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Monday, June 25, 2012

eduClipper Like Pinterest for Teachers




Pinterest has been well publicized as recently becoming the number three social media platform, and the teaching community is a big reason for their success.  The ability to see an image, lesson, or idea and "pin it" to share with a thousand or so of your closest allies is a feature that has differentiated Pinterest from other social media platforms in a way that has produced unparalled growth. 

While the rest of the world is sharing pins of recipes, home improvement ideas, and holiday decorations, the educational community has created it's own little niche in the Pinterest movement, sharing ideas and pinning just about anything from lesson plans to classroom layouts, planners, organizers and Hey Girl pictures.  Uh oh....Hey Girl pictures?  How am i going to open Pinterest in class without unwillingly bringing up a picture of Ryan Gosling, an angry orange or a dog in a spiderman costume. 

As a Pinterest user, I follow people because they share great stuff, but deep down inside I know that they also on occasion share nonsense, and I don't need to broadcast that to my classroom.  We've all been there before.  That moment where your Pinterest account's "funny" board suddenly becomes not so funny as you accidently show it to a colleague, student, or parent.  You then rapidly click away to act like it wasn't there (but it was) and then wonder if they saw it.  Or even worse, the students simply go crazy on it and you've distracted your entire classroom.  Eventually, you simply avoid using the tool altogether in class. 

Why hasn't somebody created a kid-safe, classroom safe version of this fantastic tool?  A tool with all of the great functionality but none of the nonsense and spam.  One that I can pull up on my whiteboard, iPad, or even send students to link to?

Well now they have!  Adam Bellow of EduTecher.net is putting the finishing touches on eduClipper, a resource for clipping, marking, saving, and sharing great ideas in a school friendly and kid safe forum.  Users can share clipboards to users and non users alike.  The motto of eduClipper is "Clip Anything, Share Anything" and it suits the product perfectly.  Videos, lessons, images, whatever you want to clip and share, you can do it.  You can even share it back out on your regular - non kid safe social media platforms, so there isn't any worry about doing double work.

eduClipper isn't quite ready yet, but you can signup today and be one of the very first to use this fantastic new resource! 

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Tally Marks

My students have a little trouble in the beginning with tally marks.  I saw this rhyme on another blog an had to share it.  I think it will be a big help when we start to make tally marks to count.  So simple yet so good.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Classroom Website

If you want to keep your classroom website and your blog separate, take a look at weebly.  It is the easiest free site I have found.  It is all drag and drop. Links are easy and so is design. I did my entire site in 2 days.  Take a look at my site to get an idea of what you can do. Click here.
I also have some darling clip art for a general school theme. Click here.