Tips For Education

I am a huge Evernote fan and I find myself using it in more and more ways. I was excited to discover that I can use my Evernote account to create and post to a personal blog. The website Postach.io (yes that is the website's name) allows you to use your Evernote account as a blogging platform. Postach.io creates blog posts from notes in your Evernote account. After signing up for a free account, you can start a new blog by clicking "Create New Site." You begin by creating a sub-domain, a title, author bio, and description for your new blog. The next step is to choose a notebook in your Evernote account to associate with your new website. By default, Postach.io creates a notebook entitled "Postach.io," but you can choose any notebook you desire. Notes within this notebook become blog posts when the tag "published" is added to the note. Finally, you can link various social accounts with Postach.io, enter a Google Analytics code, use Disqus for comments, ...

This past weekend I attended the Fall CUE (Computer Using Educators) conference in the Bay Area. One of the sessions I participated in was on the topic of the Common Core Standards. One of the presenters mentioned an excellent online resource to help you and the teachers at your school prepare for the shift to the Common Core: Teaching Channel . The website is full of video lessons and tutorials along with the teacher handouts and resources mentioned in each video. In essence, it is a free professional development library totally devoted to the Common Core Standards. If you click on any video, you are immediately taken to a separate page where you can view the lesson or tutorial of your choice. Along with the video player, each video lists the lesson objective, length, questions to consider, and the Common Core Standard related to the resource. Below the video player you will find any supporting materials mentioned and a discussion thread about the video. Currently users are not allowe...

Quizlet is a flashcard site that makes it easy to study any subject for free. This web tool allows a user to create a flashcard set for any subject and immediately begin studying terms and definitions. The power of Quizlet is how easy it is to create a flashcard set and the features available once the set is created. To begin with, you don't even have to create an account to preview Quizlet's features. On the front page of the website you can test drive its features using one of the sample sets. The most basic mode allows the user to quickly flip through the terms and definitions and begin learning the content. Each set gives you the option of viewing the term first, or both sides at the same time if you are running through the cards for the first time. But it is the other features that make Quizlet such a powerful tool for teachers and students. The first feature is a "Speller" mode, which allows the user to listen to a term and then type in the correct spelling. Ne...

I frequently come across videos on websites that I think would make a great part of a lesson, but the website is blocked by an internet filter (i.e. YouTube).  When I come across this situation, I turn to a very helpful Firefox add-on called "Video Downloadhelper." This little utility adds the ability to download to your hard drive most videos on webpages. The add-on automatically detects when a video is present, and the three colored spheres in the logo begin to rotate. Just click on the animated spheres and you will see the name of the video file playing. Click on the file name, and the video will immediately begin downloading. On sites like YouTube, you will even be presented with different file types and video qualities for the same clip. You can then put the video file on a flash drive and use it as part of your lesson. Video Downloadhelper

Video clips can often serve as great introductions to units, concepts, or literary themes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to locate quality clips that meet the needs of the lesson you might be teaching on a given day. That is where Wingclips comes in. This website has a large collection of clips from popular movies, past and present, arranged by theme. When you visit the website, one of the first things you will see is a slider on the left-hand side of the webpage. Simply drag the slider up and down to locate the theme you need. Once you click on the theme, you will be taken to a list of clips that fit that topic. Each clip is playable and can be viewed full screen. Downloads of clips can be purchased on the site. But for most classroom needs, simply playing the clip in order to stimulate discussion about a topic is probably enough. So the next time you are looking for a video clip to help your students engage in a topic, give Wingclips a try.

Last year one of my students wore a t-shirt with a thoughtful quote: "Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard." I immediately wanted to put the quote up in my classroom so that students would read it and be challenged by its message. I thought of making a poster, but realized that our poster making machine no longer worked. But then I remembered the website www.blockposters.com . This great web tool easily creates a poster from any image a user uploads. The poster is "blocked," that is the image is pixelated when viewed up close, but looks excellent when viewed from a distance. A quick search on Google images provided a large number of pictures with the quote. I downloaded an image and immediately got to work creating my poster. Blockposter.com walks you through three easy steps to create your poster. First, you upload the image from your hard drive. Next, you choose how many pages wide you want the poster to be and what size of paper you will use...

By now, most of us have used dropbox to sync and share files with others. In this post, I want to share with you five things you can do with Dropbox that you may not be aware of. Most of the tips I am going to share will require you to login to the web based version of Dropbox. To sign-in to the website, use the username and password you signed up with when joining DropBox. The best first step is to install DropBox at home if you haven't already. That way you can keep all of your files between work and home synced. I find that using DropBox at work and home means I never have to carry around a flash drive. A free dropbox account comes with 2 GB of storage. But after using the service for a year or more, you may be discovering that you are running out of room in your Dropbox. Luckily, there are ways to increase your space for free. First, you can share Dropbox with others. After signing in, you will see a "Get More Space" link at the top of the web page. If you click on th...