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 Pinterest

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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 Here

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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 suggest that you try to attend. You can find them under cross-curricular in the learning Guide.

Be certain to read the workshop descriptions carefully to be certain you are signing up for the right one.

To see a list of offerings, check out the online Professional Development Guide here or check out my Workshop page on this blog (look at the tabs at the top).

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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 can run the entire thing either from your own device or from your computer, whichever you prefer. And it will email you a report at the end of your activity!

This looks like a good one guys! My biggest concern at the moment is that it might not remain free for very long. 

Go here to try it out 

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