Learn how to embed Google Presentations and upload PowerPoint slides to give your mobile app some amazing content! For more information, visit www.Appshed.com The post Learn how to create mobile apps on @Appshed using #GoogleEDU Presentations and slides appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

Learn how to include Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media accounts into your AppShed mobile project. For more information, visit: www.Appshed.com The post Learn how to create a mobile app that is social media friendly using @Appshed appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

Jeff sits down with Torsten Stauch from AppShed to discuss how school districts and classrooms can create amazing mobile apps for their communities. About Mobile App Building AppShed allows people to become creators of technology, not just consumers. AppShed is a free online app-creation tool where users design, create and publish mobile apps. Everyone gains a huge sense of achievement, having been able to produce something tangible they can share with others. The app-building environment is intuitive and adaptable to your needs. Apps can be tested in real-time either on a mobile device or in a browser. Creative Apps Generation Using AppShed anyone (with no technical knowledge) can generate their own smartphone apps. Advanced students can take it much further using web technologies (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) or programming (PHP) to create fully interactive high-level apps. We are all part of the "creative apps generation". AppShed is delighted to be equipping people for an exciting future in our digital world. AppShed Academy AppShed Academy is a versatile and comprehensive online tool to facilitate student development of apps in education. Intuitive, step-by-step learning allows teachers to include app development in the ICT curriculum without the need for an in-depth understanding of the app creation. This exciting technology allows students to express their creativity through a powerful app building tool which can be tied in with school projects and assignments as well as extra-curricular activities like sports teams. Featured Links AppShed Homepage AppShed on Twitter AppShed on YouTube   Featured Guest Torsten built his first computer game at age 12 and has gone on to start 3 companies and build a wide variety of software products. He is a popular speaker in the ed-tech sector with a strong focus on creativity and entrepreneurship. Torsten is the CEO of AppShed. AppShed was started in 2009 as a content management system for native apps, targeting the SME market. It pivoted during 2011 to become an ed-tech company focusing on the use of app development as an education tool. Torsten has helped grow AppShed to almost 100,000 users and thousands of schools & colleges, both in the UK and abroad. AppShed is the most versatile free tool available for students to create mobile apps. Students can easily create using a wide range of tools and then deploy their projects as web-apps in a matter of minutes. The next hot product is AppShed Academy - an in-line learning environment to facilitate student development of apps. Intuitive, step-by-step learning allows teachers to include app development in the classroom without the need for an in-depth understanding of app development. Teachers have the ability to create their own e-learning content and distribute it across all mobile and desktop platforms. Torsten is also a founder and technical director of Red C, a 12-year-old digital consultancy based in London’s Tech City. Red C boasts many large corporate clients including Thames Water, The Independent, Mitsubishi Securities, Société Générale & Fabergé. Torsten oversees the technical solutions and product development with a primary focus on the financial services sector. As a developer Torsten built a variety of web and app products including "Plug and Play CMS" (a web-content management system) and Bus Guru which provides 100k+ London bus users with real- time bus information. The post Podcast: Learn how @Appshed can transform your students into app developers! appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

The Tech Educator Podcast is a weekly round table discussion about current topics in educational technology.  For more information, please visit www.techeducatorpodcast.com. Many great ways to participate in the TechEducator Podcast. TechEducatorPodcast.com Follow us Live on Video: http://www.TeacherCast.tv Leave a Voice Mail: http://www.TeacherCast.net/voicemail Email: feedback@Teachercast.net Twitter: @TechEdShow (http://www.twitter.com/techedshow) Hashtag: #TechEducator Hosts: Jeff Bradbury - TeacherCast.net - @TeacherCast Jeff Herb - InstructionalTechTalk.com - @InstTechTalk Sam Patterson - MyPaperlessClassroom.com - @SamPatue Chris Nesi - Education the Nesi Way - @MrNesi David Saunders @DesignSaunders -designsaunders.com Josh Gauthier @mrgfactoftheday -Mr Gauthier’s Tech Chat Guests: Show Information Tara Linney  coding in the curriculum https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gTRSQ2_Wnia22MKwdn9YoKm5DUUgbG0zzX6-ucQKaHw/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000 Treehouse http://teamtreehouse.com/join/first-week-free?utm_source=google&cid=1027&as_clid=297355d4-6045-4844-8f45-bcbd75433c5b:treehouse%20programming🅱g:1t1&gclid=CIKfiKG9y8ECFZNbfgodSg8A2g lIGHTBOT https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lightbot-one-hour-coding-14/id927711285?mt=8 Vocareum  http://instructionaltechtalk.com/021-coding-classroom-vocareum/ Tickle app https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/705926089/tickle-learn-to-code-using-scratch-to-make-iphone  http://www.tickleapp.com/ Coding resources http://bit.ly/1zxiWu4 Please join the TechEducator Podcast LIVE every Sunday night at 7:00 P.M. EST on http://www.TeacherCast.tv Please contact TeacherCast with any Questions or to become a guest on the show Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast Email: info@teachercast.net Voice Mail: http://www.TeacherCast.net/voicemail YouTube: http://www.TeacherCast.net/YouTube iTunes: http://www.TeacherCast.net/iTunes Watch LIVE: http://www.TeacherCast.tv | Broadcasting Schedule (http://www.teachercast.net/showcal)TeacherCast Broadcasting Community: http://www.TeacherCast.net/broadcastingcommunity Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Educators Guide to Podcasting today! | Video | Slideshare Presentation Hire TeacherCast to Speak or Broadcast at your conference Jeff Bradbury (@TeacherCast) is available as a Keynote Speaker, Presenter, or to Broadcast your conference LIVE!  Contact Jeff Today! Check out more TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network Shows TeacherCast Podcast (http://www.teachercast.net/education/teachercast-broadcasting/) TeacherCast App Spotlight (http://www.teachercast.net/education/teachercast-broadcasting/the-teachercast-app-spotlight/) The TechEducator Podcast (http://www.techeducatorpodcast.com) The post Podcast: Preparing for the #HourOfCode . . . Student Coding Opportunities | #TechEducator 72 appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

It’s hard out there for a creative person trying to make their passion their job. In some ways being a professional crafter has gotten easier than ever; it’s now simple to set up an online store so that you can generate sales even when you’re not driving to craft fairs and trade shows. This steady income can help tide you over between those big convention hauls so that you’re not left wondering where and how you’re going to make ends meet until the next one. It used to be that this was a cash only business. It increased the risk of you being robbed, and added to the difficulty in organizing your inventory and your schedule. There are still some hardcore crafters who use a pencil and ledger to sort out their inventory and sales, and to those brave souls, good luck. For everyone else, there’s a far better way. A mobile point of sale system, coupled with a barcode reader and printer could be all you need to get things off the ground. Makes Online and in Person Stock Sync When you’re working as a crafter you can’t afford to split your inventory. Everything that you have should be for sale in your booth at conventions, and also available for purchase at your website. You need a system that’s going to sync your inventory purchase by purchase so that you don’t wind up double selling an item. Some, you might be able to replace, but when you’re dealing with handmade crafts, each one is going to be a little different. If you used up all the wool yarn of a particular dye batch finish those hats and you sell out, you’re not going to be able to replace them exactly, just give the next best thing. You don’t want to be required to explain to your online customers that you sold the stock out from under them before you realized they’dpurchased it online. A mobile barcode scanner, offered by Shopify, can be set to tick off each item when you sell it in person, meaning that it can be pulled from your website easily and without fuss. Picking the right software is one of Entrepreneur’s the ten steps to organizing your online and offline store. This will put you in a much better position with customers. People will accept something being sold out more easily than they would accept you accidentally double selling the same item. Quicker Service Means More Customers In a perfect world, everyone would patiently wait in line while you counted back change for everyone who paid with cash, or ran their card through your third-hand card scanner. In a busy and crowded place like a crafts fair, however, that’s just not the case. People will pay for convenience, as many studies show. When someone can pay digitally with a tap and then press a button to tip, the average tip size goes from about 12 percent to about 20 percent, according to Bon Apetit. People aren’t responding to how cool and fun the scanner is. They’re noticing that things are a lot easier for them when they can tap and go. A mobile point of sale system will keep their checkouts to a single swipe or tap, and having your own barcode reader means that you won’t have to spend forever trying to remember how much something cost. One scan and you’ll have the breakdown from the price to the products that go into it. Can Show You What’s in a Product Storing product information is one of the big three functions of a barcode system, according to Wired; the other two being asset tracking and creating sales orders. This means that when you’re building your barcodes, you can stick in codes for yourself. One number can mean that everything attached to an item is cruelty-free, while another could mean that it’s all handmade, from the dyes that the wool was dipped in, down to the bow that you bundle it up in. This is a great help if you’re the kind of crafter who can’t control all the things they get into. If you only knit wool hats, for example, it’s pretty easy to remember how you make them and the materials that you use. If you’re always changing your stock and trying new things this could be a lot harder. Having this information at your fingertips will impress the potential customers who come by. The longer you can detain them in conversation the greater your odds of making a sale, and the simpler the process is, the fewer chances that things will go wrong. When a payment goes wrong you run the risk of the customer possibly not wanting the item anymore. Your expertise and a quick checkout makes it difficult for them to have second thoughts, which in turn means more profit in your pocket. The post How a Mobile Barcode Reader Helps Crafters out Class the Competition appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

Recently, I was having a PLC meeting with teachers in my high school.  The teacher was telling me that they were shooting video for a film project and she was having the students draw out different scenarios for the project.  She was eager to show me the work, but kept apologizing for the way that the drawings looked because "she wasn’t an artist."  I took a look at these sketches and introduced her to possibly the best tool imaginable for this type of application . . . StoryboardThat.com! StoryboardThat.com is a great way for teachers and students to brainstorm ideas for projects. It is a free application (with premium features) that allows users to create amazingly detailed storyboards for any occasion. At the heard of StoryboardThat is the Storyboard Creator Simple & Fun Interface:The storyboard creator uses a familiar drag and drop interface that users of all ages pick up in seconds. Our creator allows you to fully customize numerous aspects of your storyboard; from coloring in your own character, to adding text, we have everything you need to get the story straight! Detailed Image Library:Creating a beautiful and expressive storyboard is easy with our extensive and well curated library of over 325 characters, 225 scenes, and over 45,000 images in search. If that still isn’t enough we offer another powerful tool; the ability to upload your own images! Focus is on The Story: By using a storyboard like a graphic organizer it helps structure students work into a linear and concise story. Although it feels easy at first, breaking down ones thoughts into just a few cells works critical skills in prioritizing the right information and creating a good story flow. Registering for StoryboardThat.com Singing up for StoryboardThat is very easy.  To register, simply create a username, supply a login email and set your password.  From here, users will select their pricing plan.  The free version of StoryboardThat allows users to have a free account with access to more than 45,000 free images.  For only $9.95 a month, StoryboardThat offers an educational pricing plan that allows for private storyboards, extra administrative tools, the ability to export your storyboard to Powerpoint and Google, and the ability to upload your own personal images. After users register, they can create a new Storyboard.  Users are presented with three blank squares from which they can design in an unlimited number of ways. StoryboardThat has some great Teacher Features! If you are an educator, you can’t go wrong by checking out StoryboardThat.  Once you sign up for a Teacher account, you have access to a very dense StoryboardThat dashboard that allows you to view and organize your created storyboards, and the storyboards that are created by your students (more on this in a future blog post).  One of the best features of the StoryboardThat dashboard is the lesson planing section.  StoryboardThat provides educators with tons of examples for how to use it in your classroom with your students. Throughout the next few weeks, TeacherCast will be diving into the inner workings of StoryboardThat.com to showcase it’s great features and help you create dynamic lessons and projects for your classroom.  Interested in signing up for StoryboardThat?  TeacherCast and StoryboardThat have teamed up to provide you a great discount… by clicking on THIS LINK, you will be taken to our partner portal where you will receive a great discount for singing up today on StoryboardThat.com!  Check it out today!! In part 2 of our StoryboardThat series, we will dig into the interface of StoryboardThat and show you how to create your first Storyboard. The post Learn why teachers are turning to @StoryboardThat to create amazing lesson plans! appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

Jeff sits down with Barbara and Tina, the creators of LiveBinders to disgust this revolutionary free web tool that is sweeping the educational universe. Topics Covered: What is LiveBinders? How do LiveBinders work? Creating an account Bookmarking your LiveBinder account Keeping your LiveBinder organized Sharing your LiveBinder Following other LiveBinders Helpful Tutorials Why should teachers be using LiveBinders? How should teachers be using LiveBinders? What types of resources can be found on LiveBinders?" How can students use LiveBinders? How to add things to your live binder Integrating your live binders with your social networks Taking LiveBinders with you on the road The Future of LiveBinders Websites and Apps Discussed: LiveBinders About our Guests: Barbara Tallent has a real passion for creating products that customers love and products that help them communicate. With over 25 years in the Information Technology Industry, Barbara was President/CEO of BoldFish (email marketing software), which she sold to Siebel Systems (now Oracle) She has held executive positions at a number of Internet startup companies and spent six years with NCD, eventually running the Z-Mail division which was one of the first internet email clients. She volunteers with her local schools where she focuses on technology integration and support. She also volunteers for Astia (Formerly Women’s Technology Cluster) where she coaches women on business planning for their start-ups. Tina Schneider is passionate about creating technology that connects people and ideas; her mission is to enhance digital communication through new forms of narrative. As an MFA graduate student at SF State she applied art theory practice to digital mediums. Tina continued to develop that perspective as in intern at Xerox PARC and then as software researcher with FX Palo Alto Laboratory.  In 2003 she received the prestigious Fuji Xerox Innovative Technology Award for her work addressing the communication behaviors of digital natives.  Today Tina is focusing her attention on educators, providing a platform that empowers them and their students to be knowledge leaders.   The post Learn how to curate the web using @LiveBinders | A TeacherCast Classic Podcast appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

What is a Social Media Manager? Schools today are interested in sharing their voices with not only their local community, but their global community as well.  No more is it the norm for school districts to have a simple website that brings information to it’s people in a passive format.  Items such as Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and Mobile Apps are becoming common place amongst educational institutions. What does it take to manage all of these accounts?  A Good Social Media Manager. A Social Media Manager is someone with the mindset and drive to be the virtual voice for the school district as well as being the voice for the community inside of the conference rooms. First we will examine some of the skill sets needed to be a Social Media Manager in an educational environment. Confidential:  A Social Media Manager must be someone that is trusted and respected by the school district.  Why? Because the Social Media Manager should have access to information about the districts current plans, future plans, and understand how the district is implementing them so they can provide the best information to the community when called upon.  This means having a good line of communication with district administration.  When something great happens in the school, the Social Media Manager should be one of the first to hear about it to alert the community. When something happens that needs strategic attention, the Social Media Manager should also be in the loop to accurately provide vital information in a time of emergency. People Friendly: Your Social Media Manager should know how to get things done, and get them done quickly.  We live in a world of seconds, not minutes, and certainly not hours.  When your football team wins the big game, your twitter feed needs to be moving and moving fast.  It’s not news on Monday.  To have a successful social media strategy means that your Social Media Manager needs to be able to work with a district appointed team to bring in the needed content and bring it in quickly for accurate reporting. Community Aware: What types of devices do your community members use on a daily basis? How do they access their informaiton? What do they want to hear from the school district? How often do they want to hear it? These are some of the things that a good Social Media Manager needs to be familiar with.  There is no need to build a mobile app for your district if most of your community has no wireless access or smart phones.  If your community isn’t on Twitter (yet) you shouldn’t be tweeting as your primary source to share emergency informations.  A good social media manager works WITH the community to learn how they wish to be given the information about their students and school system. Persistence: A friend of mine once asked me "Did you see my tweet about…." This was the only tweet that my friend tweeted over a 6 month time.  He thought that by tweeting once, everyone would have seen it.  A tweet, a Facebook post, and most other forms of social media fall into the category known as "A Tree in the Woods."  If you send out one tweet, and nobody reads it… did it really exist?  A good social media manager needs to understand that the best way to build up a social following and profile is by communication repetition.  This takes… well… time and energy. These are just several of the qualities that companies and school districts should look for in a good social media manager.  Knowing how to organize everything is the other half of the battle. The last two, and most important qualities that a good social media manager needs to have is speed and patience.  Implementing a solid social media plan in a community for the first time takes planning, preparation, education, and this is a time consuming responsibility.  Things need to be done quickly and efficiently with the cooperation of several educators.  A Social Media Manager does not work alone.  They require the commitment from every building in the district as well as a commitment from their coworkers to supply content, submit videos, photos, and much more to fully realize a successful social media plan.  The Social Media Manager is only the captain of the ship… but a captain with a huge responsibility and dedication for their school and community. What is the Name of the Game? The responsibility for the Social Media Manager overwhelmingly is communication.  Your job is to speak on the level of those you are speaking to.  True, the internet has developed a code, a language, and several other gimmicks to differentiate those who are "connected" and those who "aren’t." A good Social Media Manager understands the community better than they understand themselves and is always a step ahead of the game.  Remember those little square digital boxes?  Well, now, most people understand them as Quick Response, or QR Codes.  It’s becoming common place to find them in stores all around to help promote a product.  The same goes with things such as URL’s or Hashtags.  It is the responsibility of the district, through the Social Media Manager to train their community, through communication, rather than push away through intimidating "new" tech terms. Links of interest: What is a Social Media Manager So You Want to be a Social Media Manager What is a Social Media Manager: HubSpot Social Media Manager Job Requirements and Description: Engadget 6 Must Have Attributes of a Social Media Manager What does it take to become a Social Media Manager Social Media Manager Salary Guide 6 Things your Social Media Manager Must Do to improve your Online Presence  The post Does your school district need a Social Media Manager? appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

In today’s fast-moving world, education is more important than ever. Nearly 70 percent of high school graduates are attending university according to Time, a dramatic increase over the numbers of the past decades. More and more people are graduating, and, as a result, individual degrees mean less today than they have in the past. Perhaps this is due to lowering standards. Perhaps it’s just a natural side effect of a flooded market. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. One thing is certain though, the normal model for education doesn’t guarantee a job anymore. It just doesn’t accurately model the real world, at least not in an economically viable sense. Sure, those looking to learn for learning’s sake can still read to their heart’s desire in the ivory tower, but for those who look to move the world, to organize and conquer, a new model is needed, one that convincingly prepares students for the necessities of real life. Proposed Amendments to the Current Education Model According to the Commission on Institutions of Higher Learning, change is a constant part of the education process. Innovation needs to start in the classroom if it will make its way out into the world. That’s a statement that most educators would agree with. Just how to bring that change about is another story. Many point to rising class sizes, a common feature of public and even private universities, as the cause. Some schools now have lectures that seat over 700 students at once. There is no chance for any meaningful student-professor interaction in that setting, and as a result, it is almost impossible for instructors to give students the freedom necessary to develop their ideas and collaborate in real time. Think of any business meeting or planning session in the real world, collaboration and creativity are critical. Another issue is the rising rates of tuition. The price of the average college degree rose at an average rate of 5.2 percent per year in the decade starting from 2002, reports the College Board. These high numbers mean that an enormous amount of stress is placed on students looking to succeed, and opportunities for the sort of growth and social ability that a real-world business situation demands get sacrificed for study time. Not that studying is bad, of course, but a well-rounded education needs to extend beyond the classroom and beyond books. Students need to learn how to build positive personal and productive relations, both with their peers, their professors, and their employers if they expect to succeed when classes end. Furthermore, this debt leaves a workforce that is crippled, prevents recent graduates from settling down, starting families, and buying homes. Thus, the future of many economies beyond those of universities is in serious danger. Real-World MBA Programs Luckily, a number of educators like the Hotchalk education network have recognized the growing need for an education model based on the real-world that will prepare the students of America for the challenges of the future. This model includes rigorous academics of course, as there would be no point in education without academics. However, a real-world education model goes beyond books, working to build experience in settings that model, or are, the settings that business people find themselves in every day. The President, in a message geared toward the current crisis in higher education, promised to help steer the nation towards a brighter future by implementing measures that will help graduates and universities obtain the resources necessary for success. Not surprisingly, that plan mentions the innovation currently underway in the higher education world. A White House press release points to approaches including accelerated degrees, Massive Open Online Courses, and hybrid classrooms such as online classes. These approaches certainly are growing, and they’re meeting with great success in the educational world. Students often struggle to balance work and school, along with any extra-curricular and personal activities. Thus, the prospect of flexible, online classes is an appealing one. Solutions and the Future Today’s educational landscape, although plagued with issues, offers many tangible solutions. One is the rise in schools offering M.B.A. programs online from Concordia Online Education. These programs have great appeal for people who already have a degree, participate in the workforce, and have found that their current education level is not adequate for work in the real world. The combination of flexible schedules and real-world focus is one that resonates with many who are dissatisfied with current trends. The future of education is turbulent, without a doubt. But in such times of chaos, the positive potential is often greater than during static years of stability. When everyone is comfortable, there is no impetus for change, even when comfort becomes stagnation. Thus, the future of education may not be as dark as many people think. However, it will take a good deal of conscious design to re-order the current system and allow those seeking for work to find an education that equips them for life in the real world. Additionally, companies like HotChalk Education Network are beginning to help change the education landscape by offering customized education solutions and accelerated learning programs. The post Finding a Real-World Education appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more

Just in time for November, Microsoft rolled out a brand new version of their popular email platform, Outlook, for users of their Office 365 platform. According to Microsoft’s website, the new Outlook delivers improved performance and reliability and a fresh look and feel that is unmistakably Microsoft Office. At the current time, there is no news in sight as to when the full release of Office 2015 (or whatever it might be called) will be released.  Users of Office can download the new Microsoft Outlook by clicking on the links below.   The following is from Microsoft’s Blog: http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/31/new-outlook-mac-available-office-365-customers/ The new Outlook for Mac includes: Better performance and reliability as a result of a new threading model and database improvements. A new modern user interface with improved scrolling and agility when switching between Ribbon tabs. Online archive support for searching Exchange (online or on-premises) archived mail. Master Category List support and enhancements delivering access to category lists (name and color) and sync between Mac, Windows and OWA clients. Office 365 push email support for real-time email delivery. Faster first-run and email download experience with improved Exchange Web Services syncing.   The new Outlook for Mac is available to Office 365 commercial customers and Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers. Office 365 Commercial customers can get the new Outlook for Mac by accessing their Office 365 Portal, (Gear icon > Office 365 Settings > Software > Outlook for Mac icon) or visiting the Software page. Office 365 consumer subscribers can get the new Outlook for Mac by going to their My Account page. For people who already have Office for Mac 2011 and Outlook for Mac 2011 installed on their Mac, check out this help article for guidance. The post Microsoft releases a brand new version of Outlook for the Mac appeared first on TeacherCast.net: Educational Blogs, Podcasts, App Reviews and more. … Read more