Waffle Bytes

Here are today's Five Friday Finds.  Have a great weekend! General Tom Barrett's Interesting Ways Series "[A] great example of  crowdsourcing good quality classroom ideas... It is remarkable what can be achieved and created together if you give people the right way to do it." ELA The Center for Fiction "The Center for Fiction is the only nonprofit in the U.S. solely dedicated to celebrating fiction, and we work every day to connect readers and writers. .. We also feature workspace, grants, and classes to support emerging writers, reading groups on classic and contemporary authors, and programs to help get kids reading." Math Math Concepts Explained   Blog site maintained that explains various math concepts, number trivia and other math topics. Science NBC Learn - Free Resources Several series of video (and sometimes other) resources NBC has put together to learn about science in real life application. Soci...

Sketch Pad 3 - Unlimited Canvas (Currently Free) Basics : User is provided with a canvas to write & draw on.  What makes this app exceptional are all the advanced features.  You can also: add a picture, resizing and rotating it to fit where you want on the canvas make the background lined or graph paper, change the color of the background add typed in notes select, move, layer and change the style of individual elements on the screen extend the canvas size as much as needed, using a tooled in scroll control to move in exactly where needed add a size customizable palm rest to prevent unwanted marks ability to export out in multiple ways (email, photos, print & app) and formats (jpg, png, pdf, file) Educational Use : This is one of the most flexible "drawing" apps I have explored.  Because everything on the canvas is an individually controlled item there is a lot of flexibility in creating materials that can be used by students.  Additi...

Last week at the MACUL Conference was the first I heard about the Reflection App.  Yesterday I downloaded the trail and played...10 minutes later I had paid for the app. All I can say is.... WOW! Reflection App for Mac What does the Reflection App do? It finally provides a way to fully display your iPad2 (or iPhone 4S) on your Mac computer - NOT THE DISPLAY, BUT THE COMPUTER ITSELF! What advantage is this? One can now create how-to or tutorial videos demonstrating exactly what they are doing on the iPad.  For instance, I run Jing while running Reflection and can record with my audio directions what I am doing on the iPad. One can also easily display the iPad onto a projector connected to the computer.  I have been in many classrooms where the projector VGA cable is wired into a large AV docking system and trying to tether the iPad in puts me in a poor location in the room.   Additionally, (if you are like me) your iPad - VGA cable constantly dise...

As a Moodle champion, I am often asked if there are book recommendations I would make to those teachers just starting out with Moodle.  I did this in the past, but with so many institutions upgrading to Moodle 2.+, there were just enough differences between 1.9 & 2.0 that those previous resources were creating confusion for the new Moodle user. Finally I have a resource that I can recommend to the new Moodle users I am working with: Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion by Ian Wild This book does a great job of introducing the brand new Moodler (person using Moodle) to the features and functionality available to them on a Moodle server.  It uses easy to understand examples, and incorporates hands-on practice exercises for the user to perform in his/her own Moodle course throughout.  Ian does a great job of incorporating tips and cautionary words for those pieces that might trip up the new user.  For example, after walking the user through uploading a file he inclu...

Today's finds are all about some great tools provided by Discovery! Discovery provides tools for teachers, students, parents and schools - this is beyond the videos (formally from United Streaming) that most of our local schools have a subscription to.  Here are five "tools" you might find useful. As always, share and share alike as we are all more knowledgeable when we collaborate. New Teacher Survival Central  Lots of resources for new or experienced teachers.  This site does not require any login. Curiosity Discovery site encouraging interaction & exploration on various topics. Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators Kathy's site is pretty comprehensive with some great finds for any educator.   Free Parent Resources Discovery even provides resources for parents!  (As well as students, teachers and administrators.) Web2012 Use this site to learn about a variety of Web 2.0 tools & topics you might find of interest as yo...

Recently we have had to add another facilitator account for one of our buildings.  Unfortunately, when trying to get the account setup it snagged at the "verify" stage. Essentially, after a new facilitator account has been created by the VPP Manager, the person acting as facilitator goes to the VPP store to login with the new facilitator account.  The first time the account is used, the password recovery process must be used to set the password for the account.  (This means you click on "Sign in," then on the Volume Purchase Program sign-in page select "Forgot Password" to set the password for the account.  The person gets an email with a verifying link to finish the password setting process.)  After the password is set, the user is required to provide additional security. When clicking on this link currently, the user gets a "Secure Connection Failure" that prevents him/her from finishing this process.  However, there is a work-around t...

At Leslie Fisher's iOS Support Group session Friday morning at the MACUL 2012 Conference. (Hmmm.... some of the material is the same as what I'm using in my session during the next session time!) Tips & Tricks Take a screenshot - press Home & Power button at same time Hidden keys - hold .com key in browser app will show other domains Split keyboard - pull keyboard apart to corners In General Settings - Keyboard -  International Keyboard - Add New Keyboard -Emoji keyboard - puts Globe icon next to space bar so you can access icons Magnifying Glass - hold finger in typing area to get cursor where you want it Apps Calendars ($6.99) - plugs into Google Calendars and has great interface & looks Typewith.me (website) - real time document collaboration ClassDoJo (website) - students behavior tracker GoSoapbox (app & website) - interaction between the speaker & the audience, can raise importance of question if multiple people select. ($80 a year) Scr...

Here's today's Five Friday Finds!  Currently at MACUL so the descriptions are short :-) General Canvastic Simple online drawing site.   ELA Storyboard Generator Generate or create your own storyboard. Mathematics Virtual Protractor A simple to use flash-based protractor. Science Famous Scientists Educational website about inventors and scientists. Social Studies   History World Interactive narratives and timelines.

AT MACUL 2012 Conference attending the Leslie Fisher session:  The Web 2.0 You Might Not Know About... (Finally up after my battery died 15 minutes before the end of the session...) RockMelt - Free browser for Mac or PC Social media browser - connects to social media but leaves you on current page Evernote Clearly can be attached to any web browser - will extract story out of web page and save to Evernote; schools.evernote.com for school accounts; can now add audio recordings; bought skitch app for drawing; solution for iPads in multiple hands (teacher on student accounts); Evernote Peek adds flash card capability for iPad Twitter - soapbox moment about uses for Education :-) Added ability to receive tweets with no twitter account, uses text messaging.  Use twitter widgets to place tweets onto webpage (real time updating...). www.coveritlive.com - backchannel room, can go to it at anytime to see as is. www.todaysmeet.com - free backchannel chat, pretty open www....

Here it is Friday again!  This weeks Five Friday Finds are about getting out and about in the world... As always, share with others and have a great weekend. General   Useful Charts Just that - some useful charts for a variety of areas. ELA Google Lit Trips A teacher created and shared site that is free for other teachers.  Among other things, the site provides free downloadable files that "mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about “real world” references made in that particular portion of the story." Math   Battleship Numberline Brainpop interactive activity where students play "battleship" to learn about the numberline or work at estimating to hit the ship or submarine.  ...

We have recently had the situation occur where the computer that our iPads were synced to had some issues, and we needed to sync the iPads to a different computer.  The first iPad we tried to restore resulted in a muddled mess.  It took us a couple days to figure out the most efficient way of getting our cloned iPads updated. That process made us back up and reconsider how everything works. Here's what to remember, and the process that worked for us. First - some key points to recall at a time like this: A device can only be synced to one iTunes Library App purchases (downloads) are tied to an Apple ID (formerly known as iTunes Account) App downloads are in the iTunes Library the device is synced with Next - what had to happen: The devices needed to be tied to the new iTunes Library The iTunes Library had to be logged into the Apple ID we used for the cloned iPads All apps had to be downloaded onto the new computer in this new iTunes Library Now - the process ...