Web viewJonathan began his teaching career as ... You can open and edit in PowerPoint for Word documents or Excel ... but I organize lesson plans differently than I did

2016-06-08-Becoming a PaperlessTVI_ Tips and Tricks from an Itinerant TVI

Seminars@Hadley

2016-06-08-Becoming a Paperless TVI_ Tips and Tricks from an Itinerant TVI

Presented byJonathan Hooper

Moderated byLarry Muffett

Larry MuffettWelcome to Seminars at Hadley. My name Larry Muffett, I'm a member of Hadley's seminars team, and I also work in curricular affairs. Today's seminar topic is Becoming a Paperless TVI_Tips and Tricks from an Itinerant TVI. Our presenter today is Jonathan Hooper. Jonathan began his teaching career as an elementary education teacher. He taught reading and mathematics at a variety of levels before being introduced to the field of teaching students with visual impairments. After completing a master's degree from Vanderbilt University, and teaching students with visual impairments, he taught mathematics at the Tennessee School for the Blind.

Most recently, Jonathan has been an itinerant teacher of students with visual impairments for the New York City Department of Education. He utilizes public transportation

©2016 Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired Page 1 of 31


to travel between schools, and literally carries a classroom on his back on the streets of Manhattan. For Jonathan, becoming a paperless TVI arose out of necessity. Today Jonathan's going to discuss the tips and techniques he has discovered along that journey. Now, let me welcome Jonathan and we'll get underway. Welcome Jonathan, and I'm going to go ahead and load up the screen show.

Jonathan HooperGreat, thanks so much. I'm so happy to be talking with you guys today. The first thing I would really like to know is some things about who you guys are. If you would, if you're able to in the text box, if you'll tell me your location and your role just so I can get an idea of who I'm talking to today. Just so you guys are aware, if you came in late there's a bit of a delay between when I say something, and when you guys hear it, so just so you're aware of that in case something comes up as questions and discussions happen. Okay, so that's that. We can go to the next slide.

Great. So who am I? So we've already covered this. I am – I began as a gen ed teacher teaching in rural Tennessee, and then I began teaching students with visual impairments [inaudible 0:02:34], and now I'm an itinerant at Manhattan. As you can see I'm crazy, because I'm blowing a bubble in front of a bubble gum wall, but I wanted to give you guys an idea of where I came from, and then just so you could put a face with the name so



you know who's talking to you right now. We can go to the next slide.

Okay, today, so today. We're going to talk a little about the digital world. We're going to talk about using Dropbox as teachers, using Google Drive as teachers. I'll talk a little bit about Dropbox versus Drive, we'll talk about four different apps for teachers, and there are things that I use. There's Evernote and Notability, Doc Scan HD, and Explain Everything. Then we'll talk a little about how I use Google Calendar and Excel in my practice. We'll talk about security, and then we'll talk a little bit about how to think about these apps from a student's perspective.

Because I use them for myself, but I also have my students use some of these things. Then I'll give you guys a pep talk, and then there are time for some questions at the end. But it's really important, I'd really like for this to be a conversation, because I bet some of you use apps that maybe I don't use or you might want to use an app – one of these apps in a different way than I use it. Just – I would really like for this to be a conversation in addition to me sharing some resources with you. The next slide.

Great. The digital world. Using the way this is how I think about tech. I'm very techy I guess you could say. I have on my desk right now there's two mac computers, my iPhone is on my desk, I have an iPad, and there's a regular size iPad, an iPad mini, and there's an Apple



watch on my wrist. So I use tech all the time, and it's very – it's my coping mechanism of how to perform every day. I think about it as using tech as a teacher's tool to lesson planning, and record keeping, and being organized in my life.

But also teaching students how to use some of these things that I use to access their curricula. So access materials or just them being organized also. This is how I think about this chat that we're having, so the majority of it is going to be on our end, on the top part how I use all these tools. But then there will be a conversation about how you can use these in your teaching to teach students how to better access. We can go to the next slide.

Yes, so here's the big thing that I think of when I think about being paperless is that I never try to make or take paper. Because I run around the city all the time, and I just can't carry that much stuff. I don't want to take things that hang off that people give me, and I don't want to make paper. So what I really try to do is not take any paper, and not really make any paper. You'll see how I try to do that. It's a struggle, but you'll see how I try to do that. Next slide.

Excellent. Dropbox is the first thing. Using Dropbox as a teacher. What is Dropbox? Dropbox is this storage tool that you can use to save different files. Photos, documents, videos or other files. You can save these



tools in Dropbox. All of the things that you add to Dropbox are then sent out to all of the places that you've installed Dropbox. We'll talk a little bit more about that, but it's a way to have all your documents always accessible. Whether it be on mobile devices or on tablets, on your computer or on the web. Dropbox lets you access all of your documents across everything. Let's go to the next slide and we'll talk more about that.

Dropbox on a computer. Dropbox is something that you can download on your computer, you create an account, and then you download this – you can think about it like an app or a program on your computer. Then that screenshot that is showing is actually a screenshot from – I use a Mac so from my computer in my Dropbox files. All of those files are – they appear to be just like they would on my computer; if I was on my desktop they would look the same. That's one way to access Dropbox is through your computer. It looks like they're on your hard drive, but they're not. Let's go to the next slide and you'll see more about that.

They're really not just on a computer. They're in the magical cloud of iWorld, so they're saved everywhere at once. You can access them in a number of ways. Even though it looks like it's on your computer, and they function just like it's on your computer you can open the file just like you would if it were on your computer, but they're not. Every time you save that file it's being updated across all



your devices. It doesn't – when you're in Dropbox on a computer you don't have to be connected to the Internet to open or edit or any of those things.

What happens is if you were to open a file and save it then it would – your computer would say the file has changed. If you were connected to the Internet it would update through the Internet all of the other files across all your devices that was. If you're not connected to the Internet then it would wait until you're connected, and then update everything. To use Dropbox on your computer you don't have to be connected to the Internet, it's just like a regular file, it just happens to be constantly backing up to the cloud. Go to the next slide.

Great. In addition to it being on your computer you can also access it from the Dropbox website. So you can go to Dropbox.com and login, and then all of your files are there. If, for example, you're in a school, and somebody says – I don't know, maybe you don't have your computer or something with you or there's a problem, maybe it's dead and somebody says can I get a copy of the blank iReport. I think I have a new student that might need services, and so then you can say oh yeah, and then you log into their computer, go to the web browser, and sign into Dropbox.

Then you can just print out anything that you need, save whatever you need, any of that stuff right there from the



website. So you don't even need your computer. Also, Dropbox recently has let you – has integrated with Microsoft online and you can edit files now on the website. I don't do that very much, but you can. If you were in a pinch and you needed to edit something quickly Dropbox will let you do that now using Microsoft online. Let's go to the next slide.

Great. This is now showing you a screenshot of the IOS version of Dropbox. You have Dropbox on your computer, have access to all of your files, then you have it on the – on a website where you can go and download all your stuff. Or if you have an iPad you can open and even edit your files from your iPad. Now, this is where things start to get sticky I guess is when you are and aren't connected to the Internet. I'm going to try to talk about that a little bit without talking about it a lot. Basically it's better to be connected. If you're connected to the Internet then that's great, and things will be updated, and you'll have not as many issues.

But if you're not connected then depending on what you're using you might not be able to do something that you might want to do, and that will be a little more apparent when we go into drive, and we start talking about Google Drive. But for Dropbox anyway all the files are going to be not saved to your device unless you tell it to, unless you say I always want to be able to have access to this file. For example, I always – at least when we first started



doing UEB I had the UEB code book favorited on my Dropbox so that if I was stuck on a train underground I could read the code book, which sounds thrilling I'm sure. But I could read the code book underground, and that's something that I did on the train. That's something that I like, it's not saved unless you tell it to save it to your device. Go to the next slide.

I threw this in just so that you could see how simple it is to edit using Dropbox and Microsoft Word on an iPad. If you are on your iPad it literally takes six steps to edit a file on your iPad. So it's not that – it's not super crazy and intense. Those are just the six steps; I'm not going to over them, because I can't really show them to you, I can't model it, but if you want to try this those are the steps to edit using Microsoft Word. It's the same situation as the website; when you go to Dropbox you can edit using Microsoft Word – Microsoft Office, same thing with the IOS. You can open and edit in PowerPoint for Word documents or Excel documents or all of that stuff using the integrated Office apps. Let's go to the next slide.

I'm very much an Apple kind of person. I haven't had a Windows computer in a very long time, and I don't use Google stuff a lot. Well, I don't use a lot of Google stuff. This is my – what we're going to talk a little bit about Drive, which is Google's equivalent to Dropbox. If you're really android and you really like Google and you're very into that, I wanted to touch on this. I don't know as much



about Google, because I don't use it every day, but basically Google Drive is Dropbox, but a Google equivalent. Now, the thing about Google is that the files that they – so Google is very ownership heavy.

Google likes for you to do all of the things Google in my opinion, so they have their own programs that run things. They have Google Docs, which is equivalent of Word, they have Google Sheets, which is the equivalent of Excel, and Google Slides which is the equivalent of PowerPoint. So they want you to convert your files to Google files, and in doing that sometimes it's very important that you know that sometimes it will create a duplicate of that file. That is for somebody who uses the computer all the time. Having more than one version of a file is one of the serious things ever, because you don't know which one is most up to day, and you could maybe edit both of them differently, and things could get crazy.

This is scary for me, but if you use that just be cognizant of that if that's a thing that could happen. If it wants to change your file to Google Docs then you might have to go in at once. Now, what I do love about Google Drive is that they have really amazing collaboration abilities. I had to use Google Drive before when I'm co-writing things with someone, because then you can actually log into the document on Drive together, and type in at once. On the screen it shows two cursors running around on the screen, and you can be having a conference call, and editing the



exact same document. That's great, I really, really like using that. That's one really cool function of Google Drive.

The Internet though is something that having the Internet really impacts, at least in my experience using Drive, your ability to access your files. Because a lot of times they open in Google Docs or Google Sheets, which is a website, so if you don't have access to the Internet all the time it might be something that you might want to check out before you decide to use Drive over Dropbox. Let's go to the next slide.

Drive on the tablet. Basically the same thing, it's the same thing as Dropbox on a tablet. You can edit your documents the same, but the difference is that you're going to be editing in the Google apps, and not Word is the only difference in Drive on a tablet. Let's go to the next slide.

This is where we talk a little bit about the difference between the two. Dropbox has a more traditional storage interface so it's going to look like – just like a regular computer, and behave that way. Google Drive though is going to be a little different experience, and also there are bigger issues if you're online. The biggest, scariest thing for both of them is that sometimes Google makes duplicates of files. So if you upload something to Google, and you edit, changes it from a Word document to a Google Doc document then you might have two at once,



which is scary. So just be aware of that. Let's go to the next slide.

Great. We've talked about the iCloud stuff, and you guys are ready to go out and be informed consumers in deciding whether or not you want to use Drive or Dropbox or both or one for this thing, and the other for the other. Now we're going to talk about apps, some of the apps that I use as a teacher. Those four apps again are going to be Evernote, Notability, Doc Scan HD, and Explain Everything. The top three, the app itself is free, some of them have some paid things that you could do. Explain Everything is the only one that you have to pay for the app, and we'll talk more about that as we talk about each of the them. Let's go to the next slide.

Great. Evernote. You can think of Evernote as a notebook. It's a notebook, and it also just like Dropbox has a website, an app, and a computer program. So it's like a notebook that it now protocols everything. You can create subnotebooks inside of your – the thing I'm thinking about is more like a binder; so a binder with little subgroups. You can take Evernote or what I do with Evernote is I take Evernote and I have a folder for every student, and inside that folder you can create notes. It's really fantastic, because you can create notes for each student what their lesson plans are for that week or that month or that term, however you organize your lessons.



I don't know about you, but I organize lesson plans differently than I did when I was a classroom teacher because I have – I don't do things by the week for every student. Some students I only see once a week, some students I see every single day so it's easier for me to organize my notes by student and not by week. I have a notebook for every student where then I put in my to do list for that student or my lesson plans or whatever it is. The great thing about Evernote is that you can take pictures, and import pictures right into Evernote, and you can annotate them, and you can change what they look like.

You can also use the built in microphone to record something if you want to record a note if you'd rather instead of writing something in you can record a note. I use this specifically for record keeping and lesson planning, and collecting files. So if someone sends me something that needs to be Brailed I might throw it in my Evernote file or my Evernote note for that week, for that student so that I know I have this one file that I need to deal with. The cons for Evernote, things to be aware of, is that the icons aren't especially VI friendly, so I don't use any screen reading software, and I don't have a visual impairment myself, but they aren't.

So if you do have a visual need you might want to play with inverting the colors or something, because the interface is very minimal, and the icons are very thin lined. It's a free app, so the app is free, but added space and



added functions you have to pay a monthly fee. It's not that much, I'm pretty sure I pay it, but for the most part you can at least really get started using it without a fee. If you fall in love with it maybe you could consider buying extra storage or stuff like that.

But Evernote is really fantastic to help you –to help me stay organized, because then I have it on my computer, I have it on my phone, I have it on the Internet. If I needed to bring up just if I was at a shared computer, public space I could bring up my Evernote and take notes. I have a notebook for all professional development, so if I'm at a professional development I take notes in my PD folder so that I have all of my professional development in one place. You can make checklist in Evernote. The functions of Evernote are really wide depending on what you would like to do. But it's a really great organizational tool. Let's go to the next slide.

Great. Notability. Notability is really great too. It's very similar to Evernote. You can have folders in Notability. The really big difference in Notability and Evernote is that with Notability you – it's designed – it's more designed to use your finger or a stylus to write. So you can type just like you would be typing in Evernote, but you can draw, and stuff like that, and it has more drawing functions. Some ways that I use this in my teaching is that I – you can download an image of the eye, and depending on



what you're trying to teach your student about his or her visual impairment you can write in different areas.

Whichever ones maybe you're teaching, whichever one you might want to focus on. But you can write all over it, draw all over it, you could draw your own eye if you're very artistic. It has a lot of great functions. It also has the same thing; you could really make folders, have things grouped just like in Evernote. It's really – it's a great app. Now, but the big way that I use Notability is to sign documents. So the thing that will stop me in my tracks as a paperless vigilante over here is if somebody says can you please sign this or if the email is can you please sign this and give it back to me. Because then I have to now find a printer, find someone willing to let me borrow their printer at a school, print it, sign it, and scan it, and give it back to them. That process, when I really first started being itinerant in New York could take an entire planning period just to sign something and give it back.

Because I'm working in hallways, and working in cafeterias. I don't know what kind of spaces you guys are in, but I don't really have a desk that I'm working at a lot of times. The signing something and sending it back is something that was a big deal. Notability is fantastic for that because you can use Notability to sign documents, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, because you need one of the other apps that I'm going to talk about to be able to do this. But basically what you need to know about



Notability is that it's really fantastic for solving the problem of can you sign this and send it back. We'll talk about that more in the next app that I'm going to talk about. Let's go to that next app, and we'll discuss it.

Doc Scan HD. I'll be honest and tell you that this is not the one that I use. This is one that is – it works, it totally works, it's free, and I wanted to make sure that the apps that I was talking about are free. I use a paid app called TurboScan just because I like the quality of the scans a little bit better. It's not that much, I think it's $2, but both of those apps do the exact same thing so we can talk about them. Basically, these are scanner apps, so you can use these on your phone or your iPad or your tablet. I'm not sure if Doc Scan HD is on android, but there will be an equivalent somewhere. It's just a scanner app. Basically what you do is that you take a document, you use the scanner, basically your phone is a scanner.

You put the document on a flat surface with pretty good lighting, you take a picture, using the app it takes a picture, and it – you can then isolate what part of the picture is the document, and then you can save it as a PDF. So you can say you're giving me this document, I would like to not take it in paper, I want to make it digital. You can scan it, and then push it into your Dropbox or you can push it into your email, email as a PDF. You can take any paper and make it a PDF. Now, if it's something that needs to be signed; let's pretend like it's something that



needs to be signed that is a piece of paper that is in front of you, and you need to sign it, and send it back to somebody via email.

You can sign it, scan it with Doc Scan HD, and then shoot it through your email or through Dropbox back to them, that's one option. If the document though that is from an email to you that you need to have scanned this will cut out that middle man. You wouldn't have to scan it, you would just open it in the Notability, and you can sign it that way, and just send it back to them. Doc Scan HD and Notability work together to scan and send documents back. If it's something that's already digital you don't need Doc Scan HD, but if it is something that is paper you would need Doc Scan HD to scan it and send it back.

I always scan anything anybody ever sends me – gives me, so if someone wants to hand me paper then I always just scan it and give it right back to them, because it's just too much, and I can be more organized. That's my strategy is to be more organized by just making everything digital, and having everything where I can save it and search for it. This is one of the big ways that I do that, and honestly I've shared this with lots of people in our department. So many of them are now using this app, because it really can cut down on how much paper you're carrying around. Let's go to the next slide.



Explain Everything. This one is the only one that's a paid app that I'm talking about today, and this one is like an electronic whiteboard. What you can think about this app as doing is you're taking pictures, putting them in this app, and then you're making essentially videos by – you're talking so you push your cord, you start talking, you can draw on the picture, you can create a new page, and have new pictures. You can record all of this – basically recording a lesson essentially as a video. Now, how I use this. I use this by sometimes teachers will forget how to – the computer lab teachers might forget how to turn on or off zoom on an iPad or maybe they set a setting, and now they're scared that they're not going to be able to take it off. I've taken screen shots of all the steps between picking up the iPad and turning on or off zoom.

Taken screen shots and drawn on it, and talked as I drew, and was like okay, you push this button, and then I would circle button. Then I would go to the next page and I would say then you push this button, and then circle that button, and make videos of me doing these accessibility things, and giving them to teachers so that they can just have them. So they know the steps are great, but this 30 second video shows me exactly how to do it, and I feel like really laying out there to them makes them more willing to do it than just having a checklist.

Those are really useful for students, so if you were going to have a lesson that you maybe wanted to do a bunch of



times you could record yourself doing it, and you could play it with a student or you could leave the file with the student, and the student could watch it like homework and stuff like that. It explains everything, it's pretty useful. I've used it a lot especially in training other members of the team to do things, especially electronic things it's pretty useful. It's well worth the $399. Let's go to the next slide.

Google Calendar. So I've talked everything about not being really super Google, and heavy in what I do in my digital practice. But Google Calendar is the way that I'm really sold on Google is using the Calendar system. I have a Google Calendar that is synced across all my devices. It's on my computers, it is on my phone, it is everywhere, and without it I would be completely lost literally. I use it to make sure I know where I'm supposed to be, what the address is for that thing, maybe phone numbers. In Google Calendar, in your IOS, in your Android too you can add repeating events, you can add locations for events, you can put notes in events, you can add important phone numbers or websites for an event. The big thing for me is this calendar is genuinely everywhere I look. So if I pick up any of my devices I can see my Google Calendar. Let's go the next slide and you can see what it looks like.

Great. I blurred out everything because I didn't want to go to jail. But you can get the gist, so everything is color coded, everything is wildly out of hand, but it works. The



way that I do this, and the way that I organize my Google Calendar is first of all what you need to know is that blue for me means my normal day. So blue is the thing that my supervisors know where I'm going to be. That's my official schedule, the blue. Any changes to that schedule I – so that calendar is called my DOE typical calendar. Then I have an – I have multiple calendars as you can see each color is a different calendar.

Because in Google Calendar, I should have said this at the beginning, you can create multiple calendars in Google Calendar. I have a typical day, and an atypical day, I have my outside of school day responsibilities, I have personal – just my personal calendar, I have all these different things – different calendars. Then I have – where am I going? So if my schedule changes, if I have a different thing happening, so as you can see on that Tuesday of that week I have a different thing, something blocked off. That's a training that I'm going to, and that I have – it stands out to me because it's a different color.

Also, if you look on that Friday – so Tuesday that training is a DOE across the board day. It's something that happens in all schools. That Friday though I'm doing something that's atypical that is not. So you see how they're overlapping, so you have the blue and the green. The way that I do this is I have this thing, I don't want to tell all my teachers about that yet because it's too far away for them. It's on the 17th, it's the 8th, I don't want to tell



them until this Friday so that they have a week, and they don't forget about it. On Friday I will send emails to those teachers and their schools saying I have this training on this day, and I'm not going to be there.

When I do that I delete those events so then this is how I keep myself aware of what – who I've been informed of what, and where I'm going to be, and different stuff. Now, somebody had a really good question about contact, and so in your – so this screen shot is of my computer, it's in the calendar section of my computer, because I'm running a Mac and I have iTel or whatever. You can set the color of the calendar or whatever you'd like for it to be. If you want it to be – mine's super colorful, but you can make it whatever you'd like for it to be.

So you can make it a different contrast that worked with whatever you needed. I hope that answered your question. Another fun thing about Google Calendar is that you can add locations, and from your phone you can say – you can click on the location in your calendar event, and it will automatically bring up your maps, so you can map your way there. Great, that's just a really crash course in Google Calendar, and how to use it. Let's go to the next slide.

Excel. We can talk for three hours about Excel and how I use it, and how useful it is. But basically I use Excel sometimes for lesson planning depending on my needs,



record keeping, data collection and graphing. The big thing that – so I started out with using Excel for all of my lesson planning and record keeping. But I've since move to using more Evernote for lesson planning and record keeping, but I still use Excel for data collection and graphing, because it's so – how wonderful it is in helping me monitor student data. So if we go to the next slide you'll see what I mean.

This is a screen shot of a section of an Excel spreadsheet that I made for one of my students. Now, this is really intense as you can see. You would not have to start off this way. But this is something that the way I think about it is you do a lot of work on the front end to set this situation up, and then you can use it every single day. So basically this what you're looking at is you see days going across the top, days of the – dates rather. Each of these groupings is a different set of contractions.

So the top one is .5 contractions, the second one is .45, and the last one is .456, and you see I started teaching .5 contractions when a student starting doing pretty well. I started teaching .45 contractions, then when a student started doing pretty with .45, I started teaching .456, and what's great is while I'm working with a student at the end our lesson where we do a thing it's let's see how you're doing on these flash cards or whatever that we've been working on. I can as a student does it enter either a C or an I, C stands for correct, I stands for incorrect, and it



graphs it. You'll see the graph in a second, but basically all that I've done here is set up a system of collecting student data, and then automatically graphing it.

So the graph I couldn't fit in this screen shot is in the next slide, but this is how I use Excel to collect data. I collect – you can do prompt or unprompted data or you can do all sorts of data collection strategies. You can do time, rating speeds, you can do all sorts of things here to record them in Excel, and then automatically graph them. So let's go to the graph what this data generates. This is a graph so now what I love about this is that I can see how my student's doing. Right at the end of a lesson as I'm entering all that information into Excel it's changing my graph. So it's showing me the most recent student work, and how that student is doing, and I can monitor it.

For example, for this, looking at all those numbers might not have told me that as you can see towards the end of that graph the students' scores for .5 contractions and .45 contractions are dipping as he's learning .456. What that's telling me the student is being introduced to a lot more words, and he – the student has the ability to make errors thinking is it this one or that one. It's interesting to be able to see that as I'm introducing more of these possible errors than the student is making more errors. I don't – I'm not articulating that quite as well as I probably could. But it's good to be able to see the graph for me anyway, and that's all in Excel. This is Excel, the last screen shot was



Excel, that's all one big Excel spreadsheet that I have for this one activity for this one student. Let's go to the next slide.

Security. You've got everything on a cloud and it's great, and it's fantastic, but you also have everything on a cloud, and dumb, dumb, dumb. Bad things can happen. The way that I handle security is that first of all of my accounts are made with my work email, and I have them separate from my personal accounts. All of that is separate, I have my personal Drobox, and I have my work Dropbox, and that's how I handle that. The second part is that I do not have any identifying information on my Dropbox. If my Dropbox were to be compromised in some way they would not have access to student's sensitive information.

So I only have initials in my documents, I only have first names in my documents, I only have – I don't have identifying information in my documents or in my calendar. At least the ones that are in the Drive. Then how I deal with that is things that are sensitive just by nature like the iReport I have on my hard drive of my work computer, they're not in the Drive. They're on my hard drive so that they can't be compromise they're on my work computer, and they're secured. Let's go to the next slide.

Alright so how do I use this for students? Using Dropbox and Drive with students is I teach them how to house and edit their documents in Dropbox and Drive just like I would



with myself. Then what I think is really great about Dropbox is that I'll have – you can have shared folders, you can have a Dropbox folder that is shared among two different Dropbox users, and so what I do is I will send them documents by using the shared folder. Pretend the student – a high school student has an obscure book that they need to read, and I don't – I only see them once a week. So how am I going to get them this book? I can find the book for them, and then put it in their Dropbox folder, and then it's more easily to be able to be opened on their IOS device or whatever they're using to read.

The same thing with Evernote and Notability. I help them to use it to organize their classes or annotate and send documents back to teachers. The way that you can use Notability that's really interesting is you can zoom in so if a student's given a worksheet that doesn't have enough space for them to write in it they can zoom in, and they then write whatever they need to write, and then zoom out, and then send it back to the teacher so they can scribble in the space, but it will be bigger for them. They can use the microphone to record if the teacher lets them – parts of the lesson if they have hard time writing is because as the teacher speaks.

That's another thing, so they can have a note for every lesson, and they can maybe record some of it that's really important. Or even if they just want to record themselves summarizing a lesson. Then another thing I've used with



Evernote that's been really useful is that I've had – a lot of my students use a vision journal. I have them journal about their week or their day, if there were any vision related issues that we need to talk about. So I use Evernote as a vision journal or a way to keep them – to have them thinking about self advocacy and their needs, and how they're experiencing the day when I'm not there. Let's go to the next slide.

Great. Now, this is another app, but it's not really an app that I use in teaching, it's an app that my students use. It's called [inaudible 0:45:43] and it's actually a remote control app, but you can disable the student's ability to control the computer. You can set this up, and it works like a mirror. So the student can use their iPad or their computer to see closer on what is on a projector, so if a teacher is using a Smartboard or a computer then the student can use an iPad to see closer the screen that the teacher's using to write on if it's an interactive whiteboard. It's been very useful, and the students can take screen shots so if a teacher's writing a bunch of stuff, and they can just take a screen shot of the screen, and then they have it, and they can put it in their Evernote, organize their files like that. Now we can go to the next slide.

Great. This is your pep talk. I promised you a pep talk at the end, now this is it. Don't worry I know a lot of times when I've been working with teachers on tech they get scared and anxious. So don't worry about not knowing



how to do it. Download the app, and just play with it, push buttons, you're not going to break an app so just push around on things and see what different functions do. Then another thing that I use whenever I download a new app is I use YouTube tutorials; so I'll Google that app in YouTube and I'll watch people using it. That's been super helpful for me for using new apps.

Then the last thing you can email me if you have a question or if you want to share a new app that maybe that you found super useful that's not one of the ones that I talked about. I'm sure that by the time that people are watching this after it's done this stuff will be outdated, and there will be something new. Whenever, if you need help, if you'd just like to chat about tech that's my email address, and now it's time for some questions. I see – some questions, and I see that there's a question about [inaudible 0:48:09] versus Join Me name.

I've used both, I'm pretty sure the other one that I've used is Join Me. In the past some of the – and it was some of our schools, some of the wireless blocks blocked some of them and not others. I've used both depending on whichever one works with the wireless that I'm in. That's the first question. I'm going to undo my talk button so you guys can ask questions if you would like.

Larry Muffett



Okay, folks lets jump in here and [inaudible 0:48:51] Jonathan with some questions. I'm sure there's some out there, so I'm going to release the microphone and go ahead and cue up and let's take some questions.

DonnaHi Jonathan, this is Donna. I was wondering if all of these apps can be used on a regular – I can't thing of the name right now, but like a Windows computer, and also an IOS at the same time. So Dropbox and you could have it on different types of systems.

Larry MuffettMy thing might have locked up here so go ahead and try that again.

Jonathan HooperI'm not sure how much of that you heard. [My talk button just went away, but yes you can use both.] I do that with my computer. I have my – all of my – my computer's a Mac, but all the [inaudible 0:49:55] and stuff is on the Windows side of my computer. I can boot up in Windows, and run that [0:50:47] with that and so that's how I share things with both sides of my computer. It's really fantastic so I have Dropbox installed on my Windows side, and I have Dropbox installed on my Mac side. When I update one of them if I'm connected to the Internet then when I boot up in Windows and it's connected to the Internet it's there, and it's that Dropbox folder, and it's super



wonderful. It works across systems, it would work across Android and IOS, it's really useful. You just have to download the driver – the program – the Dropbox program on all the devices.

Larry MuffettOther questions for Jonathan?

Male SpeakerYes, I have a question about the recording part for doing homework and sending it in my email with that, because right now I'm monkeying around with Note One to see if I can use that to go with email for school lessons.

Jonathan HooperYes, you can use – so just today with Larry the folder – the file that I was trying to send to him was way too big – the PowerPoint, this PowerPoint that has all these images was way too big to send through email. The Dropbox let me send him a link so that he could just download it. You can also send files; it would be just like they were on a computer just that they're email. You can just do the exact same stuff that you would with regular files that are on your computer to email them, to email files that are on your Dropbox out to everybody. Does that make sense?

Male Speaker



You're recommending that I get the Dropbox and – but right now I'm in the monkeying around stages, but that really sounds very interesting. I may download it.

Male SpeakerDo you – can you tell me does the file expire in Dropbox at any time?

Jonathan HooperThat's a really great question. If you were to share a link from your file, if you wanted to share your file with someone else via the link it – I don't think it does expire. You can reset the link if you wanted to give access to a file to someone for a temporary amount of time you could send the link to them, and then probably change – reset that setting. But in terms of just having files in Dropbox there's no expiration, they're always there. All my stuff is backed up in Dropbox, everything is there.

Every so often I back up everything to a hard drive space. But it's always there, there's no expiration. The only thing about Dropbox that might be a long term problem is if you're saving things like music and videos you might run out of space, and you might have to pay for it. Initially it's free, and if you a ton of media then you might run into a problem where you would run out of space.



Larry MuffettJonathan, Harry has a question. He says he's a novice and he's not clear about what is Dropbox, and how do you give them. So just a little short, quick and dirty explanation again of Dropbox.

Jonathan HooperGreat. Dropbox is just basically a way to store files, and have them be sent across multiple devices or backed up into a cloud. Instead of just having – it's actually a brand, so it's Dropbox.com is the website, and it's a way for you to have access to your files across different platforms, and have it all stored in a different place that's accessible in a bunch of different ways.

Larry MuffettOther questions for Jonathan? I want to let everyone know that this seminar like all of Hadley's seminars will be archived on our website, and available for your use anytime around the clock. Also each Hadley seminar is now made available as a podcast, which you can download to your computer or mobile device. If today's seminar has you interested in this or a related technology or professional development topics please check out the Hadley YouTube channel, the seminar archives, and of course Hadley's course list. Jonathan and I both thank you for your participation.



Your questions were as always outstanding and added to the value of the seminar. Hadley values your feedback, please let us know what you thought about today's seminar, and please give us suggestions for future topics. One way you can do that is by dropping us an email to [email protected]. That's F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K the at sign, H-A-DL-E-Y.E-D-U. I want to personally thank all of you for taking time to be part of this seminar. Again, your input added a lot value both for all of us today, and for those who listened to it on the podcast. Again, I want to thank everybody for taking the time to be a part of this today and goodbye for now.


mailto:[email protected]

Documents

Web viewJonathan began his teaching career as ... You can open and edit in PowerPoint for Word documents or Excel ... but I organize lesson plans differently than I did