I’ve been using oCam as a screen recorder for several months and I love it!
With oCam, you can create recordings in mp4 that are free of watermarks. Audio from the computer or a microphone can be captured during a recording in oCam. It is easy to use and a perfect start for the Windows user. Check out this full review at AddictiveTips and download it today.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is great. However, some of us have lots of our work living in the Windows environment. To help us out, many apps have been created for the Apple tablet to help us out.
Below are three free apps that try to bring a few more windows to the iPad.
I should be clear about one thing. None of the apps above will replace your Windows PC. You won’t have an iPad that runs Windows too. The apps above are close but some things are are just not the same in a touch environment. If you’re an iPad user who also runs Windows, all three apps above are worth taking a look at but don’t throw out your PC just yet.
QR codes have been turning up everywhere from the billboard at the bus stop to the back of the ketchup bottle at your favorite restaurant. These blocky little squares are beefed up barcodes that anyone with a smartphone can scan.
We’re starting to see them pop up in classrooms too. We now have QR code scavenger hunts, periodic tables, and worksheets.
QR codes are great for passing long URLs to your students’ devices. I think they work best when you want to conceal information for a period of time while the students try to solve a problem you have given them. For example, let students scan the QR code for a hint on a difficult problem or create a guess and check bulletin board to review a recent lesson.
However, are they always worth the time? QR codes are not as quick as they’re name (quick response) makes them sound. They are not worth the time for short messages that your students could probably type in faster than scanning. They are especially slow if your students do not already have the app required to read the codes installed on their device. You risk losing your lesson tinkering with technology for technology sake.
McKee Floyd, director of brand development for Sweetgreen, said it best when he spoke with NPR:
The issue I have with QR codes is that marketing is a little bit like telling a joke, and the longer the joke, the better the punch line has to be — and [using] QR code is a really long joke
I think the same is true in the classroom. If you’re going to use QR codes with students, make sure your punch line is worth it.
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the spring:
Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month—and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).
Here’s how the rest of the nation breaks down.
Read the whole report.
This reminds me of a Dilbert I saw recently.
Here are two ways to use text messaging with students:
Despite my love for computers, I’m not strong when it comes to typing. The idea of retyping something makes me cringe.
That’s why I was so happy to stumble upon Online OCR.
Using optical character recognition (OCR), this site will take any old document that you’ve scanned in as a PDF and convert it to editable text.
I use Readability to display news stories in class.
Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you’re reading.
Go from this:
to this: Read More
Want to share a website but the URL is just too long? Try Snipurl.
Turn this:
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/
sound01/background/seasounds/seasounds.html
Into this:
http://snipurl.com/seasounds
There are many URL shortening sites available but I like Snipurl the best because it allows you to create custom URLs without having to create an account.
Like many people, I often go to Google for answers. However, when you need to do calculations or access raw data, Wolfram Alpha easily beats Google.
For example, the other day I needed to know what date is 60 days after February 11th. Sure I could get a calendar and start counting but it only takes seconds to do this:
Below are a few of my other recent inquiries:
Start your own investigation or check out their examples to get an idea of Wolfram Alpha’s power.
Garmahis.com has posted a review of some of the Photoshop alternatives that are available for free.
What amazes me is that some of these programs can run quickly right in your browser.
Sumo Paint, Pixlr Editor and Aviary Phoenix each look like promising tools for simple (and in some cases not-so-simple) image editing.
Have you tried Wordle? If you provide the text, Wordle will create a word cloud that will display each word used in the source text in a font size based on the frequency that the word appears in the source. The more the word is used, the larger it appears. Take a look at Wordle’s gallery to see some examples.
Some have criticized Wordle by suggesting that Wordle’s only attribute is that it is eye-catching.
I’m okay with that. I can work with eye-catching. Below is a Wordle I made using all the text from a recent test.
A few days before the test, I shared this with my students. They were eager to hypothesize as to how words like “astronaut” or “gravy” would be used to access there knowledge of friction and momentum. Some student suggested possible questions that used the terms from the word cloud. A few of their questions were so good that I plan to use them next year.
While Woodle wasn’t able to teach physics, it was able to start a conversation. That’s perfect. I can take it from there.
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