Best of the Web 2013 - Updated

This morning at NCTIES 2013 I gave an updated version of my Best of the Web presentation. As promised to everyone in the room, I've uploaded the slides to Slideshare. You can view them on Slideshare or view them below.

Best of the Web 2013 from Richard Byrne

Awesome Android Apps for Students and Teachers

Image credit: Loops Creative

 Cross-posted from Android4Schools.com

This afternoon I gave a presentation about Android at NCTIES. According to David Warlick’s analysis of the conference program it was the only presentation devoted to Android applications. Below you can see my slides.

Awesome android apps from Richard Byrne

Choose What Happens Next - A Series of Video Lessons on Responsible Cyber Citizenship

This afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina I sat in on a good presentation about YouTube's video editing tools. The presentation was delivered by Lauren Boucher and Joanna Gerakios from Pitt County North Carolina schools. They started their presentation with a good video about cyber citizenship that I hadn't previously seen.

Choose What Happens Next is a series of videos linked together in a choose-your-own-adventure style. The first video features a girl receiving a text message from her boyfriend asking for pictures. The viewer then has to click "send it" or not send it. The choice that the viewer makes takes him or her to a video that explains the "results" of the choice. Watch the first video below.


Applications for Education
At the beginning of their presentation Lauren and Joanna recommended making all of your students watch these videos and I completely agree with them. I would add that you should send these videos to your students' parents and or post them prominently on your school's website.

Please see A Quick Star Guide to Using YouTube's Video Editing Tools, if you would like to learn how to create a linked series of videos like the one above.

Edcanvas - Organize, Share, and Track Use of Educational Materials

Earlier this year I wrote a short review of Edcanvas. Today, Edcanvas published a new video featuring one of the best aspect of Edcanvas for teachers, tracking your students' reactions to the materials that you share with them.

Edcanvas makes it easy for teachers to organize and share educational materials in a visually pleasing format. The "canvas" part of Edcanvas is where you arrange videos, links, images, and files around any topic of your choosing. Edcanvas has built-in search tools so that you do not have to leave your Edcanvas account in order to locate resources. 

When you share a canvas of materials with your students they can give the materials a thumbs-up to show that they understand the materials or they can ask questions about the materials. You can also see if your students actually looked at all of the materials that you have shared with them. See these options in action in the video below.


Applications for Education
Edcanvas could be a good service to use to organize collections of educational materials for each unit that you teach. Share those collections with your students to support your in-classroom instruction. You can embed your canvas into your classroom blog. You can distribute a QR for your canvas for your students to scan and open on their iPads. Or you can create a classroom code for your canvas and invite your students to view canvases.

Wikispaces is Ending Support for IE7

If you are a Wikispaces user and your school still insists on making you use Internet Explorer 7, take note that in April Wikispaces will be discontinuing support for IE7. You can read all of the details here.

Besides being able to see all of the content on your favorite websites there are some other practical reasons for updating your browser. If you're not sure which browser you're using or which version you're using, you can find out by visiting What Browser?