Microsoft Released A New Website to Help Teachers Use Minecraft in Their Classes July 10, 2015 Minecraft is an immersive learning environment that has started as a game about creating, exploring and managing resources before it becomes one of the leading educational learning platforms for students. A few days ago, Microsoft, Minecraft’s parent company, announced the release of a new website, Minecraft for Education, geared towards providing teachers with a forum where they can share their ideas about how they use Minecraft in their teaching. ‘Minecraft in education is a way to teach, learn and inspire. Here are some examples of how some teachers are using Minecraft in their classes: Elementary students in Seattle are learning foundational math skills by calculating perimeter, area and volume in Minecraft during a Saturday math program.
10 Mac Tips Every Teacher Should Know about July 9, 2015 Mac is an incredible piece of gadgetry and an ideal companion for teachers. It has tons of features and functionalities that can make your digital life way easier and more productive. To help you make the best of your Mac, we are sharing with you 10 essential and probably basic tips. 1- Take A Screenshot Skitch is an excellent app to use with your Mac for taking screenshots and annotating them. 2- Type special characters There are tons of special characters integrated in you Mac OS X and which you can easily insert in your documents and posts. 3- Annotate PDFs You don’t need to install any third party apps to annotate your PDFs, Mac’s PDF reader can do it all for you and here is how to do it. A tool bar will show up in your PDF to help you annotate, comment, draw, add lines and shapes on your PDF. 4- Sign documents You can also insert your signature into PDFs on your Mac. 8- Parental Control 10- Back up your Mac
Basic PDF Tips Every Teacher Using Mac Should Know about July 29, 2015 In an earlier post entitled ‘10 Mac Tips Every Teacher Should Know about’ we fleetingly touched on a quick hack on how to annotate your PDFs. We subsequently received few questions from teachers inquiring about PDF tips for Mac users so we decided to feature some of the basic yet overlooked things you can do with your PDFs on Mac. For any of these tips to work, make sure you open your PDF then click on ‘View’ in Mac’s menu bar and select ’Show markup toolbar’. 1 Add signature to PDFs You can easily sign PDFs using the sign feature in the mark-up toolbar. 2- Add notes and sketches to PDFs To add a note to a PDF document, click on the note icon as shown in the screenshot below and start typing in the displayed text box. The same with sketches, click on the pen icon to start sketching . 3- Add text to PDFs Similar to the notes feature mentioned above, you can add your own text to a PDF document by simply clicking on text icon.
A Wonderful Free Tool for Creating Interactive eBooks for Your Class August 2, 2015Kindle Textbook Creator is a free software application that allows you to easily convert your educational content saved in PDF format into Kindle books.These include textbooks, course notes, study guides and many more. Using Kindle Textbook Creator, you will be able to enhance the readability of your content with features such as audio, video, and image pop-ups. Once your eBook is ready, you can publish it through Kindle direct publishing and make it available for readers on different devices including fire tablets, iPad, Android tables and Mac and PC computers. Kindle Textbook Creator also includes a preview mode that shows authors which interactive features are supported on different devices. This software is available for free download for both Windows 7 & 8 and and for Mac OS X 10.9 and above. Watch the video below to learn more about Kindle Textbook Creator
Filemail.com - Send large files - fast, easy & secure Coordinate Back-to-School with Choice Eliminator and Google Forms This is a guest post from Kate Wilson (@KateWilson13) of EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site. Google Forms can be one of the best tools in the classroom for data collection and assessment as well as a great resources for teachers to use in order to get information from parents. In this Back-to-School season, you may need to coordinate times for parent-teacher conferences or the donation of shared classroom school supplies. While Google Forms offers a simple solution, teachers still need to spend time sifting through all the various responses - particularly when parents are trying to select a time or sign up for a single resource. What if there was a way to eliminate choices from a question so as not to have sign-up conflicts? Choice Eliminator is a Google Forms Add-On that removes options from a Google Form as they are selected by users. Implementing this function requires just a few steps. This will open a sidebar application within the form.
Appar för elever i behov av särskilt stöd På uppdrag av speciallärarna i Lysekils kommun kommer här mina framtagna appar för elever i behov av särskilt stöd. Publikationen tar också upp tips och trix för en enklare skoldag:) Relaterat iPad som hjälpmedel iPaden rymmer många möjligheter till anpassning för elever i behov av stöd, allt från talsyntes, till möjligheter att zooma text, ändra kontrast till hörselhjälpmedel. I "Allmänt" 32 appar inför höstterminen 15/16 Här kommer min lista med iPadappar som kommer finnas på alla iPads i Lysekils kommun åk 1-6. iPad som hjälpmedel-5 i topp Med stöd av it kan du idag förenkla många vardagliga rutiner.
3 Powerful Apps for Creating Green Screen Videos with Students June 8, 2015 Green screen is a cinematographic technique that allows video editors to add a variety of visual effects to their videos. These effects include : adding virtual backgrounds, superimposing subjects over animated backdrops, placing a subject on another shot and many more. Green screen technology has been widely used in weather and movie industry. But now with the emergence of apps such as the ones below, everyone can use this technology to create engaging clips and presentations. As Do Ink explained “ Green screen technology is used in the movies to make it look like the actors have landed on an alien planet, and it's used on TV to make it look like your local news announcer is standing in front of an animated weather map. Watch this short video to learn more about what Green Screen is all about. There are a wide variety of ways you can use Green Screen apps with your students. 1- Green Screen by Do Ink 2- Green Screen Movie FX 3- Hands-On Green Screen Movie Effects
CamScanner- A Great App for Scannig, Editing and Sharing Docs May 26, 2015 CamScanner is an excellent document scanning and sharing app. It allows you to instantly scan any type of text or graphic and save or share them with others. Using your phone or tablet camera, you can take a photo and CamScanner will automatically enhance the scanned results so you can easily email, print, fax or share them in PDF or PNG format. Using the integrated OCR feature, CamScanner allows you to scan an image or PDF making all the text captured editable and searchable. Other features provided by CamScanner include:
WriteComics.com - Create your own comics! What is it? « Algodoo Algodoo is a unique 2D-simulation software from Algoryx Simulation AB. Algodoo is designed in a playful, cartoony manner, making it a perfect tool for creating interactive scenes. Explore physics, build amazing inventions, design cool games or experiment with Algodoo in your science classes. Algodoo in scientific research There are tons of research papers about Algodoo and its use in education. Functionality With Algodoo you can create simulation scenes using simple drawing tools like boxes, circles, polygons, gears, brushes, planes, ropes and chains. Physical elements You can also add more physics in your simulation like fluids, springs, hinges, motors, thrusters, light rays, tracers, optics and lenses. Analyze and visualize For deeper analysis you can also show graphs or visualize forces, velocities and momentum. Algobox – Sharing scenes Community With a large and active community, engaging educators, parents and kids you can discuss and share your thoughts about Algodoo. Technology