Deb Norton Tech

This spring has been super busy for me.  There are track meets, baseball games, practices, school events, and of course teaching every day. Because I like to stay connected to all of my social media outlets, I am finding that I use apps on my iPhone more than I do my laptop to keep up-to-date. Here are the apps that I have been using a lot in between track events and baseball games: Twitter - I check Twitter more than any other app. I love keeping up with all of the wonderful people in my PLN. Feedly- This is really a wonderful app.  My RSS feeds build up fast and the Feedly app makes it easy to peruse through the long list of blog posts and articles. Facebook - My friends and family are always with me through this app.  It seems that the Facebook app keeps getting better and better with each update.  I particularly like the new message feature. Linkedin - It's nice to see the new connections that professionals are making as well as job opport...

I have found a wonderful app!  Let me tell you about the situation. Last week a colleague of mine needed to get videos from one iPad onto another.  The goal was to get the videos into one photo stream so that the videos could be inserted into iMovie.  Perhaps you've had the same idea of students using several iPads to capture video and then put all of the videos into one iMovie.  We discovered that this is actually not an easy task. We tried several ways to transfer the videos through other apps without any luck.  We tried Dropbox and Google Drive, but neither offers an option to save the video to the Photo Gallery.  We tried emailing and the Bump App , but the videos were too large.  It seems that only videos under 30 seconds could be bumped.  So I started asking my Twitter friends, but no one seemed to have a solution.  I began searching and came across an app that looked promising.  It was called Wireless Transfer App . Th...

Pixlr Express is an app you can add to your Google Drive for photo editing.  It's a very impressive app.  Watch my video tutorial below to see more about Pixlr Express.  Pixlr has now been opened to students in our district.  :)

On Saturday morning I was perusing through my Twitter feed when I came upon several of the awesome people that I follow tweeting about attending Minnesota's First Google Summit.   I will admit that I was a bit jealous that while I was sitting at home my friends were at a technology conference getting the chance to be inspired and Googled up.   So I did what any Twitter extraordinaire would do; I stalked the Twitter hashtag and followed all of the tweets from the conference. One way to follow a hashtag is right in Twitter.  All that is needed is to enter the hashtag in the search bar.   As an alternative, I used a site called TweetChat .  This is one of my favorite ways to follow a hashtag live.   Here are a few of the great resources I acquired from the Tweets. Flipped Classroom Kristin Daniels, a friend of mine, presented on the Flipped Classroom.  As always I was very impressed by what Kristin and her team...

Recently I had the most amazing experience.  I interviewed for a case study with some great people at Air.org (American Institute for Research) and Intel for Education.  We had a wonderful conversation about Mobile Learning and technology integration.   Today, I want to share with you the Intel Mobile Learning Website .  There are some great resources available for teachers on this site. There are 3 main sections: Each section offers informational articles and research.  For those of us that want to keep up with the pedagogy of instructional technology and mobile learning, these are very helpful and interesting reads. Another section is called  Teachers Engage . This is a community for educators to connect.  In this section  Intel also offers free webinars!  (I've posted about Simple K12's webinars before .)  As I have said time and time again, I LOVE learning through webinars.  They are such a quick...

Last week a colleague of mine, Erin,  shared a new blog that she had found.  I told her that I also had discovered a new blog.  And that is all the inspiration I needed for this blog post.  I knew that we needed to share these new found blogs with all of you as well! I highly suggest that you read this entire blog post, since there is a little surprise at the end! Erin's find:  Digital: Divide & Conquer - (Clever Title!) Written by Matt Sutton a K-5 Sp. Ed. Resource teacher.  Matt's blog shares awesome ideas for technology integration as well as actual activities he does in the classroom.  His blog is full of great ideas and inspiration.   You must check out this post on an app called Funny Movie Maker that Erin pointed out to me. Deb's find:   Technology Tailgate This blog is a network of technology blogs.  It is dedicated to showcasing technology in the classroom.  The blog posts are written by a va...

Have you been on the Sheppard's Software site lately?  If not, you should!  This site is full of activities for your students. Here are some of the activities I found while browsing: Food Chain Activity Human Body Digestion Tutorial USA Regions Game Grammar Practice One way to search the Sheppard's Software Site is by grade level: If you're looking for an interactive activity to supplement a lesson or unit, I highly recommend giving Sheppard's Software a try.