Active Textbook - Turn PDFs Into Multimedia Documents Active Textbook is an interesting service that you can use to turn your PDFs into multimedia documents. The basic idea behind the service is that you can upload PDFs and add pictures, links, and videos that are displayed when students read your PDF through the Active Textbook viewer. While reading your PDF through Active Textbook students can highlight, draw, and add comments to the document. The downside to Active Textbook is that you have to create your PDF outside of Active Textbook. You have to have the layout of your PDF set before uploading it because you can't actually change the content of the PDF, you're simply adding links to it through the Active Textbook service. Applications for EducationActive Textbook could provide a good way to create your own short multimedia texts for students.
Learning Management Systems: My Three Favorites Do you use a Learning Management System? Because I can’t function efficiently without them. I’m an online teacher. That means all my students are “elsewhere” — on average about 10,000 miles away from my home office in Jerusalem, Israel. I meet them in person maybe once a year, sometimes never. When I assign activities, it’s online. Without an LMS, these assignments get messy. Organizationally challenged I was not the most organized of students in high school. LMS’s serve many fine purposes in life, including assisting both teacher and student to remain on top of things. The LMS of my dreams I’m looking for a Learning Management System (sometimes called “Learning Management Solution”) to post instructions, host activities that include differentiated instruction, organize online discussion forums, be compatible with Google Apps, post due dates, and keep track of rubrics, grading systems, teacher contact info, and more — all on one site. His key takeaways are: Wikispaces Edmodo Downsides? Haiku
The 9 Best Web Tools Teachers Will Use This Year Clear communication with students and their parents is one of the primary goals of every teacher. Start this year with just that by using a variety of tools to share your plans and expectations for the coming academic year. In past years I have used a number of these assets but I have not as clearly organized them as I have this year. For this year’s bunch I have gathered the most important items into one single web page of my classroom website, New Students 2013-2014. I’m hoping that by conveniently placing this information in one place my students and parents are more likely to use the provided references. The following is a list of free online tools that I have incorporated (or plan to) for this year’s class. I have embed a welcome board via Padlet for students to post their introductions. It’s easy to create animated shorts using Xtranormal . It takes just minutes to create a poll and embed it on your website. I’ll bet a lot of your already know about this great service.
8 Evernote Upgrades You Should Know About It seems like every other month, Evernote gets additional upgrades. A few are quietly released, while others are highly anticipated by heavy Evernote users. Since I wrote my last article about Evernote’s new design and file storage upgrades, the popular notebook has gotten important new features, including Reminders, a highlighter and tighter security for subscribers, among others. If you’re new to Evernote, download Mark O’Neill’s free PDF, How to Use Evernote: the Missing Manual to get up to speed. This article is based on my use of Evernote for Mac OS X and iOS. Built-in Highlighter Call me old school, but I still like to highlight text as I read because it’s a great way to review content later. To use it, select some text and click the highlighter button, which is placed alongside the format style tools. Skitch Integration The Skitch icon appears in the toolbar of every opened note. Reminders Reminders was a much requested feature for Evernote, and it finally got rolled out in May.
2 Interesting New PDF Tools for Teachers I came across these two useful PDF tools in the course of my daily online meandering and wanted to draw your attention to them. I am also adding them to the section I created in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning under the title " PDF Tools for Teachers ". 1- ActiveTextbox ActiveTextbox is a great web tool that allows users to easily turn their PDFs into multimedia documents. 2- PDF Maker This is another cool tool that you can use to create PDFs from text, images, and HTML.
Summer Learning Series-Twitter Chats For Learning This is the fourth post in my Summer Learning Series. These are short posts with tools, tips and resources for you to try something new this summer or something you can take to the classroom in the Fall. First was Collaborative Learning With Edmodo and then we followed up with Learning With Hashtags. Then we looked at TED Talks. Today we are diving deep into Twitter chats, looking at #edchat and other chats worth your time. If you remember back to my post on hashtags we talked about how hashtags can be great sources of learning. As one of the founders of #edchat I get a lot of questions about the what, where, when and why. The History #edchat started out of a series of conversations between myself, Tom Whtiby and Shelly Terrell. The Basics To participate users need only add #edchat to their tweets. Following Along You will need a way to follow the conversations. Afterwards The archive is usually posted by the next day and it includes all the tweets during the hour time span. Advice
Evernote as an ePortfolio: Postach.io, Voice2Note, StudyBlue You know what no one tells you about starting a school? That ending a school year is WAY more work than starting a school year. Also, no one warned me that I would be licking cheap envelopes while everyone else was enjoying the freedom of summer. We have just wrapped up our second year of Anastasis Academy. I’m not sure what it is about heading into year 3, but it feels substantial and important. Odd numbers are like that I guess. I digress… this post is about Evernote and some neat new add-on apps I’ve been playing with. Postach.io Postach.io is quickly becoming my new BFF. Voice2Note Voice2Note is a fantastic way for students to turn their Evernote voice notes into text. StudyBlue A connection with a StudyBlue account means that students can turn their Evernote notes into digital flashcards they can study from. ***Please note that while we use iPads for our Evernote eportfolios, it isn’t necessary!
24 Essential Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools Mind mapping is the process of using visual diagrams to show the relationships between ideas or information. Its popular uses include project planning, collecting and organizing thoughts, brainstorming and presentations — all in order to help solve problems, map out resources and uncover new ideas. It can be more useful than trying to keep track of our ideas by scribbling them on paper, and can aid in manipulating and generating concepts. We've compiled a list of 24 mind mapping tools to help you organize, summarize and visualize information, with both free and paid versions available to suit any budget or requirement. Is there a particular mind mapping tool you would recommend? 1. MindMeister was built to facilitate collaboration for mind mapping and brainstorming, with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. You can access projects via mobile devices as well as online and offline, safe in the knowledge that your data is stored securely with data encryption and daily monitoring. 3. 4. 5.
Editorially, excelente propuesta para trabajos de escritura colaborativos Aunque contamos con diferentes servicios web que nos permiten desarrollar textos en equipo, Editorially está pensada especialmente como herramienta de edición. Implementa las características necesarias para simplificar la tarea de los editores y escritores. Para integrar colaboradores a nuestro escrito en Editorially podemos enviarles invitaciones mediante el correo electrónico, con diferentes atribuciones. Podemos determinar que solo puedan acceder a la lectura y dejar comentarios, o también permitirles derecho de edición. A diferencia de algunos editores de texto online que nos permiten a todos los colaboradores editar simultáneamente, en Editorially solo una persona puede escribir o modificar el texto en un determinado momento. Con cada versión que se cree se irá formando una línea de tiempo donde podremos regresar a apuntes anteriores y realizar comparaciones.
5 Reasons a Virtual Version of Your Resume is Required It is increasingly difficult to stand out in that stack of resumes piling up on a recruiter’s desk. You are initially just a piece of paper; they don’t know you, other than what’s written on your resume. Thankfully, however, virtual resumes help you evolve from mere resume… to a really great candidate who must be interviewed. A virtual resume is similar to a paper resume in that it expresses an applicant’s qualifications, strengths and work history. While I have my virtual resume on Vizify.com, there are several sites that offer simple templates to follow in order to create a virtual resume. Here are the top five reasons why you need a virtual version of your resume: Amplify Your Personal Brand Everything you do online – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, blogs and all sites in between – shows your personality. My online resume features a few of my tweets to show I participate in Twitter chats like #InternPro, that I love LA sports teams and I’m a huge fan of country music.
The 20 Best Pinterest Boards About Education Technology Pinterest is quickly becoming one of the biggest sources inspiration and innovation when it comes to cooking, design, and education. That’s right, education is a prominent fixture on Pinterest now and that, of course, means that education technology plays a starring role. In an effort to help curate the massive amount of Pinterest boards about education technology, you can use the following list as a jumping off point to start your Pinterest journey. The following boards are curated by teachers, admins, and other education enthusiasts. Don’t forget to check out the Edudemic Pinterest board where you can keep track of all the stuff we’re up to. Patricia Brown: Patricia showcases a myriad of videos, articles, tutorials, and lots of other resources all about education technology.Vicki Davis: We love Vicki! We want to see what YOU are pinning!