iHelp café | Tag | middle school

&amd=&action=embedview

Date September 28, 2020

Comments0

Do you love the Bitmoji craze but you are a Microsoft diehard true and true? Do you worry about all things google and the fact that your Facebook and Instagram accounts seem to read your thoughts?

&amd=&action=embedview

This is the ket to leveling the playing field and then stomping down on google hard. By using this at the end of a powerpoint online file shared from your onedrive not only can you have the Bitmoji classroom you have always wanted, but you can have more than one slide at a time.

From onedrive, locate the file, click the share button. (be sure to uncheck editing rights) and add &amd=&action=embedview to the end of the url and share. Viewers will see the file in presentation mode and they will be able to interact with your online virtual classroom.

Whiteboard chat – the new Padlet?

Date September 12, 2020

Posted by Tim Mangia

Comments0

Whiteboard chat is a great tool for social distance or remote collaboration. Sure, OneNote and Google docs give you the ability to collaborate, but with whiteboard chat you can have a group of students draw a mind map or a Venn diagram and collaborate on the same item if they are in the same class, down the hall from one another or across town.

So what is wrong with Padlet? Nothing is inherently wrong with Padlet. Over the years however, they have trimmed the number of free Padlet’s you can create from 20 down to a very small 3. The problem with 3 is that a secondary teacher who has 5, 6, or 10 classes will need a padlet for each class to give themselves time to grade and assess the students work. This makes Padlet a tool that teachers hesitate on. Whiteboard chat is not a hesitation tool, it is a collaboration tool.

Whiteboard chat allows you to share via a QR code and for contributors to add pictures, text, drawings and more. They can even animate what they have added. You can use whiteboard chat another way too, you can distribute individual boards to students as well.

I am in NY and there is a new privacy law, ED Law 2D. This law has a lot of components to it and if websites or programs do not handle student pii (personal identifiable information) correctly, NY schools should not be using them with students. Whiteboard chat uses QR code to share and collects NO information from the users so it checks all the Ed Law 2D boxes.

I have shared this tool with all the teachers in my district and hopefully they see the same benefits as I do. It is a great tool.

Nearpod Tips and Tricks from NYSCATE

Date August 29, 2020

Posted by Tim Mangia

Comments0

I was lucky enough to be asked to go to the NYSCATE conference in November and although it was almost a year ago, I have just found some lost notes about a great session I attended about Nearpod and some tips and tricks. The session was what is known as a “toolbox” where they just give you rapid fire ideas and tricks on whatever subject is on the plan.

This particular one was hosted by Laurie Guyon and included tips and tricks for Nearpod.

Make your first slide interactive so the students have time to get settled and log in
To save a lesson, the students must type a note of any kind somewhere in there.
Immersive reader in built into Nearpod and is very simple for students to use.
You do not have to use your classroom display for lesson since it is on all the students devices.
Use a countdown when you are asking them to do anything interactive, helps with time management.
You can share screens anonymously
TIME TO CLIMB- Kahoot type game is a lot of fun, highly engaging.
Matching pairs is also a great interactive slide option
You can embed websites such as thinglink, desmos, and padlet.

Many of these features are available with the free Nearpod subscription and for those in NY state, it is Ed Law 2-D compliant.

External Storage?

Date April 20, 2015

Posted by Tim Mangia

Comments1

You can buy the latest iPhone and iPad with 128GB of storage, but many get less due to the high cost. Those with just 16GB or 32GB can quickly find it filling up, especially when shooting lots of video. The iBridge from Leef may be the solution for those storage problems.

This little gadget plugs into the Lightning connector on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod and adds 16 – 256GB of storage. It supports transferring music, photos, videos, and documents between the iBridge and iOS devices.

The gadget has a unique curved shape that is designed to keep the iBridge out of the way as much as possible. It sticks out of the Lighting connector about an inch, and curves behind the iPhone or iPad. It has enough room to fit the iPhone in a typical case.

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The end of the iBridge that hides behind the iDevice has a full USB connector. This is used to plug the iBridge into a device with a USB port for putting content to bring over to the iOS device. Simply copy the files to the iBridge as you would with an SD card and then plug it into the iDevice for file transfer.

The iBridge requires an app on iOS to interact with the device. The first time you plug the iBridge into the iPhone it notifies you that you need the free app and takes you to the app store to get it.

The app has settings for dealing with the iBridge, plus a content viewer, a camera app, and a file transfer app all rolled up into the main app. The settings allow using the iBridge as a local photo backup and to set a storage limit on the iDevice which when hit, starts storing content on the iBridge when present.

The camera app is a basic way to take photos that are stored directly onto the iBridge.

The file transfer app provides quick access to transfer iPhone photos to the iBridge or to go the other way. There is also a file manager with tabbed access to storage on both the iPhone and iBridge.