I'm Loving the New Flipboard Update!

One of the most used apps on my iPad is Flipboard.  If you haven't tried flipboard yet, you are missing out!  

Flipboard is described as being your personal magazine.  I think of it more as a curation tool to pull all my favorite blog feeds, twitter hashtags, and social media sites into one place.  In the picture below you can see some of the twitter hashtags that I subscribe to.  

But the best part of this app?  The interface, I can flip through it like a magazine, reading brief snippets and tapping on articles I want to read.  

Great place to collect information in one place!

 I used this app ALL the time, and if I found something great I might send it out to twitter or email it myself for later reference (or to anyone else I thought it would be useful for).  A few extra steps, but it was such a great professional tool to find useful information, it was worth it.  

But now with the newest update to Flipboard, keeping all the articles that I really like in one place for later reference just came easier.  

To me, it's like Pinterest - only instead of boards, I can add articles, videos, pics, etc to my own "magazine" that I can name as I please.  

On the right, you can see now that I have my "subscriptions" and now I also have my "magazines".

    To add an article to a "magazine" of your choosing, simply choose the + button in the lower right hand corner.  From here you can "flip it" into a pre-existing magazine or create a new one.  On the right you can see that I have a few magazines created, Writing, iPads in Education, and Digital Citizenship.    

Do understand that by default all your created magazines are public, though you can switch them to private when you are setting up the magazine.  

So here is one of my magazines (above).  I gave it the name "EdTech Thoughts" and put articles that I was finding on anything around the theory, future, expectations, or opinions on Educational Technology. 

I can add this magazine now to my Cover Page (the page you see when you are on the Home of the app) by choosing the "Subscribe" at the top left corner of the magazine.   

I can also share my magazine with others, similar to Pinterest or ScoopIt.  I can email a link to someone, tweet it, or post it to facebook so other people are able to subscribe to anything I add to that magazine.  

You can view my EdTech Thoughts magazine at this link (you will need Flipboard on your iPad to view).

Flipboard also added a bookmarklet that you can install on the iPad or iPhone Chrome Browser so you can "flip" anything to your Flipboard app to curate yourself!  

Have Fun Flipping!  

Haiku Deck for Easy Presentation Creation on the iPad

Think of Haiku Deck as a simplified PowerPoint creator for the iPad.  When we first found Haiku Deck we loved the focus on the image and that it required no sign up for the students, they could just create.  Teaching students the importance of "less is more" in a presentation is sometimes something we forget to emphasize.  We've all sat through a presentation being read to us off of slides at some point, and thus comes the term - death by PowerPoint.   

With this week's update of the app still gives the free limited font and layout choice and an improved in app library of great photos based on the words used on the slides or terms searched for.  If using the in app library, it will cite the source of the photos automatically in the presentation.  With the newest update you can also crop and manipulate your photos from your library.  

 Other updated features include bulleted and numbered lists, as well as charts and graphs that are fully editable in the app by clicking and dragging.   I like the new features and the fact that it remains simple!

Like many of the apps that we share in our trainings, workflow for a teacher is always important.  Using apps that have a corresponding website can often simplify things.  Creating a classroom account on Haiku Deck's Website and thus signing your devices in your classroom into the classroom account creates an easy workflow allowing for videos to sync directly to your gallery on the webiste.  This makes retrieval of students presentations into one place easy.

Here is an embedded Haiku Deck that I created when we first discovered the app.  I added a few more slides to show some of the added features with this week's update.  From the website I have the options to download, embed, or share via email or social media giving me plenty of options to publish the work!      

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

iPad for Admin Agenda - LaGrande

Agenda for January 29, 2013 Training

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• GTKY - Infuse Learning
• Circle the 4 Cs 
• Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration 

• Basic Settings to Review - Partner Checks
• AutoLock, Passcode Lock, Restrictions
• Gestures
• Location Services and Notifications
• Safari Reader  It's OK to be a Lurker 
• Save a Website to home screen
• Find My iPad
• PDF to iBooks P21 Common Core Toolkit
• Reflection vs Splashtop vs Apple TV

• Shiny, Nice, Tools  
• Example lessons of teachers integrating Tech

• 5 Minute Reads with Flipboard
• What are you following? 
• Infographic of Education Hashtags (no twitter acct required)

• Trends in Education
• Common Core - Where's the Tech in the CCSS
• Table Talking Points
• Flipped Classroom 
• Flipped Classroom Infographic
• ETextBooks
• ck-12
• Digital Citizenship
• Common Sense Media 
• BYOD
• Teacher Observation Apps
• Sunset Elementary iWalkObservation
• Umatilla School District  eCove
• Google Forms

• Productivity Apps
• Google and Google Drive (free)
• Pages, Numbers, Keynote (must purchase)
• iMovie, Pinnacle (must purchase)

• Other Apps you may see in a classroom or two
• Educreations
• I-nigma
• iTunes U
• teachingchannel.org 

Classroom Management with ClassDojo and the iPad

ClassDojo is an online tracking system for positive and negative behavior, that if you haven't had a chance to explore, you should really take the time.  I mentioning it now because the website has a nice, easy to use app for the iPad and iPhone.

ClassDojo App by Class Twist Inc  - Free with no ads!

Don't assume this is a primary site - it has potential through upper grades as well!  (I used the site with 6th grade math - they still like reward systems!)

What is ClassDojo? (as described from the site)

ClassDojo is a classroom tool that helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators.  Better learning behaviors, smoother lessons and hassle-free data - and its free!

• Log in and Sign up at the ClassDojo website.
• Follow the guided tour and add your classes. 
• In "Edit Class" manage students and add behaviors that fit the needs of the class. 
• Under "Report Cards" set up to send emails to parents, view whole class behavior and points or by individual student.  

Sign in to the account on the iPad and record as you move about the room.  The information syncs between website and app making it easy to access the data that you have collected.   Project the class up on the screen (students love the avatars!) and discuss behavior at the end of the class period or have students nominate students for positive behaviors that they noticed during class that may have gone unnoticed by the teacher.    

More advanced and interactive use allows the students and parents to use their own code to log in and view their points.  

Between the website and the app - the data collection aspect is easy and valuable and worth the few minutes to get it set up! 

Britannica goes Mobile!

With the announcement that Encyclopedia Britannica is ending it's print version and going digital, on comes the mobile apps.  Mobile apps are being created for edu use focused on popular subject area.

 I came across Brittanica Kids:  Rainforests which is free as of now.  Other topic areas include: knights, snakes, us presidents, volcanoes, ancient rome, etc.... Encyclopedia Britannica's Mobile Site takes you to a complete list, with more coming soon.  All priced from free (rainforest) to $4.99.

 Britannica Kids: Rainforest   **FREE**

I put this on my ipad and had fun looking at the article, with great vocabulary (linkable to the definition), games, video and picture resources, interactive maps, etc.  There are also a rainforest animal resources page which lists over 20 animals with an article about each.




Of course....Encyclopedia Britannica has a free app listed as well... but requires a $1.99 subscription per month for full privledges.  Always free is the this day in history or the most popular articles.  Within the articles it links to images that are scrollable and has a great web of related articles.  (See picture)