If you own a smartphone or tablet, you should be using Mobile Nations. Mobile Nations is a group of web sites that each focus on a mobile operating systems. Each site has app reviews, hardware reviews, accessory reviews, tips, resources, forums, help topics, and much more.

These sites are great for anyone who uses a mobile system, including teachers, students, and others. Find out about new apps, resources, tips, problems, help and more. Share them with your friends, students, and colleagues. Education apps and uses for the systems are often featured on the sites. EdTech and IT personnel can find help information, reviews, and more to help them use these devices.

I use Android Central (and subscribe via RSS) for my Android Smartphone to find tips, app reviews, and more. I've learned about new apps, problems, help tips, and more from these sites and spent a lot of time on Android Central reading phone reviews before purchasing my HTC One Android Smartphone.

There are 4 sites/communities based on different mobile systems.

Android Central for all things Android.

Crackberry for Blackberry.

iMore for iOS (iPhone and iPad)

Windows Phone Central for Windows Phone/Mobile

Android for Education Resources

January is National "Get Organized Month" so I decided to share some resources on getting organized. There are some great sites out there too, including the National Association of Professional Organizers.

I am a type A personality in many ways and I've always been organized at work (not so much at home). As an engineer, it was vital to be organized. As a teacher, it was too, but harder to do. I learned some great things from United Technologies when I worked at Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky Aircraft. They use a system called ACE, Achieving Competitive Excellence, and parts of it are related to having an organized work space so that you can be more efficient.

Technology is also a great resource for getting organized. I'm about 99% paperless - everything is either done electronically or scanned. I use Evernote extensively for staying organized.

Below are links, with descriptions, to help you get organized.

Evernote Resources

Evernote is the i-ching for organization. Save everything here, organized by notebooks, notes, stacks, and tags and searchable. Text notes, files, documents, web clippings, etc. As a CIO, it is my main tool.

Google Apps Resources

Google apps, like email and calendar, can help you get and stay organized with the features they have.

Getting Organized Tips and Resources

I wrote this last January and it has some great tips and ideas for getting organized, along with resources. I even discuss paper planning here.

Taking Organizing and Planning Tips from Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin was great at being organized and had some great ideas that are used today.

Great Uses for Binder Clips

Binder clips can help you get organized, and not just by clipping papers together.

Tips, Resources, and Ideas for Going Paperless

Going paperless can help you get more organized - less clutter, less space needed for paper, and the digital versions are easily searchable.

All Articles Tagged as "Get Organized"

This will pull up a list of any blog post that I tagged as "get organized"

Getting Organized with Google Calendar

Tips on using calendar to get organized.

Getting your Lesson Plans and Room Organized for a Substitute Teacher

Life is much better for the sub, your students, and you when you return, when your lessons and classroom are organized.

Using Technology to Organize your Lessons and Resources

I was a much happier, more efficient teacher when I got myself and my lessons organized.

Getting Students and Teachers Organized

Some tips for students and teachers.

I'm a huge Android user. I have my HTC One Smartphone and my own Nexus 7 tablet. In addition, my department uses Nexus 7 tablets for mobile access and some of our schools have Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets.

I have a bunch of apps that I use on a regular basis, both when I was a teachers, as well as now as a CIO. This is my list of top apps for educators:

Gmail - email is the main way I communicate with my staff, vendors, and school admin and teachers. It is indispensable for me. I can easily check all of my email accounts (4).

Calendar - my calendar is so busy that I would be lost without this. What's nice is that my personal and work calendars are overlaid for easy viewing.

Drive - access and create/edit/share documents anywhere. You can even view and edit none Google Docs files using QuickOffice (see below) that Google bought and integrated into Drive.

Evernote -is my favorite, and most used resource. I had all of my lesson plans, resources, web clippings, lesson schedule, meeting notes, misc. notes, task lists, reference materials and much more on here as a teacher and I now use it for all of my notes, meeting notes, references, project planning and more . I can access my notes anywhere and can even share notes with others.

Google+ - this is how I connect with other educational, technology, and edtech professionals. Easy to use, great for conversations and tons of great people and communities on here.

Edmodo - this is a major component in our school district and used widely by teachers and staff. It provides some great features and resources and is free.

Student SIS System - access student information anytime. Teachers can also use it to take attendance and as a roll book during a fire drill.

Splashtop - I use this to access my desktop and/or laptop at any time from anywhere. It allows me to do anything on my Android device, including running Windows apps and accessing all of my files.

QuickOffice - access, view, and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel files.Free version comes with phone and can view documents. Pro version adds editing for a fee.

Another feature of Android I love is the sharing. I can share from app to app with one click. Great for sharing resources with others.

Related:

Android for Education Resources

My Favorite Resources for Teachers and Students

Google for Education Resources

Essential Apps and Installs for Windows, Chrome, Android

Why I use Google's Products as an Educator

Evernote is my main tool for work and home. I've been using it for 5 years and love it. It can be tough for someone new to Evernote to get started with it.

Here is a great article by an on-line friend of mine, Tim Stiffler-Dean, about how Evernote can be a little overwhelming at first and how to get over that.

Here is also a great article, and video, from Evernote on getting started and my main Evernote page has ideas on getting started.

I also told another on-line colleague that I would give him some tips on getting started with Evernote for his specific needs.

He teaches technology and physics, assists with the school network, and writes a tech column for a newspaper. Here are some ideas for using Evernote for each of these:

Teaching: (see here for more on how I used Evernote as a teacher)

• lesson plan resources (from books, web sites, magazines, files)
• lesson plans - schedule of what you are doing each day, linked to the actual lesson plan in Evernote
• unit plans and resources (attached files, links, web clippings)
• curriculum
• project ideas
• student work and e-portfolio's

School Network

• specs of all equipment
• network map
• to do list
• web clippings of articles that are useful
• equipment information
• plans

Writer: ( I do this for the articles I write)

• story ideas
• notes
• clippings of research
• articles themselves

Hope this helps!

Related:

My Workflow as CIO - includes heavy use of Evernote

I've been using a Chromebook since getting a CR-48 from Google a few years ago, and I love it. I am currently using a Samsung Chromebook, and our district is deploying over 5000 of them.

The Chromebooks, and Chrome OS in general, are fast and work great, but every once in a while they can bog down when doing serious multitasking. Many only have 2GB of RAM and do not offer the ability to add more RAM physically. I found out about a great way to increase your memory by using zRam which uses swap space on your hard disk/SSD. Kevin C. Tofel shared this great resource that is very easy to do.

Here are the simple steps:

1. Open up a terminal tab with the CTRL + ALT + T keys.
2. Type “swap enable” (without the quotes).
3. Restart your Chromebook.

It's that easy. I did it and my Chromebook runs much smoother and faster and rarely bogs down, even with 15+ tabs open.

Disabling it is easy too. Do all of the steps but type "disable" instead of "enable".

Give it a try and see how it improves your Chromebook's performance.

Related:

Chromebooks in Education: http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-chromebook-chromebox-and-updated.html

Cross posted at Educational Technology Guy and shared via Twitter and Google+

David Andrade is the Chief Information Officer for an urban school district in Connecticut. He spent 10 years as an engineer and then 10 years as a physics teacher and educational technology specialist before taking on his new job. He is the author of the Educational Technology Guy blog, where he reviews free educational technology resources for teachers, discusses ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning, and discusses other issues in education. He is also a professional development trainer and presenter at conferences, helping educators learn new and innovative ways to educate students.

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of his employer.

I put this list together for our district as we are going with GAFE and Chromebooks and I figured I'd share it here too.

Google Apps and Chromebooks Training Resources

Google Apps for Education (GAFE)

• GAFE Training Center http://edutraining.googleapps.com/
• Learn how to use GAFE http://learn.googleapps.com/
• GAFE User Guides http://deployment.googleapps.com/Home/user-resources/documentation-templates
• Google in Education - Teacher Resources http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/index.html
• Google for Educators Resources http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/google-for-educators_22.html
• GCF Learn Free - Google Training http://www.gcflearnfree.org/google
• Google Apps Crib Sheets http://goo.gl/EBN5O
• Recordings -- Innovative Chromebook Teachers - Hangout on Air Series
• 100 Tips for Google Chromehttp://www.chromestory.com/100_Chrome_ChromeOS_And_ChromeBook_Tips_Ebook.pdf

Google Drive

• https://www.udemy.com/googledriveeducators
• http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-4-docs
• http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-convert-microsoft-office-files-to-google-docs-on-your-chromebook
• Intro to Google Drive for Educators http://youtu.be/LcoppNExlZE
• Introduction to Google Drivehttp://youtu.be/wKJ9KzGQq0w
• How to Open and Edit Word Files in Google Drive http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/12/how-to-open-and-edit-word-files-in.html

Chromebooks

• Product Page for Chromebooks http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/landing.html
• Introducing the Chromebookhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqe8ieqz10
• Chromebook user Guide http://www.chromestory.com/chromebook-user-guide/
• Chromebook EDU site https://sites.google.com/site/chromebookedu/home
• Chromebook Central - Chromebook user group - https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=&hl=en#!forum/chromebook-central
• Chromebooks for Education Overviewhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSbZQNJwPuI
• Guided Tour of Chrome OS (Chromebooks)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLPcVAyNPE
• What Chromebooks can and can’t do http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/google-in-the-enterprise/your-questions-answered-what-chromebooks-can-and-cant-do/106
• 70 Tips for Mastering Chrome OS http://www.chromestory.com/google-chromebook/
• Android for Education Resources http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/android-for-education.html

Miscellaneous Computer and Tech Help

Free online resources on computers http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computers

Cross posted at Educational Technology Guy and shared via Twitter and Google+

David Andrade is the Chief Information Officer for an urban school district in Connecticut. He spent 10 years as an engineer and then 10 years as a physics teacher and educational technology specialist before taking on his new job. He is the author of the Educational Technology Guy blog, where he reviews free educational technology resources for teachers, discusses ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning, and discusses other issues in education. He is also a professional development trainer and presenter at conferences, helping educators learn new and innovative ways to educate students.

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of his employer.

Google has just launched Keep, a note taking service, that is free. It is a cool note taking system, that allows you to quickly jot down notes, checklists, transcribe a voice memo, search your notes, and more.

Your notes are saved in Google Drive and synced to all of your devices. There is an Android app for Android 4.0+ and you can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and Google will be adding these functions directly in Google Drive shortly.

It has a nice layout, using boxes instead of text and you can rearrange the notes based on your needs and priorities and you can color code your notes.

Knowing that I am a huge user of Evernote, many people have asked me about Google Keep. I will be using both. Evernote has many more features that I use and I have over 4900 notes in Evernote. However, I find Evernote a little more cumbersome for quick note taking on my phone or tablet. So, I'm going to be using Keep for quick notes on the go, along with voice notes, and then I can share the notes to other apps, or just access them as needed. I don't feel like I have to choose one note taking app, but rather that I can use two or more based on my needs.

Here's a nice video overview of Google Keep:

Evernote Resources

LibreOffice is a free, open-source, powerful office suite software that is a great alternative to Microsoft Office. I use it on my home computers. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and has six applications: Write (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Draw, Math and Base (database). It works great and the menu functions are similar to Office 97, so the learning curve is easy. It is built off of the same code base as OpenOffice. I happen to like LibreOffice better and think it runs faster.

One of the great features is that it can open, and save as, files in a variety of formats including Microsoft Office (multiple versions), PDF, ODF, and more. I have mine automatically set to load and save as MS Office files so that they work at school without a problem.

Support is excellent, with a great support site and user forums.

Libreoffice has just been upgraded to version 4.0 and offers leaner, faster performance, greater interoperability between different file formats such as DocX and RTF documents. Other new features include an Android app for controlling presentations, UI upgrades and a performance improvements. You can also attach comments to text in documents, import Visio and Publisher files, get themes, ink annotations and over 1500 other changes and improvements.

Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on office software, download LibreOffice for free. http://www.libreoffice.org/

Related:

Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Why do schools still pay so much for software? Free alternatives to paid software and services.

Google for Educators resources (includes Google Docs)

Google Docs/Drive is a great, free resource that allows you to create, edit, share, collaborate on, and comment on Documents (Docs), Spreadsheets (Sheets), and Presentations (Slides), all online. Think Microsoft Office in the cloud with some other great features.

I use Google Slides (Presentations), the equivalent of PowerPoint, for all of my presentations. I like the features it has and like that I can easily share it online and people will always be able to see the newest version. One downside was that you needed an internet connection and some conferences I have presented at can have WiFi issues due to all of the devices being used. I would always save a copy of my presentation as a PDF file to my laptop in case I didn't have a good internet connection. That is no longer necessary.

Google has announced that Google Slides will now be available with offline support. You can now create, edit, comment, and present your Slides presentation without an internet connection. When you get an internet connection, your new presentations or changes will be automatically updated online. Docs has had this for a while already.

This is a great feature that makes Slides even more useful, along with Chromebooks, for people who need to work on, or present, their presentations where they may not have WiFi. It's also great for schools who issue Chromebooks to students that may not have internet at home. Our district is going with Chromebooks and student internet access at home is a concern. That is less of a concern now.

To enable offline Docs/Sheets/Slides, follow these instructions. If you already have offline enabled for Docs, you are all set. In order to use the offline feature, you will have to use Chrome browser or Chrome OS.

Google is currently working on offline support for Sheets as well.

Offline support has been the one reason I see many people stating as why they won't or can't go with Google Drive/Docs and Chromebooks. That reason is disappearing.

Related:

Google for Educators Resources

iPad Apps for School is another site from Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers and Android 4 Schools. In this site, Richard and his guest authors will be sharing resources and reviews of apps (mostly free) that can be used in K-12 schools, along with ways that those apps can be used in the educational setting by teachers, students, and administrators.

If you use iPads as an educator, administrator, or student, or your school is looking at using them, you should check out this site.

Related:

Android SmartPhone and Apps that I use as an Educator

Android resources - information, news, resources, and more

I am a big fan of going paperless whenever possible and technology just keeps making it easier to do. Google is one of the sponsors of the Paperless pledge and has some tips, resources and ideas for going paperless and I have collected a variety of resources and tips. Here they all are.Check them out and check out Paperless2013 and sign up for more tips.

I use my Android smartphone, Nexus 7 tablet, Chromebook and desktop computers, along with apps like Evernote (essential to going paperless), email, online faxing and signing, Google Docs and Drive, Dropbox and Sugarsync and PDF tools, a Boogie Board electronic notepad, a Livescribe Sky Smartpen, and a scanner (Fujitsu Scansnap) to go as paperless as possible. The two articles below have more information too.

My tips and resources:

Paper, we don't need no paper! Tools and tips for going paperless

Tools to go Paperless (in school and at home)

Tips:

- use flat screen monitors on walls as electronic bulletin boards.

- install solar panels on roof to offset increased electricity use.

- 2 monitors for each PC - can have reference on one screen and working document on other instead of printing reference out (or use tablet)

- Use email, chat, and meeting software and other collaborative software

- all markups done electronically

- auto backup of network every day

- all files on network with offsite, fireproof backup (Dropbox, Sugarsync, own network)

- autosave files every 5 min

- battery and generator backups

- limit print outs to absolutely necessary items

- all files saved in two formats - original (such as Word or PPT) and PDF. PDF is readable by every device and operating system using free apps.

- Read-only terminals in certain areas for visitors and reference look up

- network accessible from home/road for personnel - no data on laptops

- all paperwork from outside is scanned into system - original is filed

- all partners, organizations and vendors are encouraged to use electronic communications - email, website forms, etc.

- Student Information are all searchable and connected and linked with all relevant files

- scan legacy files using OCR into PDF files or scan into Evernote to make searchable

- don't print emails!

- all files distributed as PDF's when possible - readable on any system

- Train your employees on going paperless

From Google:

7 best ways to go paperless.

1) Use cloud storage: One place to create, share and keep all your files

Google Drive: Get started with 5GB free. Try it free

2) Send an online fax: Fax machines waste paper and ink is expensive

HelloFax: Send faxes online, 50 free pages/month. Try it free

3) Manage your bills online: Access statements and organize accounts

Manilla: Avoid paper bills, pay online for free. Try it free

4) Sign documents using an e-signatures: Just as legal and super easy

HelloSign: eSign contracts for free. Try it free

5) Create an online expense report: Don't print out e-receipts

Expensify: Manage all your receipts in cloud for free. Try it free

6) Send online invoices and receive payment online

Xero: Online business accounting, 6 months free. Try it free

7) Scan your existing documents: Get rid of your file cabinets

Fujitsu SnapScan: The world's best document scannner. Check it out

What are your tips, tricks, advice, and resources for going paperless?

Google Docs/Drive is a great, free resource that allows you to create, edit, share, collaborate on, and comment on Documents (Docs), Spreadsheets (Sheets), and Presentations (Slides), all online. Think Microsoft Office in the cloud with some other great features.

I use Google Slides (Presentations), the equivalent of PowerPoint, for all of my presentations. I like the features it has and like that I can easily share it online and people will always be able to see the newest version. One downside was that you needed an internet connection and some conferences I have presented at can have WiFi issues due to all of the devices being used. I would always save a copy of my presentation as a PDF file to my laptop in case I didn't have a good internet connection. That is no longer necessary.

Google has announced that Google Slides will now be available with offline support. You can now create, edit, comment, and present your Slides presentation without an internet connection. When you get an internet connection, your new presentations or changes will be automatically updated online. Docs has had this for a while already.

This is a great feature that makes Slides even more useful, along with Chromebooks, for people who need to work on, or present, their presentations where they may not have WiFi. It's also great for schools who issue Chromebooks to students that may not have internet at home. Our district is going with Chromebooks and student internet access at home is a concern. That is less of a concern now.

To enable offline Docs/Sheets/Slides, follow these instructions. If you already have offline enabled for Docs, you are all set. In order to use the offline feature, you will have to use Chrome browser or Chrome OS.

Google is currently working on offline support for Sheets as well.

Offline support has been the one reason I see many people stating as why they won't or can't go with Google Drive/Docs and Chromebooks. That reason is disappearing.

Related:

Google for Educators Resources

Technology changes rapidly and it seems like something you just bought last week is already outdated and replaced by something new. Some people and companies are always buying the latest and greatest technology, but schools, and most people, can't afford to do that. So, what can we do?

One thing is to reuse old technology for new purposes. I use an old Palm PDA as my backup alarm clock. I can set repeating alarms for each day and when it goes off, the screen turns on, adding a visual alarm along with the sound. I use my old Palm Centro phone as a backup remote control for the TV, DVD, and VCR. It has an IR transmitter and an app that has all of the programs in it. I also have an old netbook that I still use. It is my remote back up system. It has Dropbox and Sugarsync on it and backs up those accounts, along with my Google Drive and Google Accounts and Evernote. This means that all of my data is on my main computer, this netbook, those systems, and my mobile devices. Great way to reuse an old device.

You can update old technology and give it new life. With thousands of computers in our district, many are very old. Yet for a small amount of money, we can get them running better and longer. We have been updating hard drives and RAM for a fraction of the cost of a new device and they run great. We also move the older computers for the lower grades student use since the software they use does not need high end devices. We even have very old LCD projectors out there that work fine. We are taking old laptops and updating the RAM and re imaging them. Most of the services and apps that the schools are using are all going web based so these older laptops, using a browser like Google Chrome, will be perfectly adequate and will be used like Chromebooks for web based apps only.

As schools got computer projectors and streaming video, TV's with VCRs and DVDs have been sitting idle. We just found some converters that allow you to connect your computer to a TV. Since we have some great, large TVs, we can use these converters to allow teachers who do not have a computer projector to share their computer image with their class.

You can also recycle your old technology, and even get some money for it. We have lots of old computers that need to be disposed of, along with printers, fax machines and old monitors. There are a variety of companies out there that will not only take away your old technology, they will pay you for it. They even certify that the data is securely erased. The only thing they don't pay for is the old monitors, but they also don't charge to hall them away and properly dispose of them.

Don't just throw away your old technology, find new uses, new lives, or at least get some cash for it.

How do you reuse and recycle your old technology?

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of his employer.

David Andrade is the Chief Information Officer for an urban school district in Connecticut. He spent 10 years as an engineer and then 10 years as a physics teacher and educational technology specialist before taking on his new job. He is the author of the Educational Technology Guy blog, where he reviews free educational technology resources for teachers, discusses ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning, and discusses other issues in education. He is also a professional development trainer and presenter at conferences, helping educators learn new and innovative ways to educate students.

This past November I started a new chapter in my career and became the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the district I was a teacher in for 10 years. It combines my experience as a teacher and educational technology specialist, as well as my 10 years as an engineer and project manager, into one very exciting, busy, crazy, rewarding job. I am responsible for the IT department, as well as coordinating with the data teams and all technology issues and projects.

In the past, I've written about the technology I used on a daily basis as a teacher. Today, I want to write about the technology I'm using on a daily basis in my job as CIO and how this technology helps keep me organized, informed, and communicating with others. Some of it is the same, some different, and some just used differently.

Evernote - Evernote, an electronic notebook with lots of great features, is my main tool. I have used it for lesson plans, lesson notes, lesson resources as a teacher and travel info, recipes, clippings from web sites, to do lists, personal references, tech resources and instructions and so much more. It is the main app I use for almost everything.

As CIO, I have created multiple notebooks. They are each named CIO and then the specific notebook title and all stacked under CIO as a main category. I have a note entitled "Priorities" that I update each week. It has a list of the major tasks and projects that I need to work on that week. I don't keep much for details in this note, rather I put the link to other notes that have all of the details on them.

I also upload files as attachments to Evernote so that I can easily access them anywhere, on any device. Files that I have to edit often are stored on our servers and I can access them remotely via VPN client.

I also use the Clip to Evernote extension for Chrome (my browser of choice) to clip web articles for future reference.

Another great feature is the Outlook to Evernote extension. I use Outlook for email, contacts, and calendar, and can export any email or contact from Outlook to Evernote, including attachments. This keeps my email less cluttered and allows me easier access to the emails and files from other devices.

I use Evernote to take notes in meetings also, either with my smartphone, Chromebook or laptop, or using my Livescribe Sky pen to take handwritten notes (I'm faster that way) and have them synced directly to Evernote.

I use the Evernote desktop app at home and at work due to the advanced features and local backup of data. I have a premium account (only $45 per year), although many people would be fine with the free account.

Dropbox - Dropbox is a great file sync, backup, and sharing service that you can use for free. The rest of the files I need to use that are not in Evernote or Google Drive are setup in my Dropbox so that they are synced on my home computer and my smartphone. I can access my files from any web browser also. I never have to worry about losing a flash drive or forgetting to copy or email myself a file.

Google Chrome is my browser of choice. It's fast, secure, easy to use, has great extensions and bookmarklets, and just works great. I have it automatically open up my most used tabs: Gmail, Google Calendar, Blogger, Tweetdeck, and Evernote. I also have bookmarklets for saving pages into my Google Bookmarks, accessing school systems, and much more.

Extensions:

Evernote Clipper - clip web pages and articles into my Evernote notebooks for reference or sharing with students.

Goo.gl URL Shortener - shorten web page URL's for better sharing and tracking of sharing.

Webpage Screenshot - take screenshots of web pages, edit and format them, and save them.

Evernote Clearly - clean up a web page for easier reading and clipping.

Google Apps - I use Google's many apps, including Gmail, Blogger, Calendar, Docs/Drive and Reader for myself and as part of my daily job. We are also going to Google Apps for Education for our students and faculty along with Chromebooks for different groups.

I use Tweetdeck in Chrome browser to access my PLN on Twitter. It is easy to use and has great features like multiple columns and scheduling of tweets. It's a great way for me to connect with other CIO's and Technology Directors for help and advice.

Android Smartphone - with my Android Smartphone, I can access all of my materials and resources, all of the apps and resources listed above and even control my computer with SplasthTop Remote.Android works great with all of the Google resources I use, and the Evernote app for it is awesome. This allows me to access meeting notes, files, and much more anywhere I go. Very handy as I travel the district for meetings and working with staff on technology projects.

Livescribe Sky Smartpen - This job entails a lot of meetings, issues, and challenges. One way I have been able to keep up with things is through my Livescribe Sky WiFi Smartpen. With this smartpen, I'm able to take notes in meetings on paper, which is very efficient, especially with my note taking style, which incorporates sketches, symbols, arrows, and more that don't translate well with a keyboard. The smartpen saves all of my notes and syncs them to Evernote over WiFi. This means that all of my notes are stored inEvernote so that I can access them anywhere. They are even searchable. I can also record audio in important or fast moving meetings to make sure I don't miss anything.

Microsoft Outlook - As a teacher, we all used the web version of Outlook. Administration and office staff use the desktop version of Outlook because we utilize more features. Email management, calendar and meeting schedules, contacts, and more. The full version of Outlook also has the Evernote extension so I can save emails, attachments, and contacts right to Evernote.

Brookstone Boogie Board - a paperless notepad. It is small, thin and lightweight. You write on it using the stylus, or even your finger. It has sealed battery that lasts for 50,000 erasures. I figure 50,000 erasures will last about 20 years or so. It only uses power to clear the screen. I use this as my scratch pad on my desk to take quick notes with before adding them to Evernote or doing that task.

I also use some other systems, such as Tack-IT for our Help Desk, and our budget and purchase order system. For hardware, I have an HP desktop workstation, HP laptop, Chromebook (Samsung 303) and my smartphone and Livescribe SkyPen.

So, that's what I use each day in my role as CIO. These technologies allow me to be organized and easily access all of the data and information that I need to access each day, as well as communicate with my staff and other personnel.

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of his employer.

What technology do you use each day in your job?

David Andrade is the Chief Information Officer for an urban school district in Connecticut. He spent 10 years as an engineer and then 10 years as a physics teacher and educational technology specialist before taking on his new job. He is the author of the Educational Technology Guy blog, where he reviews free educational technology resources for teachers, discusses ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning, and discusses other issues in education. He is also a professional development trainer and presenter at conferences, helping educators learn new and innovative ways to educate students.

Tackk is a free web service that allows you to instantly and easily create and share content online. No login, no fees. Just go to the Tackk page and start typing. When you are finished, you can share it via the web or social networks.

You can have a title, subtitles, photos, change fonts and colors, media, text and lists.

It's great for quick messages and notices, as well as for other projects. Tackk about the upcoming class project, the next school event, and much more. It's free and easy to use and is a great way to communicate in education, as well as use for student and teacher projects.

UPDATE: A reader asked if you could print your Tackk. I wasn't sure, so I Tweeted Tackk. They got back to me within a few minutes (that's quick service) and said you can. There is a print button at the bottom of the Tackk on the right next to the social media icons. Very happy to see how good their customer relations are.

MyPhysicsLab is a free site that contains, you guessed it, physics lab simulations. They are simple and created in Java, but illustrate the physics concept quite well. They are organized into topics: springs, pendulums, combinations, collisions, roller coasters, molecules. There is also a section that explains how they work and the math/physics/programming behind creating them.

Simulations are a great way to really explore and visualize a topic. Many times, a simulation is better than a hands-on lab because of the manipulations and visual ques that exist. I use simulations in combination with hands-on labs.

This is another great resource for physics students and teachers to use to explore and learn about physics concepts.

Related:

PhET - excellent, free, virtual labs and simulations for science

Physion - free Physics Simulation Software

Great Physics Resources for Students and Teachers

Jumpshare is a service I just learned about that lets you easily share and view files online, for free. Simply drag and drop your files to the site and then you can share them. Other sites let you do this, but Jumpshare has a very cool feature of it's own - people can view these files online without downloading them. This is a great feature, especially when many shared files are just so someone can view it.

The files are available for two weeks and it's completely free. The site supports over 200 different file types (read the whole list here) including graphics files, Office files, e-books, audio and video files, and even code files.

A great new way to share files. For free.

Some Other file sharing services:

Just Beam It file sharing

Gett - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2010/12/gett-gett-free-service-to-share-files.html

FileStork - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/filestork-request-files-from-anyone.html

Fyles - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/fyels-free-easy-simple-file-sharing.html

AVG LiveKive - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2011/04/avg-launches-file-sync-backup-and-share.html

minus -��http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2011/03/minus-file-sharing-service.html

AirDropper - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2010/12/airdropper-request-file-from-anyone.html

DROPitTOme - http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2010/11/dropittome-receive-files-to-your-inbox.html

Google has a cool new app for Android, called "Field Trip". It helps you find things about what's around you. It runs in the background and when you get close to something interesting, it pops up with details about that location. You can use it to learn more about historical locations, buildings, stores and restaurants and more. It takes information from a variety of sources, along with your location data, to produce these results.

This would be a great app to use with students, as they could explore their own school and neighborhood for interesting locations. It would also be great on real field trips to find out more information about where they are. You never know what they, and you, might find that's interesting or cool.

It's free on Google Play. Go get it and explore your world.

Related:

Android Resources for Education

Enthread is a web based image editor that has some easy to use, simple editing features. Simply drag your image to the center of the page and get started.

Adjustments include: Hue/Saturation/Lightness, Brightness and Contrast, Colors (RGB), Filters (sharpen and blur), and Process (Sepia, Desaturate, Solarize, Invert, and Edges). You can undo any edit you make, as well as save and share the finished product.

That is literally it. Easy to use, online, and simple. Great for basic edits and adjustments.

Related:

Great, free Image editing sites and software

Two More Free Image Editing Resources

PicMonkey - free online photo editing

Google Course Builder is a new resource from Google that allows you to create your own online courses. Google used it to create their Power Searching with Google online course. It has all of the software and instructions for creating an online course. Your course can contain lesson materials, student activities, and assessments. There are also instructions for integrating other Google products into your course.

The course builder does require some knowledge of HTML and JavaScript, but you can learn that online too. The site has tons of resources to help you build your course and they have Google Hangouts to help you with experts you can ask for help. The instructions are well written and step-by-step and there are checklists and timeframes to help.

This could be a great way for teachers, or schools/districts, to build their own online courses.

The Discovery Educator Network is an awesome, free, resource for educators, filled with other educators. The DEN is a great place to connect with other educators and share resources, ideas, lesson plans, and much more. It's not just about Discovery Education resources either. I've met some great people in the DEN and learned so much. It's a great Personal Learning Network for any and all educators.

This week, September 10 - 14, 2012, the DEN is having and open house to share resources and how the DEN can benefit educators. There will be webinars, blog posts from educators, and much more, all for free. Come and join us!

Check out the details below for details and more information. And don't forget to check out the Discovery Educator Network blogs, with lots of great information and resources from other educators.

Help us kick off the school year with DEN Back-to-School Week. September 10-14, we’ve got a great schedule of activities to help you share the DEN and even learn more yourself about the community. In addition to daily blog posts about a variety of topics, we have a few special webinars and Google Hangouts scheduled. This is a great chance for you to grab a colleague and introduce them to the DEN.

Monday, September 10

Best of Matt’s Media Tips for Back to School at 3:30 and 7 PM ET

Registration for 3:30 session

Registration for 7:00 session

Tuesday, September 11

We’ve gathered a bunch of DEN Gurus for a Hangout (8pm ET, join athttp://gplus.to/discoveryed)

Jen Wagner

Karen Ogen

Traci Blazosky

Conni Mulligan

Rita Mortenson

Tim Childers

Kathy Schrock

David Fisher

Techbook 2.0 Preview at 6 PM ET

Register at: http://links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Using Notebooks and Journals with the Discovery Education Science Techbook at 7 PM ET

Register at: http://links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Wednesday, September 12

Celebrate International Dot Day with our Livestream for classrooms with Peter H. Reynolds, author of The Dot at 1 PM ET

http://denblogs.com/live

Techbook 2.0 Preview at 5 PM ET

Register at: http://links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Exciting Enhancements to Discovery Education at 7 PM ET

Register here.

Thursday, September 13

Exciting Enhancements to Discovery Education at 4 PM ET

Register here.

The Common Core Connection…. Resources from the DE Science Techbook that Build Common Core Skills at 6 PM ET

Register at: http://links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Meet these members of the DEN Leadership Council at a DEN Open House via Google Hangout at 7 PM ET (Register here.)

Linda Rush

Linda has many years of teaching experience working with students with disabilities in public, private, hospital and university settings. For the last twelve years, Linda has been at the Notre Dame Special School of Dallas teaching technology and computer skills to children with cognitive disabilities. Integrating web 2.0 ideas, movie making and digital storytelling has been her passion. She is a SMART exemplary educator/certified trainer and a DEN Guru. For the past six years Linda has been on the Texas Leadership Council.

Heather Hurley

Heather Hurley has been in education for 21 years. She is an instructional Technology Coordinator in Arlington, VA. She supports and trains teachers at two elementary schools, Arlington Traditional School and Glebe Elementary School. In her free time she loves taking pictures and attending wine festivals.

Mary Carole Strother

Mary Carole is a Library Media Specialist at Finch Elementary in McKinney, TX. She been a member of the DEN for 6 years, serving on the Texas Leadership Council and has been an active member of the Events team. This year Mary Carole wanted to be a Rising STAR mentor to share all the things she loves about being a part of the DEN.

Friday, September 14

Live Podcast with Steve and Dean (Time TBD, Join at http://gplus.to/discoveryed)

Prize opportunities in the DEN Weekly Update

This is a great opportunity to learn more about Discovery Education and the Discovery Educator Network.

Discovery Education is once again hosting a fall, online, free virtual conference for educators. These are great events and a great way to get some free PD and resources.

October 20th, 2012. 9am-4pm ET

• More LIVE: Every session will be live-streamed. This means that you’ll see full video feeds of every presenter throughout the day!
• More keynotes: We’ve added one more keynote to the agenda. Keynotes will be at 9am, 12pm and 3pm ET.
• More sessions: Each concurrent slot (10am, 11am, 1pm, 2pm ET) will have up to 5 sessions being broadcast for you to pick and choose between.
• More Face 2 Face events: As of today, we already have 14 F2F events to choose from, with more coming! Even better, we’ve made it easier than ever for ANYBODY to host their own F2F event. You put it together, large or small, and DiscoveryEd will provide lunch for your attendees!
• More presenters: We want YOU to present at the Fall VirtCon LIVE! The Call for Proposals is open now,visit the conference page to learn how to submit.
• More ways to get involved: Attend online, attend F2F, present a session, host an event, share the event with colleagues… Whatever your comfort level, there are a slew of ways for you to join in the fun!

Fourteen Face 2 Face events already, up to 23 sessions to attend, and every single session LIVE streamed out… This is looking to be the best Virtual Conference yet!!

And what’s the cost for this incredible day?? FREE. And as I mentioned, if you choose to host a F2F event, we’ll even spring for lunch!

As always, while costumes aren’t required, they are certainly encouraged. I wouldn’t be surprised if we even had some giveaways in the ol’ prize closet for the best costumes of the day! Bonus points for incorporating a Discovery theme

So what are you waiting for? Visit http://lanyrd.com/2012/denvirtcon/ to register!

And while you’re there, check out where the F2F events will be, considering hosting your own or submitting a presentation proposal, and SHARE it out with your colleagues!

Welcome back to school! I hope everyone had a great summer and was able to relax and recharge. Our district starts with teacher professional development and classroom setup this coming Thursday, K-9 start next Tuesday, and 10-12 start Wednesday. The summer has flown by!

The beginning of the year is always a little crazy for all teachers. Getting your room setup, implementing new ideas into your lesson plans, getting to know your students, and just settling back in to the routine can be busy and stressful. Remember to not over do it and take time for yourself.

One thing I've done that helps me is I've created a check list of everything I have to do when school starts, including setting up my room (computer, bulletin boards, etc), things I want to post in my room, lesson ideas and more in Evernote. I modify it each year, adding new things for the following year.

Here are some more tips, resources, and help to get your school year started on a positive note, and keep it that way.

Advice to New College Graduates about to enter the Teaching profession

Summary of new teacher tips, urban schools issues, technology resources

My Favorite Resources for Teachers and Students

Evernote for Education Resources - the ultimate note taking, web clipping, lesson planning resource

Create a Personal Learning Network - a PLN is an excellent resource for help, advice, and sharing ideas.

Google for Educators - Google has a huge number of free resources for teachers and students. Check them all out (they're all free).

Overview of some free technology that can help you be more organized and efficient.

Good luck and I hope everyone has a great school year!!

If This Then That is a very cool site I learned about last Friday at EdCampCT. It allows you to create "recipes" that will automate actions online for you. For example, you could have one that will automatically download a photo that you were tagged in on Facebook to your Dropbox account.

It's easy to use with step-by-step instructions and plenty of pre-made recipes that you can use. Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, email are all "channels" that can be used in your recipes. One example given is to automatically save your Tweets to an Evernote notebook. You select the trigger that will force an action.

There are also shared recipes that you can use and personalize that make it easy to get started.

Here's an example of a personal recipe using channels, triggers, and actions:

There is a blog with information and updates,

This is a great tool to save time and effort on your part and make things more efficient. I can see it being used to document and collect certain Tweets based on topics/@'s and hashtags, Facebook posts, websites and the like, archive certain emails based on subject or content, automatically collecting materials to use in class, automatically collecting student work, easily creating student e-portfolios by collecting all of their material and related work, and much more. It's one of those sites that has a lot of potential for educators.

I'm working on some recipes of my own and will be using this with Evernote this year to collect resources and student work into my Evernote notebooks.

This past Friday I attended EdcampCT and had a great time learning, sharing, and meeting new people. I facilitated a discussion about Evernote and one of the questions I got was "why not just use Google Docs for notetaking?" I went on to explain all the features of Evernote but wanted to expand on it a bit.

Evernote is my way of organizing lesson plans, lesson resources, notes, web clippings, and more. I can share my notes with others, like colleagues or students, and I love how things are organized by notebooks and with tags. Evernote can also search handwriting and text in photos and easily clips and organizes things from the web.

Google Docs I use for writing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. I can search and organize all of my files and share them too. I use Google's other apps for email, calendar, and more. I use a mix of Google Bookmarks and Evernote to bookmark websites depending on what I am going to use them for.

I see them as too completely different tools and when used together prove a powerful combination of resources for students and teachers alike. Evernote is better for note taking and organizing resources while Google Docs is for creating final products.

How do you use them? What other tools do you use for similar things?

Related:

Evernote for Education Resources

Google for Education Resources

I'm a huge user of Google's many apps and services. I use Sites, Blogger, Chrome, Chromebook, Android, Search, Reader, Calendar, Gmail, Tasks, and much more. While I have shortcuts on my new tab page in Chrome and on my Chromebook, I can't fit all of them on one page. iGoogle is also being shutdown so I won't have that either. But, I just found out about a new Chrome browser extension that is even better from Chrome Story. Black Menu.

Black Menu is an extension for Google Chrome Browser that is awesome! It installs into your browser and gives you instant access to all of Google's apps and tools, including Google+, Calendar, Tasks, Maps, Play and more.

Just click on the extension and it brings up the menu shown above. The image above shows all the choices for Google search, including web, videos, shopping, patents, flights, images and more. Easy one-stop search.

Clicking on Google+ gives you links to all of the menu choices of Google+ including your profile, circles, hangouts and more. That's how Black Menu works. It puts all of the links and menu choices you need in one place. All of your Gmail labels, recent Docs in Drive, along with folder and other access.

The best feature, for me at least, is with Calendar and Tasks. When you hover your cursor over the Calendar tab, it shows a live calendar, with your appointments for the day, and the first part of your task list.

Black Menu is a great, powerful, resource that makes accessing your Google apps and tools easier, faster, and more convenient. It can also save time. No need to have tons of tabs open with all of your apps. Just click on this and go.

I highly recommend this to anyone who uses Google.

Related:

Google for Education Resources

Why, and How, I use Google's many Apps and Tools as an Educator

Twitter is a great resource for education. Educators can learn, share, collaborate, find help and have some great discussions. It is my go-to source when looking for help, advice, tips, tools, and resources for education.

A hash tag is a way of sorting and searching Tweets based on topic. There are tons of great educational hash tags, including #edchat, #edtech, #scichat, and more. Many of these hash tags relate to a scheduled conversation, such as #edchat being every Tuesday at 12 noon and 7pm ET, and are also used as a way to find educational resources.

William Chamberlain, author of "At the Teacher's Desk" blog, has posted that he has created a new educational hash tag, #EdStuff: "I have created the #EdStuff tag for people that want to post ed stuff, but don't want to tag it with the the chat based tags such as #edchat or #fifthchat. Feel free to use it as you will, for it is good for all ed stuff!"

This is another great way to use Twitter to find, share, collaborate, and learn.

Related:

Twitter for Education - great resource and some hashtags

Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Email, Google+ - why/when I use each one

Social Media in Education - connect, share, learn, communicate and more

Discovery Education has a lot of great resources for educators, many free (over 30). They also have fee-based services such as DE Streaming with thousands of videos, audio files, images, lesson plans, and much more.

The Discovery Education Science Techbook is more than a digital textbook. "It’s a different way of thinking. Thinking outside the box, perhaps. Or more appropriately, thinking outside the book." "The Techbook not only provides awesome content aligned to each state’s standards (there are currently Science Techbooks available for most grades K-8 in 30 states across the U.S.), but includes a model lesson for teachers to use with every concept, assessment questions for each standard, a teacher’s guide, and DVDs for when the Internet is not available. Resources such as the virtual labs, reading passages, video segments, science sleuths, explorations, and interactive glossary, etc., are packaged together to follow the five E model of instruction. Teachers have found an easier and creative way to build lessons using technology resources and content, as well as differentiating their classroom."

They have just announced Techbook 2.0 is available. This is an update to the Techbook based on feedback and suggestions from educators, including a group of well known and well respected educators who reviewed Techbook at a summit Discovery Education hosted. You can Register to attend a webinar to learn about the new layout, features, and enhancements.

links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Related:

25 Free Resources from Discovery Education

Discovery Education’s Science Techbook: Scientific Explanations in Action

What I Want from a Digital Textbook

TechBook Extravaganza

Apple Announces iBooks2 E-Textbooks - my initial thoughts

What I use with Physics classes instead of textbook

Resources to Replace Textbooks

Free Textbooks - online, download, iPad, Kindle

KanBan2Go is a free productivity and organizing app I learned about from Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers. kanban2go is a visual, online task management service. It's simple and easy to use and accessible online from computer, tablet or smartphone (mobile site, not app).

There is a To Do list that is where you put the tasks in the order of priority. The In Progress board is for the tasks that you are actively working on and the Done board is for the completed tasks. This is all done in a visual manner instead of just text and priority codes.

You can collaborate with others on the tasks and sync your tasks with Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, Evernote and share your boards through email or on Twitter. This is a great resource for teachers, administrators, and students to use to organize themselves and to do collaborative planning on projects.

Here's a video about kanban2go:

Kanban is a Japanese word that means billboard. Companies use Kanban boards to organize, communicate, prioritize and manage what they do. United Technologies uses Kanban's as part of it's ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence) program and I used it when I worked at Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky. Using Kanban's allowed us to work more efficiently, be better organized, let everyone know what was going on and where, and keep things working. We also used Kanban cards to create efficient workflows of parts, supplies, and materials throughout the plant.

This method can also be used in education - label things, create boards that communicate better to staff and students, and much more.

You can read more about Kanban here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

Education and Personal Kanban it’s a Win Win Situation

It's also part of Kaizen, "continuous improvement" which is another thing schools could use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

Related:

Business/Manufacturing ideas applied to education

Apply Business Practices to Education - great ideas that can help education

5 Tips for Success - in school, business and in life

Getting Students and Teachers Organized - tips and resources

Evernote for Education Resources

Google Calendar for Educators

Shelly Blake-Plock is the creator of the blog "TeachPaperless." It was one of the first education blogs I found and started reading years ago and was one of the ones that convinced me that I should start my own blog. His blog was not limited to articles on going paperless, but rather had articles about thinking outside the box as an educator and doing different things with your students. I took many of his ideas and integrated them into my classes.

A couple of years ago Shelly asked me to contribute to his blog and I did write some articles for it. It was a great way to get more exposure for myself and my ideas.

TeachPaperless had great articles, and great conversations in the comments sections. I learned and expanding my thinking because of this blog.

Last Friday, Shelly posted that he was shutting down TeachPaperless and there would be no more postings. The site is still available for viewing, http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/ and I highly recommend that people go there and read some of the great articles that are there.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Shelly for his excellent blog, his excellent writings and ideas, and for helping me start as a blogger and for helping me thinking differently about how to help my students do well in school and teach them in new ways. Good luck to him in his future endeavors!

Related:

What I learned this year.

Some more tips for going paperless

Paper, we don't need no paper! Tools and tips for going paperless

Unfettered by Stuff - or "Why I don't lug stuff home every night"

Edcamp is a great series of free, unconferences for educators. The Edcamp model is unique in that attendees set the agenda the morning of the conference and the sessions are not led by one person, but are rather a collaboration of both the facilitator and attendees. It is a great way to learn, share, and connect with other educators.

EdCamp is coming back to Connecticut this summer. EdCampCT will be held August 10th, 2012. You can register here. (remember, it's FREE!). It will be held at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, CT again, which is an absolutely beautiful school.

I attended the first EdCampCT last year and it was awesome. It is so nice to be able to learn about topics you want to learn about in a relaxed, discussion format. It's also nice to know that if you find a session doesn't meet your needs, you can just get up and go to another one and no one's feelings are hurt because that is the model. I learned and shared my knowledge with others. It was a great day.

If you haven't been to an EdCamp yet, you need to get to one! See the related link below for more information about other upcoming EdCamps near you.

Related:

Edcamp - teacher run, awesome, free educational conferences

Technology is a wonderful thing. I've been lucky in that my father, a chemist, and my mother, an elementary teacher, both realized that my siblings and I should be exposed to technology early on. I was using a TRS-80 computer in 7th grade (1986-87) and my parents bought us a Radio Shack Color Computer that same year. I took BASIC in high school, using Apple IIe's and then went off to college and majored in Engineering and was an Engineer for 10 years before becoming an educator. I used technology all the time. I started using a PDA in 2000 (Palm IIIxe) and continued on to other PDAs and now smartphones. This early and deep exposure to technology has made it very easy for me to integrate technology into my practice as an educator.

I rarely carry anything home from school because of these tech tools. Administrators ask to see my lesson plans and they are all on the computer. Another teacher asked me how I do this, so after showing them, I thought I'd share it with my readers.

I use a few different tech tools to organize my lessons and resources for school and use a variety of tech tools on a daily basis. Here is the list, with what I use them for. Click the hyperlinks for more information and details on the tool and how to use it.

1. Evernote - Evernote is my main lesson and resource organizational tool. I have notebooks setup for lesson plans and lesson resources, along with notebooks for things to do, things to research, and things to share. My lesson plan notes are set up by unit and have the objectives, links, resources, and attached files (like handouts and lab packets). I also have notes setup by week that I use to keep track of where each class is and to schedule my plans out. I can easily share resources and information with my students or colleagues.

2. Dropbox - I don't have every single file I use for my lessons on Evernote. Some of the materials, including videos and animations, are too big to upload to Evernote. I have all of my files on my home computer backed up to Dropbox, and then I sync the "School" folder to my school computer. This folder has resources, lecture materials, videos, and much more for each unit. I can also put files into a shared folder and share them with my students and colleagues. I also have students submit work to me to a Dropbox folder using Filestork and DropItToMe.

3. Google - Google is my other main organizational tool. I use iGoogle, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Docs and Blogger to organize my lesson materials and other resources, including my calendar. I use Blogger to create class blogs where I post their lesson schedule, assignments, and due dates, along with resources and links. I can share my calendar with students also. I also have files uploaded to my Google Docs account and use Google Docs to create lesson resources. I can then share or publish these documents, presentations, or spreadsheets for my students or colleagues to use. I also use Google sites for a class site that includes resources, files and links for both the students and myself.

Google for Educators - Resources for using Google in school

4. PowerPoint - I started organizing my lessons with PowerPoints when I used more lecture in my classrooms. I've moved to about 75% student centered learning now with projects, labs, and activities but PowerPoint can be used to organize lessons. Objectives, lecture slides, links to labs and other resources, embedded videos, and much more. I could just mark in my calendar what slide a class was on. That slide may be lecture notes, an assignment, a lab, or a quiz. I don't use this much anymore because I have my lesson plans organized in Evernote.

These are just some ways to organize your lesson plans and resources.

Other tech tools to organize lessons:

Learnboost-online gradebook and lesson planner - announces lesson plan sharing

Discovery Education - lesson planner and integrated lesson planning in your account

Related Articles:

Unfettered by Stuff - or "Why I don't lug stuff home every night"

Evernote - Get Organized for Free on All Platforms

My History with Technology

What tools do you use to organize your lessons?

This week, Googleannounced that it was buying QuickOffice. QuickOffice is a mobile app that allows users to view, edit, and create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, including Microsoft Office files. It integrates with Google Docs™, Dropbox, Evernote, Catch, Egnyte, Huddle™, Box, SugarSync, and MobileMe™, allowing you to access and work with your files on your mobile device.

Google will be integrating QuickOffice into Google Apps. I'm assuming we are going to see Google using QuickOffice in Google Drive to allow more seemless access to files other than Google Docs files. You can store any files on Google Drive, but office files have to be converted to Docs formats before editing. If Google integrates QuickOffice into Drive that will not be a problem. I can currently access my Google Drive files I'm also going to assume that Google will integrate QuickOffice into Google+, since they are integrating most of their apps with Google+. This could also give Chromebooks a better offline system for handling office files.

Google Docs doesn't work great on iOS (yet) but QuickOffice does. This could be a great boon for iOS users.

The announcement from Google also states that they will continue to support QuickOffice as it exists now, which makes people like me very happy. QuickOffice, along with Google Apps and Evernote, are my main apps that I use on my smart phone to get work done anywhere.

Related:

QuickOffice - essential app for mobile devices

Google for Education Resources

Google Drive is here! Really! No, I mean it. Free online storage.

Android for Education resources and apps

Essential Apps and Installs for Windows, Chrome, Android

eduClipper is a new app coming from EduTecher Adam Bellow that I wrote about last month. eduClipper is in sign up mode now and promises to provide a way to clip anything from the web and then share it with anyone.

It's free and allows you to clip and capture anything from the web including articles, links, videos, lesson plans and more. You then create a clipboard to organize what you have clipped and then you can share the clipboards with students, colleagues, the public or just keep it for yourself. Students can use it too and the clipboards are searchable. You can also share your clipboards via different social networks.

Adam has a nice YouTube video that describes eduClipper in more detail:

Knowing Adam, this will be a great resource for educators and students.

Sign up to be notified when it's ready to go.

Related:

EduTecher - explore and share educational web tools

Nature Works Everywhere is a great, free site from The Nature Conservancy and Discovery Education. The site has resources to help learn about how nature works and the fact that nature is a factory, making many of the things we need.

There is an interactive online game that helps students discover the connections between everyday items and nature's resources, interactive lesson plans about topics like pollinators, forestry, coastal erosion and more, videos about how nature works to benefit us and how we can preserve nature, and a section about scientists working to preserve nature and keep it productive. There are even some virtual field trips.

Check it out and share it with your colleagues: http://www.natureworkseverywhere.org/

Related:

Tons of Great Resources from Discovery Education

Great Resources from Discovery Education

Turfmutt - environmental lessons and resources

Science of Everyday Life

Explore the Blue - lessons about water for all subjects

ISTE (International Society of Technology in Education) puts on a great, huge, educational conference each year. I was lucky enough to attend ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia last year (thanks to winning a Discovery Education contest that paid for it for me) and had a great time, learning, sharing, and connecting with educators from around the world. Philadelphia is also a great town!

Attending ISTE is a great experience for any educator, but can be a tad expensive. Travel costs, meals and expenses, hotel, conference fee, etc. I was lucky enough to get my paid for by Discovery Education. Beth Still (@bethstill), a great educator that's part of my PLN thought every teacher should have a chance to attend the ISTE Conference. Back in 2008, when it was the NECC conference, she decided to see if she could use Twitter to help raise $1500 to send a teacher to the conference. It worked! And she's doing it again.

This year's ISTE Newbie is Jerry Blumengarten, better known on Twitter as @cybraryman1, who has an incredible website (http://cybraryman.com/) with thousands of great resources for educators (500 pages and 30,000 links). He's very active on Twitter, helping with various educational chats and also helping teachers out with resources and ideas. He's also a nice guy. His generosity to other educators is incredible.

So, let's help send Jerry to ISTE 2012 in San Diego this summer. You can go to the ISTE12 Newbie Site to donate. As of 9am today, over $700 had already been raised towards the $2000 goal! I donated because I think its a great idea and cause, and I think that Jerry truly deserves it.

https://sites.google.com/site/istenewbieproject/

Related:

ISTE 2011 A great experience!

ISTE Session Review - Extreme Web 2.0 Makeover by Steve Dembo

Today Google is announcing a new tool in search: The Knowledge Graph. It will be phased in over the next few days for all users. The Knowledge Graph adds new results to your search. You will see panels on the right side of the search results page with additional, factual, information about the search topic. This will have more relevant, factual information about your search (like historical, biographical, news, etc.) and list related topics. Google will also have you clarify exactly what you are looking for to help you better find what you need.

From Google Official Blog:

The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.

Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.

This is a huge improvement in searching and can help teachers and student find better results and better information in their searches.

Here's a video describing it in detail:

Source:Google Official Blog

Related:

Google for Educators Resources

Last night was the DENny Awards 2012, the annual awards where the Discovery Educator Network and Discovery Education honor DEN members for their efforts throughout the years. It's the Oscars for us. In fact, the Discovery Education employees that ran the event were wearing tuxedo t-shirts!

You can view the entire thing, which was live streamed from Discovery Education HQ last night, below:

You can also check out some of the tweets from last night #DENnyawards.

I was honored to have won a DENny for "PL DEN", a play on PLN (personal learning network), for my work sharing and connecting with other educators about Discovery Education resources on social media and the DEN blog for the CT Leadership Council. I according to DEN, I've tweeted over 132 times sharing Discovery Ed resources and posted over 100 blog posts on the DEN Blog.

(I was also honored last year with a DENny for my contributions to the DEN blog. I'm truly humbled by the awards).

Connecticut had a good showing last night, with Howard Gunther winning a DENny for Best DEN Event for the SCICon Event held at the Mark Twain house and Joe Fromme, the CT Leadership Council's fearless leader, winning a DENny for Leadership. Lynn Reedy and I were also finalists to be DEN Guru's this year and, while we weren't selected, were both honored to be part of such a distinguished group of educators that were the 12 finalists.

It was a fun event and I love the people in the DEN and from Discovery Education that I get to work with.

Discovery Education and the Discovery Educator Network do so much for educators and education. They are a dedicated group of educators and professionals that work to support educators in their job of educating our youth.

Why don't you join the Discovery Educator Network and become a STAR Educator!

More about the Discovery Educator Network: http://community.discoveryeducation.com/about.cfm

Google Search Education is another great educational resource from Google. The site has lesson plans and even live training to help students, and teachers, learn how to search for academic sources, as well as develop critical and independent thinking skills. Students will be able to become skilled searchers and be able to analyze and critique the search results.

The lesson plans are a great resource for teachers to use in their classroom to help their students search better. The live training sessions are also archived so that you can watch them at any time.

Effective internet searching is a critical skill for our students to have.

Related:

10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

Google for Education Resources - tips, apps, how-to's, getting started, lesson ideas, and more

10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

Cross posted atEducational Technology Guy and viaTwitter.

David Andrade is a Physics Teacher and Educational Technology Specialist in Connecticut. He is the author of theEducational Technology Guy blog, where he reviews free educational technology resources for teachers, discusses ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning, and discusses other issues in education.
He is also a professional development trainer and presenter at conferences, helping educators learn new and innovative ways to educate students. He is also a Discovery Education STAR Educator and member of the CT DEN Leadership Council. Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of his employer.

instaGrok is a interesting site I just learned about. instaGrok's tagline is "A New Way to Learn" and they define "grok (v): to understand thoroughly and intuitively".

instaGrok is a type of search engine that finds educational content and retrieves it in multiple formats, including web pages, images, videos and even forums. It filters out non-educational content and profanity, uses crowd sourcing to rate the quality of each search result, displays search results according to grade level difficulty, provides source notes, visualizes concepts in an interactive concept map, updates the concept map as you refine your topic. It also allows curation and tracking of your websites, concepts, student activities, and can generate multiple-choice questions from the search results. Students can use it to create editable research journals ("groks") and the groks will be populated with websites visited and the concepts covered. Teachers can review the students' groks and add comments.

Here's an instaGrok search for "Heat Capacity". The search results are shown in the concept map, and as you click on each circle, it opens up more results. The right side menu has key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes, and concepts. In less than 5 seconds, I have an incredible amount of information and resources on heat capacity that I can use with my students. Students can quickly do searches and find relevant information and resources on any topic.

Here's a summary of features and results:

It's a very cool way to do research and curate and share the results.

instaGrok: http://www.instagrok.com/

Screen Recording is a very handy tool to have. You can use it to create presentations, help sessions, and more. I've used them to create review sessions for students, as well as presentation videos and even live, remote presentations.

Here are five, free screen recording apps and services:

Screencast-o-Matic is an online, easy-to-use, screen recorder that works in your browser with no download required. It works for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The free version gets you 15 min record time, upload to YouTube, and export to a variety of video formats. While the 15 min time limit may seem an issue, I've found for most things that is long enough. You can also purchase a Pro version for $9 / year that increases your record time to 60 min.

To use it, you simply click "start recording". It then loads a Java app and you can record your screen.

Screenr is a free, web-based screen recorder that let's you easily make a screen cast recording of what you are doing on your computer. This is a great way to create tutorials, lessons, and more. It is completely web based so there is no software to download (it runs using Java).

You can create your own account or sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, Google or Yahoo account.

You simply click the record button, it then loads the recorder. Hit record and it gives you a countdown "3-2-1-Go!" and then starts recording. You can make recordings of up to 5 min long. The recordings can be embedded in blogs and sites too.

Pastevid is now Screenbird, a easy, free screen recording service that lets you quickly record your screen and share it with others. The free version does not even require a sign in. You can sign in with Google, Facebook or a Screenbird account if you want.

You can capture your entire screen or just part of it and it includes voice recording. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just go to the site and click "record now" or sign in.

The Basic (free version) includes YouTube integration, instant download, short links, and the ability to play on any device. There is a 30 min video, 150 min account limit and videos expire after 6 months. If you find that you really need more features, you can upgrade to premium for $10/month or $60/year.

ActivePresenter is a screencasting software that allows you to capture and publish what you did on your computer (similar to Camtasia).

The free version has some great features and export formats. It allows you to record your whole desktop, a specific window or a preset size window.

You can edit your recording afterwards using a timeline on the bottom of the screen to see ahead and behind the current view. You can insert things like annotations, voice overs, mouse clicks other videos and screenshots.

You can then export your project in different formats, including images, Video (AVI, WMV, MPEG4 and WebM) or Flash Video (FLV), PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a few other formats.

Present.me is a service that allows you to easily record your presentation with video and audio linked to the PowerPoint presentation. You upload your PowerPoint slides, and then present.me converts them to a web based file. Then, you go to the site, click record and present in front of your web cam, clicking your slides just like you normally would. Now you have a single file that has your slides, you, and your voice all linked. You can then share it with others, embed it, or just keep it for yourself.

This is great for recording review sessions or lectures or meetings, etc and then having them available for future review and viewing. It's easy to use and very useful.

Adobe Creative Cloud, Creative Suite 6 Deliver Professional Grade Features for Students and Educators

On Monday, April 23rd, Adobe announced Adobe Creative Cloud Student and Teacher Edition, and Creative Suite 6 Student and Teacher Edition for institutions, educators and students worldwide.

In addition to 14 new CS6 point products and four Creative Suites, Adobe is now delivering its first cloud offering for students and educators. Adobe Creative Cloud is a hub where students and educators can explore, share and deliver creative content using any of the Adobe Creative Suite 6 desktop applications, as well as new tools for HTML5 such as Adobe Muse™ and Adobe Edge Preview. By offering integration with Adobe Touch Apps, headlined by Photoshop® Touch, Adobe Creative Cloud enables new mobile workflows, from ideation to publishing, that bring the power of Adobe innovation to the classroom via iPad and Android tablets.

Prepare Students for Careers

With new capabilities designed to help students across all disciplines create stunning digital content that stands out, Adobe Creative Suite 6 gives students the ability to learn the skills needed in today’s competitive workforce:

Gain digital content creation skills across video, animations, 3D and photos with major updates to Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS6, Adobe After Effects ® CS6, and Adobe Audition® CS6. With the new Adobe Photoshop CS6, students can express themselves by leveraging the powerful new 3D and video editing tools for media they have captured across multiple devices.

Create on any device with Adobe Creative Cloud Connection which enables the syncing, sharing and storing of files from Adobe Touch Apps® for download and use with CS6 desktop products. For example, educators and students can work with a file in Photoshop Touch on iPad and use Adobe Creative Cloud Connect to sync and share that file on the desktop for refinement using Photoshop CS6.

Get noticed with multimedia-rich portfolios, websites and applications. InDesign CS6 extends its lead in digital publishing, streamlining the creation of multiple layouts from a single set of content, helping to deliver interactive campus publications for iPad, Kindle Fire and Android devices. Dreamweaver CS6 enables students to create high-impact school or personal websites.

Engage Students, Empower Faculty and Advance Teaching

The new Creative Suite 6 release gives faculty and students the tools to easily visualize, understand, and communicate information in creative ways across print, web, video, and mobile devices.

Create digital education content ranging from digital storytelling for history and languages, and gaming and animations for math, to data visualization in the sciences – all in a way that engages students and creates rich learning experiences. Adobe Creative Suite 6 provides the features and flexibility to produce interactive presentations and explore the boundaries of creativity and critical thinking.

Expand the delivery of education content with multi-screen publishing across multiple platforms and devices using HTML5 and the very latest standards for web, mobile, eBooks, and tablets.

Improve productivity and efficiency in the classroom with simplified workflows, speed and performance enhancements, and a new, more intuitive user interface across the CS6 product set.

Empower educators with ISTE-aligned curricula with the release of three newly-updated year-long, project based curriculums for graphic design and print production, web design and development, and video production. These curricula are available on the Adobe Education Exchange (http://edexchange.adobe.com), along with resources from the education community.

Certify industry-centric technical and communication skills with Adobe certifications. More than 300,000 students worldwide have been certified through the Adobe Certified Associate examination. With CS6, Adobe and CertiPort are offering new, updated curricula and certification for this major release. Educators and students can get certified for both entry-level skills as an Adobe Certified Associate (ACA), and professional-level skills as an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE).

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Creative Suite 6 products and Adobe Creative Cloud are scheduled to be available within 30 days. The Student and Teacher Edition of Adobe Creative Cloud is available for US$29.99/month. Volume licensing for Creative Cloud “team-ready” is available via the Adobe Transactional Licensing Program. More information on Adobe licensing can be found at: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/education/.

Adobe is also offering a new Adobe K-12 Enterprise Agreement designed for the needs of school districts in the United States and Canada. Customers can purchase Creative Suite 6 via Adobe.com and through select retail and online stores. More product information is available at: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html.

For more detailed information about educational upgrade policies and pricing, as well as the full portfolio of suites, please visit http://www.adobe.com/education.edu.html.

Related:

Adobe Digital School Collection - supporting creativity and digital literacy

Adobe Education Exchange - tips, training, help, resources, lesson ideas, community forum and more for using Adobe products in education.