Tech Tips Nov 2014

Sorry for not sending the tech tips more regularly but I will now try to send them more often.

1. Noisli

• http://www.noisli.com

A collection of Noises and atmosphere to help with Productivity, Relaxation and Concentration. If your more confortable working in a cafe with a small wood fire you can program it very easily using sliders. It could beneficial for yourself or your class. Make your class sound like a forest to change the atmosphere. Also available for iphone, ipad for 1.99.

2. Class Dojo

I have sent this website out before but it has really improved over the last year and added great functionality with ipad and iphone apps. Its a free classroom management system. I know Elisabeth Jean and Gabriel Maynard have used it with elementary and middle school with some good results. Each student gets a character that will get more or less points depending how they perform in the class. Not only is this a great visual effect to motivate students but also it keeps a record or their progress during the semester and could be helpful to learnign specialist or even to the parents to see how the student is performing.

https://www.classdojo.com

3. I may have said this one before but you can use Google to have a quick timer just search:     timer     in the google search bar to have a programmable timer. Its great for showing time left on exams or orals, it can even have an alarm.

4. Build with Chrome, have students build landmarks, maybe even selwyn house on top of google earth using LEGOs. Its free and you can connect and share your work.

http://www.buildwithchrome.com

Livestream from mobile with Google Hangout

As you may or may not know Google Hangout has a cool feature know as Hangouts on Air, it allows you to broadcast your google hangouts to Youtube live and in realtime and save them afterwards. Now this is great but what if you wanted to broadcast a football game or an event far from any wifi. Well ios and Android devices cannot start a Hangout on Air but they can join one.

You need to be two to do this but you can start a google on air using a computer, have the person using a mobile join the conversation. Then simply click on them so they are fullscreen, you are now broadcasting live from a mobile. I am hoping that the feature will soon come to the mobile app but in the meantime this is a great work around. 

I did not make a video because Ronnie Bincer who has a youtube channel full of tips had already made a good example of what I am talking about.

Augmented Reality Project "Dragons"

Augmented Reality Project "Dragons"

We did a project in kindergarten that required the students to draw a dragon and write up a story. We then had the students come into our media studio to use the green screen. We then used Puppet pals an app on the iPad to animate the dragons and chose backgrounds. We edited everything using iMovie and added titles and sound effects.

At our Art Fair, I prepared 10 iPads with the app Aurasma, this allowed me to use the drawings the kids made originally as a sort of QR code trigger to show the movies on each drawing. You only need to create the trigger once and make it public and it will work on all the ipads.

I made a short making of video that shows all of these steps. If you want any additional information or have questions about how to do this in your school, just email me and I will be glad to help.

trudeaujp@selwyn.ca

Aurasma - Augmented Reality

Aurasma is a free service that works with iPads, iPhones and android devices. If allows you to create trigger images out of almost any picture. These trigger images can launch a web site or a video. These are called auras and you group them by channel on the Aurasma system.

Do give you a quick demo of how this looks

The only thing the users need to do is download Aurasma for free on their device. Then they need to follow the channel that is hosting your auras. The rest is automatic and easy to use.

The easiest way to create auras is to use an IOS or Android device and create your auras using the built-in wizard.

Remind101

Remind101 is a great way to keep in touch with students and parents via text messaging. The service is free and works great to send school closing notifications, events or even send a reminder for an exam.

https://www.remind101.com/

You can event schedule messages in advance. Take it for a spin, you will be surely impressed.

I recommend you make sure to check with your director or supervisor for permission to contact students in this fashion and see if it aligns with school policies.

Educade - Lesson Plans with Games

I found this cool web site that offers lesson plans for teachers that are gamed based and with Gamification becoming a big thing in education due to Minecraft and others. I thought this could help teachers build up a library of cool activities.

http://educade.org/

360 degree Spheres

We have been experimenting with 360 degree Spheres to create a virtual tour of our school.

I used the free application on the itunes App Store called Sphere and purchased a small device from Motrr called Galileo http://motrr.com/ this device only facilitates the process of creating the 3D spheres.

It can also do cool time lapse videos.

If you want to check out our school tour simply click on this link, we are still adding new locations so some pages are empty.

http://www.selwyn.ca/podium/default.aspx?t=184360