Sample Email to Blog Post

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Yapp Yourself?

I just created my first Yapp!  If you want to easily create an app with a schedule for a conference, meeting, family reunion, anythng, Yapp is the app!  The site is really intuitive and it took me about twenty minutes to create my for first Yapp...all for FREE!  Of course there are some in app purchases you can make, but I'm good with the free stuff.  So here's how you get started: 

Sign up for an account at Yapp.us.  All you need is an email.

Select your theme in the Yapp editor.

Start editing your pages, all which are accessable on the left sidebar of the editor.

When you're finished, click publish in the upper right and share your Yapp via email, twitter, facebook, or a QR code.

In order to view on your mobile device, you'll need to download the Yapp app from the app store.  

Want to see what a Yapp looks like?  Click on this link from your mobile device.

Thank you Liz Castillo for sharing Yapp with me! 

ISTE13 Reflection

It's been about two weeks now and I've been thinking about blogging about about ISTE13 since I started my journey to San Antonio, Texas. I had a post written in my head about the anticipation of ISTE...then I hit HackedED and had a post written in my head about my first conversation there, App Creation on the iPad, then I went tot MakerSpaces in Schools and learned so much I just had to write a blog post about it, and that was before lunch on Saturday before the conference even started. So while each of those blog posts didn't happen, this one did.

 

HackED was my second ISTE UNconference experience and my favorite part about ISTE. Having conversations with other educators about what works (and doesn't work) in education, how does it get any better than that?  As a tech specialist, this is the kind of experience I want to create for the teachers I work with.  Time for teachers to share with each other what they're doing in the classrooms so we can learn from each other.  I am so grateful for Steve Hargadon and David Warlick for this experience.  It's inspired the KS UNconference held last month the day before our KS EdTech Conference and edcamp Honolulu.

This year I signed up to volunteer at the Newbie Lounge.  ISTE13 is my fourth ISTE and last year I walked by the Newbie Lounge, but never ventured in.  Let me just tell you, if you want to be around positive, supportive, friendly, connected educators, whether you're a newbie or not, hit the newbie lounge.  JoAnn Jacob's shared with me how wonderful Paula Naugle is, so I followed her on twitter and she's even better in person.  What an admirable, connected educator! I get a little timid approaching people and starting conversations which was my "job" at the Newbie Lounge and what Paula is great at.  She made everyone there just feel good!  My other Newbie Lounge highlights include meeting Lisa Dabbs and catching part of the Haiku Deck conversation where I won a $10.00 iTunes Gift Card (woot woot) AND learned what awesome tweeps Rafranz Davis and Jamie Vandergrift are (you should totally check out their blogs if you haven't already).

 

"ISTE is the glue that holds us together"
Adam Bellow

Adam Bellow gave an inspiring closing Keynote at ISTE13.  Not only the best of all three ISTE Keynotes in my opinion, but the best I've ever seen.  He not only spoke about the importance of being a connected educator, but modeled it.  He was obviously thrilled for the opportunity, and grateful to the other educators he learns with by being connected.  It's a must see and is embedded below.  He starts at about 22 minutes in.

I went on a mini vacation after ISTE and as I browsed my twitter feed while waiting for a flight someone tweeted something about ISTE being over and now what are you going to do with what you've learned.  I had been thinking about it and I think this is what I'm going to do:

1. Create an opportunity for teachers I work with to share.  I mentioned this earlier in my post and have been working on this for a while but even if it's five minutes at the beginning of a faculty meeting, this is going to happen.
2. Start a club for student tech help.  This is something I've been talking about for a long time and now is the time to make it happen.  
3. Learn how to play minecraft.  I've witnessed students collaborating, problem solving, and building positive relationships playing minecraft AFTER school in the Library.  Time to integrate it into curriculum (Doug Kiang gave a great presentation on how he uses it to build positive relationships in his class).
4. Blog more.  I say this every year.  Blogging doesn't come easy for me and when I write, it takes a long time (believe it or not).  So I'm making a plan.  I'll blog about it ; ).

ISTE13 was just a breath of fresh air.  It was so positive and I can not wait until next year.  I do not want this post to go on and on, but I'd like to also mention that I am blessed that I was able to travel to ISTE with some magnificent teachers I work with, meet up with some of my Apple Academy friends, and present with two of my favorite KS teachers (pictured below).

Lab School Challenge

Next week I'll be co-facilitating a cohort at Punahou Lab School.  We'll be working primarily with Early Ed teachers and will challenge them to gamify their curriculum.


In April, I was fortunate enough to attend the EdTech Teacher iPad Summit in Atlanta and attended a fabulous pre-conference session with Darren Kuropatwa on iPads in the Early years.  My absolute favorite activity from his session was the Learning on Your Feet, a mobile learning scavenger hunt which you can see here if you're on an iPad (it's an epub file). Luckily, Darren has licensed his workshops under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial 3.0 License and so I've modified his activity to this challenge for our cohort (here's the link if the document below doesn't load):

So I'm super excited to create daily challenges and we're going to challenge our participants to become connected educators on day 2.  I'm going to start working on that now, which is a challenge for me because we're trying to keep it to 90 minutes or less, but I'm going to give it a try.

I haven't really been posting to this blog, but if you're reading this, I'd love to hear any iPad challenge ideas you have!  Tweet me @elliemellie or leave me a comment.  I'll be sure to share next weeks Lab School activities as well!

App Review Resources

When we think about using the iPad in the classroom, itʻs not about the iPad or the apps, but what we want our students to be able to do.  With that in mind, there are some great resources available that categorize apps based on what they can do and also include an ease of use rating.

EdTechTeacherʻs iPad As…resource is excellent.  It includes a table with skills teachers would like their students to be able to do and when you click on the skill, it takes you to a page with a list of apps that can accomplish the task with the cost, description, usefulness rating, and ease of use rating.

Another fabulous resource is edshelf, reviews and recommendations of tools for education.  Edshelf allows you to browse tools by category and also by subject age and platform.  When you click on a tool, you get a description of the tool, reviews by educators,  pricing, and collections of tools that teachers have put together that are either similar or include the tool reviewed.  But thatʻs not all!  The tool is also rated based on Learning curve, pedagogical effectiveness, and student engagement.

Appolearning is a resource I just learned about from one of my colleagues, Lynne Horiuchi.  At this site, there are experts who rate apps and give them scores based on educational content, kid appeal, assessment, feature & design, value, and safety & privacy.  Apps are categorized by grade level, as well as content area.

Embedding an Instagram Slideshow on Your Blog

Today I got an email from the awesome elementary science teacher I work, Kalei Chang, who told me about embedding photos from Instagram on a blog.  Genius!  You don't have to log into your blog to update photos, just tag them in instagram!  How you ask?  Snapwidget allows you to add a gallery of instagram photos into your blog or website.   Here's how it works:

1. Go to http://blog.snapwidget.com/ and click on Get Your Widget in the upper right.
2. Choose the hashtag you want to use and enter it in the hashtag field.  Notice there are also three choices for the widget type.  After filling out the appropriate fields, click Get Widget
3. Copy the code in the pop up and click close
4. Navigate to where you want to embed your slideshow. 
   
   In blogger, click on HTML in the upper left, paste the code from step 3 and then click back on Compose.
   
   In Wordpress, click on the Text tab in the upper right, paste the code from step 3, and then click back on the visual tab.
   
5. Publish your post and VOILA!  Instagram slideshow!

In the slideshow above, I used the hashtag, #kshawaii.  Anyone's photo that are tagged #kshawaii will show up in the slideshow.  As an educator, you may want to create your own hashtag for your gallery to control the content.  You can also create a school instagram account and make a gallery of photos taken with that username. 

Just think about the possibilities!  Students take photos, tag them, and instantly share them with the class.  Great for field trips or working on class projects!  Teachers could embed photos from a current event...all in one place.  The possibilities are endless! 

A word of caution.  Instagram is a social media site and as educators we always want to keep COPPA in mind.  If you're working with children under the age of 13, you should probably create a generic account that you are in control of for students to use as well as inform parents and get their consent.

Please share other examples or ideas for using instagram in the classroom!

Look What I Learned Today with Doodle Buddy!

Today I went to the EdTech Teacher iPad Summit Preconference and it was awesome!  The presenter was Darren Kuropatwa who is absolutely phenomenal. You should follow him on twitter and if you have the opportunity to ever attend a conference he's presenting at, you should go to his session.  Super engaging and he gets you out of your seat, which makes me a happy camper. 

"There is not an app for good teaching" ~Darren Kuropatwa

One of the cool things he taught us how to do was create a self portrait using Doodle Buddy, a free doodle app.  The drawing above is my portrait and when I saw it, I was shocked at how much it really looked like me!  Even with no nose!  After you download doodle buddy from the App Store, here's what you do:

1.  Use your iPad camera to take a photo of yourself

2.  Open the doodle buddy app

3.  Click on the little tick-tac-toe looking icon and select Photos

4. Choose camera roll and select the photo you took in step 1

5. Tap the chalk icon and choose the color(s) you want to use for your portrait. I found sizing the chalk down helpful. I didn't use a stylus, but I bet that would be helpful too.

6. Start outlining your photo. You may think that there's no way it's going to look like you, but trust me!

7. Go back to the tic-tac-toe icon and this time, choose background and select the white background.

8. Amazing, right? Now just save to your camera roll by tapping on the wrench > save to photo album.

There are so many ways this can be used in the classroom.  I thought it could be used when talking about the elements of art.  The portraits could be used as student avatars when posting online.  Darren suggested using the portraits as screen savers on iPads, particularly shared iPads.  This would save time when trying to figure out who used the iPad last.

Do you have other ideas?  Please share!