Remind101: Begin the School Year with a Great Tool

The new school year is here so don't miss out on a great tool to use this year. Remind 101 is a safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents for free.

What makes Remind101 safe? 

• Teachers never see their students’ phone numbers, students never see theirs. Remind101 is a oneway broadcast system.

What are ways to use Remind101?

• Field trip reminders 
• Motivational messages 
• Homework/exam reminders
• Schedule changes
• School sport updates
• Staff updates such as faculty meeting reminders, weather updates, etc.

Here is a guide from Remind101 explaining what it is, what makes it safe, and best practices for using it. 

Introducing the Socrative Garden

Socrative now has a learning community filled with ideas, videos, user guide, and samples from classrooms. If you are not familiar with Socrative, let me introduce you to a simple student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Mobile apps are also available for iOS and Android devices. Visit the Socrative Garden by clicking here.

Socrative User Guide:

Users guide-how-to-v4 from Kristie Johnson

Socrative How-To Create an Activity/Quiz Video

How To - Create Quiz/Activity from Socrative Inc. on Vimeo.

Prezi for the iPhone

        Introducing Prezi for the iPhone

Prezi in your pocket
Use your iPhone or iPod touch to show and view prezis on the go so you always have your ideas.

Free with any Prezi license.

Prezi for the iPad

The iPad is perfect for zooming around your prezis. Edit and show your prezis on the go—online or off.

Free with any Prezi license.

App of the Week: Rover

Rover is a free education app and the only education browser for teachers and students. The great thing about Rover is that it brings access to learning content on the iPad that may typically not function (e.g. Flash content) Rover is powered by iSwifer platform (the world's first cloud-based Flash streaming platform for mobile devices).

Features include:

• Content-filtering in the cloud ensures students are protected from inappropriate content
• No personal data about users is tracked or saved
• Firewall-friendly solution works with existing IT standards and systems in schools
• Easy-to-use and intuitive for teachers as well as students

Note: Rover requires a Wi-Fi connection

Using Cell Phones in Education

"Nearly three out of four Americans send text messages on the phone and among those who do, 31 percent prefer texting to talking, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center," reported in September 2011 from the Pew Research Center. After reading the blog, From Toys to Tools: Cells Phones in Learning, I began exploring the resources to see which ones I found most reliable and beneficial for classroom teachers. After thorough investigation, these are the three sites I found to be the most useful:

Kikutext is all about parent engagement. Here's what Kikutext has to say about their program, "We truly believe that an increase in parent engagement will mean an increase in student achievement. Every part of our application is designed to help you easily and quickly communicate with parents more regularly."

Here's how we do it...

Real Two-Way Communication: Communication is never a one-way street. Parents can easily reply to your messages allowing real, two-way engagement.
Status Reports: Efficiency is the name of the game. With our easy and customizable status report feature, you can send out quick updates to all of your students' parents on a regular basis.
Full Conversations and History Archive: We never lose records. Instantly review your past conversations with parents.
Beyond Blasts: You're not limited to blasts here! Communicate information to one parent, one classes' parents, or all of your classes' parents - you choose.
Safe: We give you a proxy phone number so that personal contact information is never exchanged.
Send Later (coming very soon): This feature is in the works! Program reminders to be sent out to parents at a later date.

Remind101 provides an easy way to contact your students/parents via text messages.The great part is that no phone numbers are revealed from either party. Once a teacher creates an account then students/parents can join teacher created groups via text messaging or email.Teachers can add up to 10 different classess/groups to communicate with and schedule future messages. CON: Students/parents can NOT reply to messages.

Watch the video to learn more about Remind 101:

 

Joopz is a web-based text messaging service that enables "web texting" -- two-way communications from the Web to any mobile phone in the U.S. and Canada... and back. Features in Joobz include: Two-way web texting, Group messaging, Text reminders, and Scheduled messages.
CONS: Free only lets you send 50 messages a month. For unlimited messages the cost is $2.95 month or $19.95 year.

Sources:  All information was pulled from Kikutext.com, Remind101.com, Joopz.com

Promethean ActivEngage

Voting on iPads + Other Devices

Promethean just released ActivEngage, a software-based learning response system for use with computers and mobile devices. ActivEngage allows students to use these devices to take part in quizzes (M/C, T/F, text, numerical, Linkert scale) or polls without having to use ActivExpressions or ActiVotes.

Danny Nicholson has a great article on how to get started. Click here for detailed directions.

Air Sketch App

AirSketch App - $9.99

Air Sketch turns your iPad into a wireless whiteboard! You can annotate PDF documents and pictures live. If your laptop is plugged into a projector then your audience will see your annotations as you freely move around the room. Click here to learn more about Air Sketch.

You can also use Air Sketch peer to peer with a computer via an ad-hoc network with a WiFi hotspot is available. Click here to learn how.

Google Apps Gone Mobile

The next several weeks will be devoted to Google Apps for Mobile Devices, particularly the Apple devices but not limited to just Apple. Google apps have been available on mobile devices for several years now. Google has done a great job updating those apps and even adding new ones. Expect to see Google + and Blogger now on the app market.

Be sure to follow the next few weeks to see highlights of particular apps. Click here to read about Google Mobile Apps.