Featured 5-21-2014: ChalkUp

 

ChalkUp is a student engagement platform designed to foster real-time school-work collaboration, learning, and studying, ChalkUp enables students to ask questions, discuss and share interesting educational content, and work with each other.

 

Dashboard is a real-time feed where you can comment on discussions, submit assignments, and even view files. Chalkup keeps all assignments, quizzes, and tests in one place.

 

Assignments can be delivered to students quickly and in real-time. Drag-and-drop a document from your computer or use one that you have stored on Google Drive or Google Apps for Education. Create folders, rename files to be organized.

 

Students can turn in assignments as easily as dragging-and-dropping, uploading as many files as necessary. Annotate and grade uploaded file submissions right inside ChalkUp. Personalize feedback with a quick note.

 

 

Messaging lets the people in your class chat in real-time and share files with each other. Teachers can send messages to students to clarify, remind, and keep them engaged. Chalkup uses 256-bit AES encryption to make sure your messages are safe.

 

The free version of ChalkUp provides 1 GB of storage per class with a file size limit of 25 MB, and all the core features including integrated flashcards.

 

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Featured: 1-13-2014 eduCanon

Build and share interactive video lessons using eduCanon. Students can now become actively involved in what has traditionally been a passive experience.

 

 

eduCanon makes it possible to take any YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video content and embed rich, dynamic questions with explanations inside the video. As students watch the video, the content is segmented into more palatable components to increase student engagement.

 

You can discover quality content by searching through the eduCanon database of teacher-created video, or you can paste the URL of a YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video, such as screencasts, Khan Academy, Minute Physics, TED, NOVA, etc.

Any aspect of the lesson can be easily edited, even after you’ve built it, from the title, to the video itself, to the questions, and when they appear. 

 

 Watch an overview of eduCanon's Builder Environment Walkthrough

 

eduCanon Monitoring analytics can inform you about whether students actually watch the video (key to flipping classrooms), what concepts they struggled with, and who really needs help. 

 

eduCanon is a free web-based app and works on all major browsers, Google Chrome and Safari are recommended, however. It supports iPad use as well.

 

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

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: 9-25-2013 Kaizena

 

Kaizena reinvents the teacher feedback process. It’s as easy as highlighting and speaking. Voice comments make your feedback personal and engaging.

Giving feedback with Kaizena is faster than using a word processor, or even a red pen with its negative connotations. Kaizena is built to save you time, allowing prompt, useful feedback.

Other features of Kaizena:

• Students can respond to your feedback with a voice comment of their own.
• Support for text comments.
• Attach a resource.

Common problems can be taken care of with reusable mini-lessons. Add a link once, and reuse it every time you encounter that same problem.

 See a video demo of Kaizena by Greg Mcverry

Kaizena works seamlessly with your Google Drive workflow. No new usernames or passwords are needed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 9-17-2013 Classmint

Classmint is an interactive study notes tool that lets anyone create annotatable, audible, notes that can be folded like a paper.

Classmint notes makes it possible to add complex math, computer code, and images to notes, as well as having the ability to explain notes with text and image annotations to create more useful notes.

Image annotations can reveal information on your mouse-clicks, enabling learners to retrieve information on-demand. Notes can be played in a text-to-speech audio-visual player. Students can learn concepts by reading and listening to the study material.

Classmint also maintains an automated 'revision' list to aid in the process of reviewing the notes on a subject, especially in preparation for an examination. Notes are designed to simulate the popular Cornell Notes format. Users can digitally fold the notes like paper and try to recall concepts.

 See a video overview of Classmint

Currently, Classmint is completely free to use and ad-free.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 3/20/2013 Scrible-Student Edition [Annotation]

Scrible is a free web tool to mark up web pages in your browser, manage them, and collaborate on online. It was first mentioned on EDge21in 2011.



You use Scrible by adding the bookmarklet to your browser, then using the tools to annotate web pages with highlighting, notes, and more. You can then share, organize, and search these annotated pages  from your online libraries.

The Student Edition of Scrible is a free upgrade for students (with a .edu email address) that adds these features:

• Citations and Bibliographies-Capture citations in a snap and create bibliographies with a single click.
• Summaries and Reports-Compile your annotations from multiple articles into a simple summary or robust report.
• More Space-Use 250 MB of space to save your articles. Invite others to earn even more storage.
• Shareable Libraries-Collaborate with others by inviting them to group, topic, or project specific libraries.

The Student Edition of Scrible includes the ability to maintain multiple, separate libraries and makes them easier to share. You can now keep topics of interest separated, with each library keeping  saved pages and tags specific to a topic.



The Student Edition of Scrible also provides the ability to share entire libraries instead of only individual pages. A teacher can now collect material on a topic, and share the entire library with students through one action instead of sharing multiple links.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Featured: 1/17/2013 bContext/A.nnotate [Tools]

Today's post features two tools that can be used to annotate and share a variety of documents, one is an iPad app, the other is a web tool.



Use bContext to transform static files into engaging content that you can present on your iPad.

bContext users can add hand written notations and narrative to static documents, such as PDF, PPT, or images, without any costly software, equipment, or complex editing skills.



Use bContext to record iPad presentation sessions that express intricate ideas using interesting and attractive multimedia content.

The links to your bContext presentations can be shared for free on social networks. With a pro subscription, share them by email or with private groups. Anyone can view the recorded sessions using their browser, on any computer or mobile device.

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A.nnotate is a web tool that lets you attach private or shared notes to documents and images using a web browser.

There are many applications for A.nnotate, including reviewing draft documents, compiling corrections for future revisions, selecting passages for future reference, and general document management.

You can annotate documents, images, and snapshots of webpages. Documents can be uploaded or emailed as attachments. Accepted document types include PDF, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice formats.



There are free accounts for individual users that let you upload about 30 new pages a month. You can buy additional pay-as-you-go A.nnotate credits at any time or sign up for a subscription starting at $5.95(USD) per user per month.

A.nnotate runs entirely within your browser so there is nothing to install. The current version supports Firefox, Internet Explorer 6+, Safari, or Chrome. It does not require any plugins such as Adobe Reader or Flash.

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COD - 10/8/2012 - LiveMinutes [Collaboration]

LiveMinutes is a free online collaborative meeting service focused on document sharing.

The most commonly used method of document sharing is by email, or perhaps Dropbox or some similar cloud-based solution. The documents are discussed on the phone with everyone looking at his own static version. The LiveMinutes team believes this process wastes time, and hinders effective collaboration.

LiveMinutes sharing allows everyone to videochat, looking at the same document at the same time, and annotating those documents in real time. 

With LiveMinutes conferencing, share up to 9 videos and conference for free. Join the call with your browser, Skype, or phone directly. The number is toll-free so there are no long distance charges.

A further feature of LiveMinutes is the generation of meeting reports that can be read online or downloaded as a PDF, so everyone can keep track of what was decided during meetings, and copies can be sent to those who could not participate. Your meeting chat and the audio conversation are recorded as well.

Watch a video walkthrough of LiveMinutes main features

If you are an Evernote user, your account can be connected to open and collaboratively edit your notes directly in LiveMinutes.

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COD - 6/18/2012 - Working Math [Math]

Working Math is a collection of 90 activities designed to help students in career and technology schools retain basic, practical, everyday math skills with activities that have been placed in a meaningful context.

Most of the activities in Working Math have been designed so that a student can complete the task quickly with minimal teacher intervention. Each activity is contained on a single page. The Working Math activities are meant to review and reinforce fundamental mathematics that the student should have learned previously.

Working Math is available as a downloadable PDF ebook. To use a Working Math activity, you can print as many copies of that page as are needed and distribute to your students.

Once the Working Math ebook has been purchased and downloaded, you are allowed make as many copies of the activities as you want for classroom use. 

There is also an annotated companion to the Working Math ebook that includes solutions to all the activities as well as teaching notes.

The complete Working Math ebook is $79 USD, the annotated companion is $99 USD, or bundle them together for $149. However, you can download a free sample of ten selected Working Math activities.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0 

COD - 5/8/2012 - ReadCube [Research]

ReadCube is a tool designed to help researchers be organized and save time, while discovering more.

Import PDFs in a single step. ReadCube creates your article library instantly with one-click download of related articles from PubMed, Google Scholar™, or publisher web sites. ReadCube will automatically identify the author, title, and journal citation information of every article you download.

All your articles are organized in one place. They’re full-text searchable and can include your own highlights and sticky notes. Go directly to the articles referenced in the paper you are reading with clickable references. Easily view articles that cite the paper you are reading, or articles related to it.

ReadCube automatically recommends relevant articles every day to help you stay on top of the latest research.

Watch a video introduction to ReadCube.

ReadCube is a free public beta app for Mac or Windows.

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COD - 5/3/2012 - SideVibe [Web Tool]

SideVibe enables teachers to create learning activities directly on the screen and overlaying web content.

Student thinking is captured in context providing for more focused, attentive, and productive responses. Teachers can easily gather, view, assess, and respond to all student responses through their secure SideVibe website, providing teachers with faster, more effective methods for online feedback.

The SideVibeStudent Companion is a web gadget that works within the browser and floats over web pages. Vibes are displayed and presented to your students inside the Student Companion. Teachers will build and edit their Topics and web activity Vibes using the Teacher Companion. The companion hovers over top of your current browser widow. Students follow the Vibe instructions and input responses in their companion as they navigate to the related web pages.

The free SideVibe account includes unlimited student accounts as well as an internal message system. An account also includes free upgrades, unlimited Courses, Topics, and Vibes.

Watch a video presentation of SideVibe

SideVibe is cloud-based, runs in most modern browsers, and requires no installation other than the SideVibe browser plugin.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0  

COD - 1/11/2012 - Marker.to [Tools]

 

Marker.to is a simple yellow highlighter pen for web pages. Point out important information by highlighting text on web pages and sharing the highlighted pages with others using the specially generated unique link.

Install a browser extension or bookmarklet and run Marker.to simply by clicking on the icon or bookmarklet. You can then highlight text on a web page in a variety of colors with your mouse.

You can use the special Marker.to link to share with others on Twitter and Facebook. Highlighted pages can be viewed with any browser.

 

If you have your own blog or website, then you can add a Marker.to widget to your page. The widget allows visitors to your page to add highlights directly to your page. (These highlights will NOT appear on your page, only on a modified version of your page with a unique URL.)

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

 

Catch of the Day - Scrible - 5/25/2011

Scrible is a free web tool to mark up web pages in your browser, manage them, and collaborate on online.

To use Scrible, add the toolbar or bookmarklet to your browser, use the tools to annotate web pages with highlighting, notes, and more, and share, organize, and search these annotated pages online from your Personal Library.

Highlight, color, bold, underline, italicize, and strikethrough to mark important text and parts of a web page. Use a 32 color palette to emphasize distinct types of content differently. Add color-coded notes to the web page to correspond to selected text.

Use smart legends to categorize annotations by type and color to automatically track the kinds of annotations used on a web page. Quickly and easily export some or all of your notated content into a document.

See a video introduction to Scrible

Note: Scrible does NOT currently work in IE9.

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Catch of the Day - Speaking Image - 4/11/2011

Speaking Image is a web tool for creating interactive images and sharing them with others.

Speaking Image is a web application which allows users to upload high-resolution images, add information to specific areas of the images, and use standard social network tools to interact with other users.

You can also create groups, add wikis, and control and manage collaborative work.

Find a list of video tutorials showing the basics on the Speaking Image help page and also on their YouTube Channel.

Things you can do with Speaking Image:

• Insert markers
• Draw lines and polygons
• Create wiki articles
• Share and collaborate

You need a modern browser with JavaScript support to use Speaking Image.

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