Featured: 10-31-2013 Chronicle

Using all the features of the iOS platform, Chronicle from Powerhouse Education provides teachers with an app designed to efficiently inform instruction and chronicle student growth.

Utilizing multi-media technology, Chronicle enables teachers to quickly capture, and share, student progress with text, photos, audio, and video. Teachers can select any type of note and designate it as an artifact, a note that the teacher would like to recognize as a benchmark of student progress.

Chronicle's unique Traffic Light allows teachers to quickly assess understanding, achievement, or progress by tapping the corresponding traffic light signal next to each student, assigning the student the color red, yellow, or green.

Chronicle allows you to easily import Common Core Standards and incorporate them into your daily teaching routine.

The Chronicle Gradebook offers a number of rich, informative features, such as easily accessible comments, color-coded tracking of student progress, and quick calculation of class average.

 Watch the Chronicletrailer

Powerhouse Education was founded by husband and wife teachers, Andy and Ellen Raupp with the aim of "providing teachers with the tools to effectively and more easily implement educational best practices, knowing that empowered teachers will yield stronger, more successful students."

Chronicle is $19.99 (US) from the iTunes Store. It requires an iPad running iOS 6.0 or later.

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Featured: 10-30-2013 eHighlighter

eHighlighter for iOS can be your personal research assistant bringing eBook benefits to paper sources using your device's camera.

Using eHighlighter you can prepare organized, searchable, copy-and-pastable excerpts and notes from hardcopy books, journals, and magazines. Easily access these notes on your iOS device or any other web-enabled device.

Other eHighlighter featres:

• Create, manage, and export MLA, Chicago, or APA styled bibliographies. Instantly add citation information by scanning a book's barcode or searching by title/author.
• Keep information organized with notes and tags. Sort and search highlights by tag or keyword.
• Instantly share notes with other eHighLighter users or export to email, Evernote, and Dropbox.

eHighLighter is $1.99 (US) on the iTunes store. It requires iOS 7.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Featured: 10-29-2013 EduCore

At the EduCore™ website you will find current, relevant, evidence-based tools and professional development to ease the transition into a new era of teaching and learning based on the Common Core State Standards.

The Literacy Tools at EduCore provide resources to learn more about the Literacy Design Collaborative and the Common Core. Find out about the LDC, the components of the LDC framework, and how you can use it in the classroom.

Classroom Challenges include both problem-solving and content development formative assessment lessons. Learn more about Classroom Challenges and the Mathematics Design Collaborative in the Math Tools section. You can access lesson plans, student materials, PowerPoint slides, and other resource materials to facilitate their implementation.

Registered users of EduCore can collect and save their favorite resources as well as maintain a journal of their experiences.

The EduCore website was created by ASCD with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Featured: 10-28-2013 SodaDB

Sodadb is a free online alternative to Microsoft Access, File Maker Pro, and other conventional database software.

Sodadb is a downsized, simplified, but still very powerful online database. Intuitively create an online database quickly, no manual needed.

Add, edit, delete up to 10,000 records in a grid-like interface with inline editing. Sodadb allows an unlimited number of users and unlimited number of databases, only a maximum number of records.

Click on a template to create a new database or design your own. Access your database using a private URL. Easily share your database by simply sending out your secret URL. You can also grant access to your database by adding sub-users and setting rights. Another way to share your database is to embed it in your website.

Upload images or documents to Sodadb and attach them to your records. Existing data can be imported into Sodadb from .csv files. You can export to .txt and .csv.

Sodadb is donationware. If you like it, you are asked to make a donation. You can become a supporter ($3.49 (US)/month), unlocking more functionalities.

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The Rearview Mirror 10-26-2013

For those of you who may have missed an EDge21 featured post or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

ShareLaTeX is an online editor that enables smooth collaboration among users. Everyone with an Internet connection can access and edit the latest versions of the same LaTeX documents.

Tuesday

The United Nations Cyberschoolbus offers informative and interactive educational resources, curriculum, and quizzes/games to a global community.

Wednesday

In 2012,she++ was Stanford's first conference on women in technology. In April, more than 250 attendees met on Stanford's campus with a group of inspirational women in tech, from companies such as Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and Pinterest, and others.

Thursday

UClass is a global lesson exchange created by teachers for teachers.

Featured: 10-24-2013 UClass

UClass is a global lesson exchange created by teachers for teachers.

UClass taps into an abundance of experience and knowledge by gathering, sharing, and crowd-sourcing planning globally. A huge collection of authentic classroom assignments is readily accessible.

When teachers connect on UClass, their classrooms can participate in dynamic global exchanges. Teachers may choose to open access to a global audience, allowing students to receive feedback from students around the world, thus fostering a powerful sense of global citizenship.

UClass lessons each consist of:

• a lesson outcome
• directions
• Common Core standard tagging
• a full lesson plan
• a worksheet
• an assessment
• and a multimedia link

Lessons are searchable by grade, subject, category, strand and standard.

 Watch a video introducing UClass

A teacher who has joined UClass can access lesson previews, but must purchase lesson credits to download the entire lesson. If a teacher creates a lesson, that teacher gets paid for each time it gets downloaded.

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Featured: 10-23-2013 UN Cyberschoolbus

The United Nations Cyberschoolbus offers informative and interactive educational resources, curriculum, and quizzes/games to a global community.

Following are just a few of the many things Cyberschoolbus has to offer:

The Cyberschoolbus interactive database, InfoNation, is accessed by thousands of users monthly to locate accurate, official, and up-to-date information and statistics regarding the countries of the world.

The Schools Demining Schools project brought schools together around the issue of landmines. After learning about the topic, schools ran their own fundraising drives to raise money to clear school grounds of mines. Students could follow the results of their actions through email exchanges with the demining teams in Afghanistan and Mozambique.

The Model UN Discussion Area attracts thousands of students who gather to discuss international issues, request information, and exchange ideas.



For the Health module, classes from around the world connect with each other on a discussion board to talk about, then define health, before getting together on-line to question experts from the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization about their concerns.



Cities of Today, Cities of Tomorrow includes a comprehensive 6-unit teaching module on urban issues that covers everything from the history of urban development to profiles of today's important cities to issues facing the cities of tomorrow.

 View a video about the UN Cyberschoolbus

This year, the Cyberschoolbus Global Teaching and Learning Project is working on several large scale projects, including activities related to science, music, and history.

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Featured: 10-22-2013 She++

In 2012, she++ was Stanford's first conference on women in technology. In April, more than 250 attendees met on Stanford's campus with a group of inspirational women in tech, from companies such as Google, Facebook, Dropbox, and Pinterest, and others.

After positive feedback, it was decided to expand she++ into a full-fledged community to inspire women in computer science.

The she++ Conference is now an annual event at Stanford University where college and high school students and industry professionals join in a one-day symposium on what it is to be a woman in tech.

Previous events have included career and student panels, interactive workshops, a mentoring lunch, documentary screenings, and keynote addresses. The next event is coming up in April 2014.

 Watch a documentary about she++

The she++ e-mentoring program creates opportunities for high school students and potential technologists to connect with college CS role models. A single online meeting is setup between a mentor and student. Mentors and students are then free to independently develop a mentoring relationship if they so choose.

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Featured: 10-21-2013 ShareLaTeX

ShareLaTeX is an online editor that enables smooth collaboration among users. Everyone with an Internet connection can access and edit the latest versions of the same LaTeX documents.

ShareLaTeX documents are always available online. You and your collaborators can even work on the document at the same time with this real-time editor. Built-in chat lets all editors communicate while you're editing.

ShareLaTeX is designed to be easy to use, even if you’ve never used LaTeX before. ShareLaTeX highlights any errors in the LaTeX log to make debugging as simple as possible.

More features of ShareLaTeX:

• There's no installation needed.
• Example projects are ready to be compiled with one click. 
• Download your projects to work offline any time you like.
• Upload existing documents to get your work onto ShareLaTeX quickly.

Dropbox sync, available with paid plans, keeps all of your LaTeX projects synced to your Dropbox folder. You can make changes inside the Dropbox folder then see them sync back to ShareLaTeX.

 See an overview of ShareLaTeX

The ShareLaTeX free personal plan provides unlimited projects for you and one free user per project. You also get unlimited compiles, but with a low compiling priority.

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EDge21 Favorite: GrammarBase

 

GrammarBase is a free grammar checker and corrector, a free online spell checker, and can even help with dyslexia mistakes.

 

 

GrammarBase checks for all types of grammar mistakes, contextual errors, modifiers, prepositions, punctuation, quantifiers, and more.

 

To use the free GrammarBase online grammar checker you don't need to register or download anything, just copy your text and paste it into the website and see your grammar mistakes highlighted. You will receive a detailed report identifying any issues and offering simple suggestions for improvements and corrections.

 

 

With GrammarBase’s spelling checker, you will get your spelling checked in context to ensure the right words are used in your document.

Watch a video demo of GrammarBase

The GrammarBase grammar checking tool can be a great help for those who are trying to learn English. Learners can identify the mistakes in their writing and learn how to correct them, thus improving their English skills.

 

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First posted 4-23-2013

EDge21 Favorite: Planboard

Planboard helps teachers simplify lesson planning with features like calendar sharing, schedule printing, coordinating lessons with your school schedule, and tracking standards alignment.

By allowing you to integrate and track Common Core and other standards,Planboard can help you ensure your students have the knowledge and skills they need to be successful.

Easily align Planboard with your school and classroom schedule. Select the number of periods and which days of the week you will be teaching. Planboardalso supports day rotation, from A/B days to alternating weeks, and more.

Planboard can save you time by removing some of the repetition from your lesson planning process. Create a template that follows your day rotation. Automatically replicate your plans from the previous year.

Collaboration with teachers anywhere helps you create the best lesson plans. You can also find publicly shared lesson plans by searching for keywords or the standard codes that they need to meet. 

 Watch the video: Introduction to Planboard

Planboard is completely free including all features and 500MB of storage. The Pro version of Planboard provides 3GB of storage and costs $29.95(USD) per year.

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First posted 5-23-2013

EDge21 Favorite: The Engineering Pathway

The Engineering Pathway pledges access to high-quality STEM teaching and learning resources for use by K-12 and university educators and students.

The Engineering Pathway's K-12 curriculum uses engineering as a context for the utilization of hands-on science and math in real-world designs and applications that hope to inspire creativity.

Search K-12 engineering lessons and activities and other resources by a variety of criteria such as content area, grade level, and standards. The Engineering Pathway resources also include professional development opportunities and research findings.

Resources for higher education may be located using multiple criteria including discipline, audience, resource type, title, author/creator, special topics, or by selected collection. These resources include support for ABET accreditation, research and scholarship, curricula development, and extracurricular activities for students.

The aspiration of The Engineering Pathway is to "provide resources that help teachers, parents, faculty, and practicing engineers to inspire more of today's students to follow an engineering path as their way to understand and improve the world."

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First posted 6-19-2013

EDge21 Favorite: Flowboard

Flowboard is a free iPad app that lets you create side-scrolling presentations with text, images, video, and links.

 

 

 

Create each screen of a Flowboard using simple touch gestures. Add buttons, videos, and galleries for interactivity. Present your Flowboard and let others explore, using the interactive features, on your iPad, online, or offline.

 

Create Flowboards with content on your iPad or from the cloud. Add photos and videos from Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive; pictures from Facebook or Instagram; and use Google Image Search, as well.

 

Flowboard automatically saves your presentations locally as you make changes, and you can save drafts to the cloud, so your presentation is always safe.

 

 

Present straight from your iPad, connect to a projector, or mirror using AirPlay. You can share your Flowboard to other iPad users and the web by a URL that can be posted anywhere.

 

 Watch a Flowboarddemo from TechCrunch

 

Flowboard is free to download and use (Requires iOS 6.0 or later). Premium increases your monthly upload quota to 1GB, with bigger file upload sizes, and the ability to upload PDF files. Currently, a subscription for Flowboard Premium is $5(USD) per month. 

 

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First posted 8-13-2013

EDge21 Favorite: Kingsoft Office Free 2013

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 for Windows provides a no-cost, powerful alternative to the MS Office monolith.

Smaller and faster than most other office suites, Kingsoft Office Free 2013, includes a built-in PDF converter and automatic spell check, as well as an innovative Paragraph Adjustment tool.

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 includes the usual modules for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations:

• Writer provides word and text processing with drag-and-drop paragraph editing, a section tab, support for .doc and .docx.
• Easily create and edit Spreadsheets, a calculator, graphing, and multiple other tools for complex data analysis, export to both .xls and .xlsx extension files.
• Presentation lets you create dynamic slides for speeches and presentations, with Flash, sound and animation effects, and artistic backgrounds.

 Watch a video introduction to Kingsoft Office

In addition to the traditional interface which resembles older versions of MS Office, Kingsoft Office Free 2013 gives you a choice of a new interface similar to the newer versions of Office. You can easily switch between the two versions according to your preference.

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First posted 6-17-2013

EDge21 Favorite: MapStory

MapStory is a free online tool to organize many sorts of knowledge about the world spatially and temporally.

Anyone can become a 'Storyteller' who can create, share, and collaborate onMapStory and ultimately improve understanding of global dynamics, worldwide, over the course of history.

You can browse MapStory or search by keyword. Narrow your search by type (MapStories, StoryLayers, StoryTellers), section, where, when, or who.

Teachers and students are able to create their own MapStories and publish them on the web. MapStories may be about history, important recent/current events, or any number of other subjects.

 Watch What is a MapStory?

The aim of MapStory is to make history, geography, and many other academic subjects more meaningful to your students and their parents. MapStory wants to "empower you to succeed in inspiring the next generations of our global society."

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First posted 7-1-2013