This weekend, I was visiting friends in Maine and one of them was struggling with a PDF. This friend is a graduate student and most of her research (articles, chapters, etc.) is in PDF. Her research process has always involved printing each article and marking it up with a pen. As the research increases, so has her budget for printer ink until she has finally decided to explore paperless options. This is where I come in to the picture. She already uses Google Drive and Docs for much of her work, so it seemed logical to find a tool that fit in to that universe. We settled on Notable PDF, a Google Drive App. And it is awesome.
EdTech Review
VideoGrabby
Let’s start by saying we want people to give and receive credit where it is due and to abide by all copyright laws. Now that we are clear on that, let’s lay out the problem and our solution…. [Read More]
Code.org Review
Ryan Butler of Swift River Elementary School in the Belchertown Public School District wrote a Code.org review in follow-up to a LEGO Robotics session at TiE2015.
The TiE2015 Session “Introduction to Teaching Robotics” was led by Carmen Ferrara and used the LEGO Mindstorms robotics systems to demonstrate the ways teaching robotics can excite young people about STEM topics and can provide teachers an avenue for using hands-on, project-based lessons to introduce or reinforce many math, science, and applied physics concepts. During the session, the discussion of programming with LEGO and Code.org prompted Ryan to revisit the site and try the Hour of Code: Code with Anna and Elsa activity.
Thumbnail from Code.org Code Studio’s Hour of Code Frozen activity.
Here is an excerpt from Ryan’s insightful Code.org review:… [Read More]
Power Tools for Google Sheets
Technology doesn’t always make our lives easier, so when it saves you a full day of work, that is blog-worthy. The Power Tools Add-on for Google Sheets had me doing cartwheels around the office.
We used Power Tools to prepare some Sheets for our billing office. In years past, we have suffered through hours and sometimes days of tedious formatting in Sheets. Back then, I took the time to learn a few formulas that helped speed things up, but nothing made the process feel easy. Until Power Tools for Google Sheets.
Evaluating Ed Tech Tools: Our New System
During a recent workshop at CES, a participant asked us to develop a system for evaluating edtech tools. She said, all she wants is a simple red, yellow, green rating that was informed by a list of criteria. Based on her request, we have developed a system & are testing it on this blog (lucky you!).
Check back to see reviews of edtech tools. If you have any that you’d like us to evaluate, send them along!… [Read More]