QR Treasure Hunt Generator

Web address: http://www.classtools.net/QR/create.php

Ever seen one of these crazy things???

  Well whether you have or haven't it's worth know what they are and a cool website to use them with.  They are called a QR (QuickReader) code and are sometimes also referred to as a 3-d barcode.  Normal barcodes are just lines and based on the thickness of the black and white lines a certain amount of data can be stored in the barcode.

 

The more complex QR codes can contain more information. You can imagine it like overlaying two barcodes perpendicular to each other. There are lots of apps out there that read these codes. ScanLife and TapMedia (http://www.tapmedia.co.uk/more-apps.htm) both provide apps for all the platforms. So back to the Web of the Week!, this nifty page will let you create a QR code treasure hunt. The kids scan the codes with whatever device they have and they get a quiz! This can be posted around a room or around a school for kids to go and look for.

Keep the electrons flowing!

 I usually plug my phone in to charge every night and unplug it first thing in the morning.  Some days i will still have 30% left at the end of my day but more often I find myself dismissing those reminders that my battery is low by 3:00 p.m.  What is a tech addict to do?  How to I keep those tweets twittering?  Well one way is extra batteries? But wait, you can't change your battery?  Or you carry a tablet and a phone? Well there is a solution.  A great one or actually two: Zagg makes a small plug in charger that also carries a few different sizes for more or less charge (and more or less money) depending on your needs (and pocketbook) Mophie makes some extended battery packs for the iPhones but if you have a tablet or other type of smartphone or even and iPod touch they also make a battery pack that will recharge about anything.

Rover - The Browser for Education

With Adobe announcing that they will no longer be developing Flash the future of interactivity on the web seems to be following the vision Steve Jobs had for it. HTML 5 allows most of the kinds of interactivity that formerly required the intense system use of Flash but at a fraction of the computing power. But for those of us in education who are still using Flash based sites and want to continue to use them there is Rover - The Browser for Education. It is a tool that allows you to access Flash sites on an iPad. Give a test drive and see what you think. Share some of your favorite Flash based education sites in the comments.

Web of the Week Wednesday: PrimaryPad

Web address: http://primarypad.com/ 

Sometimes you want quick easy login free collaboration.  While GoogleDocs gives us some rich, robust and protected options for collaboration PrimaryPad lets you do it quickly and without students needing a login.  

 This technology was also used to create http://typewith.me/ and was purchased by Google to form the foundation of their latest updates to collaboration in real time. Learn more about Google's interactions with EtherPad here: http://etherpad.com/ So this week you kind of got 3 for 1!

Tech Tip Tuesday: Go Mobile with the Common Core

If you are looking for a good way to incorporate the Common Core Standards into your class what better way than going mobile? The Common Core Standards were developed in a project initiated by the National Governors Association. These standards are available on Mobile Apps.  You can look up and see which standards apply to a specific Grade Level.  Having these standards at our fingertips can be a great first step to allowing these standards to change our classroom practices. Get the Apps Here:

Android

iOS