Dropbox: A Multi-Tool for Educators. Digital Tools By Jennifer Carey Dropbox is many things — a powerful, multifaceted tool that can be used in a number of different ways. But the short and sweet of it is this: you can use it to store and sync documents and files across computers, tablets, and smart phones. You can write a lecture or lesson plan on your computer at home, put it in your Dropbox folder, and whoosh – it’s synced with your work computer. You can open files, make changes, which are then automatically synced with your home computer. It’s seamless, fast and free. You can manage your own material and make it more readily accessible. Dropbox can also be a great teaching/learning tool. Dropbox can also be a useful tool in managing student projects and presentations. Students can use Dropbox on their phones to review handouts (rather than a print-out, ultimately saving paper).
This isn’t a program you will have to teach your students to use. Dropbox is more of a mega-utility than a simple tool. Related Explore: Dropbox. Using Dropbox in the Classroom. When I mention Dropbox to friends and colleagues, I usually get one of two responses – a knowing smile and nod, or a puzzled and quizzical look. Whether you know what the program is, you have likely heard the name. But really, what is Dropbox? Dropbox is many things — a multifaceted tool that’s so powerful, you’ll continue to discover new ways to use it. But the short and sweet of it is this: you can use it to store and sync documents and files across computers, tablets, and smart phones. How Dropbox works So, how can you use Dropbox as an educator? Additionally, many applications that you likely use (Evernote, Things, 1Password, Elements, to name a few) have a Dropbox sync option. Using Dropbox with students In addition to making your life a lot easier, Dropbox can be a great teaching/learning tool – and this is why I introduce it to my students.
You can call this folder anything. Next, you will get the window shown below. Once you have invited students, this becomes a “Shared Folder.” 10 Things You Didn't Know Dropbox Could Do. We live in an age when we want (and sometimes need) to access information at all times. This includes our own data and files — text documents, photographs, videos, music and more. That's why services like Dropbox and the cloud are so popular with the connected generation. Free of charge (with a paid upgrade option), Dropbox lets you upload your files to folders accessible anywhere there's an Internet connection. It eliminates the hassle of emailing yourself attachments and running into size limits.
SEE ALSO: Dropbox Enables Two-Step Verification Dropbox is a simple service, but you may not realize there are several ways to amp up the user experience. Check out the gallery above for some useful ways you can get more out of Dropbox. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, funky-data. eBooks, Remote Control & Other Creative Uses For Dropbox That You Haven't Thought Of. Do you think you’ve thought of all possible uses for Dropbox? You haven’t. Neither have I. Writers like me will never get sick of dreaming up new ways to use Dropbox, because this seemingly simple tool can be used to accomplish so much. It’s a program that provides a simple service – sync a particular folder on your computer with all of your other computers and a web service.
But you can use this to trigger actions on other computers, keep a copy of your favorite software ready on other machines, sync your entire eBook library and much, much more. Here are just a few ideas that changed the way I use Dropbox; maybe they’ll change the way you use it too. Always Have Access To Your Portable Apps Whether you’ve downloaded everything from our list of the best portable apps or have your own carefully crafted collection, Dropbox is a convenient way to access your collection from any computer you own.
Sync Your eBook Library Have access to your eBook collection, everywhere. Host a Website Why not? Digitaalinen muistinjatkeesi pilvessä: Evernote ja Diigo. Suurin osa siitä tiedosta, minkä olen yliopisto-opinnoissani ahtanut päähäni, on jo kadonnut mielestäni. Kun tenttejä varten päntätty tieto oli oksennettu ulos, jäljelle jäi vähän. Tein toki muistiinpanot, mutta nyt paperit lojuvat vintillä mapeissa ja ovat käytännössä käyttökelvottomia – tarpeellisen tiedon palasen löytämiseen voisi mennä tunteja. Ei taida olla kovin epätavallinen ongelma? Olisin enemmän kuin tyytyväinen, jos muistiinpanoni olisivat siinä digitaalisessa muodossa, jolla niitä nykyisin teen. Vaikka tieto ei olisi selvänä muistissasi, se voi olla hallinnassasi Kun tieto on pilvessä, minulla on aina tarvitessani nopea pääsy sen äärelle, kiitos mobiililaitteiden ja tehokkaiden hakutoimintojen.
Vaikka kaikki pilvessä oleva tieto ei olisi selvänä muistissani, se on hallinnassani: tarvitessani pystyn etsimään sen nopeasti käsiini ja soveltamaan sitä kulloinkin käsillä olevassa tilanteessa. Suuret tietomassat hallintaan! Henkilökohtainen digitaalisen tiedon pankki Ps. PDF tools for iPad teacher. Notability on the iPad. How to use Explain Everything App. iPad in Education: Doodlecast Pro: For "Flipping" the Classroom. How One iPad App Changed An Entire School. I have been wanting to write a post for a while about the amazing tool that we came across last year, that has truly changed the way we use iPads in our classrooms, but haven’t had a venue to do so.
Now that I have my new website, I decided it was a must! If you aren’t familiar with this groundbreaking Nearpod iPad app , I want to take a minute to share it with you and explain how it changed our school. Nearpod is an App that allows teachers to share presentations; but wait, there’s more! It also lets you be a fully engaged participant and interact with the presentation through polls, quizzes, videos, drawing interactivity, website-sharing, self-guided quizzes and more. Needless to say, it is a presenter’s dream come true.
Our faculty use this in a number of different ways, from having students solve math problems, to reading teachers having students underline a text’s main ideas, to drawing the anatomy of plants. Starting Out With Nearpod Feedback Becomes Reality. Socrative. Posted by sevhandenise on Monday, November 19th 2012 The Socrative Quiz Building Programme comprises two apps: Socrative Teacher and Socrative Student. Teachers create quizzes on a laptop via m.socrative.com. On enrolling educators are given a room number which is the passkey by which students can access their quizzes. Quizzes fall into three response categories: open ended, true/false and multiple choice. Real Time Feedback Systems The real value of a Socrative Quiz is that it provides detailed reports of all student answers, allowing for targeted feedback and personalized student tracking, which are both keystones of m-learning (John Couch, Vice President, Worldwide Apple Education, First Annual Global Mobile Learning Congress 2012, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates).
An Element of Fun Dr. Many Cooks Make Light Work Socrative Teacher is generative in that quizzes created by one teacher can also be used by others through an invited share system. A Survey Tool and a Brainstorming Tool. SOCRATIVE. Osallistuin Educoden järjestämään, kolmiosaiseen iPadien käyttöönotto ja opetuskäyttömahdollisuudet -koulutukseen, jossa kouluttajina toimivat Jukka Kilpiä ja Timo Kainulainen. Viimeisellä koulutuskerralla tutustuttiin ilmaiseen Socrative-palveluun, jota todennäköisesti kokeilen omien oppilaitteni kanssa.
Palvelu on käytettävissä sekä verkossa että kahdella sovelluksella (opettajan sovellus, oppilaan sovellus), jotka saa ainakin iPadille. Palvelua käyttävän opettajan täytyy rekisteröityä joko sovelluksen tai verkon kautta. Rekisteröinnin yhteydessä opettaja saa numeron (room number), jonka avulla oppilaat kirjautuvat vastaamaan kyselyihin. Oppilaan ei tarvitse luoda omaa tunnusta, mikä tekee palvelun käyttöönoton helpoksi. Socrativen avulla opettaja voi hyvin helposti luoda mielipidekyselyitä, monivalintakokeita tai kokeita, joihin vastataan lyhyesti 1-2 sanalla. iPadillakin käyttö on helppoa! Mihin itse aion Socrativea kokeilla? Miltä vastaaminen sitten oppilaasta tuntuu? Flipboard ja Zite. Flipboard Turns The Internet Into A Magazine [iPad] The iPad as a device could well be considered the first digital magazine.
Its size, orientation, and high resolution screen nearly makes holding and reading it like a traditional paper magazine. And the developers of the magazine app, Flipboard, were probably the first to recognize how the iPad could turn the Internet into a mobile web magazine. When Flipboard was initially released back in December 2010, it got off to a shaky start.
It didn’t quite work well for many users, but in a matter of weeks it became Apple’s iPad App of the Year, and later TIME magazine’s top 50 Innovations. How Flipboard for iPad Works When you open Flipboard on your iPad, you see a series of random full-page dissolving images that give the app its magazine feel. You flip to the homepage which features top Cover Stories and some pre-selected Flipboard Picks of websites to get you started. When you tap on a subscription, you get pages of the most recently posted content. Adding and Deleting Content. Haiku Deck for iPad. The Fast Track To Slide Stardom. Haiku Deck and iMovie Mashup. Haiku Deck 2.0 Brings Charts, Graphs And Lists To Its Super Simple iPad Presentation Tool. Office for iPad is a long-standing rumor that frankly becomes less interesting to me with every day that passes, thanks in large part to great third-party apps like Haiku Deck that are stepping up to take advantage of Microsoft’s waffling on the matter.
Haiku Deck was a great product when it launched back in August 2012, and a big version 2.0 update makes it even better today. Haiku Deck’s entire philosophy is to make it possible for anyone to quickly create great-looking presentations on their iPad, with a minimum of fuss. No design experience is required, and the app features a built-in Creative Commons search tool to help you load your preso with great pics, without running afoul of any copyrights. You can also upload your own pics (or grab them from Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram and more), should you so choose, pick a theme, enter some text, and you’re off to the races. Storify on the iPad. Doceri 2.0 Help and Transition Videos. Presstomatic Collaborative Digital Scrapbook Comes to the iPad. By Emily | January 4, 2013 | 1 comment Whether you want to create a book to commemorate a special family event or to show off all the great photos you and a friend took while snorkeling in the Bahamas over winter break, Presstomatic may be just the app you’re looking for.
Thanks to a recent upgrade Presstomatic made the leap to the iPad. It’s now a universal app, and, best of all, it’s still free. Don’t let the term “scrapbook” put you off. Presstomatic bears little resemblance to the fussy, sticker-laden pages whose supplies dominate craft store aisles. To use Presstomatic one must create an account.
Begin by choosing a photo and design for the cover. Presstomatic’s pages are reminiscent of a blogging or other social media platform. The user may set her book as a Public, Private, or Community book. Download Presstomatic for free from the App Store. What I liked: If the author designates the book as a Community Book then any Presstomatic user can contribute to it. Sandbox. LanSchool | Classroom Management, Monitoring, and Corporate Training Software. 5 Flash Players for iPad. Here we are recommending the must have Flash Player for iPad apps, why you ask? When do iPad users wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Each time they see Apple and Adobe promising to become BFFs and wake up to realize it was all a dream.
Cupertino’s intolerance to Flash has always been the stuff of legend and the way HTML5 seems to be progressing, there’s hardly any hope for iPad users who find the current web browsing experience incomplete without Flash support. This naturally brings you to our Flash Player for iPad post. What we’re trying to say is that when all hopes falter, apps prevail. 1. iSwifter: YouWeb has put out the bait for Flash Player seekers in the form of iSwifter. 2. 3. 4. 5. So those of you who thought there was no way to get your iPad to play nice with Flash may want to think otherwise. Book Creator | The simple way to create beautiful books on the iPad. Creating a Classroom eBook with BookCreator It is no secret that I am a fan of the iPad app BookCreator since its release in 2011. Our students have created several eBooks with the app.
You can read about the creation, its process and even download the final eBooks on the following blog posts: One of the most important features of the app is the openness and responsiveness of the developer Dan Amos. He truly is interested and flexible to accommodate educators and their special needs in the classroom. Our wonderful librarian Karin Hallett, who blogs on Liquid Literacy (a must subscribe blog) published a step by step recount of her process of creating a classroom eBook with current first graders. (Tip: the student reflection video is especially interesting and the “Book Author Checklist” (see below), Karin created for first graders, is useful:) Each student worked on their own iPad to create their eBook. Each student emailed me their eBook file, which I opened in BookCreator on my iPad. iPad alkuopetuksessa. Why The Drawing & Sketching App Paper Won Apple's iPad App For 2012. The sketch and drawing app, Paper, recently won Apple’s 2012 iPad App of the Year Award, and it is very easy to see why.
Even if you’re not an artist but are a true fan of the iPad, you will want to check out the unique, custom user interface of Paper. There are dozens of drawing apps in the iTunes Store, but Paper is about as near as it gets to an app that resembles an analog paper notebook. Even if you just want to doodle, Paper’s smooth digital ink, and pen and brushes make you feel like an artist. Paper is a free download, which contains the basic features for getting started, and if you want to do more, there are additional in-app purchases.
The User Interface Paper works in landscape mode only, which of course provides you with a full 2048 x 1536 space for sketching, drawing, doodling, making lists, or diagramming. The app opens with a notebook of instructions that explains many of the features of Paper. Drawing & Sketching. 13 Ways To Use iMovie In The Classroom. Is there an app for that? Well, chances are there are dozens of apps for anything you want to do, but sometimes you find one app that is robust enough to have multiples uses for you and your students. For me, iMovie is that app. I find myself using it for everything from slow motion videography to documentation, to presentations and everything in-between. Below are 13 ways that I have used iMovie (or have heard of others using iMovie) with students to enhance learning. Documentation: Use the camera and microphone to record student work and performances.
You might record students reading, to track progress, video record a student playing a short riff in band class, or record a performance in Phys.Ed, or pretty much any other course. Peer Feedback: Use video as a great medium to get students to begin to provide each other with feedback. Self Reflection: Students learning to be self aware and provide self-feedback is one of the most effective things we can teach our students. Shoot, Edit, and Share Videos With the Loopster iPad App. Le point sur : Instagram. French Apps for Kids. Appealing Apps for Educators: How SonicPics amplifies a student’s voice - iPhone app article - Carolyn Skibba. Social Reading Apps for the iPad: Buzz or Fizzle? The 20 best typography apps for iPhone and iPad. Khan Academy Enters Next Era With iPad App. Udemy Launches iPad App To Enhance Mobile Learning. Algebra Touch Math iPad App: A Teacher's Review.
Get Math Calculations Using Your Own Handwriting With MyScript Calculator – iPad App Review. A Free Interactive iPad App To Teach Algebra. The Orchestra for iPad Redefines Music Appreciation — iPad App Review. SoundCloud Labs Showcases Experimental Music Apps. Airfoil | Select Your Operating System.