Educational Technology

As a Google Drive user you can download a variety of apps from Chrome Web Store to help you perform different tasks on your Drive. There are apps for editing images and videos, apps for digitally signing documents, apps for creating graphics and flowcharts and many more. This post features some of our favourite Google Drive apps for teachers, check it out to learn more. In today’s post we are walking you through the process of how to add, manage and/or delete apps installed on your Google Drive: 1- Here is how to install apps in your Google Drive To install apps in your Google Drive: Open your Google Drive Click on the Settings button in the top right corner Click on ‘Manage Apps’ Click on ‘ Connect more apps’ Click on ‘All’ and browse apps by categories Once you find the app you want click on ‘Connect’ 2- Here is how to Delete installed apps from your Google Drive To delete an app from your Google Drive: Open your Google Drive Click on the Settings button in the top right corner Clic

The integration of Google Maps with Google Drive made it super easy for anyone to create and share maps with others. The process is simple and does not require any software installation. Using My Maps in Drive will enable you to design your own customized maps where you can add places, draw lines, add markers and layers, add directions, measure distances and areas and many more. Once your map is ready you can then print it, export it to KML, or embed it on your site using a generated embed code. Here is how to create or open a map A- to create a map in Google Drive: ‘Make sure you're signed in to your Google Account.  Open Google Drive. Click New and then More and then Google My Maps. B- To open a map you’ve already created in My Maps: Open Google Drive. Click My Drive. Double click the map you want to open. C-To delete a map in Google Drive: Open Google Drive. Find your map and click it once. In the top right, click Remove Remove. If you delete a map, it’s moved to the Trash folde

Google Drive is one of a Swiss Army knife comprising some of the best productivity tools to use in your instruction. Besides being a cloud based storage system where you can save and access all of your digital content, it also embeds handy applications enabling you to write documents, design presentations, create spreadsheets, and make beautiful drawings. It offers several collaborative features to enhance team work and facilitate collaboration on joint projects. Our Google Drive section here in EdTech and mLearning provides you with the necessary resources to help you tap into the educational potential of Google Drive, check it out learn more. The purpose of our post today is to share with you this updated chart featuring some interesting keyboard shortcuts for Google Drive on the web.  You can access the full list from this page or you can display it in your Google Drive by pressing on Ctrl + / (Chrome OS, Windows) or ⌘ + / (Mac). Click on the image below to access to the full list

If you haven't a;ready seen it, here is a handy visual we published a few months ago featuring what we think are some essential iPad skills for 21st century teachers. Think of them as activities you need to be able to perform on iPad or any iOS device that supports apps. For each of these activities we came up with 3 recommended apps to help you better meet the requirements of the activity under question. We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback.  

Google Slides is one of our favourite free presentation tools we have been recommending for teachers over the last couple of years. We have an entire section here in EdTech and mLearning  where you can access guides, tips and tutorials on how to make the best of Slides in your instruction, check it out to learn more. Yesterday, Slides added a number of interesting features to enhance the way you create and share presentations. The one we want to highlight in today’s post is the ‘linked slides’ feature. This is especially useful for real-time collaboration. With this new feature you can easily copy  slides from one presentation and insert them into another in Slides. Everything you add to the source slide will be automatically synced with the copied versions. Students can use  slide embedding feature  to collaborate on their presentations. They will be able to streamline their workflows and keep their presentations up-to-date. To use this feature, open your presentation in Slides, righ

Stop motion animation, as we argued in a previous post ,  is a cinematographic technique that consists of animating a set of static pictures or objects through placing them in separate frames then combining them together in a sequential way to give the appearance of movement. The basic process of ‘of animation involves taking a photograph of your objects or characters, moving them slightly, and taking another photograph. When you play back the images consecutively, the objects or characters appear to move on their own.’ Watch this video from Mashable  to learn more about stop motion animation and how it works. Stop motion animation used to be a hard task that was usually the preserve of seasoned graphic designers. It is no longer the case. You can design your stop motion  clip within few minutes and all you need is an iOS phone with a camera, objects to use in your clip and an animation app. In today’s post, we are sharing with you an updated list of what we think are some of the bes

September 23, 2017 For those of you who haven't seen it yet, here is a handy visual featuring 10 easy ways to help you  integrate the power of QR codes in your instruction. We have also included a list of resources at the end of this post so you can learn more about educational potential of QR codes in education.   1- Create interactive and engaging content You can enrich the content you teach in class by adding QR Codes that link to further readings and resources around related topics. For instance, you can link to a PDF, a document, a video tutorial, a website, an audio file..etc 2- Share resources Students can use QR Codes to share educational resources with each other (e.g class notes, web content, how-to videos etc) 3- Help with homework Teachers can provide detailed instructions and how-to tips in the form of a QR Code which students can scan at home and use to solve the homework 4- Use in classroom activities Instead of handing out dozens of handouts with instructions on ho

Google Classroom is a commonly used way to organize classes and submissions, since it is an easy and effective tool to manage educational process. There are a few useful apps to help enhance experience with Google Classroom, and PlagiarismCheck.org is one of them. PlagiarismCheck.org has developed an integration with Google Classroom that shares the main idea - technology should make educator’s life easier. Features that similarity detector provides: 1- Simple integration Teachers can access all student submissions in their account  Select files they wish to check within their class  Receive a complete and interactive report  2- Advanced technology Word for word match  Word rearrangements  Word substitutions (similarities)  3- Intuitive user interface Clear design  Essential functions and no overload with useless features  Minimum time for onboarding Google Classroom + PlagiarismCheck.org = technology that helps to make quality education. This is a sponsored post by Plagiarismcheck.

Checker Plus for Gmail is a good Chrome extension you can use with both Gmail and Inbox. It allows you to access, read and delete your emails without having to open Gmail or Inbox. It also supports multiple Gmail and Google Apps accounts so you can manage all of them from a single place.  Once installed, you will start receiving notifications every time you get a new email. You can activate voice notifications to have your incoming emails read out-loud. New emails can also be read from the popup mail preview window without leaving the tab you are working on and from there you have the option to archive, mark as read or even delete your emails. Other interesting features provided by Checker Plus includes: it supports offline view, add your own sounds to customize voice notifications, monitor any Gmail or custom labels and many more. Watch the video below to see Checker Plus in action. First appeared here

DocsTeach is a great website that provides teachers and students access to thousands of primary sources that include things such as maps, videos, photographs, census records, draft cards, graphs, legislation letters, posters and several other document sources. We have already featured DocsTeach in several posts in the past. In today’s post we want to draw your attention to these excellent tools provided by DocsTeach that allows you to create your own document-based activities. The purpose is to help you engage your students in an active process of document reading. “Rather than passively receiving information from a teacher or textbook, students engage in the activities of historians — making sense of the stories, events and ideas of the past through document analysis.” Before you start using any of these tools you need to read “ Guide to Creating Your DocsTeach Activity ”. Below are the links to the tools together with a brief description of what you can do with them: 1-  Discussion T

Here are three interesting guides from Google for Education to help you make the best of Google Classroom in your instruction. These are step by step visual guides that cover a number of tips, guidelines, and activities on how to make the best of Classroom in your own instruction. The guides are available for free download from Google for Education Training Centre, you will find them under the title ‘ Handy Guides ’. Here is a short overview of what each guide has to offer you: 1- Getting started with Google Drive This visual guide will help you learn how to set up a class and add students in Classroom. More specifically, you will get to know how to: set up a class, add students by email or code, create an assignment, add materials and assignments, add grades, and how to share feedback with students. 2- Google Classroom Tips This is a one-page PDF featuring some handy tips on how to use Classroom in education. These are tips provided by educators who have tried Classroom themselves. Ti

Factile  (former Jeopardy Rocks) is an excellent web tool that enables teachers to create multimedia quiz games for their classroom.  Using a simple and intuitive gameboard, teachers will get to create engaging quiz games without the need for any coding skills. The process is easy: Open an account with Factile, click on ‘build now’ in homepage then type in your titles and categories. Click on a square to open up the editor for a question  and fill in with your content. Factile will engage your students in collaborative team work and enhance their learning while having fun. There are different ways to use Factile in your instruction. For instance ,you can use it  for formative assessment purposes to check students understanding of newly taught lessons. You can also use it to introduce new concepts or review latest ones. Please note that ‘Factile is totally free for your first 3 games. After that, you must upgrade to the PRO version for $5/month (or $48 per year). In the PRO version you

For those of you keen on learning about autism the collection below is a good place to start with. It features some notable works and research studies that will illuminate your understanding of autism and consequently inform your teaching practice and place you in a better position to meet the learning, social, and emotional needs of students with autism.' Some of these books are first-hand stories and autobiographies of people dealing with autism and how they managed to positively shape their life and the life of those around them. (See links below).' 1-  Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s , by John Elder Robison  ‘Ever since he was young, John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother, Augusten Burroughs, in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” It was not until he was fo

Google Classroom is a powerful educational platform you can use with your students to enhance their learning and create a collaborative learning space. You can even boost this collaborative learning experience by connecting your Classroom to third party add-ons. These are tools that will provide you with key functionalities that might not be available in Google  Classroom. For instance, there are apps  that helps you auto-create and auto-syncs class rosters from student information exports (e.g., Little SIS), apps to create music notation and composition assignments (e.g., Flat), apps to assign Quizizz games to students (e.g., Quizzizz), apps for detecting plagiarism in students works (e., Unicheck) and many more. Below is a visual that includes some of our favourite apps to integrate with Google Classroom based on this resource from Google for Education. Have a look and share with us your feedback. For links to the apps, check out this page. This visual is also available in PDF forma

If Google Chrome is the browser you use to navigate the net, here are some of our favourite apps to help you make the best of your browsing experience and enhance your productivity. The selection is subjective and based entirely on our personal experiences.  The tools featured here provide a wide range of functionalities from recording notes and creating to-do lists to organizing tabs and accessing Google Scholar resources. Check them out and share with us your feedback. 1-  Google Keep ‘Found a webpage, image, or quote that you want to save for later? With the Google Keep Chrome Extension, easily save the things  you care about  to Keep and have them synced across all of the platforms that you use — including web, Android, iOS, and Wear. Take notes for additional detail and add labels to quickly categorize your note for later retrieval.’ 2-  OneTab “Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the

Here are some popular Chrome apps you can use in your class to help students with math learning. They provide instructional content that covers various mathematical topics including geometry, calculus, graphing, algebra, and more. They also include interactive games to help young learners grasp basic math concepts related to addition, subtraction, and multiplication. You may want to check them out and see which ones work for you. 1-  GeoGebra GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org) is free dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. Interactive learning, teaching and evaluation resources created with GeoGebra can be shared and used by everyone at tube.geogebra.org. 2-  Desmos Graphing Calculator Explore math with Desmos! Plot functions, create tables, add sliders, animate your graphs, and more -- all for free. 3-  Math Games 'Monster Math Flash Cards for kids is a fu

University of Wisconsin has this collection of excellent educational rubrics to help you in your teaching. These are materials you can use to design  instructional plans with precise evaluation criteria to assist students in meeting learning objectives.  The rubrics are available for free from this page . They cover a number of key topics including: presentation rubrics, social media project rubrics, discussion and group work rubrics, ePortfolio and web page rubrics, concept map and graphic organizer rubrics, video and multimedia project rubrics, virtual simulations and games rubrics, research process rubrics, writing rubrics, math and science rubrics, and rubrics for primary grades. There is also a section at the bottom of the page where you will get to access a wide variety of tools to help you create your custom rubrics such as Rubistar, Quick Rubric, Essay Tagger, Rubric Generator and many more. We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback,

Here is a collection of some good educational iPad apps to help you with the teaching/learning of physics. This collection is specifically curated for high school students and teachers and is based on iTunes list of high school apps. You may want to go through it and see which ones work for you. If you have other suggestions to add to the list please share with us in our Facebook page. Links to the apps are under the visual. 1- Coaster Physics ‘What are the laws of Physics governing the motion of a roller coaster? How are speed and acceleration related? How does the g-force change at different points along the track? Design and ride your very own realistic roller coaster, and see how quantities like speed, acceleration, energy and g-force change as you ride along the track.’ 2- iCricuit ‘iCircuit is the premier iPad and iPhone app for designing and experimenting with circuits. Its advanced simulation engine can handle both analog and digital circuits and features realtime always-on an

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July 2, 2017 Here are three good iPad math apps to use with your kids. These are interactive games that will challenge kids mathematical thinking and help them learn basic math concepts (e.g., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and addition) in fun and engaging ways. The apps are created by Duck Duck Moose. As you probably know, Duck Duck Moose becomes part of Khan Academy and since then all of its apps are now  available for free. Check them out and share with us what you think of them. 1- Pet Bingo ‘Come watch your child’s understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division grow with their very own pets! Pet Bingo is a playful game for Kindergarten through Fourth Grade, that is aligned with Common Core State Standards for Math.’ 2- Moose Math ‘Moose Math engages kids in a mathematical adventure and teaches counting, addition, subtraction, sorting, geometry and more. While playing 5 multi-level activities in the Moose Juice Store, Puck’s Pet Shop and Lost & Fou

Here are 3 good web tools from ReadWriteThink to help students with their poem writing. Students will get to learn how to write different poem types (e.g., acrostic poems and diamente poems ) and in the process, will also get to reinforce elements of the writing process such as brainstorming, revising, and editing. The tools are totally free of charge and easy to use. Check them out and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page. 1- Theme Poems 'In this online tool, elementary students can write poems based on shapes from five different categories: Nature, School, Sports, Celebrations, and Shapes. Within these categories, 32 different shapes are included. By selecting a shape, students are learning how to focus their writing on a particular topic or theme. In addition, as part of the online tool, students are prompted to brainstorm, write, and revise their poems, thus reinforcing elements of the writing process. Students can save their draft poems to revise later. See the 5-m

Scrible is a very good productivity tool every research student should have. It provides you with various tools and features that enable you to curate online content, bookmark websites, store files, annotate and share webpages and PDFs. You can use Scrible to annotate content on a webpage or PDF. You can add comments, highlight passages and share your annotated content with others through email or social media websites. Everything you curate and annotate is saved to your library in Scrible. You can organize your library with tags so you can easily find your saved content. Scrible also provides an excellent PDF viewer and annotator which works from your browser. Students can use it to load or upload PDF documents to work on. They can use Scrible’s annotation tools to highlight and add comments. They can share PDF documents with each other and be able to see who is viewing the shared PDF, reply to comments and see annotations in real-time. Watch the video below to learn more about Scrib