SmartPhones and their uses

First off, I just changed over to a smartphone about a month ago, and I LOVE IT.  I can’t believe how much can be done with one.   Oh, I had a good idea and that’s why I wanted to change over, but I never realized how much I could put into it.  I want to incorporate as much of my regular day and school day affairs into my smartphone. 

Will it replace my PC, not a chance, because my PC has more of everything that my smartphone.  Better graphics, bigger hard drive, more RAM, better sound, and the list goes on.  I can do a lot of things with my smartphone, but I see it more as a valuable extension to my PC. 

The smartphones have a lot of great features, but it is still limited as far as its processing and storage goes.  My smartphone, sorry, ANY smartphone out on the market right now is still more powerful than my first real PC.  It was a Magnavox with a 386 processor, 40 megs of hard drive, and 1 meg of ram.  Smartphones are a lot bigger than that. With that, smartphones are expected to do a lot more than my old computer.  One of the biggest limitations I have found with my smartphone is battery power.  As much as it can do, it really eats up the juice.  There are apps out the that help you conserve power, but I still find myself plugging it in once or twice a day, but I REALLY use it.  Another limitation is being able to type out documents.  Sure it can be done, but face it, it’s a lot easier using a full keyboard. 

Comparing the smartphone to a net book, I would take the smartphone first.  The smartphone has many more uses like having a phone, better portability, and I believe has more applications.  There only advantage I can see to a net book is bigger keyboard, bigger view (than a smartphone), and you can plug in a flash drive.  My answer to that is Dropbox.  I can put whatever I want in Dropbox and transfer it over.

I have found a number of apps to use in the classroom.  Here’s the list.

·        50 States

·        Formula Lite

·        Math Attack

·        My Favorite  -- Student Clicker

·        Multi Lang Dictionary/Translator

·        Flashcard Helpers

Here are some places to find more:

·        Android Community

·        Android Apps You’ll Love

I have let some of the kids try out some of the apps.  50 States is a basic quiz of the states plus information about each one.  Math Attack is more complicated than what you would think.  The problems can be set to be harder than your basic math problems.  Flashcard Helpers is just what it says.  You enter a question, then on the other side you have the answer. 

I would really like to try out the Student Clicker.  I just don’t have enough kids to try it on.  I think it would work just as well as the clickers we have in our classrooms’ now.

Moodle or BlackBoard

I chose Moodle based on costs. I hope I'm right, but doesn't BlackBoard have a fee, while Moodle is free. I would love to get our admin onboard and try going totally free apps for the year. I wonder how much could be saved. I could be wrong on that. If money were no object, then probably BlackBoard. Everything seemed to be on the left side navigation bar and could easily be found. You had to do some searching to find what you wanted in Moodle to match what was on Blackboard. And I thought Moodle did grade the assignments also.
Instead of comparing the two, I couldn't help comparing them to our current system, SISK12. It has a number of problems. Like I posted earlier, I have to go back and recheck the gradebook to see if the scores entered. That gets frustrating, and we pay for it.
I didn't fiddle with the two very much. I didn't want to mess up what was in them. I took the math quiz in Moodle. Seemed easy enough, and the feedback was immediate. The Blogs, announcements, and disscussions seemed pretty much the same.
I went back and looked at the test formatting in BB. It does have a lot to offer. It would take a while to figure which question to use, but once you got it down, it would work pretty good. And you can upload questions from a file you have.
Still, since money seems to be the key driver at this time, I would have to go with Moodle, if it can integrate with admin and all.

Camtasia Wins

I didn't seem to have as much trouble as other folks with getting CamStudio to run, but as far as working with the two, Camtasia was far better.  I liked the way Camtasia broke down each unit of audio, video, and all.  I did have a little problem with converting to HD, but it worked out.  Camtasia was slower at building the video when done.  Even with that, Camtasia was much easier to use and more fun to work with.
  I combined three apps into one video.  Yola was really easy to make a website.  Simply drop whatever you wanted into the site and it would upload and go.  When you were don, the URL was right there.  Another app was TinyURL.  This app would convert those long URL strings into something nice and short.  The last one was just for fun.   It was QR Generator.  It would create a QR code for your smartphone bar code reader to read then you could open the site from your smartphone.  You can send messages, URL's, text, about anyhting, but pics.  Haven't found one for that.  Try it.  It's fun. We are looking at it for a scavenger hunt..

Professional Development/ Training, and Fun

Just thought I would share this with you.  I'm open to any inputs or thoughts you may have on this.  A fellow teacher and I have been trying to find ways to get our middle school teachers together to have a kind of get together.  At one time, we used to all get together and go to the Middle School Conference at the Lake of the Ozarks.  It was a great stress reliever and it truly brought our group of teachers together.  We all went out the night before the conference and had a good time, then the next day we would go to workshops and learn new ways to teach our kids.
The last one we went to was three years ago.  Budget cuts and all kind of stopped us from going anymore. 
This year this teacher and I have decided to create our own Middle School Retreat.  The name is "Peace, Love, and Professional Development".  We're going with a 60's theme with tie dye shirts and lava lamps and all.  Our focus is going to be on how technology has changed our way of teaching from the 60's to today.  Our focus will be on using technology in the classrooms. 
We've talked in this class about who could and does teach those who are not so technologically inclined and shy away from it.  Our retreat will give us a chance to actually work with these people and show them show to use these tools. 
So far, things have been moving along quite well.  Our tech department obtained permission for us to get the lab carts for the weekeend, our teachers are excited about getting away (and learning), and our administration has even OK'd it as part of our school's professional development time.
Our initial thoughts about the whole thing was to just get our teachers back together again.  Some bonding time.  As things progressed along, we thought "Why not make it a learning experience?"  My plans for my part is to introduce a bunch of the web 2.0 applications that we have talked about to the group.  Give them a little taste of 10 to 15 apps, and then let them decide what they want to play around with.  I'll have them YOUTUBE the app and then go around and help persons' individually. 
We are hoping that it will be a hit and that it will continue.  If anybody has any suggestions, I'm all ears.  We want this to be something they want to continue into the future.  We've even talked about drawing other schools into it, if it goes well.  Wish us luck!!!