Parents and even some educators have misconceptions about assistive technology tools and their role in the classroom. It is my goal, in my professional position and as a parent advocate for my daughter, to expose the truth and help educators and parents to discard the myths about these amazing tools. All students who need assistive technology tools should have full and complete access to them when needed.

Many of the apps and strategies mentioned in this book are quite simple, but are still underutilized by the students who need them most.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/ican-with-ios/id1057967830?mt=11

Keynote comes FREE on all your Apple devices, so why are you not using it? And before you say but I already have all these Powerpoints I want to keep using....that is NO problem, Keynote will open them. So now there is no excuse check out some of the cool things I bet you did not know Key could do, and do easily.

7 Strange Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do In Keynote by Carl Hooked of Hooked On Innovation Check out how to...

1. Make your own icons
   
2. Create a Choose-your-own-Adventure story
   
3. Make powerful Infographics
   
4. Create a Color Pop effect with black & white images
   
5. Design art for a Children’s book
   
6. Create a GameShow Spinner (as seen on Jimmy Fallon)
   
7. Recreate the Stranger Things opening title animation

More resources:

• 10 Apple Keynote tips: Apple Keynote can create amazing slides for your presentations. Here we look at the 10 best Keynote tips around.
  
• Learn: Keynote iPad starter Guide for IOS
  
• Learn: Keynote Starter Guide for Mac High Sierra
  
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea, from TED’s in-house expert

I work on my lap in my comfy chair a ton and until I saw this Ten One Design Mountie, I was balancing my iPad on the arm of my chair. I saw this last week in a school, the Principal showed it to me. I immediately bought one. I bought the one with 2 clips and it really does work. Now I can have my iPad handy and my laptop doing different things

or.....

Be twice a productive using the Duet App at $9.99. Duet turns your iPad or iPhone into the most advanced extra display for your Mac & PC. Developed by a team of ex-Apple engineers, Duet offers unparalleled performance and display quality - all with zero lag.

Single clip mount

Double clip mount

Duet App

Thanks to Glen Wiebe for these great resources. If you are a social studies teacher of any level and not subscribing to Glen's blog History Tech, YOU SHOULD BE.

Check out the resources

Need more? We’ve got more. Check out the Google Doc – it’s two pages chock-full of research, resources, teaching ideas, lists, and comic creation tools. Head over there to explore all of those goodies.

I had the opportunity to try one last week. Would take some practice, but pretty cool, and if you can't afford a 3D printer, this might be a good way to get started.

After the success of the Kickstarter campaign for the pioneering 3D doodler pen, it’s likely that you’ve already heard the phrase “3D pen” before, but not so many people actually know what a 3D pen is and how it works. These ingenious inventions can be used to create sculptures, tools, and appliances out of thin air, but the design process and mechanics behind them remain a mystery to many. The potential of the 3D pen seems to be endless, so if you’d like to learn a little more about these incredible instruments, then keep on reading.

Read the full story

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=3Doodler

Thanks to Carl Hooker of Hooked on Innovation for this insightful article.

I’ve spoken with parents from all over the country. One item that constantly comes up is “how do I know what I don’t know?” when it comes to raising kids in the digital age. While I always emphasize that tech or no-tech, parenting is still largely about relationships, communication, honesty, feedback, rewards and consequences. When you add a layer of technology to parenting, there are some additional items to be aware of and some “tools” you should have in your digital parenting toolkit. I created the Digital Parenting Bingo card as a way to easily show some talking points for parents that are dealing with either school-issued devices and/or personal mobile devices. Listed below are the talking points listed out in greater detail. Feel free to use and share with your community!

Check out the full story and all the resources to help Parents

There are many ways ShapeKit could be used in both a large and small group setting, and not all of them are in the math classroom. In math, the features of two-dimensional shapes can be reviewed as students create images. A creation challenge could be issued in the classroom, and the app could be the sketchpad for creation. The parameters of the challenge could be set; for example, make an alien creature with six eyes, a quadrilateral for a body, four non-quadrilateral arms, and at least two legs. Then, students can be left to create their creature and animate it for the class to watch. Another math activity could be an exploration where students are challenged to determine what two shapes–when they are connected together–make a new shape. The teacher could name the shapes to use or the teacher could just name the new shape they want to be made and allow students to explore on the app.

Age range of K-3

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id987047627?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Thanks to Shelly Terrell of Teacher Reboot Camp

Need a fun way for students to get to know each other? Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and other popular mobile apps make it super easy for users to add stickers and emojis to their images. For this introduction activity students are asked to choose a profile image to upload to Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pic-Collage, Buncee, BeFunky, or any other image editing app and add three stickers to describe themselves. Students post the image to their online class platform or Learning Management System (LMS) and let others know what the 3 stickers mean.

Here is her Pinterest board full of examples: https://www.pinterest.com/aprendeintef/edugoalsmooc-the-goal-minded-teacher/image-sticker-intros/

Cyndi Kuhn

Weekly resources are archived at http://www.cyndikuhn.info under Weekly Resources

Email: cyndidk@ksu.edu
Website: http://www.cyndikuhn.info
Location: Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, United States
Phone: 785-532-5812
Twitter: @cyndidannerkuhn