Blog | edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on June 16

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:01:23 -0700

Are you putting together your toolkit of technology and lessons right now? A lot of great tools have been submitted to edshelf in the last week. Here are six notable additions that educators like yourself found particularly useful.

Tagul - A fan of Wordle? Here is a word cloud generator for those that want precise control. Clouds can even be shaped into symbols.

LastPass - How often have you or your students forgotten a password? Fix that right now with this popular password manager.

PressBooks - Need to create a PDF or online ebook? With this open-source service built on top of the WordPress blogging system, you can.

Sketchpad Explorer - Do you use of math manipulatives? This is a free iPad app with a fairly robust set of manipulatives, activities, and workbooks.

Green Screen Movie FX - Want to wow your students or colleagues with video special effects? Use this iPhone app’s green screen like a movie professional.

Puppet Pals 2 - A fan of the Puppet Pals app? Here is their encore, re-imagined and easier to use. It takes telling stories with digital puppets to the next level.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on June 9

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:25:48 -0700

For some of you, it is now summer break. Hurray! But what do you do about summer learning loss? Here are six notable tools added in the last week that can help your tech-savvy little ones. You can recommend these to your students’ parents or use them for your own kids.

Aftermath - Are you trying to curb your kids’ time on the web? Why not tell them they can surf the web after a few math problems? This Internet blocker offers that.

Recordium - How about recording some audio with your kids? With this iPhone/iPad app, you can even tag and add notes to specific parts of the audio file.

CodeShare - Teaching kids how to program is a hot topic. This website allows two or more people to share a screen full of code in real-time, perfect for remote tutors.

See.Touch.Learn. - Built specifically for special needs education, your kids could benefit from this iPad app’s easy-to-understand photographic flashcards.

FlipSnack - Do you have a packet of PDF filled with learning and assessments? You can turn those PDFs into an interactive online flipbook with this website.

Vesper - Finally, keep track of your kids summer learning with this new note-taking app. It has a simple visual design so you can take notes quickly.

Enjoy these new additions!

P. S. Here is a bonus. Elementary school teacher Glenda Stewart-Smith put together this great collection for parents: Math App Collection for Parents. Read her notes and find some math apps your kids can use.

What websites and apps do you recommend to parents? I would love to know!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Introducing two new types of Collection Widgets: List and Compact

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:13:00 -0700

It is always exciting to see someone using our Collection Widgets on their blog or website. As we saw our widgets spread through the wild, we realized we needed to offer you more versions of this widget to better fit your sites. So starting today, we now offer three types of our Collection Widget:

Full type - This is the default option that we have been offering. It is designed to fit a fairly wide space, such as a full blog post or web page, such as this Wikispaces page.

List type - Did you know you can add notes alongside each tool in your collection? Yup. And now you can display those notes on your widget! It is a great way to share more context about each tool, like you can see here on TeachThought.

Compact type - Would you prefer to embed your collection onto your blog as a slim sidebar widget? Now we can accommodate that too, as Mr. Boll has done.

How do you get these new types? When you fetch the embed code on a collection’s page, you will now see another customization option: Type. Just click on the radio button for the type you want: Full, List, or Compact. A thumbnail preview is provided to help you choose the type you need.

What do you think? Helpful? Want to see anything else from our Collection Widget? Let us know!

P. S. Use WordPress? Download and install our WordPress edshelf Widget plugin! It also supports these new types.

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on June 2

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 08:01:20 -0700

Technology done well makes life a little bit easier. Here are a set of mobile apps and websites that are done well. From creating web pages to videos to podcasts, these tools have your media creation needs covered. For historical and geographic lessons, those are covered too. And to round this list out, here is also an app for the safety of your students & children.

Tackk - A really easy way to create a single web page. No account needed and available for free. Good as an online bulletin board, poster, or announcement.

VideoScribe - Want to make one of those videos with an animated whiteboard illustration that is drawn while you talk? With this Windows & Mac app, you can.

Historypin - Here is a crowdsourced resource of historical events “pinned” against a map, from recent to ancient. Have students add an event or browse your city.

GeoGuessr - A simple yet addictive game. You are placed somewhere in the world with a Google Streets view and need to guess the location. Geography is fun!

PodOmatic - Do you or your students listen to podcasts? Do you publish a podcast for your classroom? Here is a global directory for your listening pleasure.

First Aid by American Red Cross - This is one of those apps you hope you don’t need, but when you do, are glad you have it.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Needles and Haystacks

Wed, 29 May 2013 08:01:20 -0700

Photo by James Lumb

Guest article by Steve Peha, Founder of Teaching That Makes Sense

From the mid-1960s to the late 1970s almost all classrooms where early reading instruction was taught used basal reading programs. As Diane McGuiness writes in Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us About How to Teach Reading: “Basal programs tend to be alike…. Most hedge their bets and include all possible ways to teach reading…. It is typical for the content and logic of the phonics lessons to mismatch the [books] and for everything to mismatch the spelling lessons.”

With new federal dollars pouring into the system through Title I and Title II of the ESEA, and much of that funding tagged for reading, basal publishers learned a smart lesson: more is better—at least when it comes to what can be charged for gargantuan reading programs.

But more is not necessarily better for teachers. In the same book, McGuiness notes of researcher Jean Chall’s work that, “One of Chall’s most important discoveries was that teachers tend to be eclectic. If teachers are asked, or decide, to change to a new program, they do not abandon old activities from programs they enjoyed teaching…. This can create a situation where elements from contradictory programs cancel each other out.”

The ballooning basals of yesteryear that caused confusion in early reading classrooms will be nothing, however, compared to the Hindenburg-sized explosion of teaching tools and technology that will descend from the Common Core.

We’ll have no shortage of teaching resources—or even resources that help us find teaching resources like edusearch engines enabled by the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative. But how will educators wade efficiently through the millions of options available to them? How will they separate the wheat from the chaff? The signal from the noise? How will a middle school teacher looking for the best way to teach expository essay writing find that needle-in-a-haystack unit she can trust to help her get the job done well?

The Common Core is a big deal. We’re all hoping it solves some big problems. But it might create a few problems, too. And the problem of efficient access to high-quality teaching resources might be one of the first that needs to be addressed.

Searching Google for “expository essay writing middle school” returns “about 652,000 results” but I only have to flip through the first five pages to find 50+ links (don’t forget the ads and related searches) that all seem promising at first click. I could imagine spending hours just evaluating this tip of the iceberg.

Life isn’t much better over at BetterLesson, a site devoted solely to educational resources, where my query returns but a mere 193,228 possibilities. At Curriki, I’m getting warmer (Or am I getting colder?) as my search yields but a scant 13,106 resources. And I don’t think this is even close to what life will be like circa 2015.

When it comes to educational resources, we don’t need more, we need best. But to get best, we need two things we don’t have yet: proof and provenance. First, we’re going to need to know how individual educational resources have been created and who created them. Then we’re going to need to know the extent to which resources were found to be “safe and effective.” For example, how many of the tens of thousands of expository essay lesson links I’ve unearthed will take me to teaching resources that have been tested successfully in tens of thousands of classrooms?

The “fewer, higher, clearer” goals of the Common Core, and the very fact of its commonness, augur well for a more consistent and complete educational experience for our kids. But the inevitable proliferation of resources could easily complicate things if instructional eclecticism entices teachers toward contradiction and away from common sense.

So how do we make sure this doesn’t happen? How do we create scalable systems that consistently and efficiently lead teachers to effective resources? For any single educational resource, I think we need several things in place. To help that middle school teacher find a great way to teach expository essay writing, I think we need something like the following:

A Specific Resource That Directly Addresses Teacher Needs. If teachers to teach expository essay writing, that’s what they want to teach. While supplementary material is almost always necessary, the initial resource should be something that is specific to the teaching-learning context. Here’s an example, with step-by-step instructions, of how teachers can use something called the What-Why-How™ strategy to help kids craft successful expository essays.

Directly Related Supplementary Resources. Supplementary materials often get out of hand. The last thing a teacher needs is a hundred pages of “enrichment” materials for a unit on expository essay writing. But a small set of directly related materials is often helpful and sometimes even necessary. Here’s a possible example.

Scientific Research That Supports the Resources. In this case, I can easily show that the What-Why-How strategy is well supported as an implementation of two research-proven learning techniques: “elaborative interrogation” and “self-explanation”. Those techniques, and the study that describes them, can be found here.

Reasonable Information About the Usage and Success of the Resources. The What-Why-How strategy has been in consistent public use for over 15 years. It has probably been downloaded half a million times, presented by someone in my company to more than 20,000 teachers during formal training, and used by thousands of teachers more all over the world. I have many anecdotal accounts of how the strategy has helped kids score well on tests that required expository essay writing. I also have a brief informal case study about general writing success across the curriculum at one school where the strategy was heavily used.

A Sense of How the Resources were Created. I created this resource by first teaching it in a variety of forms at many grade levels and in many subject areas. After tuning it up and putting it into its optimized final form over a two-year period, I trained other teachers to use it and followed their progress. Once I was satisfied that it could be used effectively without training from me, I put it up online and offered it for free to the general public for non-commercial use. This last issue is very important: these resources must be delivered such that they can be used without training or assistance from the people who create them. They must also be free.

Ideally, these things wouldn’t exist as a disparate set of PDF documents. Everything should be bundled together in an accessible format that users can easily modify. Other artifacts like flipped classroom videos, slide decks, or student sample work could be included as well.

The resources could be delivered in a standardized fashion like the experience of installing and using an application from an app store—with update notices. A plug-in model could work as well. Perhaps best of all, teachers could simply have their own places in the cloud where they could keep links to valued resources such that the resources could be updated so that any time teachers needed them they would always have the most up-to-date version.

A final component would be an obvious support and reputation management system. A wonderful model for this is the plug-in library on WordPress.org. Here, thousands of developers have registered tens of thousands WordPress tools. Information exists on versioning, reviews, support, installation, and a number of other crucial areas—all maintained in one easily searchable place. If you want something that works with WordPress, you need only go to one location to look for it.

All of these things can be done. I’ve just done many of them right here—albeit manually. And this is something I’ve been doing for 15 years with many teaching resources I’ve created. It’s not rocket science. But two essential things are involved: human curation and deep practice in the field. The majority of the resources—teaching materials or technology products—that teachers have access to today have no basis in science, no proven record of use in the field, no proof or provenance educators can rely on as they set about the challenging and often time-consuming work of finding what they need and implementing it successfully. Education resources are still, for the most part, human-created. But that’s a long way from human curated. Curation is vital because it creates things that are useful out of things that are not.

Finding high-quality teaching resources shouldn’t be like finding a needle in a haystack; it shouldn’t be like separating wheat from chaff or discerning signal from noise. Teachers should only find needles, they should only get wheat, and they should always hear the signal loud and clear. Anything less is a waste of valuable time, that of teachers and of students as well. And time is the most precious resource of all in education.

Steve Peha is the Founder of Teaching That Makes Sense, an education consultancy specializing in literacy, leadership, and school-wide change. Through his work and his website, he has delivered over 100 million pages of free, original, classroom-proven teaching materials to educators in over 120 countries. He recently spent 18 months working as a technical product owner on the Gates Foundation’s Shared Learning Infrastructure project. A former software entrepreneur, his dual interests in technology and education have inspired him to promote an idea he calls Agile Schools whereby he advocates for the application of Agile methods (Lean, Kanban, XP, Scrum, etc.) directly to classroom practice.

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on May 26

Mon, 27 May 2013 09:51:45 -0700

Sometimes you need a series of apps to get something done. All-in-one apps rarely are all-in-one, or end up being weak in all areas. Here are a set of apps that will enable you to get more done and engage your students & children in meaningful ways.

Memofon - If you are much faster at typing notes than dragging & dropping boxes on a screen, this website will create mind maps from your text.

WikiNodes - Speaking of mind maps, here is an iPad app that lets you view Wikipedia articles in a visual, mind map-like web of “nodes”.

SkyView - And speaking of different ways to view information, just raise this iPhone & iPad app towards the sky to view the constellations above you.

Video Star - Want to see more stars? This iPhone & iPad app will turn you and your students into video music stars. Shoot a video and add effects to complete it.

Screen Time - Media Time Manager - Are your kids spending too much time on your iPhone? Give them time allowances and manage their time with this app.

Instashare - And if your students have used their time wisely to create a great music video, transfer it easily to your Mac with this iOS-to-Mac app.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on May 19

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:01:35 -0700

We had an incredible number of tools added to edshelf this week. Wow! Thank you, you kind and generous members, for submitting so many great tools.

Here are six notable additions. The first three will help you search through and organize the wonderful world of open educational resources & materials. The latter three augment the real world with the power of mobile technologies.

Creative Commons Search - Search for anything with a Creative Commons license across sites like Flickr, Google, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.

KidRex - A filtered, kid-friendly search engine that sits on top of Google. They maintain their own database of inappropriate websites and keywords.

scrible - Annotate any web page by highlighting some text and leaving a sticky note with your comments. All highlights and notes are saved in the cloud.

SpectraRuler - An iPhone app that measures distance and height using… your shoe size? Challenge your students to do the same calculations this app does.

123D Sculpt - There’s an app for just about anything. This iPad app lets you sculpt a 3D model like a piece of clay, but without getting your hands dirty.

MagicPlan CSI - Have a lesson where your students are pretending they are detectives at a crime scene? This floor plan app will help them sketch out a room.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Google announces Google Play for Education

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:01:00 -0700

Photo by AnandTech

I just tuned into the Google I/O event after a friend mentioned one of their latest announcements, Google Play for Education.

This is awesome.

You are probably not surprised to hear this from a co-founder of a directory of curated tools for educators. I know how frustrated educators are with using technology that doesn’t work, while simultaneously trying to find technology that does work.

Google Play for Education is a curated app store that allows you to sort by grade level and subject. It only includes Android apps, I believe, though hopefully they’ll add Chrome apps too, since their Chromebooks are being adopted by schools fairly quickly. Android devices, not so much yet. But the Amplify tablet may change that.

A Google account is required to use this product. This means all of your students will require a Google account too. If you and your students already use Google products, then this should be a no-brainer. Google Play for Education will launch this fall.

It makes a lot of sense for Google to do this. And, about time too.

What does this mean for edshelf? I’m excited about this announcement because it further validates the need for a curated directory of tools for educators. I love that they’ve included grade level and subject filters too. We had those features from the very beginning because, in my humble opinion, they are obvious features to include.

In Google’s case, their directory is platform-specific and only includes Android (and Chrome?) apps, while edshelf is platform-agnostic. So the Apple iTunes App Store and Google Play for Education are complementary more than anything else.

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on May 12

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:01:08 -0700

A lot of great tools for educators were added this week, thanks to members like you. As always, it is a struggle to highlight just six. So this week, we decided to select a range of tools that you can get for free - because, hey, who doesn’t like free? Here are mathematical & literacy manipulatives, presentation & lesson plan aids, and study aids for students.

Geoboard - If you have ever used a physical geoboard, you will love this iPhone & iPad app. It is just as easy to use. Also available as a website.

PicLits - Create visual literature by dragging & dropping words over beautiful photos. One teacher uses this on her interactive whiteboard for Poetry Month.

Apparatus - In this Android app, you build simple mechanical structures to get one or more marbles to their goal. Features realistic graphics and physics.

Pixorial - Here’s an iPhone, iPad, and Android app that lets you take & edit videos with real-time effects & filters. Plus: teachers get 30GB free for one year!

Google Drawings - You probably already know about Google’s docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. Did you know they have a drawing tool as well?

Chem Pro - This one is for AP or General Chemistry students. Nine flashcard sets and ten of their 80 video lessons are free. Includes a periodic table too.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on May 5

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:01:13 -0700

Looking for more ways to engage your students? Here are a myriad of options, from providing rich, contextual feedback, to presenting your subject through images & experiences, to combining real-world events, examples & electronics.

121writing - A new way to provide essay feedback. Just highlight some text and record your comments verbally.

TinkerTags - This tool teaches programming to students like other services, but with a twist - students program real-world devices they can wear!

Historical Scene Investigation - Bring the fun of CSI to your social studies class. Let your students become detectives as they investigate historical events.

Visual.ly - Search this large database of infographics, or create one of your own using one of their templates.

Presentain - Allows anyone with a mobile device to follow along with your presentation, submit questions, and share slides on social media.

Color Uncovered & Sound Uncovered - Two free iPad apps from the children’s museum The Exploratorium that use beautiful visuals to explore color and sound.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on April 28

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:01:18 -0700

This week, we bring you three tools that supplement learning with game mechanics - including one that requires learners to physically get up and run around! - and three tools that aid instruction by making it easier to make, view, and share notes and social media messages.

Fetch! Lunch Rush - Need a new twist to those QR scavenger hunt games? This iPhone app uses augmented reality to turn the camera into a portal of fun.

tagboard - Are you a Twitter user and follow education-related hashtags like #edchat? Here is a service that consolidates them in a nice, visual format.

VideoNot.es - Ever wish you could annotate a video tutorial or lesson? With this free tool, you can. Bonus: you can save your notes in Google Drive too.

Conceptboard - Several tech admins just shared this with me (thanks!) Share multiple diagrams, documents, & links on a massive, scrollable online board.

XtraMath - Built by a non-profit, this online software helps students master basic math skills and provides progress reports to teachers & parents. Free, of course.

Math Evolve - In contrast to other flashcard-like math apps, this iPad/iPhone game teaches math in a challenging arcade-style environment.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

ISTE 2013, STEM, Blended Learning, MOOCs, and more

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:01:11 -0700

It has only been a week since launching our groups feature and there are already some interesting discussions taking place. I would like to take a moment to share a few of them.

Going to ISTE 2013? - Share your social media contact info here to connect with other attendees and grow your PLN!

Blended learning research - This thread has become a great repository of blended learning links. Check them out.

STEM in middle school? - Are you teaching STEM at your school? Want to follow best practices from others who are? Follow this topic.

How do you teach typing skills? - With computer literacy rising in importance, how do you teach your students to touch type?

Your opinion of MOOCs? - Definitely a hot topic nowadays. Do you think they are worth the hype?

How do you apply technology in your Primary Year Program? - Are you using ICT in your PYP? Share your experiences with others.

Instructional Design and Technology - Are you an instructional designer? Join this group and expand your network.

It is great to see so much activity happening already! As always, if there are ways we can improve, please let me know. Thanks!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on April 21

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:18:20 -0700

Whether you’re looking free educational materials or handy tools to help make your lessons more fun and engaging, you may find this week’s highlights helpful.

Digital Public Library of America - The U.S.’s first online-only library launched last week. It features historical documents and artifacts organized on a timeline.

MyHistro - Speaking of timelines, this tool creates timelines that can be animated, matched against a Google Map, and embedded onto your site.

Wonderopolis - Engage your students with answers to questions they wonder about, such as “What goes on inside a cocoon?” and “What is a jet stream?”

Grammaropolis - Learn the various parts of English through games, videos, stories, and quizzes using cartoony characters.

Story Wheel - This iPhone/iPad app combines storytelling with the game “telephone.” Each person gets a random picture that they must incorporate into the story.

GridMaths - If you’ve ever needed grid paper but didn’t have any, this free website can help. You or your students can use it to work through math problems.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Introducing a new feature: Groups!

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:42:39 -0700

We’ve been sitting in classrooms, shadowing district ICT/tech integrators and coordinators, watching teachers use edtech, running research surveys, and think we see some common patterns:

Many teachers feel they don’t get enough technical support
Many teachers have cited that this profession can be a lonely one
Many teachers don’t have time to go searching for technical solutions to every problem they encounter

With those in mind, we would like to introduce our latest feature: Groups!

As a member, you can create a new group, such as “High School English Teachers” or “ICT Professionals.” Then others can join your group and start topics such as “Best apps for behavioral management,” “What do I need to record video lessons?” or “How can I strengthen the wifi signal in my classroom?”

This is much like an online community or forum. It is meant to help you get qualitative information on education technology that a search on edshelf might not be able to answer. While we grow our database of websites, mobile apps, and desktop software, we know that sometimes the best sources of information are other educators like yourselves.

We only have barebones features right now. More will be added in the coming weeks.

What do you think? To start, introduce yourself to the rest of the community!

How to Find Good Educational Materials

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:01:26 -0700

Photo by hoyasmeg

I tried to add up all of the educational videos on services like YouTube EDU, YouTube for Schools, TED-Ed, Khan Academy, Teaching Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Education, PBS Teachers, and many, many more. I stopped around a billion. And that’s not including all the MOOCs out there.

I could do the same for lesson plans, digital textbooks, or research articles, oh my. However, I’m not a masochist. There are probably millions, nay, billions of such educational materials out there. Some are good, some are bad, all are floating around out there in the cloud.

How do you, as an educator, find exactly what you need?

You can use a generic search engine like Google Search, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Those are great places to start. But sometimes you need something that can dig deeper, something that can shake out more of the dirt to find the gems.

Here is a list of tools you can use. They range from education-specific search engines to content curation services, or a hybrid of the two. With these tools, hopefully you can find that perfect piece of content.

instaGrok - Behind instaGrok are some of the same powerful search algorithms that enable the popular search engines. But there’s an important distinction. instaGrok is displays only educational content, such as key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes, and more. This content can be filtered by difficulty level too.

Gooru - There’s also a powerful search engine of educational content behind Gooru. Find videos, interactive diagrams, websites, exams, textbooks, handouts, lessons, and slides for whatever topic you need, then organize them into collections you can share.

OER Commons - This is a vast repository of free Open Educational Resources. It does not include the intuitive search experience that instaGrok and Gooru offer, but it does contain a range of materials, such as activities, audio lectures, case studies, homework, lecture notes, and more.

CK-12 - You can also find OER content here, including articles, study guides, exercises, flash cards, and assessments. Then you can take your findings and create a free digital textbook for yourself and your students.

Boundless - Here’s another tool that searches through OER materials that they have curated and vetted, then lets you create a free digital textbook with your chosen content.

LearnZillion - If you’re using Common Core Standards, LearnZillion lets you search through their curated library of videos and lessons easily, each meticulously mapped to the CCS. Like the CCS, they currently only cover math and english language arts.

BetterLesson - Search through their library of teacher-created lesson plans and instructional resources. You’ll find various types of content here as well, such as presentations, videos, images, and more.

TeachersPayTeachers - There are all manner of educational materials here, created by teachers for teachers. Though most of the higher-quality materials cost money, there are a lot of free resources here too.

Google Books - Need to search through some books? Google’s Book Search is a great source, though like any book search engine, it is limited to the books that have been added to their database.

Google Scholar - Like Google’s Book Search, Google Scholar searches through academic papers, research studies, court opinions, and other scholarly literature that might not otherwise be found in a general web search.

Oh, and there’s one more. It doesn’t help in the search process, but can help once you’ve completed your research.

Papers - A bonus tool. Once you’ve found a bunch of articles you want to use, it can be a headache to manage them all. Papers is a downloadable app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows. You’ll have to store all of your documents in PDF form on your hard drive, though it includes a handy way to convert any web page into PDF. The mobile apps sync with the desktop app as well, so you can take your research with you. This app is on the pricier side, but has a loyal following from people who do a lot of research.

What tools do you use to help you find good educational materials?

Please advise Scenario:  20 various schools varied levels Task to do:  Record what I have done with mixed media stylus/image/movie clips and sync with calendar and cloud but can work offline. Desired abilities: Stylus input (like Noteshelf) Integrated with cloud (like ANote) but easier navigation. Here I am searching through all the articles I have curated and coming up with nothing... The answer is there😀 I am sure but I need help "seeing" it... Thanks in advance! Gabe from "edtechDJ"

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:28:00 -0700

Hi Gabe,

If you are looking for some kind of tool where learners can use mixed media items, here are some ideas:

HyperStudio - This is a downloadable program for Mac and Windows, so it can work offline. Students can drag & drop multimedia assets to create interactive collages. Their finished work can be shared on YouTube, Dropbox, etc. The one downside is that it is not cheap.
Biteslide - Has a similar premise and functionality as HyperStudio and all its multimedia goodness, but you need to be online to use it, as it is a website. Good thing is, it’s free!
Meograph - This is another online tool that allows for multimedia usage, with a twist. Items are placed against a timeline, which can be an aid in telling stories. Also, it’s free.

Are these along the lines of what you were thinking? If you had something else in mind, let me know and I can offer some more suggestions for inspiration. Hope this helps!

Highlights of latest tools added to edshelf on April 14

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:47:00 -0700

Science, electronics, programming, and math geeks will like this week’s highlights.

Eyes on the Solar System - If you don’t mind the need for a Java plugin, this free NASA tool lets you zoom around like a Google Maps for the solar system.

MaKey MaKey - A big hit on Kickstarter, this electronics kit turns learners of any age into inventors. Convert everyday items into touchpads for your computer.

Stencyl - Using an interface as easy as MIT Scratch, create games in Flash, HTML5, Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, or iPad with this tool.

Tynker - Another tool that uses an MIT Scratch-like interface, this one teaches children computer science and programming skills.

Sketchometry - Practice Euclidean geometry and function plotting with this website. Works on devices with web browsers, such as tablets and whiteboards.

Algebra Genie - A mobile gaming app that teaches algebraic topics, such as exponents, quadratic functions, logarithms, and more.

Enjoy these new additions!

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

The New Edtech Revolution

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:01:00 -0700

Photo by mortsan

Technology: 1) The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. 2) Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge.

Education Technology: The use of technology to improve education.

We are at the crest of a new revolution in education technology. Educators know this. If you’re not an educator, you’ve already seen it if you have school-aged children, seen an iPad at a friend’s house loaded with education apps, or heard of the Khan Academy.

This revolution is expanding exponentially. And that’s a good thing.

Once considered a niche market, it is now one of the top 5 “prominent technology trends expected to influence the consumer electronics industry in the years ahead,” according to the Consumer Electronics Association. That’s huge. Apple reported that 1.5 million iPads were in use by educational institutions and schools in January 2012 and Google announced that Google Apps for Education had more than 20 million users in October that same year. A prominent technology trend indeed.

To be fair, there has always been technology in education. Education technology is nothing new. Scantrons in the 1970s. Overhead projectors in the 1950s. Or even counting boards and abaci as far back as 300 BC.

But this latest revolution is different. How? It is made up of three characteristics:

Cloud
Digital
Mobile

I’ll explain in more detail.

Cloud

Remember playing Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand on an Apple II? Or looking through Microsoft Encarta on a CD-ROM? If you grew up in the 80s like me, you do. That’s Dark Ages now, compared to Minecraft, Mangahigh, and Wikipedia.

Education software is moving from the desktop to the cloud. This means the data, and oftentimes the applications themselves, can be accessed in a variety of devices: laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. All that is needed is an Internet connection. The software and data no longer need to reside on a CD-ROM or, gasp, floppy disk (anyone remember those?). They can be streamed to you from clusters of servers using cloud computing technologies.

This leap is huge. Without the need to purchase expensive desktop and network software, as well as their subsequent upgrades, schools can gain great cost savings.

This doesn’t mean schools will completely abandon the client/server model, however. Some network infrastructure may be necessary for sensitive data, such as student information systems - though modern SIS packages are also transitioning to the cloud.

In fact, UC Berkeley discovered that they will save $75M annually by switching their email and calendar providers to the cloud-based Google Apps for Education. Its competitor, Microsoft Office 365, has seen K-12 school districts save anywhere from $100k-400k annually in IT costs. That’s not chump change.

Another benefit: instantaneous updates. Since the software exists on remote servers that software developers control, they can push the latest and greatest features to you as soon as they are available. Not just functionality, but content as well. Is there an incorrect fact in that educational game your student is playing? The developer can fix that right away. Data can be fresh, real-time, and up-to-date.

Digital

Educational content, such as lesson plans, textbooks, and even lectures, are becoming digital. This allows content that is physically-bound, such as textbooks, or geographically-bound, such as classroom lectures, to reach wider audiences.

A lot has been written about digital textbooks. Advantages, disadvantages, and the complexity of the whole debate.

However, the outlook for digital textbooks appears positive. US Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged the nation to go digital. “Over the next few years, textbooks should be obsolete. The world is changing. This has to be where we go as a country.”

This is already happening. In a study by Bookboon, nearly 60% of college students polled prefer digital over paper textbooks. Pearson found comparable results; in their survey, 70% of college students and 58% of high school seniors use digital textbooks. Both numbers are up from the same study performed a year ago. And more than 60% believe digital textbooks will replace paper textbooks in the next five years.

Even Pearson’s CEO Peter Cohen says, “A seven-year-old textbook is kind of a silly idea. It just doesn’t make any sense in this day and age. Having printed instruction programs fixed in time doesn’t allow us to modify them so students get the most up-to-date work.”

A similar change is happening with classroom lectures. Although the flipped classroom model has been in use since the turn of the millennium, the much lauded, yet controversial Khan Academy has pushed the practice into the spotlight and may have played a part in its growth.

Educational videos are also a major component of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). This trend was embraced by a handful of notable universities and independent organizations such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX, all of whom are founded by professors from those same notable universities (Stanford, Harvard, and MIT). So fervent is this trend that the New York Times called 2012 The Year of the MOOC.

Unlike digital textbooks, MOOCs aren’t performing as well. They’ve gotten fantastic enrollments, over a hundred thousand in a few cases. Unfortunately, pass rates are low. Some courses have reported anywhere from a 5% - 14% pass rate. It’s possible those numbers are skewed because the novelty of MOOCs is attracting a lot of onlookers, most participants don’t anticipate the difficulty of the courses, or they aren’t able to maintain a level of engagement that traditional classrooms can.

Supporters argue that MOOCs are free and provide students that with materials that they otherwise might not have been able to get because of geographic or socio-economic factors. As one educator says, MOOCs should “disregard the dropouts and celebrate giving huge numbers of people access to free, high-quality, education.”

Mobile

Where cloud computing and digital content enable edtech to be accessible on any device, mobility means devices can be accessible anywhere. Such as the classroom. A movement that’s been spreading across schools and universities is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).For cash-starved schools, this may represent real cost savings. Oak Hills Local School District saved $1.27M with their BYOD and virtual desktop program. Not bad. Others also report positive results, leading at least one educator to write a book on this movement.

There are benefits outside of the US as well. In countries like India, where there are more mobile phones than toilets, the availability of educational content can be life-altering to a family living in poverty. With this access, entire new worlds are open to them, even with minimal to no instruction.

Another movement that is gaining traction is the 1:1 movement, where schools roll out one computing device per student. Some pioneering schools, like Mid-Pacific Institute and others, are already sharing their best practices with others. Not all schools can afford such a luxury, but those that can are providing valuable lessons that others will be able to adopt later.

With the eager help of corporations like Google and Apple, devices are proliferating in classrooms. Google reports more than 500 US school districts using 1:1 Google Chromebooks and Apple cites about 1.5M iPads currently in use at educational institutions and schools. Ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle are also gaining a presence. All of this still represents a small fraction of the schools and universities in the US, but it is trending upwards.

The new edtech

Previous generations of edtech were none of these three. I’ve never tried to put an overhead projector in my pocket, but I have a feeling it would be difficult. And I’ve already touched upon the client/server model and CD-ROMs, both of which are characteristics of the previous edtech revolution.

This new revolution is about portability and accessibility. It is about ubiquity, or close to it. There are still questions about access. The digital divide, no matter how you define it, is very real and very troubling. But a Khan Academy video is still a step easier to access than a CD-ROM. We are at least heading in the right direction. And that’s a good thing.

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf

Great survey results today - thank you for sharing with #education! Have a wonderful day!

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:57:07 -0700

Thanks! I’m glad you liked this! :)

The Top Edtech Frustrations of Educators

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:01:00 -0700

We recently ran a survey to find out which technologies are currently used in education and which technologies are most in demand. The goal was to identify gaps in what educators need vs what educators have. The results were very enlightening.

A few thousand of you responded. The majority of the respondents were public K-12 school teachers. The second largest group were university educators from both public and private universities.

We coupled these results with search data from edshelf. Like Google, searches taking place on edshelf are a good indicator of demand. They represent what you are seeking.

Hopefully this information is useful to aspiring edtech entrepreneurs who want to create something to help educators. Education is a field that deserves attention. It is the foundation of the future. Technology, as a tool, can have a significant impact - as long as it is the right tool that solves a real problem effectively.

Now onto the survey results. Note: respondents were able to make multiple selections, so the percentages do not total to 100%.

Which subjects do you cover using technology?

Language skills (literacy, linguistics, grammar, etc) - 49%
Math (algebra, calculus, etc) - 46%
Sciences (biology, physics, medicine, etc) - 43%
Civics (social studies, history, law, etc) - 37%

These happen to match the most popular subject searches on edshelf fairly well:

Language Arts - 22% of all searches
Math - 21% of all searches
Science - 9% of all searches
Art - 6% of all searches

We expected math and science to be on top because they are so closely tied to technology. But they make sense. Language skills are critical and technology is a good language learning tool.

How do you find out about new apps, websites, and programs, (other than edshelf of course)?

Online communities (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc) - 81%
Blogs - 74.6%
Word of mouth - 74.3%

We were surprised that word of mouth wasn’t at the top of the list, but it makes sense when you investigate further. Teaching can be a lonely profession and many educators use social media to connect with peers and extend their network. And since social media gives you access to people outside of your existing social circle, the likelihood of discovering new ideas and tools is high.

Which technologies do you wish you had?

Tablets - 51%
Mobile devices - 31%

The top choice here matches the most popular platform searches on edshelf:

iPads - 47% of all searches
Websites - 29% of all searches

Sadly for Google, Android is way down on the list (4% for Android tablets, 3% for Android phones). Will the Android-based Amplify Tablet change that? We’ll see. What we do know is there is a growing demand for tablet and mobile devices in classrooms.

Which tasks do you wish were easier than they are right now?

Assessing and grading students - 39%
Creating and/or watching videos - 32%
Assessing and evaluating yourself and/or other educators - 31%
Creating and/or reading textbooks, storybooks, etc - 28%
Creating and/or using lesson plans - 27%

These answers become really interesting when paired with the top categories of tools that educators use, which can act as a proxy for tasks. Note: percentages are of the top 10 categories used.

Game-based learning - 19%
Language learning - 13%
Study aids - 12%
Video content - 10%
Publishing - 10%

It makes sense that video content and publishing tools are highly used. You are looking for videos to aid in your instruction, as well as tools to help you create ebooks, digital documents, etc. Study aids can also be used with lesson plans, though searches for lesson plan creators is more frequent than for lesson plans themselves.

What is particularly interesting are the frustrations with “assessing and grading students,” and “assessing and evaluating yourself and/or other educators.” In both cases, tools exist. There are a lot of student assessment and grading tools, as well as teacher evaluation and professional development tools out there. We don’t even see the terms “assess,” “grading,” or “evaluation” appearing in our searches.

Why is that? We have a few conclusions:

There is a discovery gap. Solutions exist, but the solutions have not been discovered by the general education community yet.
There is no demand for new solutions because existing ones are good enough. That doesn’t mean there’s no room for a disruptive new solution though.
Educators aren’t thinking of technology when thinking about these problems. Grading and assessing students conjures up images of stacks of ungraded papers (ugh). Peer evaluations conjure up images of paper forms, face-to-face conversations, or, in some cases, anxiety and fear.

For teacher evaluations, the answer seems to be a discovery gap. This is a new category of edtech and there are only a handful of choices out there. For example, if you want to do record yourself on video so colleagues and coaches can give you feedback, you have two options: SmarterCookie and Edthena.

For student assessment and grading, options abound. Some services are new, but most have been around for some time. There are some exciting new categories within student assessments, such as clickers like Socrative, GoSoapBox, and InfuseLearning, but traditional gradebook software has been bundled with large learning management systems. So it’s possible that existing solutions seem good enough.

But are they? Every time we visit a school, we hear complaints about their LMS software. Confusing to use. Can’t do this or that. Slow and breaks down often. Sounds like there’s room here for someone to change all of this. And thankfully, there are. A handful of up-and-coming edtech startups are trying to change this market, though no leaders have emerged yet.

What frustrates you the most about the technology that you use?

They don’t do exactly what I need - 36%
Tech support and access issues - 35%
Too many options; I don’t know what is best - 30%
Poor integration with other tools; lack of a single dashboard - 25%

This is an especially interesting question. We didn’t list the last three bullet points in the original survey. The vast majority of you typed in those answers by hand. They must really be frustrating!

We’re happy to say that “too many options; I don’t know what is best” and “tech support and access issues” are two problems edshelf aims to solve. #3 is what we’re doing right now and we are testing solutions for #2 with a handful of pilot schools and members too.

Your top frustration, “they don’t do exactly what I need,” is a loaded answer. It could mean many things:

None of the options are customizable enough to fit my students’ needs or my instructional style
I’ve tried many solutions and customizations, but none are good enough
There are too many choices out there, and the few I’ve examined aren’t good enough
I am unable to switch from the current unsatisfactory products I am using

This answer offers insight to many of the existing searches, such as video content, publishing tools, and study aids. To understand this issue further, let’s pull apart one example, video content. We’ve observed teachers looking for video content to fit their lessons, only to give up and go create their own. If you look at the entire universe of education videos, there are millions, perhaps billions out there. Chances are, the right videos already exist. But who has the time to search through that many?

One conclusion: there needs to be better search and curation for educational content such as this. Fortunately, there are a growing number of solutions, such as instaGrok, Gooru, LearnZillion, Teaching Channel, etc. This is a difficult problem and educators don’t feel that anyone has perfected the solution yet, but we’re hopeful.

Another conclusion: teaching is as much art as it is science. It needs to deal with a wide range of learning styles. Also, every classroom, every educator, every learner is different. For tools to be effective, they must be customizable and adaptable to multiple contexts and situations.

A third conclusion: if existing content is not good enough, then tools to create new content easily will be helpful. The key word here is “easily,” because there are a lot of alternatives. There are all manner of content creation tools, such as Google Docs, Prezi, Educreations, Edcanvas, Common Curriculum, etc.

We hear “they don’t do exactly what I need” echoed in the frustrations of LMS software too, which may have a negative halo effect on student assessment and grading tools. Since educators are frustrated with LMS software, they extend that frustration to all LMS features, such as student assessment and grading.

How about “poor integration with other tools; lack of a single dashboard?” Most LMS packages purport to be a one-stop-shop for educators. They offer a dashboard and many integrate with third-party tools. So why the frustration here? The dominant players, in your words, “suck.” Fortunately, there are a number of edtech startups that aim to replace the incumbents and give you a better experience, such as Schoology, Haiku, Chalkable, etc.

One last conclusion: maybe an LMS isn’t the solution. Maybe it will be an underlying network of interoperable APIs that shares data between disparate services seamlessly. Maybe the dashboard will simply be a view of the data, instead of a portal to all the tools and features you use. The non-profit inBloom seems perfectly poised to enable such a network, though there are concerns over their approach. Startups like LearnSprout and Clever may solve some pieces of this puzzle too.

To sum things up

Edtech in its current incarnation is still relatively young. It is a Wild West. Internet, cloud, and mobile technology is cheap enough now that almost anyone can create a cloud-based product. And many are doing so with similar ideals as edshelf: to make an impact on education.

We’re hopeful that tool creators, at least the ones that plan to stick around and grow, understand these issues and will work with educators and students to address them.

In any young industry, solutions aren’t yet perfect and opportunities abound. We’ve identified some of those gaps here so that aspiring edtech entrepreneurs can take the leap and build something wonderful. Education is the foundation of the future. If you do your homework (no pun intended), understand the needs of educators and learners, and solve real problems effectively, you’ll help us all in guaranteeing a bright future.

Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf