Web of the Week: StoryBird

Web Address: http://www.storybird.com

Do you like when students express themselves? Interested in getting them writing? and involved in art? What about technology?  StoryBird curates artwork and allows students to sign up and create their own stories to follow the artwork.  There is a good library of stories already available as samples and examples for your students.  You can also share them on Facebook, Twitter or embed them in a website. Teachers can create a class account and work with students to create wonderful stories.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Get more Plexibility with your content

Wouldn't it be nice to access all your music, movies, videos and everything else an any screen you own?  We are getting closer to that becoming a reality.  Plex is a service that allow you to store media on any Mac or Windows machine and then serve it up on other screens.  Like iTunes or Windows Media Player Plex media server organizes your media.  Apps for your iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices allows  you to access your content.  Using connected devices like Roku or Google TV will allow you to broadcast to your TV.

Web of the Week Wednesday: Knowmia

Web Address: http://www.knowmia.com 

A new service that allows teachers and students to search a collection of video content from the very best teachers.  Test prep, difficult concepts and challenging subjects become crystal clear.  Teachers can contribute and parents and students can sort and organize their learning using a library of 9000 lessons.

Mobile Learning

There are a variety of great learning sources out in the world. Eduptopia is one of the very best. I particularly like their tag line: "What works in education" The focus is not on what's wrong but what is going well and how do we capitalize on it.

Well, we have offered lots of suggestions about using mobile devices and now so has Edutopia. They have made a new PDF Guide available at: http://www.edutopia.org/mobile-learning But going beyond the suggestion of just getting the guide. I am also going to suggest that this might be a good way to really use your mobile device. Here are 5 ideas for accessing and using the PDF on your mobile

1. Find your Kindle address and email the pdf to your Kindle. Each Kindle you have registered including Apps has a unique email address you can send files to. PDF's are free other documents may have a charge.
2. Find a new PDF Reader for your device. You might tryt: GoodReader for iPad, or Aldiko for Android
3. Annotate the PDF. Many of the readers out there including GoodReader from above allow you to add notes, comments or even drawings. There are other note-taking apps that can even do character recognition on PDFs like Evernote
4. Share it. Use email, Twitter, Text messaging, Facebook or other tools to share the PDF with your PLN (Personal Learning Network) Don't have a PLN search #edchat on Twitter for a group of tech friendly folks talking about education technology.
5. Share it again. Sites like Posterous and Weebly allow you to use a mobile app, text messaging or email to create a blog and new blog posts. It's super easy and superfast and a great way to share with the whole wide world.

Web of the Week Wednesday - AnimalJam

Web address: http://www.animaljam.com/home

National Geographics has created a space for kids to play and interact online in a safe and protected environment all while learning about real animals. For free kids can create an account and play games and earn gems. The gems allow kids to buy outfits and customize their character. With a premium account kids get a monthly allowance of gems and greater access and the ability to change their character. Normally, we look at resources that are free but this one is can be very fun and make learning a game.