App Mashup Volume 1: Reflector + Laptop + TV and Graph Art eBook + Notability Workflow

Happy "Spring" to one and all! 

I use that word very lightly as Minneapolis just got hit with Snowmaggedon #3 IN APRIL, leading to a 2-hour late start in many school districts on Friday. While I very much enjoyed the extra sleep (Daylight Savings Time hit me like a ton of bricks this year), I did not enjoy the hour of shoveling to make the driveway bike-friendly. Luckily we are poised to hit upper 50's the next few days, and 71 by Wednesday! Hallelujah!

My apologies, yet again, for not posting more over the winter. I've thought about starting app mash-up posts many times and something always seems to get in the way. But no more! The time has come to start networking again, as I gear up to write "Coordinate Graph Art for Beginners" this spring and summer. I'll be posting progress updates and downloadable sneak peeks for my awesome readers (& Pinterest/Twitter followers) as the weeks march on.

Being a Technology Integration Coordinator, naturally I'm getting peppered by questions of "Why don't you release your existing books in e-reader format?" And the answer has always been, because the puzzle is on one page and the graph paper is on the other. Kids would have to toggle back and forth between the graph paper and the puzzle. It is feasible with the digital copies of my books that I just posted on TpT: Coordinate Graph Art: Teacher Edition, Coordinate Graph Art: Student Edition, and Advanced Coordinate Graph Art: Student Edition. Advanced Coordinate Graph Art: Teacher Edition has been posted for some time now.

Purchasing any of my eBooks gives you permission to copy/paste/print/scan/share its contents in unlimited quantities throughout each teacher's courses. This also includes digital devices (e-Readers, posting to online LMS, iPad, tablets, smartphones). I would, of course, appreciate shout-outs to parents of where you found my book, so I sell more ;)  

My existing books are in "print format" so they read best with multi-page selected so that the graphing directions show on the left, and the graph on the right. Then, either the teacher or the students take a screen shot of the graph, import it into an annotation or note-taking app, complete the puzzle, and then submit their work electronically back to their teacher. Or, just show it to your teacher when done! This will make coloring the final product much more engaging and less messy than using pens, markers, or crayons. 

My recommendation for ease of the above: 

1. Buy the eBook edition you desire (either regular or advanced) in both the teacher and student edition. The teacher edition has the keys, while the student edition has the correct page format to "capture" the instructions next to the correct graph paper. You could get away with just the teacher edition by posting the graph paper and instructions separately, and having the students toggle back and forth on the iPad between the screen shot of the directions, and marking up the graph paper in a note-taking app. 

2. Screen-shot or copy/paste the graph you want to assign into your online assignment posting. We use Schoology (which has a paid and free edition), but you can now attach images/files through Remind101 as well. 

3. Students access the online assignment and download the images to their camera roll.

4. Students import the graph page into their note-taking program (Skitch or PaperPort Notes are both free, but I like Notability the best - which is paid). 

5. Students use the writing function to complete the graph picture, toggling back and forth between their note-taking app and their camera roll to find the new point. Once complete, the student could color in the picture as well if desired.

6. Students use the "export" function in their note-taking app to submit their work back to the teacher, via Schoology, email, or whatever other tool you use to collect work. No paper needed!

I'd love comments back, as to how this procedure works out for you. 

ANYhoo, I was originally planning on blogging about using Reflector app's multiple display mode in the classroom and/or at home, to see what your students are up to on their devices, and to allow them to show their work to the class as they complete it. Watch the video below for an example:

How this all started: I purchased a MacBook Mini Display to HDMI adapter at BestBuy about a month ago so my husband and I could watch movies from my Amazon Instant Video account on our giant 60 inch HDTV. I have since heard that ChromeCast works just as well. I finally hooked it up for my boys on the upstairs TV so they could watch Frozen, while my husband and I watched our own Will Farrell movie downstairs (I won't say which one, but given the blog posting date, you can probably figure it out ;)

This morning I had an epiphany: Why don't I use this same setup and turn on Reflector App on my iPad, so the kids could show their apps & games on the big screen as well? My kindergartener is absolutely LOVING the Minecraft Pocket Edition iPad app, but I only allow him to use the "creative" mode. It's like Lego's on steroids... he can build blocks, dirt, rivers, bridges, "lay animal eggs" to create chickens/sheep/cows/pigs, as well as dig holes and fly around in the sky. The animals make noises, move around, eat, and can even swim. It's a hoot! You never know what they're going to do. They can also get hurt, fall, or stuck in holes, so we've had lots of good discussions about "taking care of his virtual pets". 

It's hard to see the game just looking over the player's shoulder though, which is why the Reflector piece is nice. It also makes the game more interactive, blowing it up to 500% on our TV or on a classroom Smartboard. For a kindergartener with limited motor skills, he has made several amazing cities with their own themes (bridge city, animal city, car city, just to name a few). While this app is $6.99, it's totally worth it, compared to the small fortune most parents spend on Lego kits. If you really want to see the potential of Minecraft, check out these amazing virtual creations.

Alas, I digress. Back to the point... So I have my MacBook hooked up via HDMI adapter to our TV, I also have the WIFI connected on all our devices via the same home network. I then open the Reflector program on my computer (which you can try out and/or pay for the full Mac or PC version at www.airsquirrels.com) and set it to "no password". 

The next step is to turn on Airplay on each device you wish to reflect. This could just be your teacher/parent machine, or student iPads or Smartphones. They do need to be logged onto the same WIFI network in order for this to work. You should see their display pop up on your computer monitor once they toggle the "mirroring" button from OFF to ON. The device sound should also begin playing, so you may want to ask them to silence the app.

You can get this going on several student devices at once; however, the more devices that are mirroring, the smaller their screens will get, and the more likely your WIFI connection will make Reflector glitch out or lose the sound feed. Once you do have all the devices reflecting on your screen, you can move them around, resize and reposition them, and then continue working on the other sections of your computer. 

Whether you choose to use this tool as a monitoring function (in class or as a parent) to keep an eye on students as they work, or as a display function to model and discuss what a student is working on, it is a fantastic way to get to those "modification" and "redefinition" tasks on the SAMR model. You are creating a collaborative, interactive work space in which not only the teacher can display a website or Smart file on one side of the screen, but students can input their own work products to enrich the classroom learning experience. 

Now, if you're REALLY tech savvy, maybe you have ScreenCast-O-Matic running on your computer at the same time; so not only are you making a collaborative lesson, you could be recording the whole presentation to post later on your online classroom learning space. The possibilities really are endless. 

One last thing... when you're done, MAKE SURE you have students not only TURN OFF their AirPlay, they also need to CLICK THEIR DEVICE next to the sound bell, to stop projecting audio to your computer. Or, easier yet, simply shut down the reflector program on your computer which will detach all devices.

Thanks for reading! Good luck with your collaborations! I'd love to hear all about them so I can share with teachers in my district.

Zombie Migration(s) Complete

Happy holidays everyone! I give you the wonderful present of discounting my new books, Advanced Coordinate Graph Art for Grades 6-8 & Advanced Coordinate Graph Art: Student Edition down to the same prices as my first books! ($14.99 teacher, $7.99 student) That's right! Five chapters for the price of FOUR! Give Amazon a couple days to update the pricing, and then you're good to go with hopefully an abundant stack of Amazon.com Christmas gift cards from your students ;)

As you may have anticipated from my total lack of posting in the last few months, the Zombie House Listing Experiment was a brain-smashing success. Our house sold in under two months, and we somehow closed in the old & new houses exactly a week apart. I have no data one way or another if our buyers used the QR code I provided and watched our video tour repeatedly until they put in an offer, but the video does have 25 hits! So it's definitely not just me viewing :) 

At any rate, to any teachers out there who are thinking of listing their house during the school year, I would say, "Go for it!" IF you have at least a week's break prior to prep your house for listing. It's really not that hard to keep the house clean, once it is clean. Or at least it's only hard when you have to get it back to that uber-clean state in time for a showing. And we kept ours in that state of semi-clean-ness for almost 2 months straight! With 4 pets! So yes, go for it! Just bear in mind, you will be kissing any and all spare seconds of free time "good bye".

Teacher-friendly Packing Tips:

-Try out a furniture planner site to see where your stuff will actually fit in your new house. Major reality check for me. I used HomeStyler with great success. The house listing should have dimensions for each of the major rooms to get a good floor plan built.

 

-Steal boxes from the lunch & copy room whenever possible (although they are usually happy to give them away)

-Start packing non-essential items (like cats) first, and stuff all those boxes in the back of the garage. Make sure to label the boxes with where they are going in the new floor plan!

-Avoid packing on school nights. Unless you're really

motivated. Or you have just had the final inspection and are really excited to pull all the boxes out of their secret hiding places. 

-Make the kids pack their own toys. We had piles of boxes out labeled "play room" or "bedroom" or "garbage" or "donate", just like Toy Story 3. I tried really hard not to think about that movie while we worked, how many broken/worthless toys found their way into the trash.

-By luck of the draw, although you may want to plan this, we had just had a ginormous garage sale a month before we listed our house, which cut back greatly on purging or packing JUNK.

And that's pretty much all she wrote on that. In the month since we moved, we have settled into our old semi-messy ways, gained half an hour of sleep, eliminated a cumulative hour of driving time to work/school, and to top it all off, hung some *kind of pathetic* Christmas lights. Right before 8+ inches of snow fell.

  

Now onto the plural part of "Migration(s)": I have completely "gone Google"! In addition to moving my physical house, I have also transitioned my email, calendars, notifications, groups and hordes of archived folders over to the Cloud that is Google. Our district is leaning this way anyway... let me tell you why I jumped on board early: 

1. Starting the process mid-year gives you extra time to migrate any saved/important emails you might need. After getting tired of logging into Outlook to reference filed emails in folders, I got smart and downloaded the "Eagle Filer" program to make copies of all my Mac-formatted emails. I now have a searchable hard-copy on my desktop. 

2. Re-creating "Groups" in Google is easy, as long as you've emailed the people beforehand. Those of us on Macs have been frustrated anyway that Macs don't play nicely with Outlook Groups, so this was a nice change.

3. Re-creating "Events" in my Google Calendar was semi-easy, with an easier-to-use recurring appointment calendar... especially with the "Bulk Action Tool" Chrome App that cleans out appointments during holiday/vacation breaks. I say semi-easy because Google Events do NOT like Daylight Savings Time. Either my calendar has to be set to Eastern Time, or all my appointments show at the wrong time of day. So all my appointment bells "ding" an hour early. Fairly annoying.

4. The Google Mail interface is *pretty* :)  I added a beach "theme" so every time I log into my gMail, I get a different rotating background but can still see my email on top of it. So much easier on the eyes. 

5. Spam is eliminated! Once you shut off your forwarding address, all those pesky retailers and spammers are off your trail. For the time being. Give it a few years, they'll be back. 

6. Ease of communicating with students who also have gMail at school. Not just via email, but also with "hangouts" and G+ and whatever other social gadgets and gizmos you want to add to your profile. Works great with Schoology too. 

That's all for now! I have a new post planned soon for all the cool apps and tools I just learned at the latest Minnesota TIES convention. I promise, it won't be two months until you hear from me again. Maybe just two weeks this time ;)

Zombie Home Listing Experiment!

Happy Fall to one and all! 

We are selling our house in Montrose, MN in the hopes of moving to Waconia, MN where I teach (and where my oldest son now attends school). In my efforts to document the new fall decor on my front step, I created my own zombie moment. Check out my reflection in the door glass. It LITERALLY looks like a zombie is coming to attack my house. 

The start of the school year has been absolutely insane! Between deploying 800+ iPads, to trouble-shooting WIFI, helping with app downloads, dealing with password resets and then all the fun at home of preparing our house for selling, the past 5 weeks have raced by.

Now that I am in a position of helping others with their classroom and not having my own students' data to monitor, I'm kind of going into OCD withdrawal. So I have a little experiment to exercise my slowly atrophying *math teacher brain cells*... drum roll.... 

Question: "How much does social media networking affect the sale of a home?"

Data: We have a fabulous realtor, a great MLS listing, nice photography, a clean and updated house (granted it only has a 2-car garage, but there's not much we can do about that), a great backyard perfect for a young family, located on a quiet cul-de-sac in small town 40 mins. west of the Twin Cities... HOW FAST can we find the right family who will appreciate what our house has to offer?

As you can see from our daily MLS site hits (our listing is located here) we started out strong and then have been kind of putzing along for the last week and a half. I feel as though it would be helpful if someone would set up a "match.com" site for houses, where people not only could put in their house specifications, but also click on personality/family preferences like "includes workout space" and "playground/sandbox" and "huge walk-in closets" and "we have small & clean pets" and "granite countertops and stainless steel appliances really don't matter to us!".

I continued my professional development into technology integration by recording and editing a superbly amateur virtual tour using Windows Movie Maker software. Easy and fun!! Click here to watch:

Virtual Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zusVxslqMiQ&feature=youtu.be

Task: Zombie fans unite and forward our listing to anyone you know in the greater MN area who might be looking for a 2000 sq.ft. 3 BR/2BA home. Let's see how many listing "hits" and "saves" a girl can get, just by word of "digital mouth".

I will share an in-depth graphical, statistical analysis of the results at a later date... stay tuned.

Advanced Graph Art is now up on Amazon.Com!

Get your purchase orders ready! My new book is already up on Amazon.com! And it's already on SALE too!! List price is $16.99 and Amazon has it reduced to $15.18. (not sure what the 18 cents is all about)

Click the picture above to purchase the teacher edition and here to purchase the student edition.

Also, as I previously blogged, many teachers will want to use the instructional sections for whole-class teaching on Smart board or projector. To make this process more engaging, I'd recommend purchasing the complete Teacher's Edition eBook, just listed in my TpT store by clicking here.

Eventually I'll get the stand-alone chapters 5 & 6 on TpT as well. Right now, I'm stuck at work away from my files... and I have a full basement and stairs of carpet to wet vac in order to prep my house for selling!?!? And yes, it is 95 degrees out by the way, with a heat index of 110. My poor husband just texted me that it is 85 degrees and extremely humid inside our house, so the boys are all going out to dinner. So maybe the carpets won't get done tonight. Or I might just melt like the wicked witch.

Enjoy your first few weeks back! And here's another shameless plug to buy my book!!!

Gracias,
-Zombie

Advanced Graph Art for Grades 6-8 & Student Edition now available!

 

Happy Fall everyone! I hope your back-to-school prep has been rejuvenating and not to stressful. I have been slowly transitioning into my new role as a tech integration coordinator all summer, which is bittersweet, but also really exciting. In addition to work changes, we also successfully resurfaced and repainted the deck, and redecorated two bathrooms. Summer went by in the blink of an eye, as usual. 

Good news for you all, as you head back to your classroom, is that you have a glut of new fun math activities available in my new book! The first edition contained 25 puzzles to walk your students through the basics, with a taste of transformation challenge. The new second edition (click either picture above) will take your students' skills to a much higher level of understanding in the area of coordinate plane geometry. 

Both books are available for purchase now on CreateSpace.com. Rest assured, the Amazon.com listings will be up in a week or so for schools who require purchase orders for online curriculum orders. You can also purchase the first 4 chapters on TpT. I will be posting the last two chapters, as well as the full book, hopefully on Sunday this week if you are itching to get your hands on a digital copy. The really nice thing about having both the hard copy edition and the digital copy is that the digital keys and instructional segments are full-color. It makes instruction on a Smart Board or projector really come alive. So buy both!! :o) 

Stay tuned for updates. I will post as soon as I can with more info about the new TpT listings and when Amazon.com is up to purchase. Enjoy your first few weeks back!

Here are the listings:

Teacher Edition:  createspace.com/4329744

Student Edition: createspace.com/4412291

-Zombie Out

Advanced Coordinate Graph Art: Sections now available on TpT

Happy August! Where did the summer go??

I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to my wonderful editors who have gone through sections 1-4 with a fine-toothed comb, offering lots of helpful suggestions and (gasp!) even catching a few typos.

While I still have Section 5 and Section 6 to write, I am happy to announce that Sections 1-4 are now available on TpT! Each is listed at $2.99, same as my previous book. 

I am hoping to finish the rest of the book in the next two weeks before heading back to work. Or it's not going to get done. Send good vibes my way! 

Click here for my TpT store front.

Each section contains preview images as well as a preview section that you can download and try out. If you are liking all of the sections, you may want to hold off purchasing as it will be cheaper to buy the eBook at $14.99 than 6 sections at $2.99. 

Meanwhile, here are some fun free samples to keep you occupied. Remind me to try not to give away the entire book before it even goes to print ;)

Warning! Zombie Digital Footprint Sighted

Man, it's HOT in Minnesota right now. My Advanced Graph Art / Transformations book is 2/3 complete and much of the editing is done as well! Perfect day for vegging by the computer with a bowl of popcorn in my air conditioned kitchen, NOT doing that work.... maybe some other work instead... so I've been perusing Digital Citizenship curriculum for my students, bookmarking helpful pre-made resources.

Teaching students about their Digital Footprint is an important first step in Digital Citizenship. It's a good idea for everyone (students, teachers, parents, etc.) to "google" themselves every once in a while to see what kind of trail you're leaving. Here's mine.

I find it hilarious that I've been with Twitter for three months and it's my #1 hit, compared to LinkedIn, my MathByMandy.com website, and my Pinterest account that have been around for years. Twitter must have a deal with Google for prime searching.
 

You have to actually search my full name (Immanda Bellm) to get any references to my published works. And my physical address on WhitePages.com didn't even make the top 5 search results!

This is a good exercise for students, to see what (if anything) comes up when they search for themselves. Adding key words like their hometown, school or middle initial might help for common names, to see if they have begun leaving a digital trail yet.

Once they start networking on Social Media, they will begin to find themselves in searches, which of course means... everyone else can too. Having a talk about limiting contact info, and especially about appropriate pictures/tags and language is very important, as well as what is not appropriate to include. They need to be told about the very real possibility that their future employers may search their name, and they will be judged on their digital footprint all the way back to their teen years. 

 

Begin the conversation EARLY. "Digital footprints" are summed up in this excellent lesson example from CommonSenseMedia.org. It's really worth watching the whole video.

An important next step is to talk about the latest trend of attracting "followers". Like in the picture above... I look like a total nerd compared to the goddess Amy Farrah Fowler. We have similar numbers of tweets, BUT... While I am following over 250 people, I only have 29 followers (follow me!?!? please!!??)... and Amy is only following 11 people, but has over 32,000 followers!!??? WHAT!?!?!? 

Seriously people, I know it's super trendy to try to attract followers to market your brands, sell products and network (which I am doing just that) but our students are on a totally different course of perceived POPULARITY, in the latest "tag for likes" and other following tools. Several of my students have comments on their homepage, "Follow me! I follow back!" to help newbies start gathering their own network of "friends", "followers", or whatever you want to call them. Many of whom they don't even know. You click on their profile information and they have their cell phone number listed, their email, and sometimes even a physical ADDRESS! Yikes!

 

One of my favorite examples is a former student who has TWO, count them... one TWO... pictures on his Instagram account... yet has 200+ followers. Why!?!? Because it's "cool".  My Instagram, on the other hand, is relatively in control... 99% of my contacts are people I know, and I try not to tag or upload pictures of friends and/or family on my sites without their consent. Students have NO FILTER when it comes to snapping pictures of friends, photo-bombing each other, or taking video without asking for consent. This is a big privacy violation, especially for school device usage.

 

LinkedIn is equally dangerous for adults, especially when we are looking for work... giving out copious amounts of personal history and contact information in the hopes of finding new employment.

 

The problem is... personal data on LinkedIn doesn't necessarily mean much! Take my "Skills & Expertise" for example... while this is pretty accurate to what I'm good at, 100% of these supposed "endorsements" come from people that I have never met. Yep, that's right... you can solicit endorsements, or individuals can look through your digital "stuff" and endorse you for things they think you are good at, without even asking your permission.

Pinterest is another of my big obsessions that scores high on my digital footprint search. There is a lot of really good image sharing going on, especially on the education boards. The thing that worries me, is that the general public doesn't even need to log in to see any or all of my boards. 

My "Silly and Often Inappropriate" board may be offensive to some people, even though I try to keep it pretty G-Rated. Likewise, certain individuals might create a "pretty undergarments", or "nude canvas paintings" board that contains some pretty sketchy stuff (however tastefully it may have originally been perceived). They get searched, not realizing their boards default to "public" and badabing! They get a nasty parent call that their student was looking at their "naughty links" and YOU get fired. (I have no personal experience there, thank God!!!)

I guess the bottom line for everyone, kids and grownups alike, is... if you're not sure that you should post something, you probably shouldn't. If your partying ways are some day going to come back to bite you in the butt like Katie Perry's "Last Friday Night" song, you might need to rethink your lifestyle. Kids especially can be bullied or peer pressured into doing or saying much less risque things online, whether in text, pictures/editing, video chat, you name it... but it can affect them for the rest of their lives. 

On that happy note, here are some great resources I found in my searches! Please, if you find more resources I have overlooked, tweet them to me @MandyBellm! (and then "follow" me so I can feel "cool" ;)

 

Common Sense Media Online Safety Tips (page to the bottom)

Internet Safety Tips for Parents (printable pdf)

Yahoo Digital Safety Kit (differentiated by Age)

 

What's Your Digital Footprint? (for kids)

Digital Footprint Survey (for HS, College, Adults)

 

How's Your Online Health? (for professionals, how to build a healthy footprint)

 

 

That's all I've got for now! The sun is setting, I should probably go for a run... although I did DVR a few episodes of HGTV Star and Food Network Star... hmmm...