Since our Boces SLS director (hi Molly!) purchased a “green screen in a backpack” kit this year I thought this would be a fun topic to try out. The first takeaway I gathered from the readings was that this whole green screen thing isn’t nearly as complicated and technical as I thought it would… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 37: Green Screen Fun
I really, really, really wanted this tool to work out for me. The idea of having an easier way to organize and keep up with the overwhelming flow of information is so so appealing. Unfortunately, a lot of this experiment felt like an overwhelming bust but in the end, I did find some handy takeaways.… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 24: Control the Info Flow with RSS & Feed Readers
Just like the Cool Tool on Everything Google, I was going to skip this one. I’ve had a Twitter account for a few years and once upon a time I even took the four week course ALA offers on Twitter for beginners. I’ve made some great personal contacts through Twitter and found some great ideas… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 3: Twitter & Online Communities
I was so excited about this one! I have heard about Google Cardboard and Google Expeditions and even got to try out Google Cardboard briefly at a workshop a few months ago-these seem like guaranteed ways to get students excited about a new topic! Since I don’t have the actual viewfinders, I decided to check… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 38: Augmented & Virtual Reality
For this tool, I choose to try out the presentation tool Buncee. I’ve been hearing Buncee mentioned more and more often at workshops and conferences over the last year and I’ve been impressed with the projects I’ve seen come out of it. It was finally time to satisfy my curiosity and give it a try… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 5: Presentation Tools
I almost skipped this one but I’m glad I didn’t! We’re a Google Apps for Education School and I’ve taken plenty of PD on the various tools over the years so I wasn’t sure I’d find something substantial enough to warrant a Cool Tools blog post. As always though, Polly put in some amazing leg… Continue reading Cool Tools, Thing 41: Anything Google
Another year, another Cool Tools session to wrap up. Let’s dive right in! What did you learn? How did you put what you learned into action at school? Personally? While I struggled initially with the EBP lessons that kicked off the Track 4 Cool Tools, I think they have had the biggest impact on how… Continue reading Thing 40: Final Reflections & What’s Next?
For this lesson, I ended up looking at the following blogs: Aabdul810, TechieToolsBlog, and Bri’sCoolToolsBlog. What did I learn? So much!!! I wish I did a better job of reading other blogs during this year’s Cool Tools because in just this weekend, I got so many ideas and learned so many cool tips and tricks.… Continue reading Bonus Lesson: Making Connections
After exploring several of the links for App-apalooza, I found three discoveries I’m pretty pumped about: Discovery #1: Digital Dog Pound and their App Task Challenges! I loved that they made their ATC available in one Google Drive folder you can add to your own Google Drive-and of course immediately added it to mine. The… Continue reading Thing 38: App-apalooza
The Setup For this week’s activity, I decided to finally try out the Seesaw app. I learned about the Seesaw app last year and immediately requested it be placed on the school iPads. However, there were a variety of technical difficulties and issues the result of which was I didn’t get the Seesaw app on… Continue reading Thing 35: Digital Portfolios for Students
