education is the best

Saturday, 16 June 2012

Most Read Articles on Ed Tech Guy from past week

I'm recovering from injections to my back for my herniated discs and relaxing this weekend. Monday is graduation and Tuesday is the last day of school. This summer I'll be attending a couple of educational conferences, running and EMS Instructor training program and taking a couple of short trips. One trip is to Philly, which we fell in love with at ISTE last year. And, part of the trip, thanks to my wife, is a visit to the Philly Zoo and a meet-and-great with a tiger. Should be fun!

Here are the most read posts from the past week: And don't forget to check the posts on Friday.They don't always have time to become the most read, but there are usually some good ones there (and of course check out all of the articles on the site). Peruse some of the older ones also.

1. 10 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

2. 4 Ways Technology Helps To Diversify Education

3. Plagiarism of my blog happening right now

4. Physion - free Physics Simulation Software

5. A Great Blog post on teacher uses of Evernote

6. Conceptboard - visual collaboration on ideas and documents

7. EdTech Magazine's 50 Must Read EdTech Blogs & my additions to list

8. Aviary launches free mobile app photo editor for iOS & Android

9. Thank you and Farewell to TeachPaperless Blog

Don't forget to check out the permanent pages at the top of the site too! There are some great resources here.

I am also available to speak at your school or conference and to facilitate professional development sessions. I will work with you and your staff to tailor a training plan that works for you.

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Friday, 15 June 2012

Dropbox getting rid of Shared Folders for New users

Dropbox, the very popular cloud file/sync/backup/sharing service, has announced that starting July 31st, new users will not be able to create Public Folders. Current users will be able to still use public folders, but anyone signing up for Dropbox after July 31st will not be able to.

Shared folders was an easy way to share files with others and allow teams to have access to the same files. Dropbox did recently add a new feature that allows you to easily create a link to a file in your Dropbox account and share that with others.

I've used Public Folders a few times, but not enough that this would effect me even if current users where losing the feature. But, if you are someone who would use Public Folders a lot, sign up for Dropbox before July 31st.

Related:

Lots of Great File Sync/Backup/Share services

JustBeamIt file sharing service comes in very handy - also has links to more file sharing services

Let's Crate - easy, free, file sharing

minus - file sharing service

eBackpack - educational file sharing and backup

YouSendIt - easy file sharing, sync, and sign

Evernote Updates it's Chrome Web Clipper and Windows App

Evernote, one of my favorite and most used apps, has just announced two updates that bring even more functionality and usefulness to their app. I use Evernote for lesson planning, web clipping articles for future reading, research, notes on everything, organizing my home, belongings, and finances, travel planning and much more. It's an invaluable resource.

Update 1: Web Clipper for Chrome gets Related Notes and More
The Web Clipper extension for Chrome lets you clip parts of web pages, a URL, or an entire web page to your Evernote account. You select the notebook it will go into and any tags for the clipping through the clipper extension. Evernote has updated it to now have it also show you related notes to the one you are about to clip. The clipper window will show you related notes that you have already clipped, as well as a list of all of the other items you've clipped from that web domain.

This can be very useful and help prevent you from clipping duplicate items, as well as more easily find similar things that you may have forgotten about.

Evernote also updated the quality of clips and fixed some bugs and problems.

It will be coming to other web browsers soon.

Update 2: Evernote Windows App gets updated with Activity Stream for Shared Notebooks
A great feature about Evernote is the ability to share notes and work on them collaboratively. This is great for project groups, research, project management and much more. The Evernote App for Windows has been upgraded with a new feature, Activity Stream. This allows you to see the activity happening in all of your shared notebooks and any shared with you. A badge will appear on the screen when something changes. This makes it much easier to keep track of what's going on and not miss anything. This is a great feature for shared notebooks.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Aviary launches free mobile app photo editor for iOS & Android

Aviary is a great resource that I use constantly. I use the Falcon and Talon online image editors to grab images from the web and edit/crop/add effects to use with my blog and with lesson materials. There are browser extensions to use with the online apps and it's very powerful.

A while back, Aviary launched an add-on for mobile devices that allowed you to use Aviary within mobile apps. Yesterday they announced that Aviary is now available as a free, stand-alone mobile app for iOS and Android.

The Aviary mobile app is free and features an easy-to-use, intuitive interface with effects, stickers, color balance, crop and rotate, brightness, contrast, saturation, drawing, text, cosmetic tools and more. There are more effects available for purchase in effects packages ($0.99) and more effects and tools are being added.

This is a great mobile tool that can be used for photo editing and effects on iOS and Android devices by teachers, students, bloggers, and for personal use, greatly increasing the abilities of your device. I now have the ability to do more of my work on my mobile device using this app. I was using it last night to edit some photos that I'm using in a project and it was very easy to use.

Try it out for yourself:

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

kanban2go - free visual task management and organization

KanBan2Go is a free productivity and organizing app I learned about from Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers. kanban2go is a visual, online task management service. It's simple and easy to use and accessible online from computer, tablet or smartphone (mobile site, not app).

There is a To Do list that is where you put the tasks in the order of priority. The In Progress board is for the tasks that you are actively working on and the Done board is for the completed tasks. This is all done in a visual manner instead of just text and priority codes.

You can collaborate with others on the tasks and sync your tasks with Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, Evernote and share your boards through email or on Twitter. This is a great resource for teachers, administrators, and students to use to organize themselves and to do collaborative planning on projects.

Here's a video about kanban2go:

Kanban is a Japanese word that means billboard. Companies use Kanban boards to organize, communicate, prioritize and manage what they do. United Technologies uses Kanban's as part of it's ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence) program and I used it when I worked at Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky. Using Kanban's allowed us to work more efficiently, be better organized, let everyone know what was going on and where, and keep things working. We also used Kanban cards to create efficient workflows of parts, supplies, and materials throughout the plant.

This method can also be used in education - label things, create boards that communicate better to staff and students, and much more.

You can read more about Kanban here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
Education and Personal Kanban it’s a Win Win Situation

It's also part of Kaizen, "continuous improvement" which is another thing schools could use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

Related:

Business/Manufacturing ideas applied to education
Apply Business Practices to Education - great ideas that can help education

5 Tips for Success - in school, business and in life
Getting Students and Teachers Organized - tips and resources
Evernote for Education Resources

Google Calendar for Educators

Physion - free Physics Simulation Software

Physion is free Physics simulation software that can be used by educators to create physics simulations for their class or by students to create physics simulations to explore concepts or as part of a project. The teacher can even create experiments for the students to use in class (virtual labs).

You use the included tools to create physical objects, including gears, and joints (springs and pulleys) that obey the laws of the Physics. It is similar to software I used as an engineer.

Below is a video that shows how it works. It's easy to use and fun. Students can use it to explore all kinds of concepts on their own, as well as using teacher created simulations. It can be used on Windows and Linux OS's. A Mac OS version is in development.

Here is a video showing some of the complex simulations you can create using it:

This is a great resource for physics teachers to create virtual labs and investigations, as well as a tool for students to explore physics concepts and create their own labs. There are also scenes that others have created that you can download and use.

The site has a Wiki and Forums to find help and ideas.

Physion: http://physion.net/

Related:

PhET - excellent, free, virtual labs and simulations for science

Google Blockly - easy to use visual programming language

Google Blockly is a visual, web based, programming language that works by having users drag blocks of commands and programming together to build their application. It is a great way to learn about programming because the blocks will only fit where the commands would work, like a puzzle. There is no need to memorize terms or worrying about brackets and formatting. You can also export your blockly code as real code to use.

It is still in preview, with demo's available for practice and to give feedback to Google on how it works.

I'm hoping this goes live soon as I think it is a great learning resource for learning how to program. I'd love to use it to learn and refresh my programming skills, seeing as how I only know some HTML. I have taken courses and used BASIC, Visual BASIC, Pascal and Fortran. I'd love to learn how to make apps though and think that teaching students how to make apps is a great idea for education.

Related:

Free computer science resources for teachers and students
Google Code University - free computer science classes

Learning HTML Code - some resources to get started