Presefy: Go mobile with your presentations and give everyone a front row seat

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What it is: Presefy is a new tool that lets you present with your mobile device wirelessly.  The best part: those attending the presentation can view your presentations from their own web browsers (on a mobile device or a computer), and follow along using your unique “channel.”  Upload pdf or ppt(x) files, at the moment those are the two supported file types.

How to integrate Presefy into the classroom: Presefy would obviously be wonderful to use when you are presenting at a conference or to a large group, but I also love the implications in the classroom and school setting.  Have you ever been sitting in a conference or a session where your vantage point stinks?  You go right ahead and check out because you can’t see what the speaker is referring to anyway.  Imagine having the ability to follow along on your own device.  Now you are more engaged than ever!  The same is true for students, having something on a projector for all to see is great, but if you have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or a one-to-one setting, Presefy is a great way to share.  Students can follow along on their own devices.  Added benefit: now there doesn’t have to be a front of your classroom.

At Anastasis, we don’t have clear fronts of the classroom.  This is intentional.  We want to be able to share and discuss in a variety of ways and locations.  Presefy lets us do just that by taking away the need for everyone to be facing one direction, with one presenter at the front.  Instead, the teacher can present and be a part of the discussion and conversation in a way that is more organic.  Students can follow along on their own devices.  Everyone has a front row seat.  Everyone can see clearly and be part of the presentation.  SO much better!

With Presefy you can broadcast and run your presentation right from your mobile device.  You even have access to see your notes and jump to any slide.  Additional features are coming soon including the ability to poll your audience, ask questions, make notes, etc.

Tips:  Right now, you are limited to having two presentations uploaded at a time.  If you invite a friend to join Presefy, you will get to upload additional presentations.

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Leave a comment and tell us how you are using  Presefy in your classroom.

Meraki: Manage Mobile Devices from the Cloud…FREE

What it is: Meraki lets you centrally manage mobile devices, macs and PC’s from the cloud based dashboard.  The systems manager makes it simple to centrally manage applications on iOS, Android, Mac and PC devices.  It integrates with Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store and Apple’s Volume Purchase Program.  In addition to being able to manage apps, Meraki makes it easy to enforce and deploy restrictions on mobile devices. Choose how your students access the app store, gaming and content, how they connect wirelessly, security settings and remote VPN access.  Meraki has a virtual backpack where content can be shared with devices.  Files and documents can be added and sent wirelessly.  Separate backpacks can be delivered to different classrooms so that the correct documents are shared with the students who need it.  The cloud platform makes 1 to 1 projects and BYOD (bring your own device) roll outs manageable.  The best part?  Meraki is 100% free.  You just can’t beat that!

How to integrate Meraki into the classroom: This is one of those tools that I WISH I had seen before I spent $3,000 on another solution.  Blerg.  Live and learn, right?  Next year, this is the solution I will be using to manage all of our BYOD iPads at Anastasis.  It has everything that we need.  The integration with Apple’s Volume Purchase Program is pretty fantastic.  This is a great way for the school to purchase and manage educational apps that we want to share with students.  The cloud management means that we can manage devices from anywhere and we don’t have to have a dedicated server to do it.  I can do a lot of things, but managing servers is not one of those things that I want to spend my time doing!

Meraki is a great solution for whole schools or single classrooms that need to manage devices.  I love that Meraki can be used for a school initiated roll-out or in a single classroom BYOD initiative.  Either way the tools are easy to use and will make the integration of technology in the classroom run smoother.

Tips: Check out the FAQ page to learn more about how Meraki gets installed on the student devices.  The installation changes based on device.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using  Meraki in your classroom.

Tag My Doc: Access Documents Stored in the Cloud via QR Code

What it is:  Holy awesome. That was my reaction when I opened my inbox to find an email from the team over at Tag My DocTag My Doc lets you put a “tag” (QR code) on any document which can be scanned with a mobile device and retrieved as a virtual copy of the document.  Tag My Doc is like reverse printing…instead of going from virtual to paper your document goes from paper to virtual.  Tag My Doc lets you share documents any time.  Tag My Doc has a sister mobile app called ScanMyDoc.  ScanMyDoc is a QR reader for your mobile device.  Students and teachers can sync ScanMyDoc with their TagMyDoc account to manage all scanned documents.
There are some great time-saver add-ins that let you tag and save your document directly from Microsoft Word or PowerPoint so you don’t even have to leave the application.
Pretty. Darn. Cool.

How to integrate Tag My Doc into the classroom: My mind is racing with the possibilities of Tag My Doc in the classroom.  I can envision middle and high school teachers using Tag My Doc to share documents with students.  In the land of mobile devices, Tag My Doc makes a whole lot more sense than endless paper copies that get lost on the way home.  Post the QR codes from Tag My Doc next to your door, as students leave the classroom they can scan the code for the evenings homework, study guides, rubrics, etc.

Students can use Tag My Doc to keep a record of all the digital documents created throughout the school year.  Each document can be uploaded to Tag My Doc and an accompanying QR code can be printed and put in a physical portfolio.  No more worrying about where a document was saved and if students transferred it to a flash drive or CD at the end of the year.  Everything is kept in the cloud and easily accessed.

Back to school night and parent teacher conferences are a great time for parents to gather information about what is happening in your classroom.  Instead of making paper packets, hand out a business card with your contact information on one side and a Tag My Document QR code on the other side.  Parents have all of the information they need without the paper clutter at home.  Awesome.

Tag My Docs is fantastic for staff meetings, conferences and meetups and anywhere you are sharing documents.

Tips: Tag My Doc supports the following file types: jpg, tiff, png, bmp, gif, doc, docx, ppt, pptx and pdf.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Tag My Doc in  your classroom!