preview the source, Insert a link to the source, or get a citation for the source. For more info about Google Research, check out the Google Help Her...

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Gzaas!

Yeah, I have no idea how to pronounce this one. This is a groovy little tool with a very simple purpose. The only thing it can do is take small amounts of text and make them full screen. Now if you are like my, you like to have a bell ringer when the kids come in the room, and you generally put it on a PowerPoint slide so that it will show it HUGE on the screen. And you can do some cool formatting stuff with it as well. What you see in the picture above is basically all it takes to get started. You type your text in the box and hit the orange button. It will randomly select a style for you, but you can change it at the bottom of the finished screen if you want. That's pretty much it! ...

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Summer Technology Courses

Check out these awesome technology offerings for the summer! Registration opens May 12, so be sure to jump in Eduphoria and sign up for the ones you want! In particular, I want to highlight the Moodle offerings this summer. All teachers will have access to Moodle Middle School folks, you may want to check this out. It is a great tool and especially wonderful for Flipped Classroom online environments, and offers discussion boards as well as a way for students to turn in work online. CTE folks, there are some lunch and learn sessions that are designed for the current Moodle user, to show you the differences between the old Moodle and the new (version 2.0) It's a great idea, and if you plan to use Moodle next year I would strongly...

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YouTube for YOU!

Frisco Teachers! Did you know that you have a YouTube account associated with your Google Login? It is a great place to store videos that you want to share with your students. If you have students create videos, you could login to your YouTube account and load them all into one place. Create a playlist for each class! This would be especially good as we begin to do more with flipped classroom stuff and you might have more videos that you need to store. Don't use up space on a drive for videos. Store them on YouTube and save the space! Don't forget to check privacy settings, and be sure not to publish videos of kids who are on the Do Not Publish list....

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Socrative

What is Socrative? Think CPS clickers but simpler. And using handheld devices/phones instead of clickers. Socrative is really simple to use. You create a free account, and start making a quiz. You can do multiple choice, true/false, and even short answer! There is a teacher app and a student app. Once you create an account you are given a room number. Students enter that room number on their app to join your room. You can even use socrative to ask verbal questions. Can you say formative assessment?! It's kind of brilliant.  There is a quiz mode, an "exit ticket" mode , and the space race which is a game based on one of your saved quizzes.  When your class is done, you can clear the room with one click. You...

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TED Ed

Most of you have probably heard of the TED talks before. TED talks are "ideas worth spreading" and focus on Technology, Engineering, and Design. From the same people has now emerged TED Ed, and it isn't just about technology! On TED Ed, you can find entire flipped lessons, created by teachers. AND you can personalize these using a simple interface.  You can also use this site to create a lesson around ANY YouTube video! I am going to hazard a guess that this is going to be an amazing resource, and I can't wait to dig in deeper! I really encourage you to take the3 minute tour and find out more! Click here to go to TED Ed for the to...

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Remind 101

Okay, this is super great for teachers. It's designed just for the educational setting! Basically, this is a way for you to text your kids and parents reminders about things that are coming up. They can even receive the text messages via email if they prefer. The teacher sets up an account, and kids can "subscribe". the teacher never sees the student phone numbers, only the number of people who have subscribed. The teacher then sends out a text and it is received by everyone on the list. Accounts are free to create, and you can create up to 10 different groups within your username. You just tell the kids which one to sign up for. So for example, I could create a group for my on-level kids, my PAP kids, and the extra-curricular...

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iSpring

iSpring is a nifty little tool that can convert your PowerPoints to flash. You download this to your computer, and it appears as a tab within PowerPoint. Why would you want this? Well, flash files are smaller than video files created when you record narration with PowerPoint, making them more suitable for upload to the web (Google Docs or Moodle). If you are thinking about giving the Flipped Classroom methodologies a try, this may be a helpful tool to have in your arsenal! Find iSpring He...

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Today's Meet

Have you heard of Today's Meet? I first ran across this kind of thing while attending conferences. Today's Meet is an example of a "Back Channel". It is a place to hold an instant messaging conversation among a group pf people. Presenters will use this to provide a place for participants to talk about what they are viewing. When David and I presented at TCEA last year, we set up a Back Channel on Today's meet so people could ask questions or give us feedback during the presentation. One of us did the speaking while the other monitored the Back Channel and responded to questions. Multi-tasking at it's finest. Now, how about putting this in the classroom? You could set up a Back Channel for kids to use to ask questions during a project. Then...

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Triptico

Here is a cool little gem sent to me by Miss Kristy McCoy who is always full of great resources. This is unique. It is a desktop application that you download from the Internet. Once downloaded, you no longer need the Internet to run it. I am not sure if I can adequately describe the simplicity and coolness of this little application. It has more than 25 little tools that you can work with. Some are super simple, like a scoreboard for your classroom games. Others are more involved. Type in a list of words that the kids can click and move around, then choose one of 42 different backgrounds to use. You could do a venn diagram for example and have the kids sort the words. You can make your own lists. Of students. Of vocabulary. You can use that...

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Self-Driving Car

Okay folks, this is just cool. Google has been working on a self-driving car. You can watch it in action in the video above. Or read an article about it here. The very first person outside of Google to get to drive the car was a man who is 95% blind. Just amazing. The TED talk about the car can be found here and I find it inspiring that this was initiated by a man who lost his best friend in an auto accident. The implications for people who are blind, aging, otherwise incapable of driving right now are staggering. But what about the rest of the population? I think they could benefit too. How many traffic accidents are caused by drivers who are temporarily incapacitated. Texting while driving, drunk driving, and fatigued driving make up a good portion of automobile fatalities. The widespread...

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Facebook Scores- A New HR Tool?

 Last night on the radio I heard an intriguing story about Facebook Scores. It is no secret that employers are using Facebook to make hiring decisions. In fact, 45% of employers admit to using social networking sites to facilitate hiring decisions. The Facebook Score is a new trick though that is leaving some folks a little nervous. Facebook scores are a way for hiring managers to get a sense of what type of employee you will be before you are hired. You already have a credit score that helps salespeople predict whether you will make good on your payments, and the Facebook score is kind of a similar deal. It tells employers whether or not you will make a good employee. It is kind of an interesting concept, and it is based on...

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Take an Interest in Pinterest!

The secondary facilitators are in the process of moving all of our wonderful online resources to Pinterest! Pinterest is great because it is a visual way to organize all your favorite things. So if you need a presentation tool because you're tired of PowerPoint, Pinterest has your answer. Browse through images and short descriptions, and when you find something you like, repin it to your own board so you can find it later. You need an invitation to join, but I can do that for you! Email me if you want to sign up and I will take care of it. Need a tutorial? Give me a holler and I will help you out. Disclaimer: this is not for use with students, With Pinterest, you never know what you're going to get. This is for your professional use- do...

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