Countdown to exams

The countdown to Exam time has well and truly begun so here is a list of some useful websites and apps to help you get the most from your time. 

Practice makes perfect? 

 Mocks.ie is a website, that also has a very useful app. (Watch the TME demo here) On this you can view mock papers, revision notes, information about orals, career guidance as well as some discounts. While there are elements of this app and service that you do need to pay for, there are plenty of free materials to help get you started. You can access both Junior Cert and Leaving Cert past papers, listen to Aural Exams, Test yourself with Multiple Choice Questions as use the Timetable and Study planner to get you off to a great start with your study plans!

This is an Irish Company focussing specifically at the Irish Curriculum.

Click on image to go to site.

www.clevernotes.ie

Clevernotes is a Folens company, with a long history in providing educational content. This website gives you access to engaging interactive content, exam preparation tips and is focussed on the Irish Curriculum. Contributors to the notes include Irish textbook authors, experienced teachers, examiners and subject matter experts. 

www.themathstutor.ie

If maths has been you weak area, then this fantastic site may be all you need to improve! Covering all 5 strands of Project Maths, including ordinary level and higher level. With interactive exercises, video lessons and online support all designed to help you ace your maths exams. 

www.examtime.com

Regardless of what topic or level you are learning, examtime.com puts some powerful tools at your disposal to help you improve your study. You can use features like Mind maps, flash cards and what I really love about this site is that you can share study notes, so that you can collaborate on your study! Learn more here 

Click to go to App DemoOne of our favourite apps on www.tme.ie is Shakespeare in Bits. (Click on the icon to the left to be brought to the demo). Not only can you get your Shakespeare plays here, the app is rich in features that make studying and understanding the text, so much easier. Study notes are provided for each scene along with key themes, language, and imagery. You can take your own notes in the app itself, or just look at the character maps!

Click on icon to be brought to app store

Poetry Beo - is for Leaving Cert Irish Poetry Study.  Includes texts, subtitled video and audio recorded performances, study notes, quick revision memos, sample questions, a game, and English translations of the meanings. Ideal for the oral as well as written exams.

One of the most popular mind maps out there, and it is easy to see why, is Popplet. (Click on the icon to the left to be brought to the demo).  Popplet's super simple interface allows you to move at the speed of your thoughts. With Popplet you can capture your ideas, sort them visually, and collaborate with others in realtime. Quickly and easily! You can also sign-up for an online account to work on your popplets in any Flash-enabled web browser.

Also in the Mind map genre of apps is iThoughtsHD, allowing you to sort your ideas and notes. You can export your map as an email, so creating a logical flow to your information becomes easier. This type of app really supports different learning styles and can be very useful to allow you to plan out how you will write essays etc.

If you are still struggling and feel you need the benefit of some grinds, check out www.onlinegrinds.ie. Grinds are delivered by teachers, in the comfort of your own home and are very reasonably priced. 

Click on logoFinally, for some tips on how to avoid stress and develop some good study habits. Check out Spunout.ie for some excellent practical tips. 

Good Luck!

You can count on this to keep score!

 At some stage in your life you are going to need to keep track of scores or multiple things at once. Whether it's keeping score in a quiz, a match, counting up loose change, surveys, voting and informal elections or tracking calories.

TallyPad is a fully customizable counter for iPad or iPhone. With so many areas in the app that can be changed, to suit your needs, its uses are only limited by your imagination. It came to my attention from a PE teacher who was using it to examine a rugby team and how many times different things occured throughout their games. He was able to quickly present their stats to them at half time, which made them focus more in the second half of the match. 

 Not only can you customise what you are counting, you can give different values to different motions within the app so a vertical swipe may add 10 points to a score, while a horizontal swipe may take away 10. You get to choose the values. TallyPad implements AV Out and AirPlay Mirroring with AppleTV. You can display your tallies on an external screen! This is great for keeping score at sporting events, family game night, or displaying items on a television in the classroom, and it all looks very slick!

Because TallyPad saves all your custom-named tallies, you can keep track of a virtually unlimited number of tallies and come back to them later.

To steal or not to steal, that is the question?

Image is from Copyright and Plagiarism Course available on iTunesU from NCDPI Instructional Technology(Click on the image, to the left, to be taken to Course in iTunesU)

Technology is amazing! Right at our fingertips there is so much content available to us to find and enjoy. We all (well most) agree that it is wrong to steal other people's stuff. Yet, as teacher's, student's and/or parents, we are also aware of the temptation to copy and paste some work and present it as our own, especially, when deadlines are looming and other things in life still have to be done! Most frequently, plagiarism is done with no ill intent or quite innocently by simply not quoting sources or attributing quotation marks. So how do we avoid it?

This week, in the US, a campaign to highlight the importance of originality in academic work is kicking off. Some great tips for teachers are being shared (with consent and acknowledgement) from the likes of plagiarism.org, writecheck.com and turnitin.com to name but a few. 

You can access student posters, links, and some useful videos to share with your classes. I particularly like this one from writecheck.com, which tries to explain why Wikipedia is not necessarily considered a reputable source by many. The aim is to promote an understanding of why copying is considered wrong, even when it's not over the shoulder of the person beside you. 

If you are interested in getting copyright for your own material, you should check out www.numly.com. If you submit work to them, they create an electronic serial number to prove your copyright. If you are using a mac you can download the free Widget to your desktop (although you will still need to have an account!) Download the widget here

For more information and useful links check out: http://www.plagiarism.org

Here is a list of online websites that will assist in identifying plagiarism, and have additional support materials to help you teach your class about plagiarism:

https://www.writecheck.com 

http://www.turnitin.com

http://www.ithenticate.com

http://www.plagiarismchecker.com

http://www.plagiarisma.net They also have an app available on Google Play (Android only)

http://www.grammarly.com 

If you are looking for an app and are using a Mac laptop, there is an app called Novus Scan. I have yet to try this out myself as I tend to use one of the web based services. 

If you are interested in this article why not also read/watch Common Sense Media.

Focus on Plant

Focus on Plant is a nice and detailed app that allows a student/teacher to examine Plant Biology. 

Covering Plant Structures, Plant Cells, Physiology and Life cycle in detail, users can delve deeper into each section to reveal more detail along with animation. It has an impressive Auditory Glossary so you can get some assistance with pronouncing scientific terms.

Useful for Biology Teachers, students or anyone with a general interest in botany. 

Quickmath

Try and solve math problems as fast as you can to beat your personal best. Quick Math is a great game app that will keep young and old brain's ticking!

It has a handwriting recognition feature, which allows you to jot down your answer directly on the iPad screen. You can choose from game types and levels. The game will remember your personal best and you can set up multiple player profiles so it is useful for teachers using a singular iPad in a classroom. 

iThoughtsHD

This is, by far, one of my favourite apps at the moment. I have always personally struggled to write essays, and when I take notes I usually look back over them wondering what I was referring to. Mind maps have been incredibly useful to me to help structure my thinking and allowing me to flesh out those random thoughts that pop into my head from time to time. 

For those of you already familiar with Mind Maps they are useful in education, brainstorming, thinking, meeting, planning, problem solving, communications and note taking etc. It is often used for students with different learning styles to assist in their learning. 

This app gives the user the potential to use them in many ways. From presenting using mind maps, to sharing them in cloud services, and also email them to yourself (which lays the mind map out in a very easy to understand layout, so much so I actually surprised myself that I took such diligent notes!) I will be honest and say I dived straight into the app without looking at any help menu's or tutorials and found the basics straight forward enough, however, some thing were not so intuitive. They are still very easy to do and once I watched the video above I felt like a pro using the app. Rather than recreate the video, here it is for your own benefit!

Soundbrush

An app that will appeal to both the musician and artist in you. Soundbrush allows you to draw to create music. You have a selection of instruments to draw for piano, strings, flute and synth. 

To create you draw on the screen. Double tap a line to delete it. You will need two fingers to scroll. 

Once you have completed your masterpiece you can export it to Soundcloud.

Puppet Workshop

A fun and colourful app that will have your student/child exploring their creative side. Make sock and glove puppets, and save them to your camera roll to be used in other apps later for storytelling!

This app is designed to ensure there are no banner ads, data collection or social media links so it can be used in safety and without distraction.

Common Sense - courses on Digital Citizenship

Social media and Digital citizenship are hot topics at present. These courses, available through iTunes U, will give you handouts, videos, and also some suggested app to equip you to effectively approach these topics with your students.

The range of courses are extensive and cover topics like Cyberbullying, Copyright, Online Identitay and Digital Citizenship to name a few. 

New Facebook android. Do you Like it?

Facebook have announced their new service on Android phones called "Home". Essentially shying away from creating their very own phone, the new Facebook phone app once downloaded will be able to send you updates from your Facebook account, regardless of whatever app you may be working in. 

If a user decides to download Facebook home onto their phone from April 12th, the Facebook app essentially becomes the Hub for the phone. Facebook becomes integrated on all levels of using the phone. 

Home won't just be tied to a single device or a single manufacturer. Facebook will offer Home as a download in Google's Play store to select devices -- including Samsung's Galaxy S III and Galaxy S4, and the HTC One X. The plan is to update the app every single month, not only adding more features, but also support for more devices.

What will this mean for you? As many classrooms consider BYOD (Bring your own device) could this be more of a headache or what advantages do you see in this? Share your thoughts on the wall below.

Official Promo Video for Facbook Home

Facebook Home Wall: Share your thoughts:

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Autism Awareness Month

The month of April is Autism Awareness Month. This month is all about challenging ignorance, prejudice, fear, and hysteria about autism and autistic people. Autism Acceptance Month helps to spread the word that autism is both a neurological disability and a natural part of human diversity. Autistic people are valuable members of our society and should be treated with respect. The good news is that to celebrate this month many Apps are free. The question is always which App is best? Apps are as diverse as the users who download them, so this is a perfect opportunity to try out apps and see if they suit your particular needs. 

Below are a list of apps that may appeal. Please feel free to share your favourite on the wall below!

All of the following Apps are FREE. Click on the picture to be brought directly to the app store.

Behaviour BreakthroughsMy Autism DayAutism Activity RoutinesAutism Tracker Lite: Track, analyze and share ASD dailyAutism iHelp – Colors

ABA – Problem Solving – What does not belong?

Autism iHelp – Language ConceptsABA Flash Cards – AnimalsAutism iHelp – SortingAutism Emotion

Picture Card Maker - For Communication and More!Autism iHelp – WH QuestionsTapToTalk™Autism Apps

For a list of even more apps based on Bloom's Taxonomy, click here. (Developed by Mark Coppin)

Why not post your favourite on the wall, which can be shared with others using this link: http://padlet.com/wall/autismapps

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Create your own interactive wall - Padlet

Click here to visit the Padlet website

This video demo shows you how you can create your interactive wall for your classroom. Student's can access the wall using their own devices, (as long as they have access to the internet), so it is great for BYOD days!

You can customise the URL and also embed your wall onto your website just like TME!

If you haven't yet contributed to the walls on this site, please make sure to drop by and join in!

Flipped Week - What are your biggest challenges in your classrooms?

As part of Flipped week - and the question for this wall is: "What are your biggest challenges with Technology in your classroom?" 

Feel free to add your concerns, you never know someone maybe able to answer your concerns!

Don't forget to check back on previous walls and add to those as well!

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Flipped Week - What has inspired you recently?

As part of flipped week, on the second wall, we want to know what has inspired you recently? Whether it's personally or professionally, please share with us, on the wall below. Simply double click anywhere on the wall and add your note. You can add a Twitter name if you like or remain anonymous it's totally up to you!

Feel free to check back and see what other's have said! You can drag photos or add links to articles if you like! Of course feel free to share on Twitter

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Flipping the website

If you could share one thing with peers what would it be? 

So if you have a favourite app, a favourite review, or a favourite anecdote that you want to share with us, this is your chance to post it to our wall!

Simply double click anywhere on the wall below and tell us your favourite app. Please incude your name (twitter name if you want us to follow) and feel free to share this page with friends.

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