Free Safe Text

Not necessarily a "teaching" tool for the classroom, but a "teaching" tool for life.  Free Safe Text is an app that is currently available for Android phones (iPhone app is currently in development) that helps users resist the urge to text while driving.  The App works by opening the App before you start driving.  Any text message you receive, the sender will get an automatic reply that lets them know you are driving and provides a link to information about the App.

When a person comes to a stop and is no longer driving (not just at a red light) you can place the App in Parking mode and the user will be able to receive text messages again.  During the month of December to encourage the use of the App, they were giving away $25.00 a week based on the number of times the automated message was sent from your phone AND the number of referrals to sign up to use the Free Safe Text App. 

To sign up for information about when the iPhone release will be available, click here.

For more information, see the video below to learn more.

To learn more about the statistics related to texting while driving, see the video below.

Bump Images to you Computer

Most of us that have an iPhone or Android phone have heard of or seen the Bump App that allows users to easily transfer photos and other files from one device to another.  Now that same services offers users the ability to "bump" pictures to your computer.  With bu.mp you can take photos on your phone to your computer by simply visiting the bu.mp website and tapping the space bar with your phone.  Make sure that location is enabled in your browser for it to work.  To see how it works, see the video below.

Another App from the same company that would be of interest is the Flock App.  If students are working on a project together that requires the use of pictures, Flock App would allow the easy sharing of those photos across their mobile devices.

Shadow Drive - Social Cloud Drive

ShadowDrive is a web application that plans to make sharing content more social through various social networks.  It is still in development and plans are in place to have desktop, tablet, and mobile services available in October of 2013.  You can currently join for free by logging in through Facebook (Twitter in the future).  You can still use the service, but the space allotment is currently small, just 1GB.  What makes it worthwhile is that students probably won't be using a large amount of space in the first place.

With integration into Facebook, ShadowDrive would make it easy for students or teachers to have important files or documents easily made available to students and have it appear on their Facebook Timeline.  We are well aware that students are on Facebook.  Now, if you have a teacher page or classroom page you can have files made available to students.  Students that are working together on a project could also use the service to share pieces of a project, artifacts, pictures, videos, etc. 

Another benefit is that if your Facebook friends are using the App, then they would have access to the same files through the ShadowDrive site.  There are several security features in place to not only protect privacy, but also to protect the legality issues that might surface.  Like other applications on Facebook, you do have to provide permission to this App. 

Here is a video that introduces the product and provides more information.  If you are an active user of social media (Facebook and Twitter) in your classrooms with your students, this might be an app worth investigating. 



To learn more here are some other reviews of interest:

http://www.estartups.org/promoted/shadowdrive-the-social-cloud-storage-drive/

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/shadowdrive-a-web-service-to-easily-upload-files-share-with-online-friends/

Edublog Awards - Voting is NOW OPEN!

I recently posted my nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards and after tons of nominations, the voting is now open.  Voting for these can be a long process, especially if you don't know about the blogs, sites, and people being nominated.  However, the Edublog Awards themselves provide a wonderful opportunity to discover and connect with some great educators who are sharing some valuable resources. 

These people who have been nominated use their valuable time to provide and share with you.  The least we can do as peers is learn about them and then make an educated vote based on what we have gathered.  The best way to see all that were nominated and be able to click on each is to view the Google Doc they have set up that provides links and results from the nomination process.  If you only want to be able to visit the finalists, you can do that on the Edublog Awards main page under the 2012 Categories Links.

Voting is open till the end of the day on Sunday, December 9th, so you have about just over 6 days to vote from the time of this posting. 

Tuesday Teaching Strategy - Empty Outline

Empty Outline

An Empty Outline is best used when a great deal of structured content must be presented, such as in a lecture.  Varying levels of ability in students allows an empty outline to meet the different needs.  An empty outline can help students develop skills of listening, note taking, and organization.  All of these skills do require clear and supportive feedback at the same time.

Beginning with a detailed outline lecture or discussion, decide whether students should pay more attention to its topics, subtopics, or supporting details (this might alternate with certain subject matter).  Then, prepare a partial outline, omitting the topics, subtopics, or supporting details from it. 

After the lecture, ask students to fill in the blanks in the partial outline.  Completing the outline demonstrates students’ mastery of the material and shows students how topics, subtopics, or supporting details relate to one other.  An empty outline is also a valuable resource in teaching students how to organize notes when outlines are not provided.

It is important to be cautious when choosing what to omit.  It is recommended that an empty outline be limited to at most, half of the lecture or discussion.  The same outline technique could also be incorporated into a “Book Look” activity when assigning students reading from a text.