5 Free (or Low-Cost) Tools for Flipped Learning -- Campus Technology Flipped Classroom Page 2 of 2 5 Free (or Low-Cost) Tools for Flipped Learning Office Mix For Windows users, Office Mix is a free add-on that lets you turn PowerPoint presentations into interactive online videos, complete with built-in polls, quizzes and analytics to check for understanding. Office Mix works on versions of Office 2013 or later, including the free Office 365 for educators. When you're done recording, you can upload your mix to a free Office Mix hosting portal. According to Bergmann, Office Mix is very useful "because it offers video creation and interaction and hosting — all in one solution." Screencast-O-Matic Screencast-O-Matic is a free browser-based app that lets you create screencasts from a Mac or Windows computer without having to install any software. With just one click from the Screencast-O-Matic Web site, you can bring up a screen recorder window, which you can drag and resize to anywhere on your screen. Verso Plus, "it's all anonymous," Bergmann added.
Technology Summer Camp | Edutopia Remember summer camp? The adventures, the friendships, the challenges, the mosquito bites? Well, when you think of professional development, bandanas, s'mores, and campfire songs might not be the first things that come to mind. Yet when we designed the kickoff for our school's first Technology Summer Camp, those festive features helped us set the mood right from the start -- this wouldn't be your ordinary PD. What Is Technology Summer Camp? Technology Summer Camp is an exploratory, collaborative, self-paced professional learning experience. Tech Camp aims to: Offer friendly, shared, hands-on practice with technology Build a common baseline of knowledge and skill with digital tools Develop firsthand experience with digital creation, collaboration, and sharing tools that work for students Support the development of a cohesive approach to authentic technology integration. Here's what it looks like. Here's What Makes It Work It's relevant to our teaching. It's social and supportive. It's fun!
Web Tools for Teachers: Digital Storytelling There are a lot of great digital storytelling tools on the web. The tools below are free, easy to use, and they do what they say they will do: Animoto– Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account for use in the classroom. Capzles– Create rich, multimedia experiences with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents. Creaza Cartoonist– Cartoonist is an online tool to create cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, images and text. Digital Films– Unleash your creativity and make your digital film for free! Dvolver Movie Maker– As it turns out, people have a lot to say, and they like to say it with animated characters. Fakebook– “Fakebook” allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes. Flipbook! Fodey.com– Generate an assortment of digital expressions such as newspapers, clapper boards, and talking animals. fotobabble– The ultimate personal e-card. Go! My Story Maker– Simple digital story maker.
Nice for Every Device: 15 Tech Agnostic Tools | EdSurge News EdSurge Newsletters Receive weekly emails on edtech products, companies, and events that matter. While entrepreneurs were at the GSV-ASU conference, thousands of Catholic educators flocked to Orlando for the annual National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) conference--and they came with a variety of devices in hand, from Chromebooks to iPads to tablets. Such a device-rich sight is a common one for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schools, but the existence of multiple devices isn’t just limited to those BYOD campuses. In those instances, it helps to know what products are device-agnostic, meaning they can be utilized or accessed across a number of different devices. Luckily, two Florida teachers, Lisa Jones of Annunciation Catholic Academy and Anita Brady of Ascension Catholic School, brought a slew of device-agnostic tools to share for math class, English language arts and more. For Student Response Systems For Student Collaboration Activities For English Language Arts/Social Studies
Give Your Kids a Most Excellent Summer Coding Adventure | EdSurge Guides For a new generation of students growing up in a digitally-connected century, all roads lead to code. Coding is the new literacy. It will not replace foreign languages, but it will be the global vernacular for understanding how technologies work. Unlike the Trix cereal, coding and computer science aren't just for kids. Everyone, and especially teachers and parents, can lead by example and learn a few lines of HTML. Here's how Idit Harel, CEO of Globaloria, explains why parents need to code: We all read to our children from a young age and encourage them to write. Not every coding job involves working in a blue chip tech company or Silicon Valley startup. And contrary to public perception, learning to code doesn't necessarily require hammering away at a keyboard, eyes affixed on some text editor. In this collection of articles below we share different perspectives on coding movement. It's summertime...and the coding’s easy.
How to Create Your Own Textbook — With or Without Apple By Dolores Gende Apple’s iBooks2 and authoring app has created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks. As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks. Here’s how to create a digital textbook and strategies for involving the students in its development in three steps. 1. Teachers can work with colleagues within their subject area departments and beyond the walls of the classroom to aggregate resources through social bookmarking. Also try Paper.li or The Twitted Times, which will sift through your connections’ resources and organize them. 2. One of the most user-friendly tools to post resources for your course is LiveBinders. 3. Cybrary Man Educational Resources
A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers: Learning Models Learning Models, Theories, and Technology: A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers by Terry Heick and TeachThought Staff Purpose: Improving our chance for a common language in discussing existing and emerging learning trends, model, and technology in hopes of innovation in classrooms, and collectively, education at large. Audience: K-12 & higher ed educators, researchers, institutions, and organizations globally. Form: An index of learning models, theories, forms, terminology, technology, and research to help you keep up with the latest trends in 21st century learning. Revisions: Persistently updated. Ed note: As stated, this is an ambitious work in progress that we’re choosing to share as we proof, revise, iterate, and generally improve for wider dissemination. Ed note 2: If you’d like to help update and improve this page, and have the background, curiosity, and/or expertise to contribute, email me. A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers: Learning Models & Technology Activity-Based Learning
- TeachingForward Free Webinars from Microsoft Help Educators Get up to Speed New to Windows 8.1? Looking for great ideas for Windows-using classrooms and schools? If so, Microsoft has some helpful webinars for you! For starters, you can join Microsoft, educators and industry experts for a monthly webinar series designed to help educators and administrators support students to meet college and career goals. These free educasts are offered by the Microsoft IT Academy and the the Microsoft Educator Network. Examples of recent and upcoming webinars include: How You can Transform Your Classroom with Technology [now available on demand] Flip This Classroom! Check out the Microsoft EduCast landing page for a complete schedule and registration info. If you’re looking for a broader array of Microsoft webinars – ranging from What’s New in Windows 8.1 and What it Means for Education to Exploring Microsoft Cloud Services – visit the Microsoft Events landing page and search using the pull-down menus and tabs.
These 6 questions determine if you're technology rich, innovation poor Think your school is innovative with tech? Answer these 6 questions and prepare to reassess At the start of a webinar I recently conducted for school leaders, I asked attendees if they felt they were leading an innovative school as a result of the implementation of technology. More than 90 percent responded that they were. At the end of the webinar, when polled again, only one leader claimed to be leading an innovative school. The complete reversal was due to a presentation on the six questions that you will read about in this article—a list of questions that were developed to help clarify for educators the unique added value of a digital learning environment, and whether their assignments were making the best use of this environment. Want to test your own level of innovation? (Beyond SAMR: Special note to those of you applying SAMR. (Next page: the 6 questions and how to shape your lessons for innovation)
GoAnimate A web app that lets you generate fully animated cartoons where you can make animated characters act out whatever you’d like (from Techcrunch.com) Resources links and/or class examples This is a short and sweet example of an animation helping to explain Newton’s Laws. Strengths Free No limit on how many videos one can produce. Weaknesses Characters can fight, kiss, flirt, drink beer and other cocktails Profanity is not allowed but one can get away with it by using symbols for letters (i.e., @ss) Promotes consumerism by using well-known characters Users are enticed to buy GoBucks which you use to gain access to the “premium features” of GoAnimate Users cannot download GoAnimate animations to a desktop or disk No downloadable version available, purely an online tool. Opportunities Users can upload and share their videos via GoAnimate or Facebook, digg, StumbleUpon, myspace, reddit, and del.icio.us. Threats Ideas for the Classroom