Teach your kids to "Shoot Like a Pro" - Photo Shooting Gallery

 When we literally leave our students to their own devices, they create infinite sums of really terrible photos. It doesn't matter if they are killing time with the camera or actually trying to take purposeful shots for academic projects, the stuff they capture can be pretty terrible.

It doesn't have to be that way. Here is a simple activity that is guaranteed to help kids ramp up their production value when it comes to taking pictures. The Photo Shooting Gallery is based on a favorite activity of mine that teaches students cinematic angles when creating videos. The same principles apply here as this activity is all about framing shots and understanding the visual grammar each one conveys. 

The Shooting Gallery is great for students new to devices, like schools initiating 1:1 programs. It is also a way for remote teachers to get students utilizing their home environments as they capture their worlds around them. Click here to make your own copy of the deck below. 

Clear up the Google Sheets with One Quick Trick

Our district reading specialists are doing a great job by creating individual profiles for all of our elementary students. Those are shared via Google Sheets with other staff so we can best tailor instruction to each child's needs. With that comes a lot of clutter to Google Sheets in the "Shared with Me" section. Add in the fact that I am at four schools and it can get really messy.

I just discovered this trick though. In the search bar simply type "-" and the person's name sharing the multiple files. Everything they have shared with you disappears from the list. You can even type several names if you are trying to de-clutter even more.

I love that information is being shared to tailor education, sometimes I just need it out of the way in order to find the sheet I am currently needing.

The best part is that nothing is actually deleted, just hidden temporarily.

By subtracting certain owners, their shared documents are temporarily hidden.

60 Second Tour of Kiddle.co - Kid Safe Search Engine

Parents and teachers rejoice! The best safe search engine for our kids is the new Kiddle.co. Not only are search results safe, they are from selected sites and prioritized by readability and depth. Icons are nice and big and image searches won't return any random inappropriateness. News and video results actually contain quality content that kids can understand and use.

A couple of disclaimers: Kiddle looks like a Google product but IS NOT owned or operated by Google. It runs off of Google's safe search. Also, it is not completely fool-proof. Some reports of questionable returns have popped up across the web. Thanks to Karen Bosch for sharing this article about that.

Let's just call Kiddle "the safest search engine yet". Always, always supervise searching and help kids evaluate the usefulness of search results.

 

A Simple Approach To Dealing With Personal Devices In The Classroom

I have long been an advocate for bring your own device (BYOD) in the classroom. I figure that if kids have tools that know well and use well, then there is no reason to restrict them from using them in the classroom.

Key word there: tools, as in apps for learning.

Too many of the teachers who are frustrated with dealing with personal devices often don't take the learning tools approach. Instead of allowing for specific purposes they end up policing. They collect phones ahead of class or insist on no devices being out at any time. Kids at our high school have even started bringing old phones to turn in at the beginning of class so they can still access their working devices.

I'm not naive enough to think that every time a kid has a device out in the library, they are using it solely for a learning activity. What I do know from 20+ years in the classroom that kids for the most part respond well when you give them some clear expectations and put the responsibility on them to do the right thing.

Despite spending a lot of time on this early in the year I too have had some frustration with our students in the library who are taking online classes. Too many are "forgetting" or just seeing how much they can push our guidelines with personal devices. Usually a friendly reminder gets everybody back on track. Sometimes it takes a few reminders.

Here is a new poster adorning our work stations. The kids got a laugh out of the devices I chose but more importantly the "got" the message.

Teaching Math with Google Drawings - Eric Curts

Northwest Ohio Google Certified Innovator for Education Eric Curts delivers a great webinar on using Google Drawings for teaching math.

Eric takes viewers through the ins and outs of Drawings but excels when he starts to unpack Common Core standards and show practical activities for elementary teachers. The geometry examples are good but the fraction activity is really innovative.

Check out the recording of the webinar as well as some great tip sheets for using Google Drawings for any purpose at Teaching Math with Google Drawings 

Get to Know Your Community | Discovery Education

I take a turn "in the barrel" as the guest of Brandon Wislocki and Kristen Davis on Discovery Education's "Get to Know Your Community" video series.

We talk about a fun way my students have been mashing up Discovery content with Apple's Keynote, some Sketchnoting teaching strategies, and 20 random questions.

Apologies for the poor lighting and the Tom Brady/Go Blue informal apparel...well, at least for the lighting.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54nvKRerBp4[/embed]

Get to Know Your Community, introduces you to your fellow community members in a way that’s never been seen before. Each week, we will interview a new community member. You’ll get to know who they are, what their favorite Spotlight on Strategies is, and they’ll play 20 questions in 60 seconds. Each participant will see how many questions they can answer in 60 seconds. You’ll get to know more about each community member in a brief amount of time.

Check it out at: Get to Know Your Community: Andy Losik | Discovery Education

Flite Test | Tile Can Help You Find Almost Anything

I have often infuriated my family by not being able to find my keys when we are all ready to go someplace. Last January they bought me a Tile ($25 on their site) that hooks on my keys and connects to an iPhone app. Now when I can't find my keys and I am within less than 150 feet I tap a button on my phone and the tile starts to chirp. The app uses bluetooth to locate the tile and pinpoints it on a map. Even if I am a greater distance away, the map shows the last place the tile talked to my phone.

All of the above would be cool enough but Tile uses all other users with the app as anonymous trackers. That means that any time anybody gets within 150 feet of a Tile no matter who it belongs to, it's location is registered with the company and updated on the owner's app. Imagine losing your keys or a camera or anything at Disney World. Instead of having to look under every seat of every boat in It's a Small World, just fire up your app and chances are it will get pinged by another Tile user.

The guys from Flite Test have created a great video demonstrating how all of these features work together. Check out the Tile Blog as well.

 

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8nvzFZ38h4[/embed]

#Sketchnotes | Doodling that really helps you remember

If you went back to all of my notebooks from high school and college you would notice a lot of doodling. It wasn't random though. It was a series of pictures I created to help me remember more deeply the content being presented. There might be a crude White House next to something that was supposed to be the Washington Monument as we were learning about the Executive Branch. You'd probably find a lot of flames and snow flakes in my Chemistry notes as I tried to keep straight whether certain elements exploded or froze when they reacted with one another.

What was once perceived as random scrawlings or worse yet time wasting is proving to be an effect way for learners of all ages to help remember material more effectively.

Seeing some of the great stuff Karen Bosch was doing with sketchnotes during the 2015 MACUL conference made me realize I had been on to something since the mid 1980's. Below are slides from the introductory presentation she gives on sketchnotes.

Digital Sketchnotes 101 from Karen Bosch

Susan Bowdoin wrote this past September on the Discovery Education blog about sketchnotes as an instructional strategy. Personally I like how she ties sketchnoting into the research of Robert Marzano that shows non-linguistic representation plays a powerful role in making learning stick.

Visual or graphic note taking, also called Sketchnoting, is gaining greater popularity as a strategy for increasing engagement in lectures, seminars and video presentations. When sketchnoting, learners use visual means to analyze information, make comparisons and develop analogies to better understand and communicate what they’ve learned. This requires higher level thinking. It is also directly related to Robert Marzano’s research on the significant positive affects that nonlinguistic representations have on student achievement.

Read all of Susan's tips on SOS: Sketchnotes at the Discovery Education blog. She not only provides practical strategies for implementing the strategy but also delivers some app suggestions for making this digital.

Wow, and to think all of the mean looks I got from Mr. Stuyver in Trigonometry for "doodling" too much were all for naught. Those weren't doodles; they were sketchnotes. Maybe if he hadn't discouraged my use of non-linguistic representation, I would have remembered more from his class.

Sketchnote on, my friends.

Inserting Pics and Marking Them Up Is Now Easier in iOS 9 Mail

A couple of neat updates in the iOS 9 Mail app makes inserting photos and then marking them up a lot easier and intuitive.

At an Apple seminar in Jenison today I learned that in iOS 9 the Mail app now has a camera icon above the keyboard when you type in the body of the message.



Once you have inserted your picture, tap it to bring up a toolbar with the new "Markup" choice.



Mark up your picture with a set of drawing, text, and signature tools.



This is a great addition that allows us to communicate more clearly and then saves a bundle of time without having to mark up pictures in additional apps.

55 Tips from Google for Teaching and Learning

As the United States trickles back to school, Google is offering up some great tips for both educators and students.

All kinds of things from staying better organized with calendars to understanding how work is stored are covered in these quick hitting tutorials.

One of my biggest personal initiatives is to dig deeper into working with Google Classroom. A handful of the tips will help with that from both the teacher side of it and from the learner's perspective.

55 Google Tips for Teaching and Learning.

Best kids’ apps to download for Spring Break | WOODTV.com

Spring Break might be history for 2015 but these apps rock anytime of the year.
 

 

Best kids’ apps to download for Spring Break | WOODTV.com.

10 Spring Break Apps and Features for your kid's iPad

The calendar is about to flip to April and with that comes Spring Break, at least here in West Michigan. It's been another brutally cold and long winter and I personally can't wait to get to some warmth, relaxation, and time with my family away from the daily school routine. As families prepare to hit the road or just enjoy some time off here are ten great iPad apps and features for Spring Break 2015.

1. Off Switch - It's not an app but probably the best feature of any electronic device for Spring Break is the off switch. Shut down for a while and unplug. Focus on all of the natural and analog adventures you can have even if it's just for an extended period each day. Unplugging completely might not be that easy though for the family facing a 24 hour drive, hours in airports, or suddenly now faced with a whole week at home together. The following recommendations are to help keep kids' brains, creativity, and fun going throughout the week. They're not in any particular order as far as one being better than another, just great apps.


2. Keynote - This is more than Apple's version of PowerPoint. Not only is it a really powerful presentation maker, it's a powerful design tool as well. After a week of taking pictures and video of their adventures, kids can spend the ride home assembling all of their memories. Keynote is free on all iOS devices purchased since the Fall of 2013. Keynote is car friendly because most features aside from sharing are not wifi dependent.


3. Maps - If you're on the road this break, give your kids part of the navigational duties. When I was growing up, we would travel most summers across country from Arizona to Michigan. My sister and I learned so much about geography and math when we rode shotgun with the big Rand McNally atlas on our laps. The iPad's built-in Maps app or its Google counterpart do way more than a print atlas. You can search for restaurants, upcoming gas stations, hotels, and more. Maps requires an Internet connection so in the car, kids might need to use the one on your phone.


4. Cargo-Bot -
   
   [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="191"] Cargo-Bot app for iOS[/caption]
   
   Here is a game based on doing work at the shipyard, but every kid I know thinks of it more as the beloved claw at 90% of America's pizza joints and grocery stores. Kids have to program the claw to move crates in a series of puzzles that gradually increase in difficulty. This app is ladened with advanced problem solving and an introduction to computer science in that in order to move the claw, kids have to assemble directions as if they were coding an app. Building this type of logical reasoning transcends many different subject areas. No Internet needed.


5. Replay - Here is a fabulously easy-to-use movie editor that provides stunning results. In fact, this app is so good, Apple used it in its product launch of the iPad Air 2 in October. The killer feature lies in the app's ability to analyze your photos and footage for tempo, sound, and color. High-end effects like lens-flare, background color, and music are all added automatically and can also be adjusted manually. It's actually called Replay Video Editor for Instagram but no Instagram account is needed. Internet is only needed for sharing projects or buying advanced features. Remember to always, always, always shoot your video horizontally! Here's a sample of what you can do literally in just a few minutes with Replay. This was some really, really rough drone footage we took over my house.
   


6. IXL - Sometimes the math drill apps get a bad rap, but I am a firm believer that in the proper dose they can do a lot of good as building computational fluency is essential. Without a strong handle on basic facts, kids are greatly hampered moving forward into more complicated math. IXL is a great app that works all math standards from Pre-K on up. Many schools have student subscriptions. Check with your kid's school to see if they do and get the username and password for your trip. You'll need an Internet connection so it might not be the best for the car or van, but incorporating a little math never ruined anyone's vacation...not completely anyway.


7. Penultimate - Here is a notebook app where kids can doodle, journal, or draw-up inventions. Because it is digital, they have an endless supply of paper and no crayons will melt all over your interior when left on a hot backseat. Any photos on the iPad can be easily inserted into sketches and if they have an Evernote account, your kids can sync their creations and keep them among their other notes on the cloud-based free service. Internet is only required to sync or share.
   
   [caption id="attachment_1025" align="alignleft" width="1536"] Penultimate App from Evernote[/caption]


8. Google Drive - This one is more practical over exciting, but many schools issue students Google Apps for Education accounts. With the Drive app, kids can upload all of the photos and videos they shoot with the iPad to their school accounts. When they get back to school and get the "What I did over Spring Break" essay assignment, they'll have tons of visuals to insert. Requires Internet.


9. Kindle App - If your kid can handle reading in the car or on an airplane without getting sick, load that iPad up with good books. The iBooks app lets you do the same thing with books from the Apple Book Store but if you are an Amazon Prime member you can take advantage of the lending library and can "borrow" one free book a month for the Kindle. Internet is required to download books, but not needed once loaded.


10. Tinkerbox HD - This puzzle app is ridiculously addictive and involves engineering one contraption after another. Getting a ball into a basket gets increasingly more difficult as new conveyor belts, levers, and ramps are introduced. It works scientific concepts and logical thinking but in the end it is just fun.

No matter where you are headed or if you are just sticking around home, these apps all can fend off the dreaded "I'm bored" and keep brains firing all week. A few others to explore include Canva, Photoshop Mix, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Snapseed. Whatever you make, make sure great memories are at the top of the list.

The Easiest Way To Learn Fractions With LEGOs - YouTube

Yep, it's that easy. Cutting Lego blocks like that isn't. Great video that will stick with your kids. Thanks @scottsy for sharing.

The Easiest Way To Learn Fractions With LEGOs - YouTube.

#edcampOAISD Create Animated Text Cut-outs with Keynote

At EdCamp Ottawa Area ISD yesterday I shared how to do some app smashing with Keynote to create graphics featuring cut-out text and animation like this one for the word "sharks". Here is a step-by-step guide to the workflow involving Keynote, Preview, Giphy.com, and EzGif.com.

This and many other cool techniques will be featured in my upcoming MACUL two-hour hands-on session Friday March 20 in Detroit. Cost is $50. Space is still available and can be paid with registration or at the conference.

Easily find GMail sent and received between custom dates

Here is a quick way to see all of your sent and received email from a specific time period.

In the search bar type after:YEAR/MONTH/DATE before:YEAR/MONTH/DATE with your custom dates. See my example below from searching for mail during this past November.



For more advanced search techniques, check out Google's list of commands.

 

 

Chrome Extension Pic2Pixlr Cuts the Workflow

I use Pixlr a lot for photo editing and design. I have always appreciated the ability to open images to edit by pasting in their URLs. That process is a lot quicker once you install the Chrome extension Pic2Pixlr.

Now instead of having to open Pixlr editor in a separate tab and then pasting in an address of an online image, all I have to do now is right-click that image and get the "Open with pic2pixlr" option. From there I can left click on the general editor or designer apps Pixlr-O-matic or Pixlr Express.

Find Pic2Pixlr in the Chrome Web Store.

A Great Use of Space

Check out the picture that Oklahoma's Jeff Lay shared on Twitter.

All areas of a building can be utilized to encourage learning and something like this sends a message to the kids that multiplication facts are important more than during that sliver of the day when the class practices them.

5 Easy Tech Projects for Kids to Give Thanks

Here are five technology infused ways for kids to show their thankfulness as we head into Thanksgiving here in the U.S. Canadian friends can file this one away until next Fall.

The great thing about each of these activities is that thoughts and ideas are not only shared with the whole class but also an authentic audience across the web. Publish a link in a newsletter or on a class blog and invite the outside world into your classroom and the hard work of your students.

1. Blog Comments: One of the fastest ways for kids to give thanks is on a class blog. Create a post as a writing prompt and then open up the comments to your students. In Blogger and other platforms there are various settings to allow anonymous comments but have students sign each one with a first name. It is a good idea to watch each new addition closely to ward off any pre-holiday hi-jinx or silliness. It is neat to see all of the ideas in one group spot. Students can also comment on each other's thoughts.



2. Build a Shared Class Slide Deck: If your students all have Google Apps for Education accounts, you can create a presentation that has a blank slide for every student. Just share the deck with the entire class and each student can work in his or her own little corner of the collaborative project. It is a proactive idea to designate each slide ahead of time with a student name or class number. This greatly reduces students interfering with one another. Each can create a slide that has textual and visual expressions of what makes them thankful. The finished deck can be embedded on a class webpage for everyone to easily view.

[caption id="attachment_881" align="alignleft" width="251"] Haiku Deck helps you makes stunning slides.[/caption]

3. Get Artsy with Haiku Deck: Students will need an account in Haiku Deck, but they can do that with their Google Accounts as well. Haiku Deck is available free as an iOS app or on the web at HaikuDeck.com. There isn't the option of all collaborating on the same deck of slides like in Google Apps, but there are a number of sharing options that easily let students email links or embed codes to a teacher so all of the work can get compiled in one publicly accessible spot. Students can upload their own background photos or select from the beautiful free collection that Haiku Deck offers.

4. Create a Pic Collage: This a great free app available on iPad and Android devices. It has an easy to use interface for dragging and dropping a number of pictures into a collage and accenting with text and borders. A number of frames are available that makes the maneuvering even easier. Non-linguistic representations of concepts are often the most powerful connections to really understanding something. A collage showing thankfulness really gets kids thinking about what they have special in their lives, but also how to effectively communicate that visually. Collages can be saved as images and then posted by the teacher.

5. Let Them Show it with ShowMe: ShowMe is a great whiteboard recording app for the iPad. Students can upload a picture or draw one and then create a voice over track telling for what they are thankful. One advantage that ShowMe has over some of the other whiteboard apps is that if logged into a teacher account, the quick movies generated can all be easily posted to webspace that ShowMe provides.

None of these techniques take a tremendous amount of tech skills and don't require a lot of planning on the teacher's part. Give one a spin this week and you are likely to wind up thankful you did.

Crop and Export Google Drawing as Transparent Graphics

I got inspired by Eric Griffith at the Michigan Google Conference to start using Google Drawing more but I found it limited in that everything was on a rectangle and I didn't know an easy way to export.

Today I discovered you could not only export as a .png graphic with full transparency but that you can also grab the bottom right corner and crop the size of your canvas. This is great for creating banners for websites or letter heads.

The only thing that continues to be missing is a quicker way to save that .png file into Google Drive without having to download it first and then upload it into your Drive account.

[caption id="attachment_852" align="alignleft" width="885"] The quick and easy way to crop and export Google Drawings as .png[/caption]

Explain Everything + Google Drive = Awesome

I saw today via the Twitterverse that the whiteboard app Explain Everything  (iOS|Android) connects with Google Drive. I have primarily been a user of ShowMe when it comes to whiteboard apps but this might be the tipping point for me to move over to the EE side of the fence. Add in the fact that Explain Everything is also the only whiteboard app currently available on Android and it becomes even more attractive since I use devices on that platform as well.

When starting a new project, Explain Everything allows users to access photos from the device's internal media storage but also makes materials and docs in iTunes, Dropbox, Box.com, Evernote, and OneDrive available in addition to what you have in your connected Google Drive account. With some of the other whiteboard apps, I would get frustrated because something I wanted to annotate in a video wasn't in the camera roll on that one particular device.

Those multiple cloud-based options are also available when it comes to saving your project video with the additional benefit of exporting to Vimeo. On the iPad, there is even the option to open the project in other apps like iBooks as a .pdf or iMovie as a .mp4.

Here is a video I created from family pictures housed in Drive and then saved back to Drive. 

Here is a scenario where Explain Everything connected to Google Drive could be very handy for a teacher. A fourth grade teacher is trying to figure out why many of her students are struggling with long division so she has them each complete one long division problem on the tablet in the hallway while narrating their problem solving with Explain Everything. By having students save their videos to her Google Drive or a classroom Drive account, she can later watch those videos on her computer. She can analyze exactly where hangups are happening for each student and organize all of those pieces of formative assessment into one folder. She could conference the next day with each student as they watch the video together and address the specifics of the problem. She can also share that video with a child's family very easily to help explain where the student needs work.

One drawback of Explain Everything is that the app does not provide users an online space to post their videos like ShowMe does. With all of these other options, that is quickly becoming a moot point.

The app costs $2.99 but is easily worth every cent.