Educationals Technology and Mobile Learning

July , 2017 If you are planning to use QR codes with your students in class the chart below provides you with some of the best web tools and mobile apps for generating and reading QR codes. And as we have argued elsewhere, there are several ways to integrated QR code technology in your teaching. In this excellent video tutorial,  Red Squirrel  demonstrates 11 ways you can use QR codes in your class (e.g: create handouts with links to online content; enrich your content by adding links to online videos, documents and PDFs where students can access more information about topics taught; create QR codes that can show answers to a specific exercise or instructions on how to carry out a certain activity …etc, make books interactive and many more). Note here that for you to use QR codes you will need : Mobile devices with QR code readers/scanners installed  QR code generators to create QR codes to share with students. To learn more about how to use QR Codes in class, check out these guides: Q

July 27, 2017 For those of you using Chromebooks in your instruction, below is a collection of some of the best educational apps you can install and use with your device. The purpose is to provide you with a one-stop place where you can easily access and find apps curated by teachers for teachers saving you precious time to use on other pedagogical activities. We have arranged these apps into the following categories: Apps for science teachers Apps for social studies teachers Apps  for taking notes Apps  for creating timelines Apps for digital storytelling Apps  for creating and editing videos Apps for creating educational infographics and posters Apps for creating animations Apps  for annotating web content Apps for creating beautiful drawings Apps for creating flyers and newsletters Apps for planning and managing projects Apps for collecting students feedback Apps for task management Apps for editing photos Categories Apps Chromebook Apps for Science Teachers ChemReference The BioDig

July 26, 2017 Common Sense (formerly Graphite) has this wonderful  section  packed full of pre-made lesson plans that teachers and educators can appropriate to their own teaching situations.  These lesson plans are digitally focused and integrate a number of educational web tools and mobile apps to provide teachers with practical working examples of the effective use of technology in classroom. Teachers can also create their own lesson plans and share them with the education community in Common Sense. To do so registration is required. Before you create your own tech-rich lesson plan, you may want to check  lesson plans  other have already created. You can either check the ‘Featured lesson Plans’ section on the right hand side to view a number of suggested lesson plans or search the site for specific lesson plans. You can filter your search using criteria such as subject and grades. Watch the video below to learn more about Lesson Flows. Enjoy

July 24, 2017 KeepVid has recently launched a new Android app that allows users to easily download videos from Facebook, Vimeo and Instagram. This lite version does not support YouTube videos the full version does. For those of you who are not familiar with KeepVid, this is a popular platform that enables you to both download and convert a wide variety of video formats. You can even download multiple videos at once. KeepVid provides a set of powerful features that include: download videos directly to your device, convert videos to MP3, search and download videos without opening any other app, enjoy your downloaded music directly on your Android device without opening other media player app, enable you to get the music you want without compromising the audio quality, allows you  to download HD videos on Android, including 1080p, 2K, 4K, HD and UHD, without compromising the video quality and many more. Check it out and share with us your feedback. This is a sponsored post.

July , 2017 Speech to text technologies allow you to transcribe your speech into text in a couple of clicks. Most of the established platforms integrate this kind of technology. For instance Google has it integrated with some of its services like Google search. You can click on the mic icon in the search bar and start speaking, Google will automatically type in your speech and run your query. Below are some of the Chrome apps for speech recognition. Check them out. 1-  Announcify Announcify reads out loud various kinds of information, like events or whole documents, for you. For example, if you're too tired but still need to study one more Wikipedia entry, Announcify can help your tired eyes relax. 2-  Select and Speak Select and Speak uses iSpeech's human-quality text-to-speech (TTS) reads selected text. It includes 43 iSpeech text to speech voices. You can configure the voice and speed options by changing the settings on the options page. 3-  SpeakIt SpeakIt reads selected te

July 23, 2017 Below are 10 good Chrome extensions to use in your math classes. These are are meant to help kids develop math skills through a wide variety of exercises, activities, games, interactive simulations and many more. Some of these apps are integrated with Google Drive and are also available for  iPad, Android, and Chromebooks. 1-  GeoGebra GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org) is free dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Interactive learning, teaching and evaluation resources created with GeoGebra can be shared and used by everyone at tube.geogebra.org. 2-  Desmos Graphing Calculator Explore math with Desmos! Plot functions, create tables, add sliders, animate your graphs, and more -- all for free. 3-  Math Arcade Games Improve your math skills and have arcade style fun at the same time.  Blast your way through wave after wave of attacking alien space

July 22, 2017 In today's post I am sharing with you an excellent rubric for science teachers. This document, which is available for free download, is shared by the  University of Wisconsin . The rubric  outlines performance criteria for using : scientific tools, scientific reasoning and strategies, science concepts and use of data and communication. The performance is assessed for each of the following categories: novice, apprentice, practitioner, and expert. Click  here  to download the rubric. You can also check  this page  for rubrics covering other subject areas such as writing, cooperative learning, math, social media, oral presentations and many more.

July 20, 2017 Here is a list I curated over the last weekend. The list features some of the best web tools teachers can use to create mind maps on Chromebooks. I have only included the ones I think are too simple and easy to use so any teacher can use them without any advanced technology knowledge. As I was trying these apps on my Chromebook, I discovered some glitches in the popular apps : blubber.us and Text to Mindmap so I did not include them, but you can try them out in your device if you want. 1-  Lucid Chart Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy. Work together with an unlimited number of others to create and edit diagrams in real time, with changes merged and synced instantaneously -- great for team collaboration. 2-  MindMeister MindMeister is another good app for creating mind maps.MindMeister is deeply integrated into Google Drive, allowing users to open and edit many mind map formats. Some of the things you can do wi

July 19, 2017 Today’s post features some very good iPad apps to use with your dyslexic learners. The first app helps students understand dyslexia through a video comic and subsequent quiz. The second app is a detector that allows you to detect different types of learning difficulties including dyslexia. The third app provides learners with a variety of engaging games to help them ‘assess working memory, phonological awareness, processing speed, visual memory, auditory memory and sequencing skills.’ The last app is a Dyslexic dictionary for explaining unknown terms. 1-  What is Dyslexia? A FREE app to help you understand dyslexia. Watch a video comic and follow the story of a typical dyslexic.Take a quiz to see if you show signs of dyslexia. Find out ways parents can help at home. Send your teacher tips on how to help at school.’ 2-  Dyslexia Detector Find out if you experience Dyslexia or another form of learning difficulty.Dyslexia Detector can detect other learning difficulties inclu

July 13, 2017 Last month (June) marked the commemoration of the aboriginal people of Canada (First Nations of the West, the Inuit of the North, and the Metis of the East).To this end,  iTunes App Store dedicated an entire section featuring resources and educational materials  to  help teachers and students learn about Native Canadians and explore their history and traditions. We have gone through these resources and piked for you some of the materials we think are useful for using with students. The resources are arranged into the following categories: Fiction and literature, Movies, Aboriginal Language Apps, Non-fiction, and Music. We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback. Categories Links Fiction and Literature Runaway Dreams, by Richard Wagamese Green Grass, Running Water, by Thomas King Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past, by Thomas King Pilgrimage, by Diana Davidson A Short History Of Indians In Canada: Stories, by Thomas King Song Over Quiet