Random Name Fun!

Tonight I'm going to show you a really quick and simple webpage that I have used in my classroom many, many times. It is extremely simplistic, but can be used for a number of things. It is a random name generator with a fun and interactive appearance. It will randomly generate names in a slot machine (or in a typewriter) that you put in.

I keep a text file with my class rosters in it, which allows me to just copy and paste the names of my students into this page. What I usually do, is to use this for review days. I will put an activity up on the smartboard for the students to do, and then if they get it right I switch over to this screen. They can push the "Fruit Machine" button you see on the right and it will generate the next name. You can have the names removed after they have been selected if you would like.

The animation looks just like a slot machine and my students have always had fun watching the names spin around and around. It even has a dramatic stall at the end between two names before finally selecting one. I like this because it makes sure everyone is focused on the activity because they can be called on at any time. It also makes randomly picking names fun for the students.

ClassTools.net has a large variety of tools that I will be covering at a later date. Any suggestions you may have for future blogs are always welcome! Feel free to comment!

Next Up: RedLaser

This week's app is a multi-functioning scanner that can be used on most any smart phone and tablet with a camera. The name? RedLaser. Many people have heard of this tool before, but probably not for use inside of the classroom. I am going to give you just a few ways that you might use this app in the classroom.

First things first, let me describe what RedLaser actually does. This is an app that scans a bar code or a QR code (I'll go into more detail about these later). After it scans the bar codes, it will give you a description of the item. Sometimes these are rather detailed descriptions, sometimes they are quite vague. It just depends on the item being scanned. It will also allow you to search online and nearby stores for a price comparison.

I'm sure you can tell that I'm going to turn this into a math project! Many students already have smartphones that can use this app and it just so happens to be free! In many classrooms, you may actually be able to allow students to use their cell phones for educational purposes! Ok...I may be showing my teacher side a bit now. Anyway, these could easily be used to have students create a budget and then use this app to scan items from their house and compare the cheapest prices found to what was actually paid. It is a great way to teach students how to save money and how quickly saving money can add up!

The other side of RedLaser is the QR scanner. This is one item I love to use. The reason? Well, it is really just a quick way to get to a website. For instance, if you scan the QR code on the right, it will direct you to this blog! There are plenty of websites out there that will allow you to create these for free. I used this one to generate the code on the right. On a later blog, I will show you a site that allows you to create a scavenger hunt out of these codes. I did this with my Algebra I class and had them solving equations while racing all over campus. I have also placed these on the bottom of a worksheet to give the students a link to the solutions to their homework. You could also link students to suggested websites to assist them in any topic.

I'm sure teachers will find many other uses for this app in the future, and if you have any ideas yourself, I would love to hear them. Please comment any ideas you may have for this app yourself. In later blogs, I will refer to this app again, because I have found quite a few ways that these may be used and I'm still trying to implement these in different ways in my own class.

Today's App: Pick Me!

The app I am going to talk about today is very simple to use, but I have found it to be valuable for many reasons! Pick Me! Click the link to take you to the iTunes store for more info.

This is essentially a random name picker that has the ability to track the responses of the students who are called upon. It also allows you to store student information and photos for quick access to data on the student.

When you begin using the Pick Me! app, you will import or create a list of students on your roster for each class. You setup each class by period. You can keep this as basic as inserting their name, or you can input parent and student email addresses, student photo, and a note section for any other notes you may want to add to the student such as accommodations, etc. From here, you begin by starting a session in a class and it is easy going from here.

Once you have begun a session, you have an interface like you see on the right. I have blurred out the names and not included a photo, but you can clearly see how it lays out. It looks very simple, and it is. To me, that is really the beauty of this program. When I am in the middle of conducting a lesson, the last thing that I want to deal with is a highly involved and clunky interface. To run this app, you just click the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Each click assigns a right or wrong answer and spins to the next random student in the class. The nice part is, it not only picks random names for you, but it will track how many questions each student has answered and how many they got correct.

At the end of each session you can choose to keep the data running, or reset the data. The nice part is, you can simply email the results to yourself to keep a running tally of how each student is doing. This is a great way to track participation points in your class.

Also, if you are like me, cold calls aren't the easiest thing to keep track of. This is a quick and easy way to keep track of them. It is also a great way to learn the names of your students at the start of the school year. You can take pictures on day one and then put names and faces together without that awkward admittance that you haven't learned their names on the first day!

This app is very simple to use and only costs a couple of dollars. I use it on my iPad all of the time and have found quite a few times that this makes my classroom much easier to manage.

First up: Dropbox

The first piece of technology that I am going to introduce is dropbox. This is an app that you can download here for your pc/mac/tablet. So what does it do? Heh...well it is a long list! I will try to do justice to some of the uses this program has.

The basic idea with dropbox is mobile storage. What I mean is, anywhere you have access to the internet (which is almost everywhere now) you have access to a storage device. Dropbox allows you to store any kind of files (PowerPoint, videos, music, gradebook backups, etc.) you want for use on pretty much all of your devices. And yes I mean all. Dropbox has an app for iPhones, iPads, Macs and PCs. This means you can take your files with you everywhere without ever having to carry that obnoxious USB storage device.

All you have to do is go to droppbox.com and install the app on any device you want to use it on and voila! What happens is, anytime you update files that are saved in the dropbox folder, dropbox automatically syncs them with their "cloud" and stores them for access from any device. It is essentially like copy and pasting these files to the dropbox website, and then dropbox copy and pastes them to all of your devices for you.

So why is this useful for teachers? Again, I have found many uses for this. Let me just give you a few examples:
1) Since I hate keeping a hard copy of my gradebook in this digital age, I can keep backup copies of my gradebook in dropbox at all times. Since I can check it on my phone, I never have that moment where someone catches me away from my desk and wants to know their grade. I also use this to ensure that no student somehow gets access to my gradebook and alters their grades.

2) In my JAVA classroom, I have all of my students download this on day one. Why? Well, when they work on their programs at school, they automatically save them to dropbox. This way, when they get home, they always have their saved work from class. It also works the other way. When they show up to school and try to tell me they forgot their paper at home, since it saves their work at home too, it is always just a click away. No more dogs eating homeowork or flash drives.

3) Dropbox also has a feature that allows you to share a folder with another colleague. In this case, anytime one of you makes a change to something in this folder, it syncs with everyone who shares this folder. Well then, what happens if someone makes a change to something that you don't want? No worries...dropbox keeps older copies of files for backup purposes too.

4) Finally, many of the apps I will introduce in the future have a feature that allows them to sync with your dropbox automatically. This allows for much better usability for users.

Hopefully this helps and any suggestions you have, feel free to comment them!

The Ed Tech Introduction

Welcome to The Ed Tech Blog Spot!

This is a blog designed for two purposes: 

1) This is a place for educators to come to find new pieces of technology for their classroom.

2) This is also a way for me to ensure that I try to keep finding new technologies for my own classroom.

First off, let me give you a little bio information. I am a fourth year teacher who began his career in a small rural area school just north of Kansas City, Missouri, and I am now teaching at Lynbrook High School in the Silicon Valley in California. I have spent a large number of hours in a variety of educational settings, including underprivileged inner city schools with marginal access to technology,  and schools who thrive with a great number of resources and frequently place students in high ranking positions in companies like Google, Yahoo!, etc.

I am a Secondary Mathematics teacher and I also teach JAVA computer programming. Before I got into education I spent three years majoring in Electrical & Computer Engineering. This background really emphasizes my love for technology and my understanding that it really needs to be present in today's world of education to keep our product relevant to the students we teach. 

Having said these things, my primary focus here will be to introduce technology that is either free, or highly inexpensive to add to an existing laptop or tablet (I use an iPad so most tablet apps introduced will be referenced from this perspective). Many people would be amazed at the number of things that are out there that can make our lives easier as educators. 

 

My goal with this blog is to introduce a new piece of technology/app that I have found useful or think I may find useful in the future for my classroom. I hope to blog about a new piece of technology every week, but this may move to every other week depending on my schedule. 

If you have any recommendations or suggestions about future topics please feel free to comment and let me know! Otherwise, I hope some people find this blog to be useful in some way!