Mobicip Web Browser

Telling you all about Mobicip, the web browser app, has been on my "ideas" list for about a month now. Current events have put it on my heart to tell all of my teacher and parent friends about how to protect our children. 

We are living in a MUCH faster world than we grew up in...and I'm only 35! Children have unlimited access to any information available in the world via the internet and they don't possess the maturity to know what is appropriate and what isn't. This is where we need to teach our children digital citizenship or a way to prepare students for a society full of technology. In the meantime, blocking access to certain sites is a step that we must take to protect our younger students. 

If your child uses the Internet for research, I recommend purchasing the Mobicip app. The app is technically free, but you pay $10 per device per year for the service. You set basic school-age levels, on/off times, white list, black-list and key words. You can view reports, download them or have them sent to you. You'll see that some very questionable sites were blocked, sites your kids might have accidentally stumbled upon, or sites you really don't want them to seek out. Check on your kids browsing history from anywhere, anytime. I don't use it to spy on them - they know they have a special browser. I use it to keep them honest - if I have reason to doubt their claims, I can go to the reports.

If you own an iOS (Apple) device, I would recommend making a few adjustments in the settings:

• Turn on Restrictions and set a password that only you know
• Disable Safari and YouTube
• Turn off App Store (Your children know how to download free web browser apps that can take them anywhere and doesn't show in the browser history)
• Turn off In-App Purchases 

These days, in order to protect our children, we have to know at least as much as they do about their devices that connect to the internet. I have been knocking around the idea of offering some parent/student training sessions or even a technology camp for students. If you are interested in one of these sessions as a parent, please contact me.

Simple Transfer App

Simple Transfer is an app that I learned about from Kasey Bell, our Digital Fluency Academy trainer, and it has changed my life! Simple Transfer is the easiest way of transferring your Photos and Videos to computer and other iOS devices wirelessly. You can also transfer the other direction from your computer to your iOS device. No need for a cable, iTunes or extra software on your computer. There is a free version but I went ahead and paid the $2.99 for the app without restrictions. 

GaggleTube (Filtered YouTube)

Do you want to use YouTube videos for the students in your classroom?

The vast majority of school districts (including Commerce ISD) use internet filters to prevent students from accessing YouTube, and with good reason. There is a lot of inappropriate content available on the site, and that content changes rapidly. In fact, every minute more than 24 hours of video is uploaded to the YouTube site. But there is also a wealth of good information on YouTube, and many videos could be very beneficial in instruction at all grade levels and across all content areas. That’s where Gaggle comes in! 

GaggleTube allows searches of appropriate videos with an added layer of Gaggle safety, while still allowing us to block direct access to the YouTube website. Teachers and students can search and preview videos, tag or save them, and show them directly from Gaggle, full screen. Videos can also be embedded in blogs to promote discussions outside of the classroom. We gave our students a version of GaggleTube, allowing them to view only videos that have been filtered by the YouTube Safe Search filter. You’ll find the GaggleTube icon on your left panel within your browser and in the Gaggle iOS app. 

Keep in mind that no filtering system can catch everything all the time, so be sure you watch and listen to any video you might want to use before you show it to your class. And although we have the option to allow students to search filtered video on their own, active monitoring by the classroom teacher is the first line of defense for our students. With GaggleTube and a few minutes of previewing, the world of YouTube video can bring an exciting new dimension to your classroom!

Safari Montage Live 5

SAFARI Montage® Live-5! is the ideal solution for providing reliable school-to-school or school-to-home education for many applications, including AP classes, distance education for homebound students, professional development for teachers at school or at home, and virtual field trips to remote locations.

Other uses include:

Large meetings - faculty, school board, superintendent address, professional development.

Small meetings - teams, collaborative groups, student led conferences.

One to One meetings - evaluations, peer collaboration, parent teacher conferences.

Instruction - online, blended, virtual trips, expert discussion panels.

Intrigued? Watch this video explaining how the system works!

Have an idea for SML5 use in your classroom? Let me come and help you get started!

Gaggle

Gaggle is a student learning program that Commerce ISD utilizes. It encompasses many blended learning pieces including the following:

• Email: Gaggle Email includes extensive text filtering, inappropriate image detection and human monitoring.
• GaggleTube - Allow safe searching of YouTube videos even when YouTube is blocked by your district filters. All YouTube access is logged, filtered and monitored. Teachers can also upload videos, and saved videos can be shared, embedded and linked in multiple ways.
• Assignment Drop Boxes - Enable teachers to easily create, assign and collect assignments for a truly paperless classroom. Assignment Drop Boxes are integrated with Google Apps and GaggleTube for a full, rich media learning experience.
• Digital Lockers - Provide online file storage with integrated editing of Word documents, spreadsheets, photos and more.   Individual files and folders can be shared with specific students, classes or the entire school or district. All files are filtered for appropriate content and accessible from school or at home.
• Discussion Boards - Support curriculum and extend learning with ongoing classroom discussions. Teachers can create discussion boards restricted to specified students and classes.
• Social Wall - Provides profile-based connections with sharing, similar to the most popular social networking experiences.

Plus, there's an app for that!

The latest addition is the integration of Google Docs. Students can use their Gaggle login to log into Google Drive where they have access to all of the Google Apps for Education. Google Drive is a wonderful resource for students to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Their work auto-saves and is web based for access across any device and even offline editing. 

The good news is that EVERY STUDENT and TEACHER already have a Gaggle account! All logins follow this 

Username: firstname.lastname@cisdtigers.org

Password: network login

Happy Gaggling!

Heather

Quick Key Turns Your iPhone Into a Scanner

Quick Key is a new and free iOS app that turns your iPhone into a bubble sheet scanner. Thanks to Richard Byrne at iPad Apps for School for posting about this app!

Quick Key has two parts to it that when combined make it very easy for you to quickly grade multiple choice and true/false quizzes. Here’s the basics of how it works; create your quiz on the Quick Key website then print and distribute a bubble sheet. After your students have completed the bubble sheet you simply scan the sheets with your iPhone (it works on iPads too, but the resolution is grainy) and the grading is done for you. From the app you can send grades to the classes that you have created on the Quick Key website. If you enter students’ email addresses in your class rosters on Quick Key, you can have grades emailed to students.

I can see this being used to grade homework, bell ringers or exit slips in a secondary classroom! Check it out in action in this YouTube video:

The Pencil

I found this sticker last week from the AC Williams Scholastic Book Fair. 

It was the final straw that told me that I needed to share some things that I came across this week in regards to the school supply staple...the pencil.

As we all struggle to integrate technology into our classrooms, we have to remember that the students that sit before us are not us. They don't learn like we learned. Kasey Bell, our Region 10 Digital Fluency facilitator, said it best when she said, "Technology is the pencil of our time." How true are those words!

I want to share this video about pencils...actually technology in the classroom. This is an Xtranormal video made from a Twitter conversation about the use of technology in the classroom...except they replace the word "technology" with "pencils". It's funny, don't get me wrong! However, it makes me think about how far technology has come since I was in school and how we, as educators, need to adapt and change some things to meet students where they are! Okay, I'll step off my soapbox...enjoy the video!