Google Docs integrate with Edmodo

This one comes compliments of our Technology Manager Mike Swanson!  Listen up Edmodo users.  This is actually a fantastic solution to a problem that one of the 5th grade teachers at Country Meadows was experiencing.  She was pushing out reading responses to her students on Edmodo and they were not finishing in the Edmodo response space in the allotted time.  There were sometimes not hitting submit.  There was not a clear way for her to get an complete response unless the student wrote uninterrupted all in one sitting.  Our solution at the time was to create a running google doc for all her students.  Although that will still work, this is a fantastic addition to that classroom management piece.  You will know when your student has completed their response because you can teach them to link and turn in the google doc on Edmodo.  The students compose a google doc with the assignment as the prompt and simply copy the link into Edmodo assignment window.  Below is a video of EXACTLY how a student can complete this.

With our students becoming more and more familiar with google docs this additional step will make your life a bit easier.  Thanks Mike.

Preview Pane Gmail

Google announced a Labs effort to enable an email preview pane on Thursday, adding a capability that has been in Microsoft Outlook and other Webmail programs for some time.

Users can go into the Gmail Labs tab under Gmail and enable the option.  Below is a screencast on how to enable preview pane. 

Importing Pixie templates to Wixie

I was just tinkering with Wixie and figured out that you can import a Pixie project into Wixie.  How to do it is in the following screencast.  Your resource library just grew larger!

Show Me Interactive Whiteboard

This app is fantastic.  If you want to see if a student understands a concept, use this app.

This app will essentially record voice and the screen (like a screencast).  You as the teacher can go back and look at a student's thought process.  What a fantastic intervention tool.  Sometimes we just see the answers and not how a student arrived at the solution.  For math I see some fantastic uses!

Also use it as an alternative presentation tool.  Have students display their understanding, by asking them to "show me!"  I am sure that my teachers can find other fantastic uses.  All for the low, low price of free. Coming to the Country Meadows iPad's next week.

Teacher's Assistant Pro

For those of you that have an iPhone or iPad for your personal use Teacher's Assistant Pro is a great tool for you to track and monitor classroom learner characteristics.  Check out the video to learn more about this app. How many times have you forgot to record a student's behavior?  This app is easy to pop open and quickly record the qualities for better reference later.  See patterns and have data to relay to mom, dad, and administrators.  Students will be more responsive to when you log their behavior.  Have productive conversations with your students with visual data regarding their behavior.

Timez Attack

Timez Attack

This tool is complements of Ed Koday at Ivy Hall.  This is a fantastic game that I should be finished setting up for installation next week.  The available facts are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  This fun math game will give your students a pre-test and post-test with trackable proficiency scoring.  The data is stored on the cloud so your students can log into any system and continue their practice.  You as the teacher can access data through a password provided by me.  I am looking forward to rolling it out in the iLab next week.  Please email me rhanrahan@kcsd96.org if you are interested.