Deb Norton Tech

Today's Chat with Deb is about an ios app called Quick Key . This app allows teachers to assess students with a bubble sheet and the app will quickly scan the bubbles and produce class reports of the results. Watch the Chat with Deb to see more: Thank you to Intel's Teachers Engage for sponsoring this Chat with Deb

Active Prompt is a clever visual polling - survey site. It's really pretty simple to use and no account is required. First find an image.  Next ask others to drag a red dot to a certain location on the image. (You only have 24 characters, so keep it short)  Share the link for others to participate. Check out the results with the link to the responses I used Active Prompt to see which social network people like best. Try it out! Click here to participate. Click here to see the responses. Here are some possible ways to use Active Prompt in the classroom: Active Prompt would be a great way to see if your students understand a concept.  Your students could collect data using Active Prompt and graph the results. Active Prompt would be a neat way for you to conduct a quick poll on an issue or debate. Use images that illustrate a story and then periodically have students show understanding of the story by marking a part of the illu...

Last week a teacher asked me to recommend a site that would work well for students to journal with the possibility to also share the journal with the the teacher. There are plenty of apps for keeping a journal on the Internet and each has it own special feature, but after exploring about a half dozen apps, m y recommendation would be a Chrome app called Penzu. Here are the features that I like about Penzu : Signing up for an account is simple and free There is an option to lock the journal entry for privacy. There is a full text editor with the option to insert images and hyperlinks. To make the journal look appealing, you can choose a background  Sharing a journal entry can be done through email or through a public link. Journaling is good therapy after a disappointing event (notice my journal topic) and Penzu is a great tool for making this lady feel a tiny bit better. I highly recommend giving Penzu ...

#1    Google Keep  (an ios app and web site) - Create sticky notes for to do lists, notes and reminders. color code your notes create a to do list and check off items insert an image set a reminder to notify you on a future date share a note with others and work on the same note in real time archive notes for easy retrieval or to reuse them in the future. #2  Moo.do   (a Chrome App and Mobile App)- Introduce students to this amazing app for organizing, making lists and taking notes.  Here are some of the great features of Moo.do   Works on any computer, tablet or phone Quickly creates tasks and sets priority to the tasks Sets deadlines to tasks View the tasks as a timeline to see what is coming up Invite and collaborate with friends in real time Take notes in an outline format Import tasks from other sources Export tasks Here is an example of my notes on setting goals for the new year. Outline Co...

Today's Chat with Deb is all about using the popular green screen app from Doink.   In this episode you will see how to set up a green screen and use this simple app. Be warned that there is a major photo bomb during the video and a special historical visitor. There are many great technologies to incorporate into today's digital lessons, but there is something magical and innovative about green screening.  For more information on green screening, make sure to check out the Classroom Challenge post from my friend Gail Holmes in the Teachers Engage Community.   I hope you have a chance to give the app from Doink a try and if you have an idea of how green screening could be used in a classroom, please share with the rest of us in the comments below. Thank you to Intel's Teachers Engage for sponsoring this Chat with Deb.

There's a new app in town called  Ladibug .  Ladibug can be used to take pictures with a webcam and then mark up and annotate those pictures. Here is a picture of the reflection board in my office with some markups on it. The orange and pink lines are my markups that I added. When you first open Ladibug , don't let all of the tools scare you. Just hover over an icon and you will see what they are used for. Ladibug can also be set up to take a time lapse video - which is what I feel makes it different from most screen capture tools. Here is a video I created from the captured photos of my husband shoveling off our deck.   Ladibug itself does not create the video, but it was simple enough for me to download the captured images from Ladibug and import them into Wevideo to create a quick time lapse video. When setting up the time lapse there are a few settings to choose from such as delaying when it will start, how many intervals between eac...

Google as a search engine has some great features. Give these a try: Google Image Search Engine #1 You can upload and search an image: Click on the little camera icon when using Google Images Choose an image to upload Google Image Search Engine #2 Find an image with a transparent background. Click on Search tools, Color and then Transparent If the image has a checkered background it is transparent.   If the image does not have a checkered background it is not transparent. Google Image Search Engine #3 Search for animated images (gifs) Click on Search tools, Type and then Animated Google Web Search Engine #4 Search for current information. Click on Search tools, Any time and then choose the time period. Here are a few more tips to help with the Google Search engine: #1 Use it as a timer to keep you on track. Google: set timer 30 minutes Go full screen and project it in front of the class. A scroll bar will show ...

Recently I was asked by a co-worker to suggest a site that students could use to create questions and answers for their friends. Immediately I remembered a site called " Quiz Your Friends ".  What I like about this site is: no account is needed you can choose the number of questions create a personalized message for your friends when they finish your quiz share easily the quiz scrolls nicely from question to question Click here to take my quiz on bowling. I highly recommend giving Quiz Your Friends a try.

This week we celebrate the national Hour of Code event. Watch this Chat with Deb to see two sites that will help students to become creators, inventors and coders. 3D Tin Made with Code Resources shared in this episode: 3DTin.com Make with Code from Google Click here to view all of the Chat with Deb episodes. Thank you to Intel's Teachers Engage Community for sponsoring this episode.

Thanks to my Facebook friends, I've started playing a new app called Trivia Crack . It is free and addicting.   And, unlike many apps that people are playing, Trivia Crack is educational!!!! Although I must admit that most of the time my friends are better at Trivia than I am. . .  Trivia Crack is very similar to Trivial Pursuit.  The object of the game is to get enough correct answers to earn each of the 6 categories: Science, History, Sports, Art, Entertainment and Geography What I love about Trivia Crack is that it is challenging, I'm always learning new and interesting facts, and I can play against my friends. I'm hoping this app becomes very popular amongst our students. Whenever an app can make learning facts exciting and also has a social platform, I think it's a winner!!!   Wouldn't it be great if teachers would have a friendly competition between classes using Trivia Crack ?  Students could use the knowledge they have ...

Here are some of the great sites and tools being used by the amazing educators that I work with: Thinglink and Kahoot are two sites being integrated by a large number of our teachers. What makes these sites popular? Thinglink is all about making an image interactive with hotspots; something that is easy to use in any academic area. And Kahoot is just plain fun. Reviewing content in a game-based platform is so appealing to teachers and students. Google Classroom has taken our high school by storm. This past week when I was helping a teacher to get his students onto Google Classroom, I asked the students in 5 different classes if any of them were not already using Classroom and not one hand went in the air. Teachers and students love the simplicity and interface of this LMS. Keegan is having his students create videos using WeVideo and Screencastify . Did you know that you can use the Webcam option on the extension Screencastify to record a video and then edit tha...