Increase to OneDrive free storage

I previously wrote about OneDrive as being an alternative to GoogleDrive and Dropbox and now OneDrive has gotten a bit more competitive.  They now offer 15GB of storage space (just as much as Google Drive) and almost 8 times as much as DropBox.

Microsoft is working to become competitive with GoogleDrive.  OneDrive offers a similar experience as Google Drive in that there is a web based editor for things like documents and spreadsheets.  While I still like Google Drive better, I never say no to free storage.

What do you use for your online storage?

EarthViewer App - take a look into Earth's past

I came across this app called EarthViewer.  It's a free app for Android and iOS and as soon as I found out about it I downloaded it on my class's ipad.  This app helps to answer questions such as: "What did Earth look like 250 million years ago? Or 1 billion years ago? Or 4.5 billion years ago? What was the climate like in the deep past?"

EarthViewer is an interactive tool for exploring the science of Earth's deep history. From molten mass to snowball earth, EarthViewer lets you see continents grow and shift as you scroll through billions of years. Additional layers let you and your students explore changes in atmospheric composition, temperature, biodiversity, day length, and solar luminosity over deep time.

What cool apps have you used in your class?

DOTGO - search the web only using text messaging

DOTGO is a mobile publishing technology built to serve interactive content through text messaging.

To reach a supported domain that ends in .COM through text messaging, compose a new text message to the phone number DOTCOM (368266), and send the domain name in the body of the message.

For example, text wikipedia.com to the phone number DOTCOM (368266).

To reach a supported domain that ends in .NET through text messaging, send the text message to DOTNET (368638). To reach a supported domain that ends in .ORG through text messaging, send the text message to DOTORG (368674).

Once you have made the domain request to DOTCOM, DOTORG or DOTNET you will receive a one time message (1 msg/request) back with information on the site if the SMS website is available through DOTGO. You'll also receive within the response one time message news or information about the site, including how to opt in to on-going subscription alerts (30 msgs/mo) where available. DOTGO will notify you if the site is not available.

virtual exit tickets and in class assessments

Exit Ticket is a new website/app that I discovered.  It is a way for you to virtually assess your students.  You can use it as an do now/bell ringer, mid-class checks for understanding or exit tickets.  I know there are many programs out there that do similar things, but I really like ExitTicket because of all of the features that you get in the free version.  The thing that I love the most is that the free version allows you to track individual students!  Yes, the students do need to create accounts, but you can collect a lot of data.

There are so many great things that you can do with it.  They have created a toolkit for teachers to help them implement ExitTicket in their classroom.

What do you use for quick informal assessment?