The New Remind 101 is Coming!

Many of you know that I'm a huge fan of Remind 101.  A big piece of that is the feedback that I've received from the teachers I work with.  They tell me that they love having a way to text students and parents that doesn't share numbers and allows texts to be scheduled in advance.  It looks like this great service is about to get even better.  Check out the video for more information.

Online PD

Summer is almost here and I know that many of you like to use that time of year to build up your professional development hours.  Coursera offers free online PD classes and they have availability for many of their summer sessions.  They cover a broad range of educational topics and are worth taking a look at.  You can receive a certificate at the end which could be submitted for credit within the district.  Take a look: https://www.coursera.org/courses?orderby=upcoming&cats=teacherpd

Free Google Maps Online Course

Google is redesigning Google Maps and is offering a free online course to build up the skills of its users.  Participants will be able to earn a certificate at the completion of the course.  For more information check out the video below or click here to register.

Exam Time

Yes, it's exam time once again.  There are many, many services out there to help students prepare for their exams.  Examtime is one that has some pretty useful features including flash cards, mind mapping tools, goal setting with tracking, quizzes, and a collaborative function.  Check out this video for more information.

Jog the Web

Have you ever just wanted a quick and easy way to direct your students to a select group of websites?  Jog the Web is a free service that makes this an extremely easy to accomplish task.  It's perfect for webquests and other web-based activities.  A great feature is that it doesn't require students to have an email or password to use it.  They just go to the link of the "jog" that you created and from there they can click on each site.  You can add directions for each site to designate a task or purpose for visiting.  You can also tap into a growing community of jogs to build up your own resource bank around certain topics.  I've received lots of positive feedback from people who have used this service and I hope it benefits many of you and your students as well.   

Plagiarism Checkers

I've been asked about catching plagiarism several times recently so here are some tools that could help out with this. 

One of the easiest things you can do is to copy and paste a small section of the text in question into Google and put quotes around it.  If the work is plagiarized, Google will often return a search with the page(s) that contain the exact phrase you searched for.  From there, it's usually easy enough to spot the rest of the plagiarized text on the webpage.

There are free tools that can make this even easier.  The Plagiarism Checker is a tool that allows you to copy and paste a section of text into a field on their website and search for plagiarism.  In my tests it worked better than some of the alternatives.

The one free tool for detecting plagiarism that I thought detected plagiarism the best was Plag Tracker.  I liked this tool because it gave a percentage of plagiarized work in its report and reported multiple sites where the identical work appeared.  One thing I didn't like about this site as much is that it doesn't consistently seem to be as fast as Plagiarism Checker.  One of the times I attempted to use it, the service delayed my results and emailed a report to me later in the day.  I still appreciated the detailed report, but I found having to wait a bit of a turn off.

There are other services out there, but I found both of these to be better than the others I tested.  Feel free to recommend you favorite resource for catching plagiarism and I'll be sure to pass it along.

 

Fun, Teacher Approved Resources

The following three resources have earned a great deal of positive feedback from teachers.  They're easy to set up and easy to use. 

1.  Jeopardy Labs allows you to create Jeopardy games very easily.  Forget setting up hyperlinks in a notebook file, or PowerPoint presentation.  Jeopardy labs makes it so easy with their template based creation tool.  They store the game online for you and you can easily modify it after it's been created.  They give you a direct link to your game, so playing it in class is a snap.  It was a huge hit this summer and I highly recommend it.

2.  Bingo Baker is great for creating Bingo style review games.  This online tools is easy to use and creates .pdf files that can be printed and distributed to your students.  Teachers who came to our summer training loved this tool.

3.  Crosswordlabs is another great tool.  It allows you to make crossword puzzles that can easily be printed.  Teachers loved how easy it was to use.

I'd be happy to help out if you have any questions with these or any other resources recommended on this blog.

Remind 101

     Remind 101 is a service that we blogged about last year and we encourage anyone who has not used it to take a look at what it can do for you.  Basically, it provides a way for you to send messages and reminders (via texting) to parents and students with-out either party having access to phone numbers.  The one minute video below should give you lots of ideas on how you can use this free and easy-to-use service. 

Use it first because it will help your students and parents, but also realize the impact it could have on your APPR. 




Want to try it?  Send a text to:  415-418-7433  In the message type:  @dud 
I'll send you a text at 8:00 tonight.

Volunteer Spot

If you've ever tried coordinating volunteers for something you know the amount of work involved.  Volunteerspot offers a free and easy way to coordinate volunteers.  I've embedded a video below for you to get an overview of the services they provide.  Again, if you have questions feel free to get in touch with us. 

Doodle It

If you've ever taken on the task of scheduling a meeting, you know it can be challenging.  Doodle seeks to make the whole process as quick and painless as possible.  It allows you to give the participants a few different dates and times from which to choose so that you can pick the one that works best.  You can already do that through email, texts, or phone calls though right?  Yes, but if you give Doodle a try you may never want to again.  It's so much easier.  Check out the short video below to learn more.

Qwiki, Anyone?

If you haven't tried Qwiki yet, you should.  It's a great resource for finding information on a wide variety of topics.  Results are shown in short video explanations.  Check it out!
http://www.qwiki.com/

Instructional Tech Newsletter

Sandy Paben's newsletter is back with more great stuff to share.  Check it out!

March april 2012

View more documents from dudleyteaches.

Watch Know Learn

Here's another resource for finding educational videos online.  Everything is categorized which makes searching a lot easier.  Enjoy!

http://www.watchknowlearn.org/

And Bingo was his Name-o

Here is another great tool for building a review game.  I've seen teachers here using homemade bingo boards to review for tests and quizzes and this tool may just make their lives a little easier.  For those of you who haven't used Bingo in the past, perhaps checking out some of the examples on Bingobaker.com will inspire you to give it a try.

In addition to a few pre-made examples, you will find a free and easy-to-use bingo game generator.  It really couldn't be much easier.  You can even give the board a title and change the headings from BINGO to a 5 letter word of your choice.  Check it out!

It's Time For...

Jeopardy!


Many of us have made our own adaptations of the popular game show for our classrooms.  From paper and pencil to digital versions, variations have been used in classrooms many times over.

Have you tried creating your own version in PowerPoint or Smart Notebook?  If so, you know more about the time investment required than those of us who found templates and customized them.  Either way, it takes a fair amount of time, and one incorrectly linked slide can turn a fun review game into a frustrating experience.

Jeopardylabs.com offers a free and easy-to-use online template tool for building and playing your jeopardy games.  It's worth checking out!  As always, feel free to stop by the mountain or respond in the comments section to let us know what you think.  

Discovery Education

     Discovery education is more than just an educational video warehouse, however the way that it breaks large videos into segments is worth a look alone.  You can stream or download videos as well as generate assignments, questions, and writing prompts.  The video below will explain more.  Directions were sent out at the beginning of the year for logging in and we would be happy to share them with you again if need be.  Just shoot us an email and we'll send them to you.

Free Flash Drive Treasure Hunt

Would you like a 2GB flash drive courtesy of your fun tech coaches?  Be the first to answer all of the questions below as a comment to this post and it's yours.  All answers must come from previous posts. 

1.  What web-based service allows you to make free flash cards that can be embedded and shared in a variety of ways?
2.  Name 2 services that can be used to share large files.
3.  What free service allows you to embed and share PowerPoint presentations and .pdfs?
4.  What service refers to itself as the "zooming presentation editor"?
5.  What free service allows you to send text messages to students and parents?
6.  Name a free service for building and hosting a website.

Please number your answers accordingly.

April Fool's Day

We're taking a break from the sharing of resources today to watch something by a pretty creative and innovative teacher.  Matthew Weathers has several very clever videos on youtube along with some tutorials on how he creates his effects.  The video below was from April Fool's Day (technically the day before) in 2010.  It's worth the watch.  Do we have anyone that can create something similar?  It would be pretty cool to see.  Let us know your thoughts.

Screencast-o-matic

Screen casting is the process of recording of what is being displayed on your computer monitor (screen).  It allows you to make instructional and tutorial videos.  I've had great luck using www.screencast-o-matic.com which allows you to make screen casts for free with-out the need to download anything to your machine.  Below is a quick overview of the screen casting process.  I'll be using screencast-o-matic to show you how to create a free, easy, and dynamic website in future blogs.  Stay tuned!

Did You Know 4.0

This is video is a couple of years old now, but it really speaks to our changing world.  How are we preparing our children for these changes?  What else can we be doing?  What are the obstacles?  There are many discussions to be had around this one.  Enjoy!