Free Online Books!

I totally have to thank my friend, Eve, for this find. We always compare apps that we've downloaded for our little girls on our iPads, so when she sent me the info for this one I had to immediately download!

The app is called MeeGenius, but its more than just for an iPad! It can be used on the iPad, iPhone, Android tablet, Google TV, or any computer with Internet access! As a regular member you get a handful of books for free that give you the "Read it to Me" or "Read it to myself" option but as an educator, young get something like 70 free titles! There are some really great classics like fairy tales and other fun stories on there all with narration and great illustrations. I'm not sure what your populations like at school, but I am always shocked when I talk with my class about text-to-text connection regarding classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Usually 50-80% of my class responds that they've never heard the stories before! That makes MeeGenius a great, at-hand resource for me to help them build that background knowledge. I quickly pull it up on my projector and we read the story!

Another way you could use MeeGenius is if you have a classroom computer of tablet for your kids to use. If I had one of these available during centers, I would have it as a listening/reading center. If choosing the "read to me" option, the words are highlighted as they are read. It's also great for ESL students and students who might need remediation. So many possibilities here!

Here's how to get your free account-
Go to www.meegenius.com
If you come to the welcome screen with the iPad on a desktop picture, look in the top right corner. It says "Check out our school accounts" right above then"Start Reading" button. Click the school account link and sign up using your school email and info. Once approved, you'll get an email confirming and you're set!

(If for some reason you don't get this welcome page, scroll all the way to the bottom of any of the other pages on the website and you should see the option on the bottom menu that says "Work with us"…"Schools and Libraries". Click that and it will take you to the signup page.

Hope you enjoy it, my kids and my daughter love it!

More Technology Tips for the Classroom!

I mentioned in my last technology tip post last week that I attended a staff development through my county regarding technology.  Sometimes I think some of the best stuff we get out of these staff development classes are the resources!  Those are the things I want to share with you.

For those of you who use your iPads in the classroom here are 4 apps that might come in handy!

1- CommonCore
This app gives you quick access to the Common Core Standards.  Enough said.

2-  Rover
This is a FREE Educational web browser that is Flash enabled!  That's right . . . you can actually utilize websites that use Flash!  (I don't know about you, but this used to be a big bummer for me regarding the iPad.  I even debated whether it was worth getting an iPad before since you couldn't access Flash.)

3-  Puffin
This is another web browser that is Flash enabled!  Puffin is great in that it enables you to get the full version of web pages on both smart phones and tablets and uses cloud servers.  Puffin is normally $2.99 for the iPad but it's currently free as a 2012 Olympic Promotion, enabling Flash support for users from July 22 to August 12 for the London Olympics.

4-  Penzu
It's a FREE online notepad/journal/diary.  You can actually just do it on the internet giving you access to your entries from anywhere through the web.  If you choose the app for your iPad/iPhone, however, you would need to purchase the Penzu Pro account in order to sync your iPad/iPhone to your web account for $19/year.

More tech tips to come, but until then here's a question I'd love for you to weigh in on.  I see plenty of pros and cons, so I want to know what you think!

Do you let your kids use your personal iPad for instruction in the classroom?  Why or why not?

Technology Tips for the Classroom

If you're like me, you're torn when it comes to taking summer staff development classes.  On the one hand you could learn more and grow yourself as a teacher, thereby benefiting your students.  On the other hand it's summer!  You're on vacation!  Now come clean . . . sometimes we're more inclined to say yes to summer staff development when a stipend is involved.  But what about when there is no stipend?  Do you take it anyways?

Today was my 1st day of 2 in a technology staff development aimed at preparing our school cluster for the technology we are about to pilot.  Technology is a big push, and this new system is supposed to be all encompassing.  While quite a bit of today wasn't a big revelation (or anything new) for my friends and myself since we're already big on technology, I did get some great new websites!  Lucky for you I'm going to share some of them with you (without you having to sit through 2 days worth of sessions)!

Here's the 1st technology tip I'm going to share with you:

The following 2 websites can be used for the same purpose.

As a 1st grade teacher I find it hard to get all my students on the same webpage in a timely manner.  It's not always possible to go into the computer lab and load every computer with the same website you intend to use with the students.  It's also very time consuming.  (Trust me!  I've done this!)  While bookmarking the pages can help, you still have to bookmark the page on every computer and then walk the students through the process of finding the bookmark when it's time to use it!  That's where these 2 sites come in handy!  They are:

www.tinyurl.com

and

www.linkyy.com

You can use either site to take a long url and shorten it to something much easier and/or more memorable!

For example:

Here is an online magnet experiment I like to use with my students from the bbc website.

Notice the long url. (Not the longest, but still pretty long for a 1st grader!  Plenty of room for mistake.)

Copy the url, go to either website, and paste it into the text box provided.

Click the shorten url button, and it will shorten it for you.  Click the "Show advanced options" text below and you can specify the rest of the url after the "http://linkyy.com/" or "http://tinyurl.com/" address.  In my example I ended the url with "magnets1".  In my classroom I would probably use my name since they will either remember the spelling or the spelling would be easily accessible.

Once this new, shortened url is used it will take your students directly to the intended website.  You now have a new, shorter, and permanent url to use!

My suggestion - keep a list of all the shortened urls you've made.

OR do as one of my presenters did - create a website with a list of the hyperlinks you will be using so that you will only have to create one shortened, memorable url!  (I may just do this and create the url "http://linkyy.com/wilcox"!