Have you ever wanted to quickly grade student assignments or assessments with a quick snapshot using your cell phone’s camera? With Quick Key Mobile you can do just that! With Quick Key Mobile, you no longer have to hand grade bubble sheets anymore. You can use this FREE app to grade the app and upload student scores directly to your online gradebook. The setup is quick to merge the app and your gradebook with clear directions and ease of use. How does the App Work? "Quick Key turns your phone into an optical scanner to grade quizzes, tests, and surveys on paper, up to 30 questions long. Then, Quick Key allows you to run analytics right on your phone, then upload the data to your electronic grade book. Newly updated and easier than ever to set up and use. If you already have an electronic grade book, you can set up your account on our companion site www.quickkeyapp.com and import all of your students and assign them to classes in 60 seconds." Use of the App As you can see in the picture at the right, you snap a picture and it scores and sends the data for your to review or upload to your gradebook. Very quick and convenient! If I were still in the classroom this would be one of my main go-to apps that I would use frequently. What a time-saving tool and app! If you read the reviews, the reviews are positive and highly recommend this app. The app is described to do what is says it does and is extremely convenient. This is great news for all teachers using bubble sheets for assessments or assignments. Check it out and let me know what you think and if it actually does what it says it does - I am very curious to hear your personal experiences!       Image Sources: ITunes Quick Key Mobile Page

Stars have always fascinated mankind, and they’ve helped us with everything from navigation to monitoring time through the development of the calendar based on the Earth’s position relative to our star (the Sun). Stars have been classified into shapes based on their positions in a group, known as constellations, and these have had important religious and astrological significance. Photographing stars can be difficult due to light pollution, but using a combination of long exposure in isolated or remote areas can reveal truly breathtaking photographs of the heavens. Martis Valley Stars by Paul Heran Stars by Tiberius47 Star by Tom Hall Stars by Mats Anda The Universe Looks Down On The Township by Ben Robson Stars by PaulineMoss Stars by Mohamed Majid Stars by Rosm One Starry Sky over Yosemite’s Half Dome by Adam Foster Sandbox Under the Stars by PeterJCoskun Stars and stars by John Hill Billions and Billions of Stars and a Perseid Too! by Michael Menefee Stars by Butterfly-Skies The tower at night by Kostadin Madjarov Stars by Kefirux Star Hunting At Loveland Pass by Mike Berenson Star Light…… Star Bright by James Duckworth Stars by Miikka Vennola Stars by LuxLucie Star icefall by MASAHIRO MIYASAKA Stars over Galena Peak by Pat Gaines Pure Milky Way by James Wheeler Stars over Wall Street - Bryce Canyon by Royce Bair **Galloping in the mountains** by Konstantinos Vasilakakos Stars and Arch by John Fowler Milky Way by Denis Belitsky Balcombe Stars by Jamie Pryer Alien Hand by Adam Stephenson Stars by David DeHetre Milky Way over New Hedges by Grant Hyatt Related Posts 30 Beautiful Starry Night Photographs 30 Photographs of Bicycles 30 Majestic Photographs of Horses Duck Photography Bright and Sunny Photography

Do you love making animated posters with Glogster like I do? If so, there is a new iPad app out that allows you to create ‘glogs’, or graphic blogs, on the iPad. You can create a poster or image and add video clips, audio clips, links, etc. and animate all of it to embed the image on a variety of websites. There is an educational version of Glogster where students can have their own accounts. Then they can create their own online posters as culminating activities or any number of possible learning activities. Glogster also has ambassadors that are educators that use Glogster frequently with their students and help guide and share innovative ways of using Glogster. In iTunes, Glogster adds that the following features are available via the app: Combine images, graphics, audio, video and text with a simple yet powerful Glog canvas Start with some predesigned templates, allowing you to quickly create impressive glogs Add flair to your glog with 10,000 unique educational graphics, categorized by subject Delete elements, close and preview glogs with simple gestures Edit photos and graphics with Aviary effects Edudemic shared a video about using the iPad app as shown below: Glogster iPad App [Official Video] from Glogster on Vimeo. Check out the newly released app and let me know what you think of compared to the online version - very curious to hear experiences!

Creating text effects is one of the most common tasks in Photoshop for designers. It’s common for logo design, the text in flyer design, web design effects, and even in 3D or animation. Photoshop continues to add more tools to create powerful effects for text as new updates occur, and it’s now possible to use vectors and create 3D effects in Photoshop. In this post, I’ve gathered up 10 fun Photoshop text effect tutorials for you to try: Discover Hidden Depth in Type Illustration Tutorial How To Create Wooden 3D Text Hipster Text Effect in Photoshop CS6 Create Abstract Shiny Text with a Groovy Font Magma Hot Text Effect Elegant Glossy Gold Text Effect The Sugar Bag Effect Simple Bokeh Text Effect 3D Rubber and Glass Text Effect 3D Skyscraper Text Effect in Photoshop CS5 Related Posts Fun Text Effect Tutorials You Have to Try Photoshop Typography and Text Effect Tutorials Illustrator Tutorials for Text Effects Burning Hot Photoshop Fire and Flame Tutorials Great Photoshop Art & Design Tutorials

There are many resources that provide free Kindle, Nook, epub and ereader books in a variety of formats and for many different devices. The following are resources that will allow you to download and receive or borrow free Kindle books. Some offer the books in a variety of formats for the different readers but the list below is intended for use with a Kindle, using a Kindle on an iPad or tablet or the Kindle cloud app online via the Internet. Some are blogs that you have to subscribe to while others you can search and download directly from their site and not all books are free to be aware when you are downloading books. As far as copyright issues, if a book is in the public domain you can download it for free. The resources shared below offer a variety of genres and new releases that include best selling authors. Some are from new authors trying to get publicity for their work. Regardless, the resources are numerous and I find the offerings interesting to discover new books to read. Check out the resources, review their terms for downloading and fill your Kindle or Kindle app with some exciting things to read or research. The LIST of Resources Amazon/Amazon Prime Kindle Lending Library Ereader News Today The eReader Cafe iLove Ebooks OverDrive Service through a public library BooklendingeReader IQ Kobo Pixel of Ink Project Gutenberg Digilibraries Free Books Hub Hundred Zeros Free Booksy (including books for children) Open Library eBooks Habit Pixel Scroll Free-ebooks.netKindle Buffet World Public Library Shelfbuzz Free Book Sifter Daily Cheap Reads (including a junior edition)   Partial Source: http://freebies.about.com/od/onlinebooks/tp/free-kindle-books.htm

It’s my pleasure to announce the completion of the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center annual report for the 2013-14 academic year. This year, we created a new digital annual report that is available at facdevreport.niu.edu. Below are a few highlights. During 2013-2014, the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center contributed to Northern Illinois University's mission "…to promote excellence and engagement in teaching and learning, research and scholarship, creativity and artistry, and outreach and service" by collaborating with various academic and support units to meet the ongoing and emerging needs of NIU faculty, staff, administrators, and graduate teaching assistants in their teaching, technology integration, professional development, and related needs. This marked the fifteenth full academic year of operation for the Center since we were reorganized in August 1998. Some of our significant accomplishments this year include: Offering 143 programs for 1,663 participants, which totaled 5,421 hours of professional development Conducting 1,018 consultations with 367 unique faculty, instructors, staff, and graduate teaching assistants from 80 academic and support units Serving on 26 committees, councils, and organizations within NIU and the broader Faculty Development community Being recognized with 8 awards, both as a unit and as individuals, for commitment and contributions to NIU, teaching effectiveness, technology integration, and the broader Faculty Development community. Feel free to explore and learn more about our activities and accomplishments from the past year. Sincerely, Jason Rhode, Ph.D. Director

Today I have another set of Vintage Stone Wall Textures from some old ruins I shot last summer. The textures are grunge and gritty, suitable for various types of projects. As before, you can download the set in a zip file using the link at the bottom of the post. Enjoy! The Location: Download all textures as ZIP from copy.com (81.7Mb) Did you like these textures? Let us know by leaving a comment, and you can even post a link if you used them in your artwork. Related Posts Free Texture Friday - Vintage Stone Wall Free Texture Friday - Grunge Stone Wall 3 Free Texture Friday - Old Stone Wall Free Texture Friday - Vintage Book 3 Free Texture Friday - Vintage Paper 9

If you are an avid user of Dropbox, I highly encourage you to check out their new features. There is a cost involved but if you need to store and share large videos online in the cloud, Dropbox Pro may be just what you need. One feature I downloaded was the ability to send email to Dropbox. There are certain emails that I need to save and find easily such as the ones for the company that I am an online instructor for, PLS 3rd Learning. Anyway, I download the app/plug-in so I can send my email to Dropbox. Below is the description of the mailbox plugin. In the next few days I will be talking more about the new features of Dropbox as I try them out. For now, here is the info about ‘Mailbox': What began with an observation — that people used email as a (terrible) to-do list — evolved into Orchestra To-do, the App Store’s 2011 Productivity App of the Year. Despite the app’s success, the team was still receiving tasks via email. And one day it dawned on them: rather than moving these tasks somewhere else, what if they transformed the inbox where the tasks already live? We’ve come to believe email is here to stay. And while we can’t get away from it, we can change how we interact with it. We can put email in its place. That’s where Mailbox comes in. We’ve created a mobile-first email experience from the ground up — challenging assumptions about how email works and redesigning the inbox for a world on the go.

The sun plays a key role in most types of nature photography. Whereas portraits and objects can be artificially lit, most natural scenes have sunlight as the lighting source. Sunlight has a variety of properties that have to be accounted for in photography, and the time of day plays a huge role in how a photograph appears. Golden hour, or the hour before sunset or after sunrise is frequently the most popular time for nature photographers. However, many photographs are also taken in the bright sun, and they frequently have a vibrant, happy and energetic feeling: On a bright, sunny day in Amsterdam by Thorsten Becker Bright Lost Lagoon by Songralonian Countryside by Kasper Nymann Free at the top! by Penny Wong Sunny by TimeKiller357 Lifecycle by Rasica Let the light engulf you! by Noelle Buske Sunny Day by Lady—Vengeance Countryside by Kasper Nymann Looking Up by Gary Bright by D-o-m-u-s Red Carpet by Marco Götze Lightness yb Lisa Lang Sunny day by Roman Las Montan~as by Darian Smith Sunburst and Wildflowers by Orlon 2 Goat Rock by Watson Lu trees sun flare by Sean Gladwell Sunny Fields by LyraWhite SUNNY FLOWER by Batpaws Autumn sunny park by Roksana Bashyrova Summer Beginning by Dominic Marley Sun light between the trees by Deyan Georgiev Linearity by J-P Kalupa Light by Marisa Nourbese Field of sunflowers by Igor Goncharenko What a beautiful morning! by Ruth Hartnup It’s Quite Bright by sejnow Bright by Mona Dienhart sunset boulevard by Tegan Edwards Related Posts 30 Marvelous Underwater Photographs Rocks, Stones and Pebbles in Photography 30 Photographs of Bicycles 30 Majestic Photographs of Horses Duck Photography

As a current member of the advisory council for the UPCEA Center for Online Leadership and Strategy, I’m passing along this notice about the upcoming 2015 Summit for Online Leadership and Strategy. I highly recommend this conference to all those engaged in the leadership of online program delivery and I hope you’ll join me there. ~ Jason Rhode @jasonrhode Join key campus leaders — presidents, provosts, deans and practitioners directly engaged in the management and delivery of online programs — at the 2015 Summit for Online Leadership and Strategy in San Antonio this January! Attend concurrent and general sessions on pivotal challenges and opportunities including the strategic growth of online programs, virtual leadership, online marketing, competency-based education, predictive analytics, and more. Don’t let the early bird registration rate pass you by - be sure to register before December 8th to save $50! Remember that groups of four or more can receive a 10 percent discount on their group registration. Call the UPCEA office at 202-659-3130 for more information. See you in January! Amy Heitzman, Ph.D. Chief Learning Officer, UPCEA