evernote – iLearn Technology

Seesaw: The ultimate ePortfolio for every classroom!

September 1, 2015Kelly Tenkely5 Comments13851 views

What it is: Seesaw is the first truly student centered/driven digital portfolio tool that I’ve seen. What makes Seesaw such an awesome option as a digital portfolio is the way that it empowers kids to build and keep a digital portfolio totally independently with features like QR code login for young students. Students can log their learning using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links. Seesaw also has direct import features from lots of popular apps. From the teacher perspective, Seesaw makes it simple to access student work immediately from their own device. Content is easily searchable by student and makes it simple to review student progress over time and keep track of growth. In addition to browsing by student, teachers can use folders to organize work by subject area or project. There is also an awesome flag feature that makes it easy to highlight work that you want to go back to for conferences or follow-up with the student. The built in audio recording and drawing tools mean that students can reflect on what they’ve learned or explain how they reached an answer. Parents are also able to login to see work and give feedback on it (you as the teacher can control who sees what and what feedback can be given. Teachers can approve peer feedback before it is seen by students or parents.

How to integrate Seesaw into the classroom: We’ve long used Evernote as our eportfolio of choice, because it was a simple (enough) entry point and gave students enough flexibility to show what they were working on. With each new release of features, Seesaw is quickly winning me over. This is an app that was clearly created with students and teachers in mind. It has incredible flexibility while equipping with just the right tools and features to make it extra valuable in a school setting. I love the options for feedback that teachers can give, and that all stakeholders are able to login and see what kids are working on. The way that Seesaw enables teachers to give quick feedback to students is incredible. I am also impressed with the integrated audio and drawing features that allow students (even young students) to comment and reflect on their own learning and thinking process. The metacognition implications of Seesaw are awesome!

At Anastasis, even non-digital native assignments get captured in our eportfolio through the camera or video. This means that work “travels” with students from year to year. Future teachers can go back through their progress, but students also have this incredible “bread crumb trail” of learning that they can go back through. It is always fun for us to hear students exclaim over the difference in their writing from day one to day 100. Often the learning process is so infinitesimal that students (and sometimes parents) have a hard time seeing the growth. An eportfolio is a great way to capture all learning so that those baby steps can be seen over time. This has been encouraging for our struggling students especially.

Seesaw supports a variety of platforms making it super simple to use in any classroom environment and particularly in a BYOD setting. Supported platforms include iOS devices, Android devices, Chromebooks, and any computer with a Chrome web browser.

Best of all: Seesaw is FREE!!! If you want to store and organize a child’s portfolio beyond the current year, a Plus account can be purchased by parents for $9.99/year OR a school account.

Tips: Seesaw also has Google App integration, if your school uses Google in Education, they can login with the same Google login they use for everything else!

Archive Pinterest Boards with Evernote Web Clipper

August 17, 2014Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment8903 views

At Anastasis Academy, we don’t have boxed curriculum. This can be both incredibly freeing, and terrifying. If you don’t have curriculum that tells you what to do, what do you DO?! We engage students in inquiry. Inquiry gives students parameters of learning, but allows them to discover and explore within those parameters. Teaching students to properly manage their freedom.

Each 5 weeks, our students engage a new line of inquiry. We follow the PYP inquiry questions (Who we are, Where we are in place and time, How we organize ourselves, How the world works, Sharing the planet). These questions give us good parameters to work within. Each 5 weeks, I send our teachers resources for the inquiry block. Within these big inquiry questions, I provide our primary, intermediate, and Jr. High with different key concept lines of inquiry to explore. These are aligned to the social studies, science, language, and math standards for that age group. Every year I change-up the key concept lines of inquiry just a bit (keeps things interesting and fresh for all of us!).

I create Pinterest boards for our teachers that have a variety of resources for each inquiry block. These resources include ideas, videos, lessons, books, apps, etc. that are related to the inquiry block. They are not prescriptive, but rather offer a launching point for teachers. Then, I create QR code posters that look like this:

These get posted all over the school so that teachers and students always have access to the resources (note: we are a 1:1 iPad school).

This has worked REALLY well for sharing resources, as I notice students connect with a line of questioning/inquiry, I can add resources during the inquiry block that the students can use. This creates a whole community that is discovering and learning together. The curriculum is fluid, it is constantly growing and adapting. Teachers often send me links and ideas through Pinterest (I don’t add teachers as collaborators for the boards-even though I could- because I don’t want them to feel obligated to spend their free time the way that I do). Students have begun to send ideas through Pinterest as well…way cool!!

Here is the problem, each year I create 18 inquiry boards. I use the same Pinterest account for personal use as I do for education (you never know when a non-education idea will spark the perfect education idea). As I was getting ready to create boards for this school year, I realized how MANY boards I was going to have to sort through to find this years boards. It is starting to get ridiculous! I needed a good way to archive boards. Enter Evernote. We already use Evernote as a school for ePortfolios, archiving boards using Evernote is the perfect solution!

I used the Firefox web browser to do this, I’m sure this plugin exists for all major web browsers. First, go to “Tools” in your Firefox menu bar and choose “Add Ons.” In the search bar, type “Evernote web clipper” and download the Evernote Web Clipper add-on. After you restart Firefox, this will put the Evernote Web Clipper button in your Firefox tools.

Navigate to the Pinterest board that you want to save. Select all by going to “Edit” in the menu bar, and choose “Select All.” You could also just navigate to the board you want to archive and hold down the command key and letter “a.” Then click on the Evernote Web Clipper button in your address bar. Add any tags that you want to be associated with the board and a note to yourself about the board.

That is it! The board is saved to Evernote with all of the images, and the web link is live as well! Verify that the board saved to Evernote correctly and then delete the board. Now you have room for a new year’s worth of boards.

This is a seriously great way to archive any boards that you need to save but don’t need in your Pinterest list right now. I’ve just archived all of last year’s inquiry boards and am ready to pin another year! This is also a great way to create a back-up of your boards or to save and send entire boards to colleagues.

If you just need to save the images from a pinterest board, use that-boy-I-love, (@jtenkely)‘s awesome creation, Pinswiper. This tool will save just the images from a Pinterest board as jpgs on your desktop. Great if you need images that you saved for classroom presentations, writing prompts, etc.

Evernote as an ePortfolio: Postach.io, Voice2Note, StudyBlue

June 11, 2013June 11, 2013Kelly Tenkely3 Comments10760 views

You know what no one tells you about starting a school? That ending a school year is WAY more work than starting a school year. Also, no one warned me that I would be licking cheap envelopes while everyone else was enjoying the freedom of summer. We have just wrapped up our second year of Anastasis Academy. I’m not sure what it is about heading into year 3, but it feels substantial and important. Odd numbers are like that I guess. This feels like the year that all of those nagging things that we wish we had time to tweak are going to happen. Like we have a great groove to work from and now anything is possible. (This could also be the optimism that comes with every summer when schedules are a little looser and there is more time to dream).

I digress… this post is about Evernote and some neat new add-on apps I’ve been playing with. At Anastasis, we use Evernote as our digital portfolio. For the most part, this works brilliantly! Students can record text, images, and audio directly into Evernote. Notes can be shared and emailed to teachers and parents alike. Evernote makes it easy to capture learning that isn’t natively digital in their eportfolio. Snap a picture or create a short audio recording directly in Evernote and the learning is captured, searchable and sharable. All of the incredible projects that our students create during inquiry can be reflected in Evernote portfolios. Another HUGE benefit to the Evernote/iPad combo: it goes with them everywhere. Recording learning on a field trip? Check. Recording learning at home? Check. Recording learning on the fly? Check. Teachers often send students a PDF instructions for an assignment or a picture to the student’s Evernote account. Parents can login to their child’s Evernote account from any computer or iDevice to see what they are working on. Not only is learning captured on the device, but it is stored in the cloud. This means that if a student iPad gets lost, damaged, etc. their work isn’t gone.

Postach.io

Postach.io is quickly becoming my new BFF. You see, we had this truly convoluted way of getting student work from Evernote portfolios to an edublog or an edu 2.0 blog. It worked smoothly about 1% of the time. BUT, we want kids to be able to “publish” their work for the larger community (Anastasis community and the wider education community). Postach.io is the answer to our frustrations!! Here is how it works: Create a pistachio account, click “create site”, authenticate your Evernote account, choose an Evernote notebook subdomain… finished! Postach.io creates blog posts and pages from student notes in Evernote. All the student needs to do is create a note in a Notebook they’ve specified when creating a site. Postach.io then converts those notes to published posts and pages. Add “published” or “page” to the tags in Evernote to publish it to the Postach.io blog. So, now our students can quickly edit their notes to be post worthy, add a little tag, and voila! they have a blog post. Currently Postach.io uses Disqus to add threaded comments. (This is a secondary account for your students to create.)

Voice2Note

Voice2Note is a fantastic way for students to turn their Evernote voice notes into text. Students record their voice (just like they normally do in Evernote), Voice2Note takes that note and converts it into text. Students can even tag their notes by saying “Tag with” at the end of their note! Now students can search even their voice notes! To use Voice2Note, students need to login to the Voice2Note website to register and connect their Evernote account. Then, students just record their voice note as they normally would. The rest gets taken care of by Voice2Note. This is another app that is going to make some of our students HAPPY!! Many students have fantastic ideas but struggle with getting their ideas out in writing. Voice2Note means that they can say their ideas, have them transcribed into text directly in Evernote, and edit from there. Not only is this ideal for struggling writers, it is also helpful for emerging writers who may have a large spoken vocabulary, but their writing is limited by what they know how to spell. Voice2Note could also be really helpful as a pre-writing brainstorming activity, during the design thinking process, or during group discussions. Previously our students were copying/pasting from Dragon Dictation…not a huge problem, but those extra minutes count!

StudyBlue

A connection with a StudyBlue account means that students can turn their Evernote notes into digital flashcards they can study from. Study Blue makes it simple for students to turn their Evernote notes into study guides, digital flashcards, and quizzes. Students can even set up study reminders. When students create an account with StudyBlue, they have the option to Sync with their Evernote account. The integration will create a new notebook in Evernote called “Study Blue.” If students wish to, they can upgrade their account to StudyBlue+ which will allow them to share their study guides and flashcards, merge with other teachers and students. StudyBlue gives students more efficiency in their school lives. They can easily maximize their time by taking notes in Evernote (or recording voice notes and using Voice2Note to make them text) and seamlessly creating study materials with StudyBlue. Students can download the StudyBlue app to their device or log on via web browser.

***Please note that while we use iPads for our Evernote eportfolios, it isn’t necessary! Any device that has a web browser will work (even that dusty old desktop in the corner of your classroom) and all of the add-on’s mentioned above will work with or without an iPad.

We use lots of other apps that enhance our Evernote portfolio experience because of their integration with Evernote. Click here for a guide I made last year with some of our favorites!

Evernote as an ePortfolio in a 1-to-1 iPad setting

August 11, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5380 views

Open publication – Free publishing – More 1to1

Above is the information sheet I created for using Evernote as an ePortfolio.

At Anastasis, we use a combination of Evernote, Edu 2.0, and Edublogs to keep and share our work. Evernote has been a fantastic app for our students. Students can record text, images, and audio directly in Evernote. Each note can be emailed to teachers and parents. Evernote notes can also be posted on blogs through the email-to-blog feature. Better yet? There are SO many apps that have the ability to share with Evernote. Very handy. Students do quite a bit of writing directly in Evernote. This is a good place for all of student writing (even those pieces they don’t want to, or aren’t ready to, share). Evernote makes it easy to organize all of their notes into notebooks (the learning curve here is teaching students to use some organization). This year we are keeping learning logs (we call them Tracks) as a table of contents for what is in Evernote. Everything is tracked by a number as part of the Evernote title so it is easy to find and search.

The ability to record audio and take pictures of their work in Evernote is great. This means that students can capture learning that isn’t natively digital-digitally. All of those awesome inquiry projects that they construct and build can be captured and reflected on in Evernote. Another HUGE benefit to the Evernote/iPad combo: it goes with them everywhere. Recording learning on a field trip? Check. Recording learning at home? Check. Recording learning on the fly? Check. Teachers often send students a PDF instructions for an assignment or a picture to the student’s Evernote account. Parents can login to their child’s Evernote account from any computer or iDevice to see what they are working on.

Edu 2.0 is our education portal. In Edu 2.0 we can share things as a school community. Edu 2.0 has a built in e-portfolio (we don’t often use this), a blog, a post feed, calendar, and message system. Edu 2.0 makes it easy for us to stay connected as a school community. Because we teach young students, this “walled” community is a safe place for students to share any, and all, of their work and thoughts with others. Students often write blog posts in Edu 2.0 about their learning. Other students, parents and teachers can comment on the Edu 2.0 blog posts. Teachers use Edu 2.0 to send students assignments, make class announcements and communicate quickly with parents in their classroom. Students can link any content from their Evernote account to their blog in Edu 2.0 to share it with other students, parents or teachers. The school calendar is updated with all birthdays, learning excursions and school events so that students, parents and teachers are always up-to-date. The live post feed makes it easy for teachers and administration to make school-wide announcements. This feed shows up on the home page of every student, parent and teacher.

Each of our teachers has a class Edublog. This is where the teachers write blog posts about the happenings in their classrooms. Students can also contribute to the class blogs to get input and comments from a global audience. Some of our students also have Edublog accounts where they can share their work from Evernote more publicly. The Edublog is the place for interaction and collaboration with the world.

We have a school YouTube account where students can upload videos and stop motion animations. The school account has become a nice central place for students to share their work with the world. I act as administrator on the YouTube channel so that I can moderate comments and videos. Students can easily link to, or embed, videos they have created in Evernote, on their Edu 2.0 blog or on Edublogs.

This combination of tools has worked well as an ePortfolio for student work. I love that at the end of the school year students have ALL of their work with them. Because they own their iPads, the Evernote content goes with them. Even without the iPad, students can access their Evernote account from anywhere and continue using it. Parents can also easily access and view student ePortfolios using Evernote.

1-to-1 iPad ePortfolio solution

October 11, 2011October 11, 2011Kelly Tenkely12 Comments4140 views

Today @j_allen asked how we handled eportfolio’s at Anastasis Academy. The 140 characters of Twitter felt a little too limiting to explain the hows and whys of what we do…bring on the blog post!

Anastasis has a one-to-one iPad program. Our students own their iPads in a modified BYOD (bring your own device) setup. I say modified because we requested what device they brought. The iPad was the ONLY supply on our supply list. Anastasis supplies all other materials (pencils, papers, crayons, markers, paint, glue, etc.). This has been a fantastic setup for us. Families are in charge of keeping the iPads in working order, synced with the student iTunes account and charged for class. We made the decision not to own the iPads as a school to keep costs low for technical support, replacement of broken or out-dated devices and so that our students could take ownership over their own devices. Students can add any apps to the iPad at home using their own iTunes account. As a school, we purchase curricular and productivity apps for students. Students download these apps using redeem codes so that they can stay signed into their own iTunes account.

Anastasis has 60 students in 1st through 8th grade. At the beginning of the school year, we sent home a list of recommended restrictions for parents to set up on student iPads. We taught families how to enable parent restrictions on the Internet, movie/app/song ratings, and how to block in app purchases. We asked all parents to restrict student access to Safari. At school, we downloaded the MobiCip app to every iPad so that we could filter the Internet. MobiCip allows us to set up broad category filters based on age. A premium MobiCip account lets us filter exactly what we want to and allow those sites we want to. (For those who are wondering our students do have access to YouTube.) 🙂

I digress…the question was about ePortfolios.

We use a combination of Evernote, Edu 2.0 and Edublogs to keep and share our work. Evernote has been a fantastic app for our students. Students can record text, images, and audio directly in Evernote. Each note can be emailed to teachers and parents. A link can also be generated for each note making them easy to share on blogs. Better yet? There are SO many apps that have the ability to share with Evernote. Very handy. Students do quite a bit of writing directly in Evernote. This is a good place for all of student writing (even those pieces they don’t want to, or aren’t ready to, share). Evernote makes it easy to organize all of their notes into notebooks (the learning curve here is teaching students to use some organization). The ability to record audio and take pictures of their work in Evernote is great. This means that students can capture learning that isn’t natively digital-digitally. All of those awesome inquiry projects that they construct and build can be captured and reflected on in Evernote. Another HUGE benefit to the Evernote/iPad combo: it goes with them everywhere. Recording learning on a field trip? Check. Recording learning at home? Check. Recording learning on the fly? Check. Teachers often send students a PDF instructions for an assignment or a picture to the student’s Evernote account. Parents can login to their child’s Evernote account from any computer or iDevice to see what they are working on.

Edu 2.0 is our education portal. In Edu 2.0 we can share things as a school community. Edu 2.0 has a built in e-portfolio (we don’t often use this), a blog, a post feed, calendar, and message system. Edu 2.0 makes it easy for us to stay connected as a school community. Because we teach young students, this “walled” community is a safe place for students to share any, and all, of their work and thoughts. Students often write blog posts in Edu 2.0 about their learning. Other students, parents and teachers can comment on the Edu 2.0 blog posts. Teachers use Edu 2.0 to send students assignments, make class announcements and communicate quickly with parents in their classroom. Students can link any content from their Evernote account to their blog in Edu 2.0 to share it with other students, parents or teachers. The school calendar is updated with all birthdays, learning excursions and school events so that students, parents and teachers are always up-to-date. The live post feed makes it easy for teachers and administration to make school-wide announcements. This feed shows up on the home page of every student, parent and teacher.

Each of our teachers has a class Edublog. This is where the teachers write blog posts about the happenings in their classrooms. Students can also contribute to the class blogs to get input and comments from a global audience. The Edublog is the place for interaction and collaboration with the world.

Do you have a one to one program? I would love to hear your solutions for an ePortfolio!

34 Free Productivity Tools That Will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software

November 4, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3877 views

Today I am sharing a guest post that I wrote for Inspired Classroom: 34 Free Productivity Tools That Will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software. These are my favorite free productivity tools to use in the classroom. Here is the first paragraph, hopefully it will convince you to go take a look at the full article 🙂

Software can be an expensive burden for schools to carry year after year. This expense can result in a decreased use of technology because schools can’t purchase the tools that make the technology worthwhile. Lack of budget doesn’t have to stop you in your tracks. There are thousands of free technology resources and online tools that will keep your students learning even without a large software budget. Below are a few of my favorite free online productivity tools that offer excellent alternatives to their expensive software counterparts.

To view the rest of the article click here.