Prezi - Ready, Set, Go! How to Make an Effective Prezi Step by Step.

Provide Your Students the Opportunity to Create With Explain Everything

Our goal as educators is to engage our learners.  We all know that it's not so simple.  Engagement involves not just action but interaction.  Action could be perceived as the teachers teaching the new material in a lecture format.  It is purely one dimensional and teacher-centered.  Interaction entails that the students are interacting with the teacher and/or with the content being taught.  They are learning the content through a multi-sensory approach.  The more opportunities a learner is provided to connect with the new knowledge, the greater chance he/she will grasp it. Years ago, students reading their textbooks in front of them was considered to be interaction.  Not anymore.  What's the best way to have students interact with the content for purposes of mastery?  Give them a chance to create something with it, according to the new version of Bloom's Taxonomy.  And if you're looking for an app that will allow your students to do that, then you must use Explain Everything.

Developed by MorrisCooke, Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design tool that lets you annotate, animate, and narrate explanations and presentations. You can create dynamic interactive lessons, activities, assessments, and tutorials using Explain Everything's flexible and integrated design. Use Explain Everything as an interactive whiteboard using the iPad video display (via Airplay/cable).  

But to say that Explain Everything is merely a note taking tool or even an interactive whiteboard does not do it justice.  Explain Everything allows one to create screencasts and so much more.  You can insert a web browser for live annotations and basic recordings.  Explain Everything records on-screen drawing, annotation, object movement and captures audio via the iPad microphone.  You can create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage.  

You can import many types of files into the app. This includes but is not limited to: photos, PDF, PPT, XLS, RTF, Pages, Numbers and Keynote from Dropbox, Evernote, Box, WebDAV, Email, iPad photo roll and the iPad camera. Export MP4 movie files, PNG image files, PDFs and share the .XPL project file with others for collaboration. One of the many benefits of using Explain Everything for creating screencasts is that unlike hosting websites, the user becomes the owner of the screencast.  This means that they can be fully downloaded as mp4 files and shared with others instead of just being embedded online.  When you’ve finished recording your presentation, you can reorder your screens and then export your presentation in a variety of ways (email a link, post to YouTube, or upload to Dropbox or Evernote).  This is a perfect opportunity for your students to share what they have created with you and with their parents as well.

To learn more about what Explain Everything can do, watch the video below. The website also provides  video guides and print guides to help users navigate the tools, along with an online showcase for some inspiration.

Some website reviews:

http://langwitches.org/
The different pieces you draw, type or import become objects that can individually be manipulated (resized, deleted and are treated to be a on a layer that can be send to back, front, etc)
[…] Export features: I am not forced to upload the video file to the company’s site. I have CHOICES! I can export a screenshot of the slide I created to my Photo Roll (this feature is huge for me, since I can now import the movie file directly from here into iMovie on the iPad and make the screencast part of a larger movie), via e-mail, to Dropbox or Evernote.

http://www.techchef4u.com
I am typically quite skeptical when I come across paid apps that do the same thing as free ones. That being said… I have been looking for an advanced screencasting app for some time and was quite elated with the features, design, and potential Explain Everything promised.

How High Are You Climbing the Ladder of Educational Technology?

As the world continues to change, technology continues to change as well. Not only is it important for us as educators to teach our students how to use technology, but it is even more important for us to use it in a way that is seamlessly integrated so our students can learn the content, material, and skills that they need to learn.  This is Education Technology Integration.
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When I first started my blog entitled "Climbing the Ladder of Educational Technology," I entitled it so because I envisioned myself on a journey learning about emerging educational technology.  After blogging on various educational technologies for more than seven months, I have found new meaning in my blog.  This is all relative to Educational Technology Integration.   

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When I reflect upon Educational Technology Integration, I think of a ladder.  The very bottom of the ladder touches the earth.  This represents the actual basics of the technology itself.  For instance, the ability to turn on an iPad and read a document on it; or writing on a SMARTBoard in a similar fashion to using an overhead projector.  These are the most simplest ways to integrate the technology.  Although the technology might be integrated in the classroom, is it providing the students with an interactive, engaging experience?  Most likely not.  The teacher will need to learn how to use the technology at a deeper level and then how to integrate it into the lesson as well.  (Please see the SAMR Model below for more information.)

Once the teacher has learned how to use the technology thoroughly and can use it in an efficient manner, it's time to integrate it with the content that is being taught.  The teacher has begun in a sense, to climb the ladder of EdTech.  It is the educator's job to create lessons that will engage the students and will bring their learning to new heights.  At the same time, it is important that the educator personalizes the learning to the needs of the class.  Included in personalizing the learning is differentiated instruction to reach those students who may have diverse learning styles.  



When planning the lesson and creating the content, the teacher is going to want to use best practices.  One of the most important points to consider when integrating technology in education is when to use it and when not to use it.  Secondly, another point for the teacher to consider is, "What is the technology allowing me to do NOW that I have not done before without it?  What are my students able to do with the technology NOW that they could not have done before without it?"  Third, what cognitive skills are being included from Bloom's Taxonomy?  Are your students thinking and creating?  Are they collaborating to make something new?  Fourth, is the technology a teacher centered tool or a student centered tool?  We must all remember that implementing the technology - whether it's iPads, SMARTBoards, etc. is not going to bring "magic" inside our classrooms.  Technology is just a tool.  It's up to teacher how to use it inside the classroom. The teacher is the one who has the job of bringing magic into the classroom.  

     SAMR Model of Educational Technology Integration

  

                                                              TPACK Model 

                                                      The New Bloom's Taxonomy

Integrating Educational Technology With Bloom's Taxonomy Skills

Put Your Mail in Its Place With Mailbox

We know our world is constantly changing. Years ago, organizing my e-mail was merely a cinch. Twenty years ago, I remember signing on to AOL and hearing the man say, "You've Got Mail." In those days, sending and receiving e-mail was an enjoyable activity. Not anymore. Between work, school, family, friends, other contacts, and paying bills, my e-mail is constantly flooded. I needed a solution to help me organize my inbox and reduce my mail - with the hope that it would actually reach zero. Worse yet, people were sending me to tasks to complete via e-mail. (This was due to none other than my fault, since I was the one who asked them to do so. "If you need me to get something done, then e-mail it to me," I would tell them.) Yet, that was just adding clutter to my inbox. Thanks to some of my colleagues, I was fortunate to learn about the newly released app Mailbox.

Currently available for iPhone + Gmail (with more platforms to come soon), Mailbox is the the fast, fun mobile inbox that puts email in its place - literally. The Mailbox app uses the cloud to sync with one's Gmail account in order to deliver one's e-mail to his or phone as fast as possible.   The mail is then delivered securely to one's phone. With Mailbox, one can quickly swipe messages to his or her archive or trash.

In addition, one can glance at an entire conversation with chat-like organization.  If the user finds e-mails that he or she does not need until a later date, he can "snooze" the e-mails until that time with a swipe and tap of just one button.  The "snoozed" e-mails will return automatically to the user at the desired time.  This enables the user to focus on those e-mails that are important to him or her now. 

Mailbox is an entirely new experience to using one's inbox.  Personally, I often dread cleaning out my Gmail inbox.  Using the Mailbox app no longer makes cleaning out my e-mail a chore; instead it's a breeze. I can now pay attention to those e-mails that are currently in my inbox.  And once I focus on those e-mails, I am a left with a clean empty inbox.  Now that's a great feeling.  

Zite: A Magazine Created Especially Just For You

If you're a reflective practitioner like me, you are constantly searching for articles to read about the newest trends in education and ways that you can enhance your teaching methods.  This includes subjects such as pedagogy, professional development,  teaching, educational technology, special education, and much more. We all know that teaching is dynamic and not static.  The students we are teaching nowadays are not the same students that were in our classrooms 20 years ago.  Therefore, we need to change our teaching styles in order to personalize the learning towards our students.  Because my time is so limited, it is difficult for me to research various magazines on different articles.  And then I discovered Zite.

Zite is an awesome mobile app for educators. It's a free app that allows you to create a personalized magazine for a specific topic. Tell it what you’re interested in and the app will suck in relevant blog posts, news articles, videos, and articles. Over time, Zite learns about your preferences and serves up more of the content you want. This app is ideal for teachers who want to stay on top of a subject and find the latest news to share with students without having to spend hours scouring the Web.  Zite attempts to customize and deliver the type of articles you like to read in a newspaper style reading.It is Wifi- connection enabled which means that you can easily access news content with a tap of a button.

As educators, we can try Zite to make our reading experience even better. You can access the content of your favorite websites and even customize it in a newspaper style and share it with others. Invite your students to use it and enjoy the look they would have when reading the feeds of the websites they like. I am quite sure you will like this app when you try it.  The more you use Zite, the better the app will get to know you and select articles that are based on your personal interests.  Your magazine will be personalized just for you.  That's personalized learning at its best.  

Here is a list of some of the main features that Zite offers to its users:

• It is compatible with iPad and requires iOS 3.2 or later.
• It is free
• It is easy to use
• It has an intuitive interface
• It allows its users to customize and use magazine style to read their feds
• It has 1000's of magazine sections to choose from using a smart auto-suggest tool
• It allows you to share content you like to Twitter, Facebook and via e-mail.

To get started using Zite, here is a short video tutorial to help you understand how to use Zite on your iPad.

Creating a 21st Century Learning Environment: My Goals as an EdTech Leader at My School

Oh Evernote, Wherever Have You Been?

Ever since I was a child, I have been fortunate to have a decent visual memory.  I had an easy time remembering things that I saw.  Unfortunately, I took this gift for granted and only realized that I was actually a visual learner as an adult.  Between working full time, going to school, being a mother and dealing with everything else in my life, I just have not been able to remember everything that I have needed to.  If I hear something without being able to process it visually, it's as if it never existed to me.  I even sought the advice of a neurologist as I was fearing that I was suffering from dementia.  I just couldn't remember everything I needed to remember.  His response to me was that it's impossible to remember everything.  Fortunately, I have found something to help me remember important things and get me organized.  Meet Evernote.

Evernote is a web tool that allows users to bookmark, record voicemails, take text and voice notes, upload pictures, docs, PDFs and files, and capture images and information on the web as well as a software download on your computer or as a plugin for your browser and also as an application for your mobile device.  A lot of ink has been shed on this topic and just one click in a search engine is enough to get hundreds of links to guides and tutorials about Evernote.  

As of now, I am still new to using Evernote.  I am using it to clip pages and articles from the web that I will need to refer to in the future.  If I had been printing these articles out, this would have been well over 100 pages.  According to Rob Walker of Bloomberg Businessweek (March 4, 2013), "It happens gradually, devoted fans insist. Once you get it, they say, you live and die by Evernote, the five-year-old, everything-in-one-place personal organization application that is hyped by its creators as your "external brain."'  I have heard several of my colleagues express similar opinions about the app as well.  The more you use Evernote, the more it's going to benefit you.

Ted Barnett, who works as chief operating officer of digital publisher Byliner, heard of the app from a friend in 2009 and was attracted to the idea that he could enter and access his data, stored in the cloud, from any smartphone, tablet, or computer.  "I have a terrible memory," Barnett says, explaining that he used to rely largely on physical notebooks to keep track of ideas, until he started adding those to Evernote.  Then he added a cheat sheet of parents' names at his daughter's school.  Now, at the end of a work meeting, he'll photograph the whiteboard, store that picture in Evernote, add some thoughts and questions, and send it around to his team.  Basically, the more Barnett used Evernote, the more he thought of new ways to use it.
Sounds like a win, win, right?  So what else can Evernote actually do?  And how can Evernote help teachers in education?

There are several reasons why we should embrace Evernote in education and here are some of them:

• Evernote makes it easy for everyone to easily remember things big and small using computer, phone and the web.
• It is a great organizational tool for teachers and students. Evernote automatically processes and indexes anything one captures on the web and it makes this content searchable. It also allows users to add tags and organize notes into different notebooks.
• Evernote keeps all your important information in one place
• Class notes, schedules, assignments, lesson plans, research or anything related to your schoolwork can be easily added to your Evernote account
• Evernote automatically syncs all your notebooks to the cloud and everywhere you have Evernote installed.
• Evernote has apps for all kind of smartphones meaning you can access your notes everywhere you are.
• Evernote has browser extensions for the major browsers making it down to earth easy to take notes and organize bookmarks right from your browser.
• Evernote allows users to easily share their notes with others via email, or popular social media
• Evernote has a special section for education called Evernote for Education where you can learn about how teachers and students are using this tool.  http://evernote.com/teachers/ (It appears that you will need to subscribe to the premium version in order to access this feature.)

Here are some of the many ways that teachers can use Evernote in education:

• The first and foremost usage of this tool for educators is to take notes  in class or when attending a lecture , a conference, a symposium, wherever they feel the need to capture and save ideas for later review.
• Teachers can get their notes organized into different notebooks
• They can use it to create to-do lists and work logs via recording tasks completed in Evernote, along with the beginning and end times.
• Teachers who are running a classroom blog can use it to write post drafts to be published on their blog when they get access to internet connection
• Teachers can organize their classes in Evernote using tags 
• Store all the teaching materials to use during the whole year , one example is the grading templates such as  grade sheets or student assessment forms.  

The list goes on an on. The more you use Evernote, the more ways you will find to use it.  There are many ways students can use Evernote in education as well.  A couple of examples include students taking handwritten notes in their class and using a camera to capture an image to keep in their Evernote.  Students can also create different notebooks where to organize and keep their assignments, class projects, docs, files, school events and many more.  

Overall,  I have found Evernote to be a very beneficial web tool to help met get organized.  I am currently subscribed to the free version, which means that I must have an internet connection in order to sync and access my notebooks.  If I need to access my notebooks offline, I will print and/or save them as PDFs and open them with another app, such as iBooks.  Subscribing to the premium version will allow me additional storage space as well as saving my notebooks to be access when I am working offline.  

Another recommendation is to install the Evernote bookmarklet into your web browser, so you are able clip the pages, websites, and other information from your smartphone.  These notes will go directly into your Evernote notebooks and you will be able to access them from your accounts on other devices.  

"Evernote says it has 50 million users around the world (a third in the U.S.) and is adding 100,000 a day.  Operating on a "freemium" model, the company makes money primarily from the silver of that user base that pays $45 a year, or $5 a month, for a souped-up version with more storage capacity." (Bloomberg Businessweek)  

If you don't have Evernote yet, whatever are you waiting for?  Download it and start using it today.  Trust me, you will be happy you did!

Information for this blog has been compiled from "The Cult of Evernote," Bloomberg Businessweek, March 4, 2013 and from "The Ultimate Simplified Guide to the Use of Evernote in Education" by Med Kharbach http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-simplified-guide-to-use-of.html.