App Overkill: Going Beyond the Buzz Words #SXSWedu

App Overkill: Going Beyond the Buzz Words
SXSWedu 2017 Panel

• Jena Draper, CEO, CachOn Inc
• Carl Hooker, Director of Innovation & Digital Learning, Eanes ISD
• P.H. Mullen Jr., Arc Capital Development
• Adam Phyall, Director Technology & Media Services, Newton County School System, Covington GA

Oh oh! Mr. Hooker says this panel is going to include lots of interaction. This may impact my ability to take notes!

Freemium apps account for over 80% of apps and tools in schools today.

In the past finding tools was top down, but teachers are increasingly coming back from conferences or doing their own research and bringing tools back to school with them.

It's important to build the WHY for using apps/digital resources. Teachers need to know the value-add of the tool if you want it to be adopted.

There's a huge gap between what's being designed by edtech companies and what is happening in classrooms and what classrooms need. In classroom use cases and research is of paramount importance.

Good resources for finding quality digital resources and apps:

• Students
• EdCamp
• PLN on Twitter
• Educator Blogs

When selecting tools and resources:

• Ask what the core functionality of the app is. And what you want it to do.
• Look for multiple options.
• Does the product work year after year? Can it continue to be used as students get older, change schools, etc?

Knowing if apps are being used and being used well:

• It's important to track use AND impact on student achievement.
• How do we define use? Is it just logging in? Or is it tie on task?
• Is it being used only during the school day or is it being accessed after hours?
• Campuses often purchase systems and districts need to use data to show them if the money is being used wisely or not.
• If what you bought is/isn't being used, what other tools are being used?
• CatchOn (http://getcatchon.com/) is a tool launching tonight at SXSWedu which will help districts obtain data on the use of their digital tools.

Once you have the data, what do you do with it?

• Administrators: Ask informed questions of your staff. Why is the tool not being used? Is it too difficult? Is it not meeting the need? Then take answers to the next level. Expect vendors to help and improve. 
• Teacher: Data should confirm what you've already observed with your students. Look for anomalies and use the data to improve your students' educational experience. 
• Vendor: Find the breakpoints in utilization and see what is needed to fill the gaps. Data should be used to improve the apps and the classroom experience. 
• IDEAL: Share the data between schools/districts and support one another in better use.
• Be careful not to use the data to hit teachers on the head. Use it to open conversations and give teachers and students voice. What other tools are they using instead? Or what do they need to help them implement better.
• Data is the middle piece in the efficacy discussion, not the end all be all.

Closing Thoughts:

Consolidation is happening rapidly in the EdTech market. Those of us in education can impact how this takes place.

USE DATA to make what you are doing better and fuel innovation.

Make sure you hold vendors accountable for their products functioning the way they should and the way you need them to.





*********************************************************************************All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Create Short Animated Videos for Learning With the Tellagami App

Through a teacher and an educational technologist in my school district, I've recently discovered the Tellagami app for creating short animated videos. The video below is only the third Gami (the app maker's term for a finished product) which I have created. I was able to learn the app very quickly this weekend in preparation for introducing it to secondary fine arts teachers from my school district this morning. I won't take time in this post to teach you how to use Tellagami, because the app gives you a very nice tutorial the first time you launch it. There are also good instructions included on the Tellagami website. 

Check out my Gami (it's only 26 seconds!), then scroll down to learn more about what I like about the app and some ways I think it could potentially be used in teaching and learning.

What I Like About Tellagami

• The app is free  for both iOS and Android mobile devices, which makes it ideal for both 1:1 and BYOD learning environments. I created the Gami above on my Galaxy Note II Android smartphone.
• You do not need to create an account to use Tellagami.
• The app has a few choices for customizing your avatar, which helps keep a focus on the final outcome of the product.
• There are a few backgrounds to choose from in the app, but you can also doodle your own background,  select a photo stored in the photo library on your device, or take a photo while you are creating the Gami to use as a background.
• There is an option to directly record your voice or type what the avatar says and let Tellagami add the speech with a computerized voice.
• The maximum length of a Gami is 30 seconds, which lends itself to succinctness.
• There are numerous ways to save your Gami, including directly to your device as a QuickTime (iOS) or MP4 (Android) or sending a link by email without saving to your device.
• An advantage of sending by email without saving is your Gami gets uploaded to the web, and you get a link that you can Tweet or share on Facebook or in a text message. You can follow the link to get an embed code if you want to post the Gami on a website. This is the procedure I used to add the Gami above to this blog post.
• An advantage of saving the Gami to your device is you can then upload the movie file to a website of your choice such as YouTube or a blog. Here is the Gami I created as a demo during a fine arts teacher inservice this morning, saved as a a file to my iPad, and then uploaded to YouTube.

Ideas for Using Tellagami in Teaching and Learning

• Any teacher or staff member could create a Gami to add to their website or blog with a brief welcome/introduction message.
• A foreign language teacher at one of our high schools lets students speak via Gami because it is less intimidating than standing up in front of the class.
• Create a public service announcement (PSA) on a health, wellness, or safety topic.
• Create a book teaser/trailer to get peers or students interested in reading a book.
• Explain a problem, process, or procedure. This Gami uses a screen shot created with the Educreations app to explain a math procedure.
• Create a news report recounting the important facts of a current or historical event.
• A possible advanced use could include recording several 30 second Gamis and then editing them together into a longer video. This might be a way to get students to create a collaborative presentation, with each student recording a Gami for their part.

What Other Ideas Do You Have?

Have you used Tellagami before or had an idea spark from the examples above? If so, please share your ideas in the comments, and please include links to any Gamis you have posted on the web!

********************************************************************************************************
All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

10 Killer iPad Projects Students Will Love #ISTE13

Notes from ISTE13 Concurrent Session

Holly Dornak and Jessica Dyer, ITS's, Lamar CISD

All presentation resources posted here:
http://icafe.lcisd.org/presentations/10-ipad-app-projects-students-will-love/ -

***Goal is to use the iPad or whatever device it might be to do higher level skills/ higher
levels of Blooms.

iPad Essential Skills - allow students to teach you if necessary!

• Spotlight Search - Kinder on up can do this with training!

• Adding Images to Camera Roll - Using camera, screen shot, Internet images (integrate finding
  copyright-friendly issues here; for example, Google advanced search)

• Taking Video - horizontal, please!

• Action Button - box w/ arrow coming out to send stuff off of iPad

• Turning in Assignments:
  
• Dongle - connect to iTunes; it acts as a USB drive

• Email - generic account or student email accounts

• Cloud Storage - SkyDrive, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, etc.

• Edmodo

• Showbie- an app where teacher makes accounts and students can turn in
  work from iPad. Go to showbie.com for more info.

Tip: Get the App Apps Gone Free - Gives you a few apps every day. Can use about 1/3 for
education. Many of the apps recommended in the projects to follow may cost money now, but
the presenters first became aware of them through Apps Gone Free.

10 Projects:

1. Build Vocabulary - Skitch     Ex: take pictures of real world objects and label fractions, get a pic off Internet of something you've been studying (Ex: peninsula); trace and annotate.

2. Send Postcards from the Edge - Turbo Collage Lite and Postino     Build front of postcard with Turbo Collage  then make back of postcard with Postino. Can email the postcard to some one. Also send by snail mail for a fee.

3. Go Hollywood - storyboard with Stickyboard (movable sticky notes) or Grafio Lite (limited to 4 graphic organizers) or Poplet Lite. Sock Puppet, Puppet Pals, or ToonTastic to make cartoonish videos; Cute CUT (free; almost as good as iMovie) or iMovie for live video; OSnap! or iMotionHD for stop motion

4. Use Student Instructors - Educreations and Doodle Cast - teacher can record lessons for students to review or have students record presentations or their thinking when completing an assignment

5. Become Thread Heads - Voice Thread - Have students comment on content you or they post or create. Great because it can be easily shared online.

6. Write and Illustrate - Outline, Drawing Pad, Strip Designer, Scribble Press, Little Story Maker, Book Creator

7. Witness and Report - Pocket BMX & Evernote - Have student play game while other students act as reporters. When you first do this, have a game that moves slow or allows for instant replay.

8. Building a Talking Museum - Croak.It! and Scan - Students drew and wrote about a field trip. Posted on bulletin board and put a QR code next to it linked to them reading their report. Also use DropVox to record.

9. Connect to your Community - Make it real-world - FaceTime, Skype (Ex: Talk with a fireman and he/she can give you a tour the fire station. ) Also check out Skype for educators. DigitalWish and SignUp Genius will help manage project connections.

10. Get Social - Edmodo, Twitter, Blogger - Example: @Emilydrocha posts what's going on in her class via Twitter. Check your school's social media policies before jumping into this.

Posted with Blogsy

Search for Mobile Apps Using Google

Yesterday I learned from a TCEA Tweet that Google has launched an app search feature. What a cool tool for those of us working in mobile learning environments - whether they be individual teacher devices, pods of classroom devices, 1:1, or BYOD - to use to explore app possibilities without having to log into an app store first!

I played with app search a little and made a quick tutorial video to show you how to access it and an idea I had for combining it with Google's advanced search feature. Hope this is helpful to you! If you have any other ideas for using Google's new app search, please share below in the comments.