TeachBytes

LOL of the Week

Aditi Rao — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:33:58 +0000

Found this cartoon online, and HAD to share. I’m curious, how many of your students prefer reading on tablets or laptops to reading real books? This is the one area that I myself have had a hard time transitioning, because there’s something about the feel of flipping pages that my iPad just can’t replicate.

What do you prefer to use for reading?

Pearl Diver: Practice Number Lines With This Diving Game!

Aditi Rao — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:39:35 +0000

If you have students who struggle with the concept of a number line or even a student who just needs more practice, Pearl Diver might be just the thing for you. This fun game created by the fine folks at New Mexico State University lets students practice with a number line while diving for pearls in between shipwrecks and sunken ruins. Students must harvest pearls by diving at the right spot in the number line, all while avoiding deadly electric eels! It’s perfect for grades 3-8 and targets whole numbers, decimals, mixed numbers and fractions.

Check out a screenshot below and play for yourself online, or download the app for $0.99 for your mobile device.

Happy pearl-diving, y’all!

Gate2Home: An All-In-One Virtual Keyboard Online!

Aditi Rao — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:57:55 +0000

Since I work at a Jewish school, one of the issues I constantly face is how to provide my Hebrew instructors with resources that can be used in their script. This is especially complicated when students need to type in Hebrew, which is easy to do in school with our Hebrew keyboards, but more difficult to accomplish at home. Thanks to Gate2Home, though, our students can now access a virtual language keyboard from anywhere they have internet access.

Gate2Home has options for over 100 different languages including Arabic (العربية), Chinese (中文), Hindi (हिन्दी) and Russian (Русский). Just select the language you want to type with and presto – a virtual keyboard appears on the screen:

As you can see, users are provided with a visual keyboard that they can use as a reference to type from their own keyboards, or they can click on each individual key online. Once they are finished, text can be pushed to Facebook and Twitter, or copied to be pasted into another document. The opportunities this allows for foreign language teachers is especially exciting.

Happy typing, y’all!

Free App of the Week: Evernote

Aditi Rao — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:39:10 +0000

Most of you have probably already heard of Evernote, but for those of you who haven’t, it is essentially a free, note-taking tool. The coolest thing about Evernote is that you can access it on multiple devices, from your personal computer to your iPhone to your school computer. When browsing the internet, Evernote allows you to capture pictures, video, audio or text, write a brief note and save it. You can save entire webpages, as well as scan things into Evernote to keep track of all your documents, electronic and paper, in one place. Then, when you have all your information stored in Evernote, you can search it easily. This is especially useful when conducting research and you need to track of different sources in one, convenient place!

The free online service has monthly usage limitations (currently 60 MB/month), and displays a “usage” meter. A premium service is also available that currently costs $5 per month or $45 per year, and currently offers 1,000 MB/month usage.

Happy note-taking, y’all!

Free App of the Week: Screen Time

Aditi Rao — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:30:06 +0000

This week, I want to share Screen Time with you, which offers teachers and parents a way to control the amount of time students spend on a device. It’s relatively easy to use: just set up a passcode, choose a time limit and hand it to your student. When the time runs out, the phone will lock up and the only way to unlock the phone will be to enter the pre-chosen passcode. You can designate different users if you have multiple students using your device, and set different time limits per user or each time you hand the device over.

Although this may seem a little reversed for someone who encourages the use of technology to share an application that would limit the use of technology, I believe that students need to be monitored and guided with this technology, especially at a young age. While I firmly believe that technology provides an immense amount of opportunities for learning and engagement, I also believe that students can often spend too much time on trivial applications that have no greater purpose for their growth. Even though I myself enjoy fun games with no greater purpose than defeating villains or catapulting birds at pigs, I eventually have to stop playing and resume my other tasks. As the adults involved, we can use this sort of an application as a tool to monitor and coach students to manage their time with these sorts of applications.

Here’s a couple screenshots to get a better idea of what the app looks like:

Happy screen-time monitoring, y’all!

The Economics of Seinfeld: Use Video Clips From The Sitcom To Explain Key Concepts

Aditi Rao — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:31:29 +0000

Linda Ghent, Alan Grant and George Lesica, three Economics professors from the University of Illinois, created Economics of Seinfeld to encourage educators and learners to utilize pop culture when learning key economic principles.

I myself am a big proponent of using pop culture to help students understand concepts that might otherwise not relate to their lives. When I used to teach the Tempest and dealt with trying to explain the concept of “power struggles” to teenagers, I would play an episode of Tom and Jerry and have students discuss who had power in each scene. Something about using characters that students could relate to and bringing the subject into a real-world sphere did wonders for their understanding.

The website houses over 100 principles, each defined and then accompanied by a video clip of a Seinfeld episode that explains the concept in a real-world fashion. Each example includes a brief summary, a list of concepts that apply, a link or embedded video of the episode, and timings for clips that best explain the concepts.

For example, when trying to explain the concept of a price ceiling, you might use a clip from like this:

Jerry lives in a rent controlled building. The only time an apartment opens up is when Mrs. Hudwalker dies, because rent controls create immobility. Elaine and Jerry find out about the opening, and because Elaine happens to be first in line, she gets it for $400 per month. Subsequently, Jerry gets worried about having Elaine living so close, and tells Elaine that she can’t have the apartment–the super was offered a $5,000 bribe.

Additionally, the website is organized so that you can browse all of the episodes in alphabetical order, search for key concepts, or view an index of all the concepts that have been featured so far.

Happy Seinfeld-watching, y’all!

Video Tutorial: How To Add Images To Google Forms

Aditi Rao — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:38:19 +0000

If you haven’t ever used Google Forms before, it is a fantastic way to gather data, manage surveys and assess students online. Recently, the fine folks at Google added another feature to make this platform more robust: embedded images. You can now insert images from your computer or online into your forms with ease!

Check out Richard Byrne’s simple, tutorial video below:

Use this feature to create assessments for students that involve matching terms to images, such as geography recognition, biology labeling, or even a fun, silly quiz like Richard’s about his dogs!

QR Voice: A Picture Is Worth A 100 Characters

Aditi Rao — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:56:12 +0000

I’ve posted a couple of articles in the past about QR codes in the classroom, and I’ve found that they can be an engaging, hands-on way to disseminate information to students. Today, I want to share a new QR tool that will allow you to use these codes in the classroom in a new way. Now usually, you need a link to generate a QR code, usually referring students back to a website, a video, an audio file or even an interactive activity. Sometimes, however, you just want to use QR codes to provide students with brief instructions, clues or a short synopsis of information.

For these purposes, QR Voice is perfect. Unlike other QR codes, when QR Voice codes are scanned, they play short snippets of audio. You can either record your own audio or type in your message and have an automated voice read the message to the code-scanners. Just remember, with the text option you are limited to 100 characters. This really drives home the purpose of this tool: to provide brief messages to students.

Happy QR coding, y’all!

BardBytes: Shakespeare on the Web

Aditi Rao — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:40:29 +0000

I wanted to share with you a work-in-progress, but exciting website: BardBytes. BardBytes, aptly summarized by its title, is an effort to bridge the gap between the Elizabethan Era and the 21st century classroom by providing educators with modern Shakespearean resources. Resources are categorized into history, tragedy, comedy and poetry, and then by individual plays.

Resources are updated in a blog format, so you can subscribe to the blog for new resources or check back for new posts. The current website has a number of great resources for usage in your classroom, including animations, infographics, online games, interesting graphics and useful websites. Check out some examples below and see more at the website.

A visualization of the character relationships in Hamlet:
The Comedy of Errors in 30 seconds:

Gems From The Journey To Technology Certification

Aditi Rao — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:08:44 +0000

So recently, I’ve embarked on the endeavor to become certified to teach technology in the great state of Texas. Unfortunately, this process involves passing a test that focus on either largely irrelevant and obsolete information (like the technology to the left) or information that is so obvious it should be a crime to ask about it.

I’ve been trying to take everything with a smile and to see the humor in the situation, and I thought I’d extend the laughs to all of you!

Check out some of the gems I’ve found in my test preparation book as I studied:

“Do not place electronic equipment near water sources that can splash onto the components”
“Typing in all capital letters on the Internet is considered rude because it is difficult to read and comes across as very aggressive (LIKE SHOUTING)”
“Secondary storage includes floppy discs, jump drives, and CD-ROMs”
“The most recommended search engines for classroom use are Google and Alta Vista”
“When printing documents, avoid printing in color as it is generally expensive”
“When making PowerPoint presentations for the principal or other administrative leaders, be sure to use 12-point Times New Roman font”

… Seriously?