Google Drive OCR Feature Reads Text on Images and PDFs #edtech #gafe

I learned today about a feature in Google Drive that allows you to take an image or a PDF and use the OCR (optical character recognition) to access the text.  Once you have the text you can edit, change, or copy it.  To use the feature, find a PDF or an image in your Google Drive and right-click (control-click) on it and choose "Open with... > Google Drive".  You'll see your image or PDF on the top and the text from it down below.  That'a a very useful feature, especially for teachers and students who have not had access to edit PDFs in the past.  Oh, and it works with 200 languages

iPad Peek - See How a Website Looks on an iOS Device #edtech

I saw iPadpeak.com while watching a tutorial and I liked it immediately.  It allows you to see how a website is going to render on an iOS device so you can see if it's going to look good or not.  Just enter the URL into the address bar and press 'Enter' and take a peek.  It also got me thinking that there are probably a lot of those type of sites out there, and there are.

http://mobiletest.me/
http://www.mobilephoneemulator.com/

GoFormative - Excellent Tool for Formative Assessments & Student Response #edtech @goformative

On Twitter today I came across a new (to me) tool called Formative.com and after only about 10 minutes of playing around with it and watching some of their help videos I was hooked.  The tool is very deep, but here are the basics.  Teachers can create assessments from images, documents, PDFs, Google Drive, amongst others, and within that assessment they can add multiple choice, text boxes, and places for students to draw their answers.

After creating the assignment teachers can assign the test to students with a unique code or to an entire class if the class has enrolled, which is also by a unique code.  Students can access the assessment on any device.  It gets better from here.  Teachers have a live look into any students assessment where they can comment, grade, or just view each students live work. You can even toggle the names so their is no teacher bias when looking at who's doing what.

And even better, the results can be graded automatically or graded very easily by the teacher as the student is taking the test.  The thing that I really appreciate about this tool is that it does a lot of things and all of the things it does are valuable to teachers.  It's not trying to do too much and make itself a do-it-all tool, which gets annoying.

I highly recommend you check out their site and the accompanying videos that explain what it does.

How it Works

Help Videos

Whooo's Reading - Interactive Reading Community #edtech #learn2earn #whooosreading #readathon @Learn2EarnOrg

As a former ELA and 1:1 iPad teacher I'm always hooked by services that claim to engage students and help them read.  I read about Whooo's Reading from Learn2Earn and was intrigued to see what it offered.  What Whooo's Reading gives your students is a place to have an interactive reading community.  It's very much like a Facebook feed centered around the books your students are reading and questions you want them to address while reading.  Students can comment and encourage each other to build reading success.

The free services offered will get you going as a classroom teacher.  The premium services, which cost about $5/month, allow you to give kids coins they can spend in the virtual store to modify their avatar as well as give diagnostics to teachers.

Here's information from their website:

Motivate your child to read every night, encourage them to write for their audience of classmates from your phone, tablet, or computer.

• Students read books and log them on their personalized online profile.
•  Each book read prompts the student to respond to a question.
•  Students earn Wisdom Points(WP) to customize their Owlvatars.
•  Students can share their reading interests and interact with classmates in a secure online environment
•  Students can comment on each other’s book reviews and responses, which encourages them to always write for an audience.
•  The teacher can make private comments to her students, so that certain critiques can remain only between the student and his/her teacher.

More Than A Reading Log

In addition to bringing modern technology to classic paper reading logs, Whooo's Reading:

• Keeps students accountable.
• Provides teachers with an easy-to-use tool.
• Involves family members in their child's education.

Students earn Wisdom Points (WP) by reading, writing good answers to critical thinking questions, and more. Then students use their WP at the Owl Shop to personalize their Owlvatars!

Piktochart - Create Great Infographics #edtech #ipaded @piktochart

Infographics aren't all the rage but they should be because they're a great way to present information quickly and easily.  I learned about a great tool on Twitter yesterday called Piktochart (website and iOS app) that guides you through the process of making an infographic.  You're presented with templates to choose from at the beginning which you can then customize to your heart's content.

The applications for infographics in education are great for almost any subject area.  In the classroom setting teachers could use Piktochart to present content in an engaging and students can use it show what they're learned.

ClassKick - Watch Students Work in Real Time #edtech @classkick #ipaded

I learned about an iOS app called ClassKick last week and have been playing around with it since then.  The beauty of this app is that a teacher can create an assignment from a picture, PDF, web link, video, or draw their own questions and even add a voice recording.  Once they're done creating the lesson each assignment is given a unique code to pass along to students.   Once students enter that code they are taken directly to the assignment and can start to use the tools provided to answer the question or view content.

The beauty of the app comes is on the teacher's screen where he/she can view the progress of each student who is currently in the assignment and jump into it to offer advice in real-time.  Students can also virtually raise their hand to notify the teacher they need help or ask for the teacher to check their work.  My initial thought was this would be good for Math but then as I started to share this with teachers we saw other opportunities in almost any subject, like map work or art.

The developers have said the app works best with an iPad Air but that they are working on making it accessible for more types of iPads.  The other drawback I see, and one I've been in contact with the developers about, is the desire to NOT have to send a class code for every single assignment.  I wish there was a way to have kids enroll via a class code and then whenever you added an assignment it would automatically push and notify students.  That helps out a teacher's workflow tremendously.

Dictationary - Use Your Voice to Search Dictionary #edtech #ios #ipaded

Many times in the classroom setting a student either doesn't know how to spell a word and asks the teacher or they have corrections to make on a paper they've written.  But the trouble has always been that when a teacher asks a student to get a dictionary and look up the words the students still don't know how to spell it in order to look it up.  I've always encourage students to use the tools they have to do the task at hand and I know that if I didn't know how to spell a word the first place I would look is my phone or an online dictionary.

In the classroom one of the best tools we used for spelling words is Google's app because it has voice input.  Simply say the word and it spells it out for you.  Today I learned about an app that is free, that normally costs $1.99, called Dictationary which essentially does the same thing, but that's its only job.  Tap the search bar and instead of typing in your word use the microphone button and say it instead. If you are a WSD employee you can request that it be put on your iOS device by filling out this form.