21st+century+tools

Welcome to the 21st century!! To get a feeling for the context of 21st century tools and learners check these out and then ...come on into the 21st century!!
= Turning Student Cell Phones into Instructional Tools with Nearpod =



What is Nearpod?
Nearpod is a web-based, iPhone/iPad or Android app that allows teachers to customize, create and share interactive presentations with students. Students become engaged participants as they interact with the presentations using cell phones, tablets, or computers. Teachers can share presentations with colleagues and browse other teacher-created presentations for ideas, while students can explore content through polls, text, images, videos, drawing, website-sharing, self-guided quizzes, and more.

=__**Open Educational Resources**__=

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. That means they have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. For some of these resources, that means you can download the resource and share it with colleagues and students. For others, it may be that you can download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work

EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. EDSITEment offers a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies. All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. They cover a wide range of humanities subjects, from American history to literature, world history and culture, language, art, and archaeology, and have been judged by humanities specialists to be of high intellectual quality.
 * EDSITEment**

OpenEd is a K-12 educational resource catalog, with over a million Language Arts and Math games, video lessons, assessments, and courses. While it integrates with all popular Learning Management Systems it offers its own simple “flipped classroom” LMS oriented to using resources.
 * OpenEd**

WatchKnowLearn has indexed approximately 50,000 educational videos, placing them into a directory of over 5,000 categories. The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom, as well as parents and students at home 24/7. Users can dive into innovative directory or search for videos by subject and age level. Video titles, descriptions, age level information, and ratings are all edited for usefulness. The web site invites broad participation in a new kind of wiki system, guided by teachers
 * WatchKnowLearn.org**

Gooru is a free search engine for learning, has organized OER into easy-to-locate categories and collections to help teachers and students make the most of what’s offered online. Users can search for resources, collections, or quizzes; study individual resources or entire collections; practice with an adaptive assessment system; interact with peers or teachers; and save and customize their favorite learning materials.
 * Gooru**

http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/Home

Here is a sampling of tools – both cloud-based and device-based applications – that would be extremely useful for digital micro-storytelling:
 * [|Animoto]
 * [|Prezi]
 * [|iMovie] / [|Moviemaker]
 * [|Storybird]
 * [|ToonDoo] / [|Comic Life]
 * [|Pic Collage]
 * [|StoryKit]
 * [|DoInk]
 * [|Glogster]



=**AnyBook by Franklin Electronics**= AnyBokk lets students hear your voice reading a book or giving a lesson when you are not available or around.Students can even record themselves reading their own books and you can listen to the playback. The gadget consisten or a Pen and some stickers. The tool is available at Staples, Amazon or Walmart. It comes in 30 or 60 hour editions. The cost ranges from ( you are not going to beleive this!) from $ 29.00 and up. Watch the video below and see you think. media type="youtube" key="vTqyCmQeqoA" height="187" width="336"

=The Top S'Cool Tools for Q1, 2014=

As we round out the first quarter of the year, we take the time to reflect on popular edtech tools we’ve seen over the past three months. Every week, EdSurge sends out an educator-specific INSTRUCT newsletter ([|sign up here]) containing a section called “S’Cool Tools,” where we showcase 3-5 edtech tools that have tickled our fancy. Out of 60+ S’Cool Tools, ten products from Q1 have risen to the top based on the number of clicks they’ve received from our INSTRUCT readers. Check them out below! (And educators, if you've got some cool tools you haven't seen yet in the newsletter or on our site, let us know!)

//And in the number #1 spot...//
 * 10. Fluencia - Freemium:** Fluencia is a language learning tool for conversational Spanish. Built by the creators of Spanishdict.com, the virtual tutoring solution boosts retention using the spaced repetition model. The web-based tool currently boasts 100,000 learners working through an impressive 30 million questions. In aggregate, the software maps to approximately two years of K-12 Spanish curriculum, and there's also full college curriculum currently in development. All you need to pay is $15/student/month (though Fluencia has some freemium offers).
 * 9. Function Carnival - Free!** Desmos is up to more math goodness with the recent addition of Function Carnival, developed in collaboration with Dan Meyer and Christopher Danielson. Function Carnival helps students get a handle on confusing graphs lessons and helps them experiment to resolve misunderstandings. Through video, graphing, and replaying graphs as animations students can begin to construct their own understanding of what these graphs really mean.
 * 8. ClipConverter - Free!** Flipping it, blending it, or just using video in class? Sometimes you need a tool to easily convert a Youtube video to a file you can use offline. ClipConverter makes that process easy with a a free online media conversion app allowing you to record, convert and download nearly any audio or video URL to common formats.
 * 7. TeachIt Timer - Free!** Forget other classroom timers you’ve used. TeachIt Timer is free, simple, and has something that many other timers don’t: it shows time elapsed and time remaining. This tool’s been making the rounds on edublogs (FreeTechforTeachers and Edutech4Teachers, to name a few), so we’d say it’s gotten the teacher stamp of approval.
 * 6. Sumdog - Free!** Sumdog is a free site with math games where students can play each other, or play other students from across the globe. Extra bonus goodies: create free student logins, monitor your students’ live performances and run progress reports for parents. Shout-out to Technology Specialist Elisabeth Flottman and LA’s KIPP Empower Academy for tossing us this “math bone”.
 * 5. Pixiclip - Free!** True to its “message in motion” slogan, Pixiclip puts creating and recording at your fingertips with a web app. Sketch a diagram, add your voice or video commentary and flip that lesson! Even better, get students showing what they know by sharing those Pixiclips with each other.
 * 4. GoNoodle - Free!** Need some short videos to get kids back on track for learning? GoNoodle has “brain breaks”--short videos that help get kids moving, calm themselves or whatever it takes to get them back to a ready state of learning. Sample activities include jogging in place with “Run with Us” and breathing exercises with “Airtime.”
 * 3. EduCanon - Free!** Not all existing video content is ready for the flipped classroom model, but that’s where eduCanon comes in. eduCanon lets you take any video content from YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube and transform it into an interactive experience by embedding questions that students engage with as the video progresses. Still curious? These eduCanon users give their two cents on the product.
 * 2. Eduvee - Free!** Eduvee is a personalized learning platform covering Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Attempting to address the frustration students feel when working through online study materials, it atomizes content -- both OER and publisher-created -- into manageable chunks of interactive learning that students can more easily navigate. Over time, Eduvee provides students a more personalized experience, presenting those content and media formats that have produced the best results on previous assessments. Used by 16,000 students to-date, the cost is free with premium features to come.
 * 1. Visme - Free!** Bring those lesson plan ideas to life with visuals--without having to code! Formerly known as Easy Web Content Presenter, Visme makes it easy to design powerful animations, infographics, graphs, presentations and other visual creations in a simple interface. (We’re talking utility, not fluff.) Start from scratch, or use one of Visme’s pre-generated presentation templates. Visme is also browser-agnostic--presentations can be both created and viewed from any browser.

Read below and discover ten sites that will bring out your need to buy iTunes Cards,!
 * __Great iPad Resources You Do Not Want To MIss__**

1. The iPhone Application List – While this site has numerous categories for apps, This is a portion of the site that contains about 100 apps both free and for purchase. You can select between free and paid. Each app is click-able allowing the reader to view description, posting date, and a link to the download.

2. The iPad Pilot Project – A page filled with resources and so much more. This wiki has categories you will want to explore. There are three separate links leading to apps for elementary, middle, and high school. Don’t stop there! Make sure you explore other links including digital textbooks, challenges and successes, setting up carts, mobile management, other school districts, andarticles/blogs. Also make sure you visit eMobilize (a sister site) where you will learn about mobile computing standards, curriculum, logistics, management, and use/care. The iPad pilot project is sponsored by the Department of Educational Technology in the School District of Palm Beach. It is administered on the department’s wiki by John Shoemaker, Melissa McBride, and John Long.

3. iPads For Learning – Our first stop is The Department Of Education And Early Childhood Development in Victoria, Australia. Be sure to explore the link Why The iPad along with some interesting Case Studies. The biggest treasure may be an awesome 36 page publication on 21 Steps To iPad Success. Thought that was good? How about a 41 page publication on Classroom Ideas! Just when you think you have all the information you will need it may be time to finally discover all of the Educational Apps… Wow! Don’t forget to look over all of the helpful ideas and hints in the Nuts and Bolts Section