Another tool for creating self grading quizzes has come to my attention. Flubaroo was the first I found and it works great. Another that works equally as well for me is Super Quiz. Like Flubaroo this add-on uses Google Forms to build your quiz. Its a great tool. Grades your quizzes and sends the results directly to the students. There area several videos on YouTube that you may find useful.
Here are two videos you can use to help you utilize Superquiz. I hope you find them useful.
Filed under education, online video
Yeah, I know lots of stuff from Google. Our school had “Gone Google” so I’ve been trying to find as many tools for our instructors as possible to help make their jobs a bit easier (and mine as well).
Most of us whether we know it or not use rubrics when we grade reports and papers. That rubric may be in our head instead of paper, but we still use one. Unfortunately administrators and students can’t see what’s in your head or maybe it’s good they can’t. But students do much better when they understand the yardstick they are being measured against. That’s where Alice Keeler’s add-on for Google Sheets can help out. She has developed an add-on that will help you create a simple but effective rubric for any subject that will allow administrators, other teachers but most importantly students see what you are using as a standard for grading their research papers, reports and projects.
She has provided easy to understand instructions taking you step by step through the process of building your first rubric. I suggest bookmarking it just in case you need to reference it again later.
I hope this helps make your job a little easier. Here is a screen capture (using Jing) of her web-page.
Filed under Uncategorized
I like to find easy ways to do things and I think I’ve found one here. Using Google forms you can make self-grading tests and quizzes that will not only grade the quiz or test but it will send the student an email with their score.
I made a short video to show some of the basics necessary to do this. One of those necessities is an add on to Google Sheets called Flubaroo. This is the add on that will grade the work and send the students their scores.
So, Here is a video to give you the idea of what you can do. It’s not my best video but you will get the idea.
Let me know what you think.
Filed under education, Online Resource
Flippity.net allows teachers and students alike to use Google spreadsheets to create quizzes, flashcards and Jeopardy style games. As long as you understand the basics of spreadsheets, this is a very simple process.
The first thing you need to do is have a Google account with Google drive. Next, go to the flippity website so you can copy and rename the template for quizzes, flashcards or jeopardy games. Once you have this completed, open the template fill in the data, spell check everything, publish, and then follow the directions for copying the link so you can either send or embed your flashcards quizzes and games.
What I like about this is the fact that the students can create their own flashcards. They can include pictures, videos, words, and have the flashcards with them wherever their smart phones, tablets or computers are available. From my flashcards. I was able to create quizzes which included the still pictures I had put on the flashcards.
None of this took very long at all to do. If you can follow the examples in the template you won’t have any problems at all.
Below is a screen capture of their website. It is easy to use and the best part is it’s free.
Filed under education, Online Resource
You know, I think I’m addicted to apps. I have so many in my phone and my iPad that I can’t even take a picture of anything anymore. If there’s a 12 step program for beating this addiction, I probably better find it. In the meantime I found another app I really like. It’s called Adobe “Voice”, it is only for the iPad and it allows you to make short videos using icons, pictures, music, and your own voice to tell a story. You can send the story to others. You can embed it in your webpage. There are lots of things that you can do with this and the best part is it’s free. Your students can use it to create stories and projects and then they can share those with you as a teacher with their friends and their relatives and fellow students.
Some people believe their problems with this because you can’t load the videos onto YouTube and you can’t save them on your Google drive. But as I said, you can send a link to anybody you want to you can publish them to the public and you can also get a link so you can embed them into your webpage. So there are lots of ways to publish it other than utilizing YouTube and Google drive.
So if you’re addicted to new apps that can help you do your job better as a teacher in your students provide you with more creative ways to tell their stories and turn in their homework, then this is a good choice for you. As I said it only works on the iPad right now. I wish it worked for some of the android tablets. Maybe someday they will get it to that point. But right now if you got an iPad, download it is called voice, it’s free, it’s a lot of fun. And it is one of the easiest storytelling programs I’ve seen in a long time.
Filed under education, Online Resource, online video, storytelling
I found a new tool for teachers and students, Powtoon.com. Powtoon is a way to make short videos with voice-over and music to help sell products, sell individuals with video resume’s, as well as educational offerings and many other things. The program is free OR you can subscribe to get more bells and whistles. If your an educator or a student PowToon has special rates for teachers and students. http://powtoon.com is well worth looking at. I’ve made a few and you can make them as easy or as complex as you want.
For this assignment I used one of their templates http://www.powtoon.com/show/bpu76VOrSjY/clinical-mission-impossible/
This short tutorial for my students started with a blank slate http://www.powtoon.com/show/cUnVXpkSaQk/the-basic-formula/
This third example took a bit longer, no template, has both music and voice-over. the timing took a bit of time to do. http://www.powtoon.com/show/eUMHANMpGrx/ratio-and-proportion/
Enjoy trying PowToon at http://PowToon.com
Filed under presentation software
CoSketch.com is a free whiteboard program that will allow you to create and share whiteboards with others and embed them into your BLOG. I’m going to use their app to put a whiteboard here. Not all of it appeared to be visible on my preview.
The rest of this was created at their site not using their link that allows you to creat a simplified version.
You can link to your whiteboard by a direct link or you can use a thumbnail picture that will link to the site.
http://CoSketch.com/Saved/pT0H4EGL
Please give it a try at http://CoSketch.com
One thing I did not show is that you can use google maps as a background to give directions. A nice feature.
Let me know what you think about it.
Filed under Online Resource, presentation software
Yes, I know I haven’t been very vigilant about posting to this. As a matter of fact, I’ve been downright negligent. I apologize.
One of the first posts at I’d placed on here had to do with online storage with a drive, sky Drive, and the other cloud services that allow due to save pre-much everything you wanted. At the time I was unaware of a service called Evernote. Evernote has become my new favorite app on my smart phone, my iPad, as well as on my desktop. I can save anything from anywhere and have it accessible anyplace that I met. I can save sound, video, music, documents, PDF files on the list goes on and on. And have them immediately accessible. What makes this nicer than so many of the other services that are out there is, there are apps that integrate into Evernote to make it easier to submit information to be saved. Some of these are Evernote clipper hello, which allows you to very quickly import people in your contact list sketch which allows you to draw and annotate on pictures. Food allows you to post recipes as well as pictures of food and comments about your latest restaurant. Outline works with Evernote to help you set up outlines. There are apps for doing meeting minutes. Pen ultimate allows you to write your entries by hand, and they become searchable text. Clearly takes away a lot of the advertisements and things on a webpage and saves them directly to Evernote lightly allows you to highlight sections of a document and they were are automatically saved to your Evernote Apollo and dolphin are browsers that work very well with Evernote, as well as every meeting, moleskin notebooks actually have a notebook. You can carry around in your hand. You write and not take a picture of it and it again become searchable text. Evernote has worked with Post-it notes and developed for colors that you can predetermine what notebook you want them to go to you simply write on the Post-it note take a picture of it with your smart phone and it immediately is saved and goes to the notebook that you specified. The text written on your Post-it note becomes instantly searchable as well.
You can share your notes and your notebooks with your students, if in the medical field with patients or with really anybody you want to. And you can collaborate on these notes together.
With other apps you can blog utilizing Evernote, or you can use an app to link through a program like a Asana to work on projects, personal, to do lists, appointments and all kinds of other applications. Through still another app you can link it directly to your Google calendar and set up appointments.
There are many, many other apps and features that you can use with this. The free version has a smaller memory than the Pro version does, however, with as many things as I have saved that not even come close to filling up the space you are given for free. As you can tell I’m pretty well sold on this product.
Please check out http://www.evernote.com or check out the Evernote app on your smart phone or tablet. I think you’ll be very pleased.
I’ll be talking to you later. Have a great day.
Filed under Online Resource, presentation software
Want to add some pizazz to your presentations? Do your students feel like they are being tortured through death by PowerPoint? Are you more of a spatial thinker rather than linear? Or do you just want a presentation program that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? Prezi may be the answer for you.
Prezi is free for a limited version but for teachers/educators with a school email a more robust version is available for the same price free. Go to http://prezi.comand check out their promotional video. If you like what you see, check out the learning tab and go through the tutorial videos to see just what prezi can do. You can import your PowerPoint presentations too.
With the educator version you can download your presentation if you want but as long as you have an Internet connection you can access and show your presentation from there. No more forgotten USB drives.
If you think better using a form of mind mapping then you will love this program. If you want to easily add pictures and video to your presentation you will find this to be much easier than the traditional presentation software. If you decide you want to customize your presentation you can easily add or skip portions by simply changing the path. The text, picture or video isn’t gone, it’s still there prezi just skips over it because it’s no longer on the path so you can add it back in later.
Give it a try. Check out the videos on YouTube and give it a try, the price is right.
Filed under Online Resource, presentation software
Have you ever forgotten your jump or thumb drive either at home and your at work or left it at work and you need the information at home? Or have you ever accidentally left the USB drive still attached to a computer “somewhere” and when you go back it’s gone? It’s frustrating isn’t it? There are alternatives for you that allow you to access your information anywhere you have access to the internet,. On your smart phone, tablet, laptop, at work, on vacation, and on the road. Where there is an internet connection your data, photos, etc are all available to you.
Currently there are a number of free options available for you to store your data in the cloud and best of all, they are free. The amount of space available at that price depends on the program you opt to use. Box, Dropbox, Sky-drive, A-drive, and Google Drive are just a few of the many options out there for online secure storage of your documents, photos, music, videos, etc.
For some of the programs only you can access the data for others you can choose to share or make as much or as little as you desire open to the public. You are in control of your data and who has access.
Storage can be as little as 5GB with Box and Dropbox to 50GB with Adrive and a lot more with Google Drive and Skydrive. With Box, Dropbox and Adrive you can purchase additional space. I’m not sure if you would even need to with Google or Sky drives.
What do I use this space for? As the regional director of a medical program I have to make sure the programs are all meeting various accreditation and credentialing standards. It’s easy to keep this information on a USB drive but I have at times misplaced the drive or just left it home and I hate having to go back and find all the information again, so I save it and store it on the cloud. The program I use allows me to share the information with others so when I get an update I post it and everyone has access to it immediately without having to save it locally.
If an accrediting body or certifying agency has a question I can easily send them the information from my cloud storage regardless of where I am or what time it is. All that matters is I have a connection to the internet.
We recently decided to go green and convert all of our paper records to electronic. Wouldn’t you know it, I needed access to the records and our main server was down and the boss needed several records now. Luckily I had copied the files to the cloud and even though I was not at my office with access to my computer where the data was also stored, I got the records needed from my online storage and got it to him within minutes of the request while sitting and having breakfast on the road. When asked how I got the information with the server down. I asked him if Captain Kirk ever asked Scottie how he got things done when nobody else could? He quickly pointed out he was’t Kirk and I wasn’t Scottie so he wanted to know. I explained and now he uses it for his presentations and record keeping.
There are uses for these programs for every profession, teacher, student, business executive, manager, chef, restaurant owner and the list goes on. If you use data, and you need to be able to access it from anywhere at any time, these online storage areas are exactly what you need. Check them out.
Filed under Online Resource
The Electric Teacher 