An Annotated List of Flipped Class Tools and Resources

Previewing a new Classroom by Google

 Not a lot of specifics, but it sounds like teachers piloting Google Classroom are pretty happy about it.

Jude           

Free Booktrack app for Google Chrome and Ipads

Reluctant reader? Creative reader? Artistic reader? Geek reader? Have fun and improve your skills

Booktrack Classroom allows students to read with a movie-style soundtrack, or to create their own soundtrack for any story, essay or other text. Students can also create and publish their own Booktracks, reading them on the web or on mobile phones and tablets.

Visit www.booktrackclassroom.com to get sign-up and get started.

• 17% increase in comprehension
• 30% increase in engagement
• Common Core integration across multiple subjects
• Proven to dramatically improve test scores
• Free and incredibly easy to use for grades K – 12
• Multiple uses across the reading and writing curriculum

Jude

Google Unveils 'Classroom' Learning Management System

Viewed on Education Week by Jude:

By Michele Molnar on May 7, 2014 9:45 AM 

Google is entering the world of "learning management systems" with the pre-release ofClassroom, designed to work with the Google Apps for Education suite currently used by 30 million students and educators.

The tool, which Google announced on its blog Tuesday, will give teachers a way to create and collect assignments, provide real-time feedback to individual students, make announcements, ask questions, and organize their folders by assignment or by student. 

Below is a screen shot from Google's blog, showing an example of how a home page might look using Classroom, with assignments for each period of a school day.

The free tool, which weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail, is expected to launch officially in September to K-12 schools and colleges. It will be available in 40 languages.

For now, the company is inviting educators to apply for a preview, and ed-tech companies or individual developers can sign up to learn more about integrating with Classroom. 

"We've been working with more than a dozen pilot schools and universities to try out Classroom and provide feedback," wrote Zach Yeskel, product manager for Classroom and a former high school math teacher, in the blog.

Educators interested in applying for an opportunity to try out Classroom before its release can do so here.

Easy navigation between Apple devices and Chrome

Apple devices and Chrome users, our life keeps getting simpler and better.

Thanks to a couple of Chrome extensions, you may access your Apple productivity tools, docs and data on your PC. Syncing between devices is all automatic.Here they are:

- Your bookmarks
- All your iWorks documents: Pages, Numbers, Keynote... In fact, Chrome allows you to create and modify documents as if you were using your Apple device.

- All your pictures, mail (you have the option to sync with outlook, too), contacts, calendar and tasks.

- For the absent minded-ones among us, you can even use "Find my phone" on Chrome.

All you need to do is install in Chrome these two apps, iCloud Bookmarks and iCloud Dashboard.

Jude

Edmodo Snapshot

Whether you are using EDMODO or not they just released a really cool tool for  use in the classroom and for teacher evaluation.  Its called EDMODO SNAPSHOT and it is a very easy way to test student's understanding of the Common Core standards.  You can use it as a pre-test or exit ticket or quiz for lessons or for your class.  EDMODO will create the assessment for you as long as you identify the standard/s you want tested.  It gives instant real time results that shows student strength and weaknesses, thus your strengths and weaknesses since their entire academic potential rides on teacher effectiveness and not diet, home life, personality, community, mood, sleep schedule, job, mental state, and on and on.

Check it out:

https://www.edmodo.com/snapshot

Josh

Microsoft Office for iPad

Yes, it's available. No, it's not free.

You can download the apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote) from the App Store. They are free.

Then, when you open the app, you'll discover the string attached to it; you need a subscription to Office 365.

The subscription is ~$10/month. It automatically saves on the cloud all the documents you create, either on your iPad or your  Microsoft Office applications on your  computer. It also syncs between your devices.

iWorks, the Apple version of Office does this for free. Pages (Apple word processor, not quite as versatile as Word), Keynotes (Apple version of powerpoint), Numbers (Apple version of Excel) are all free apps (if you bought your device after Sept 1, 2013. Otherwise it is ~$10 for each app). They automatically save your documents on iCloud and sync between your devices. Your documents can be exported in Microsoft Office format and iWorks will open Office documents.  

The choice is yours.

                                                                                                                                 Jude