Dropbox: File Storage and Sharing

I wanted to tell you about an application I've been using for a few months now. It's called Dropbox.

Dropbox is basically a folder on your computer, phone, or on the web that holds your documents and pictures and makes them available anywhere else you you have Dropbox downloaded or an internet connection.

All you do is go to the Dropbox website and register for a free account. You then download the application to your computer with a few simple and guided instructions and link the Dropbox folder to your account. The icon will then be visible on your desktop or your tray icons (all those icons near the clock on your screen) And, making the app even easier to use, instructions are in each folder to tell you exactly how to save and share.

Whenever you have a file you'd like to be able to access from home, school, or on the go, just open Dropbox and move a copy of the file there. It will automatically update the folder and when you get to your next device the file will be there. This is great for lesson plans, worksheets, PDF files, pictures, and anything else you can think of.

You don't even have to be on a computer that has Dropbox downloaded to it, because you can access your account via the Dropbox website and still download and store or open files.

Download the app on your home computer, school laptop, and even get the app for your phone.

The other great thing about Dropbox is that you can choose files you'd like to make public and share those files with other Dropbox members. Maybe you want to share some project files with your team. Just drop them in your folder, right-click and choose "Share Link". The website will open up with the option to email your team members the link to your file or copy the link and paste it into your own location. This would be great for emailing the file to students or team members, storing and sharing lesson plans, and making sure you have your files even if your primary computer goes down for the count. 

A free account only comes with a certain amount of storage, so I find myself deleting files I don't need anywhere access to when I'm done with them and storing them in another location. For small fees you can upgrade your storage. Either way you choose, Dropbox is useful for file storage, anywhere availability, and file sharing. 

Gaggle, You Tube Education, and 2 More Resources

Welcome to your Tech Tips of the Week, Blog Edition.
Featured: Gaggle Tips, You Tube Education, Scholastic Storia, and Internet 4 Classrooms Online Tutorials

1. Gaggle:
I gave you an introduction to Gaggle a few weeks ago. (Get started here.) I have seen quite a few classes start to use it in big and small ways. Some teachers use it to have students turn in assignments from the computer lab. One class has begun using the discussion boards feature under My Classes for students to open dialogue about the novel they are currently reading. And, I can see in Gaggle Tube that many teachers have been saving videos to their My Videos folder for streaming in class.

These are just a few examples of the Gaggle use going on here at school. If you are using Gaggle in the classroom, share how you are doing it by leaving a comment below.

Also, I have saved some Christmas Traditions videos in my folder on Gaggle. You can access these videos through Gaggle Tube in the "School Library" folder. Just click on my name. Tip: When saving videos, I find it is good to add tags to them for easy organization. That way I can save many videos, but not have to scroll through all of them to find them. When saving a video, make sure to check "approve for student use" so students and other staff members can look through your videos too.

2. You Tube Education:
Now accessible here at school! You Tube started offering You Tube EDU a little while ago. Similar to Teacher Tube, You Tube EDU has thousands of lessons and educational videos to stream right to your classroom. You can make your own account and add your own videos as well. Our county recently opted into You Tube EDU on our network, so we can browse, search, and watch videos from a defined set of educational content. This means that sometimes you may come across videos that are not accessible on our network because it is either not suitable, or doesn't fit into the defined set of terms. I recommend searching for videos to use while you are here at school or at least testing if your videos will open here at school before committing them to a lesson. The great thing is there are many videos to choose from and unlike Gaggle Tube, you have the ease and flexibility of searching like you would regularly from the web instead of going through Gaggle Tube. (Both are great options.)

3. Scholastic Storia:
Storia is a new download from Scholastic. It is a way to download e-books purchased through Scholastic but with a few more features, like a dictionary and read aloud. Check out the site. You may not have tablets to download these ebooks in the classroom, but you can use the app with your devices at home or share this new resource with parents. Really neat!

4. Internet 4 Classrooms:
Internet 4 Classrooms has online technology tutorials available here. If you need a refresh before starting that Power Point project or want to see some of the differences between Word 03, 07, and 10, check them out here. The Web 2.0 Tools link gives some great tutorials on tools you can use in your classroom to make your lessons more engaging or to help you get more organized.

Happy Teching!

Getting Started with Gaggle

Gaggle is email, social network, discussion board, digital storage, and more all rolled into one. It's also incredibly safe for students to use. Here's all the information you need to get started on Gaggle today.

1. Gaggle has so many capabilities, don't worry about using them all. As you use Gaggle, decide what to use and what just doesn't work for your classroom needs.

2. When you log in, you will see your personal dashboard and navigation tabs at the left. This dashboard is customizable.

3. To start off with, Gaggle can be used for email. Students can email you, you can email students, and students can email each other. Everything in Gaggle is immediately run through a filter before getting sent out, so if there is something non-kosher that is written it will be flagged and not sent.

The mail tab can be accessed on the left or on the top.

4. Gaggle also has ways of organizing and sharing things with your students. Your "My Classes" tab has your classes. (If you are in OCS, your classes have been downloaded automatically from NCWise. If you are not, you will have to create student accounts and create your classes.) Just click on the class you want to work with and there are a few options available.

You can share information on the class wall, share photos from field trips, and upload documents used in class for students to access from home. You can create assignments and have students submit the assignment through Gaggle. You can also create class discussion boards for discussions on any topic, like their thoughts on the book read in class or their favorite historical figure.

5. Gaggle is also known for its applications. Apps include blogs, a digital locker, Gaggle Tube, and social networking.

Gaggle Tube: Filtered You Tube you can access at school! You are able to search for videos. If it is an inappropriate video, the video will be highlighted pink. Anything else is available to view. You can also save the video to "My Videos" to access later. You will have to play the video through Gaggle. There is not a way to download and save the video. But hey, at least you know nothing inappropriate is going to pop up!

You can access "My Videos" on the left hand side of the browsing screen. You can also search the School Library to see what other teachers are showing. This is great for someone who found a video they want to share with their grade level team. Each team member could just look under that teacher's folder and find the video to share.

Digital Locker:
You can upload and store files here. You can access these files from anywhere on any computer. So long Student Share! Have students save their work on the student share, but then upload it to their digital locker. They can work on it from anywhere, including home. They can also then submit assignments through Gaggle. And teachers can access their students digital lockers by finding the student in the Student Admin section.

You also can keep your files to yourself or enable sharing. Just click on the blue link under the Sharing column. You can choose to email and invite others to view your document. A good idea if you want to share something with your team or committee. You can also choose People with Access  tab and give others access to either view or edit. 

This is an option for students too, so they can share documents with classmates in a group and edit the document together. 

Social Networking: Other capabilities of Gaggle are the Social Wall and Chat options. If you click on Social Wall you can make your own profile and even add friends. You can then chat with those friends using the chat feature at the bottom right of your screen. This is a fun way to add a personal touch and get to know your students and other staff. Students can feel like they have social networking options, but still communicate in a safe space. Just like everything in Gaggle, even the conversations in the Chat feature go through the filter before they are delivered. Great way for students to communicate safely with no room for bullying!

This is a great way to get started with Gaggle. There are so many ways to use this tool in your classroom. If you have more questions, check out the Training Videos also available in the Applications tab.

SMART Exchange Resources

The SMART website is a good resource for training and tips to enhance your lessons. Whether a beginner or more advanced, you'll probably still find something new. A good place to start is http://www.smarttech.com. (This is different from the SMART Exchange where you can download lessons.) On the top navigation, go to Resources and click on Training and Professional Development.

Scroll down the page and you have a few options. I suggest checking out the Free Resources or the Training for Education sections.

The Free Resources section has short tutorials or PDFs with step by step directions.  (Find the "more" button to expand each section to browse said tutorials.)

Many of these are much like the other tutorials I put on this blog. Short, step-by-step, with pictures to help you learn to do one thing at a time. As someone who has not actually taught with a SMART board in my classroom (I had Promethean), everything I've learned about SMART has been self taught or learned by searching resources like this. I was very excited to come across these guides. I learned some new, very fun things to put in my notebooks.

Like the magnifying glass:

And the Magic Tunnel:

I recommend revisiting this site often to find new ways to add interaction to your lessons.

Introducing Sumdog!

Sumdog is actually a pretty neat site that is easy to implement in your classroom. It is basically a site with math games for students. The students get their own account and avatar. The incentive to play and do well is as they play games, get right answers, and earn coins, they can use their rewards in the Sumdog store. The store allows them to add things to their avatar, like new clothing, musical instruments, sports equipment, or even play other games.

To get started, go to http://www.sumdog.com and register for your FREE account. When you do, you'll be given a username and a "request to join" will be sent. Another teacher at the school will have to log in and "approve" you to join before you will be able to log in. This is just a safeguard to make sure the correct teachers are making accounts for the correct school.

Once approved you'll need to add your students to create free accounts for them. It will give you usernames and passwords for all of your students.

If you go to "Students" and select your class, there is also a print out that you can pass out to the students with their information already on it. Just hit print. Have them keep it in a safe place. They can access the site from school or from home.


The URL you will want students to use for their "quick login" is:
http://www.sumdog.com/sch/southwest-elementary-school

*Give this to students to access at home and add this page to your favorites (or Symbaloo!)

The other thing you'll want to do is to restrict student skills. All the games are the same for all grade levels, but each student plays according to their skills. If you don't restrict the skills you could end up with a kindergartener trying to do a multiplication problem in their game. (Unless, of course, you have a kindergartener who is able to do a multiplication problem.)

To do this go to "Southwest" at the top of your screen.
Choose "Skills"

Choose "Students"

Edit by choosing "restrict their skills"

Then you will be able to choose according to grade level. You can always go back and change this for students who are experiencing difficulty or need more challenging games.

Now your students are ready to play!

Other information you should know to start out:
The Sumdog Blog has great information:

You can get students to join national, state, and county competitions. Just another way to give students an incentive to play.

• The only thing you can track with a FREE account is when students have last logged on. You are not able to track skills. 
• You can create challenges and activities for your class for FREE up to 5 times. I would use them wisely. But definitely try them out!
• Parents can make their own FREE accounts or they can pay for their student's account. When a parent buys an account our school gets credits towards more paid accounts. Please share this information. http://www.sumdog.com/en/Families_information_for_students
• More resources can be found at http://www.sumdog.com/en/Classroom_Resources
• How to Videos: http://www.sumdog.com/en/Teachers_Help

Sign up, try it out, and let me know how you think it works for you. 

The Wonderful World of Edmodo

I've heard of Edmodo, visited it once or twice, and didn't give it much thought until I took a look at it again recently. It's totally amazing. (And yes, I just said totally.) Edmodo is a FREE(!) online community for your classroom that allows teachers and students to interact. It's kind of like  a Facebook-Wikispaces-gradebook-Gaggle-Blogger all rolled into one. To add to the awesomeness, there are many ways that Edmodo is 100% safe for students to use and gives the teacher full control of all content.

Start here. When you create your (free and 5 seconds to make) account, your basic dashboard looks like this:

You can add a picture and a few details to your profile. You can join groups (you might notice I've joined the Edmodo New User Group) or create groups. For use in your classroom, you'll want to create groups for your class as a whole group, by subject, or maybe even by reading or word study groups.

You can then add assignments:

 Quizzes: (That can be automatically graded. Time saver!)

Keep track of grades:

And store files in your library so you can access them for other assignments and posts:

For more information, I highly encourage you to visit the Edmodo Blog and watch several of the webinars that are available to view at any time.

Excited yet? Who wants to use this in their classroom this year?!

Student Created Technology Projects

Just as we use technology to enhance our lessons, there are many ways that students can use technology to demonstrate or further their understanding. Like the digital storytelling we've talked about before, students can create other projects from in-class lessons and independent research. These projects can be created using computer or web based software. There are hundreds of websites, programs, and projects out there. Here are just a few software and project ideas to get you started:

Software you may already find at your school:

Microsoft Office: Word, Power Point, Publisher, Excel

© Microsoft

Windows Movie Maker
Audacity
Photostory

Web Based Projects:

Glogster ($)
Prezi (There are ways around the "no one under 13" rule and allows you to be the sole owner of the account. Read about it here.)
Posters for Teachers
Big Huge Labs (create magazine covers, movie posters, or other fun items from photos.)
Weebly
Wikispaces

© Prezi Inc.

A student project can be as easy as a Word document or Power Point, or more involved like Glogster or Prezi. Either route you choose, students can add photos, embed videos, add animation, sound, timing, flashy colors and fonts, and whatever else their imaginations desire.

Ten Ideas for Student Created Technology Projects:

1. Poster : Such as: Biography, Safety, Animals, Characters.

2. Video: Such as: How-to, commercial, acting out a scene from a play, book, or their own writing.

3. mp3: Such as: How-to, Public Service Announcement, advertisement, writing and poetry.

4. Digital Storybook

5. Brochure: Such as: geographical destinations, biomes or landforms, biography.

6. Presentation: Such as: biography, animals, how-to

© Weebly, Inc.

7. Map: Geographical locations, places to travel, map routes different peoples have taken

8. Data Graphs

9. Webpage

10. Scrapbook Page


It might be the end of the school year, but it's not too early to think about projects that can be planned for next year!

SMART: Standards Correlated Lessons

Did you know there is an easy way to search for lessons that go with specific standards? When you go to the SMART Exchange website, click on the tab on the top navigation bar labeled "Standards Correlated Lessons". Using the drop down menus, input your state, standards, and subject. Then hit "View"

The standards will appear and so will lessons to go with each.

Totally simple way to get lessons that you know are right on the money, instead of searching through pages and pages of notebooks.

New ActivInspire Features in Version 1.6

Promethean released Version 1.6 of their software this past October. They've updated it and come up with a few new features. To make sure you have the most recent version, you can go to Promethean Planet and download the latest version. Just click Download ActivInspire and follow the directions on the screen.

Technically, the new features include:

• An Equations tool, which can also be edited
• Integration with Promethean's ActiView document camera
• Asian vertical text
• A page extender option
• A right-click menu that allows you to toggle between the pen and select tools quickly

Unless you all write lessons in Asian vertical text often, I think you'll find that the most useful new features are the equations tool and new right-click menu.

Right Click Menu for Select and Pen tools:

Before version 1.6, you could choose the pen and select tools by clicking on the main toolbar. But this is often time consuming and distracting when you are going back and forth across the board to do so. Now you can switch with two easy clicks. 

1. If you are on the arrow/select tool, simply right click and this menu will appear. The first option is "pen". Now you will have the pen tool.

2. To switch from the pen tool to the arrow/select tool, right click and this menu will appear. Choose "select" and you will be on the arrow/select tool.  

You also have the option of changing all of what you just wrote into text. For example, in this flipchart I have written the name of the hidden animal:

I can now right-click and choose "convert to text" and it will change all of what I have written into text.

This is just like the Handwriting Recognition tool, except that when using Handwriting Recognition you have to make sure to write quickly. It also changes the color and width of your pen. 

When using the "Convert to Text" option, nothing changes except the words are now text. You are also able to do this without worrying about keeping up with the timing. 

Equations Editor:

The neat thing about this tool is that you can easily add mathematical equations to your flipchart without having to search for the right symbols or line up your fractions just so. It's simple and easy to add fractions, long division, or even more complex operations. 

The Equation tool can be found in two locations:

Insert--->Equation from the main menu on top

or Insert--->Equation from the main toolbar

Just click on your flipchart and this menu will appear:

Click around on top and different math symbols and equations will appear.

I decided I might add some fractions to make a flipchart page. Just click on the equation you would like to use and insert the numbers into that equation.

Once my fraction is inserted, I can click on it and resize it or move it around the page. 

I can also edit that fraction or add a new one.

Now I have an easy fraction flipchart page. I don't have to worry about trying to line up the numbers and symbols to make it look right, it's done for me. 

Good job Promethean! 

Triptico Interactive Whiteboard Resources

Triptico is an AWESOME resource you can download for FREE.

Basically, a former educator, David Riley, created resources to use in his classroom. He  then decided to create this app for your computer to make the resources available for other teachers to use. And these resources are really cool.

To start, visit the Triptico website here: http://www.triptico.co.uk/

On the main page, you can click to download and it will take you through the very easy and fast process. When I downloaded it today, it said there was an update and I chose to go ahead and install the update too. It took maybe 5 minutes for everything to download and be up and running.

Once you have downloaded the app, you can view the resources by scrolling through the scroll bar on the bottom for all of the resources or by clicking "Favorites" for a short list. More resources are found through the scroll bar.

There are a variety of resources from games to timers and organizational tools. Just click on any activity to view it. You can move the activity around on the screen and you can adjust the size by pulling at the corners. 

You can preview each activity by clicking the demo button for example questions.

You can also run two of the applications at one time. 

There are so many great activities that you should take a look at. Here are a few I think you'll like:

1. Timer: You have timers in your Promethean and SMART software, but this one is pretty cool too. When you open it up there are three timer choices. Choose one, place anywhere on your screen, and press start. 

2. Team Scoreboard: This resource would have come in handy during all the team games I played with my students. I used to split my math class into teams and hand everyone a whiteboard and marker. I'd give them a math problem and reward points to the teams who got the questions right. I kept score with a tally chart, but this little app would have been very cool. You can choose how many teams you want, and even name each team and award or take away points. I could also see this being used for other things you do in groups or for classrooms who seat students by tables and award points for behavior.

3. What's the Question: This is a game that is like Jeopardy. You can open it up and create a set of questions and answers. You save the file and then open it back up to play the game. It is very fast and easy to use. This would be a great quiz review.

4. Find 10: This game has students find ten answers to a question. The demo has Shakespeare plays, but I could see this being used for any subject. It would be a great morning exercise for ways to make a number or activities to complete that day. 

There are quite a few games and tools. You should absolutely, 100% go download this app and begin using it today. Go do it now!

You can find another review of this product here: http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/category/iwb/smartboard/