I've got to share about this awesome phone app that I recently found. It is an Android app called document scanner. It allows you to use you phone's camera to scan a document, edit it for clarity, and make it into a PDF file. Even better than that, you can then upload the file directly to your Google Docs, Dropbox, ever note or export to your SD card.
Why am I so excited about it? If I want to scan a document to project onto my interactive whiteboard at school, I have to take the document down to the library, hope no one is on the computer with the scanner attached, log in, start up the scanner, scan and save, then go back to my classroom to project the document. Way too much trouble! With this app,I can scan, edit, and send to my Google Docs and have it up on my screen in about 5 minutes! Excellent timesaver, and great for those last minute changes to lesson plans!
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
E Learning for Middle Grades Students
Having just completed my masters degree in a totally online distance education program has inspired me to think about how I could adapt and use e learning in my 6th grade classroom to push students to reach higher levels of learning. I began by checking out a variety of online learning management systems including Moodle, Udemy, and RCampus. Each of these are great, free tools to host online courses. Since I am working with sixth graders and facilitating an online course for the first time, I decided to try tools I am familiar with to start in the hopes of keeping it simple for myself and the students.
I ended up basically creating my own course management tool by using several other web 2.0 tools. The basic course is hosted on a Google Site. I used the site to post announcements and directions for students. As they complete each of the 5 lesson parts, there are links to the learning materials they need. I added to this, a discussion board where students are assigned to post comments on questions related to lesson topics. The discussion board is actually a blog on Blogger. I used ClassMarker to create an online graded quiz for each lesson. Finally I am trying out using Engrade to report scores to students.
The biggest dilemma in this adventure for me is making the online lessons easy to access and navigate through for students. I really would love to spend some more time with the course management programs to make things a bit more fluid and easily accessible for students and myself. So far things seem to be going well with how I have things set up.
You can check out my online learning site at: https://sites.google.com/site/rockstarsonline/
Once my students have finished the project, I will post my reflections and tips I learn through the process.
I ended up basically creating my own course management tool by using several other web 2.0 tools. The basic course is hosted on a Google Site. I used the site to post announcements and directions for students. As they complete each of the 5 lesson parts, there are links to the learning materials they need. I added to this, a discussion board where students are assigned to post comments on questions related to lesson topics. The discussion board is actually a blog on Blogger. I used ClassMarker to create an online graded quiz for each lesson. Finally I am trying out using Engrade to report scores to students.
The biggest dilemma in this adventure for me is making the online lessons easy to access and navigate through for students. I really would love to spend some more time with the course management programs to make things a bit more fluid and easily accessible for students and myself. So far things seem to be going well with how I have things set up.
You can check out my online learning site at: https://sites.google.com/site/rockstarsonline/
Once my students have finished the project, I will post my reflections and tips I learn through the process.
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