Category Archives: Web 2.0 tools

Using apps to teach emotions? Try out these free apps.

Posted on December 1, 2013 | Leave a comment
A good free app for teaching emotions
A good free app for teaching emotions

I try to use the apps I review  for at least a month or more with students before I am ready to recommend them as a useful app.  My first review is of Moody Monster Manor.  I really like this app as it gives you a lot of play time and teaches a variety of emotions.  This app is a game that has 20 different monsters with 20 emotions.  Each monster has a cleaver name associated with its emotion, such as Tired Tilly or Worried Wanda.  There are four games that children can play with others that are to come (these are the locked doors) at a later date.  As of now there aren’t any in app purchases required and this app is FREE!  The games are easy to navigate and take about a minute to play.  This app is best for children ages 3-7 and is very good to use with autistic children that are learning about emotions.  This app is available for download  iTunes.

Emotions - ABA Flash Card

Emotions – ABA Flash Card

The next app that I found to be truly worth downloading was the emotions flash card app, by Alligator Apps.  This app has 20 different emotions with very nice pictures that match the emotions.  There are a number of ways to use the flash cards.  In the settings tab, you can find a variety of play modes and games.  There are four exciting game modes to choose from.  You can customize the flashcards and even personalize the cards to add a photo and voice to your own flashcards.  This is a great app to use if you are teaching emotions.  This app is also free and is available to download at the iTunes store.

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Posted in Ipad Apps, Web 2.0 tools

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Video

Happy Halloween

This video is the cutest with animated skeletons dancing to the sound of Micheal Jackson’s hit music “Thriller.” This is a good way to end a spooky group session.

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Posted on October 31, 2013 in Web 2.0 tools

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Video

A Fun Learning Community: SimpleK12

http://vimeo.com/19402754

Introducing one of the best sites to become tech savvy, get new tools and resources.

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Posted on September 30, 2013 in Web 2.0 tools

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Five Tips for Taking Advantage of Twitter Over the Summer | Edutopia

Posted on July 30, 2013 | Leave a comment
Develop a personal learning network on twitter

Develop a personal learning network on twitter

In an earlier post, I wrote about how you can use technology to organize your professional material, share professional items, and connect to similar professionals.  Take a look at Twitter for developing your personal learning network.  You will be surprised how engaging, informative,thought-provoking, and current twitter can be.  Although the article linked below,  is written with teachers in mind, it can apply to the many clinicians that work in schools.  Follow these same tips by: joining a social work chat, follow connected social workers, re-tweet things that you find informative and interesting (keep your personal and professional twitter accounts separate) and don’t forget to have fun.   After reading the article take a look at my twitter page and follow me @socialworkpad

Five Tips for Taking Advantage of Twitter Over the Summer | Edutopia.

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Schools out, vacations here, and its summertime; it’s your chance to organize!

Posted on July 1, 2013 | Leave a comment
Bookmarking

Diigo, collect, organize and share
click here to go to Diigo site

Have you ever wanted to have your favorites (web sites) accessible from any computer at any time.  Do you want a better way to organize your favorites and have the ability to share your favorite sites with others.  What about having a group of like minded individuals share web sites and great finds with each other at one location where they can be referenced by the group continuously and commented on.  Look no more because diigo is your tool!  I would suggest that when choosing a tool to collect, share, highlight, annotate, and access anywhere you check out diigo.  I have used diigo for some time now and found it useful to have the ability to bookmark a web site or page that I feel is useful, and be able to share it with others instantly or just file it to return to later.  Diigo has been valuable as a research tool for me, as I have joined a couple of groups that collect and share bookmarks consistently.  As you begin to organize your sites that you reference professionally, diigo is great for this.  I think this is my first go to place as I am collecting and curating my web finds.  I suggest adding the diigolet tool to your favorites bar (this is very easy) so you can just click on the icon and bookmark instantly.  After collecting and organizing your bookmarks, you can then take your resources and place them in other web tools such as Pintrest, Scoopit, Livebinders etc., as a more visually stunning way of showcasing your collections.   I will discuss these tools and more,  as I write more on tools that help you organize.

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You will love this! Now you can view, comment and write on PDF forms at personal.crocodoc

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 4 comments

crocodoc

This has got to be one of the most useful tools that I have found recently while doing my never ending web tools searches.  This will be a game changer in the way you collaborate, view word documents and fill out forms, especially PDF’s.  Let me introduce personal.crocodoc, (there is another site for companies but this is for individual use), and make you smile.  Below is a description from the site regarding what this tool can do, and my bet is you will like it.  There was no mention about how much storage space you are allowed anywhere on the site, but once you create a doc, you can save it to your computer.  Log in and make an account to keep your docs, and the best part, its ALL FREE!

Why Crocodoc?

“Sharing and reviewing documents and presentations with others can be quite a pain. Crocodoc was built to change that, alleviating the need to email attachments back and forth, print and pass around hard copies, or install expensive collaboration software.

Crocodoc takes your PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations, and lets you view and mark them up online. Documents can be shared with others, who can collaboratively highlight or strikeout text, add notes and comments, and make revisions. All files are stored securely on our servers, and can be password protected and encrypted for maximum security.”

I have tried out this tool and it works great!  The uses are endless.  I needed to write goals on my Anger Coping groups’ personal goal sheet.  I uploaded the PDF document to crocodoc and I was able to type on the document using different goals for each student.  You don’t have to save what you type, you can just push print, delete what you don’t want and type  different statements in.  I also used this tool to assist a student with filling out his service learning hours sheet to make a cleaner presentation.  You can now fill out those PDF’s that are sent to you, save your marked up copy and then send it to the receiver by email.  Crocodoc even allows you to save your original and marked up copies for further use.  Think about using some of the social emotional worksheets with a personalized touch for each student.  Another cool thing is that this tool allows you to collaborate with others, making a social emotional assignment really cooperative.  Here is a sample I made, you can try it for yourself.  http://personal.crocodoc.com/GCoZl8c              Go to personal.crocodoc site

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DISCUSS, DECIDE, AND COLLABORATE IN A NEW WAY WITH Mural.ly

Posted on March 31, 2013 | Leave a comment

Hey guys, ever wanted to work on a project but you wanted to have pictures, document, videos, reference material etc., but you had to email it piece by piece.    Have you wanted to work on a collaborative project with a couple of people or have your students learn how to work in teams, make decisions and collaborate on a project.  Well your wait is over!  Mural.ly is the perfect tool.  Mural.ly is a big flexible canvas that allows you to collect and post anything so that you and your team can develop an idea/project.  This tool has so many options and it is great to teach decision-making, taking turns and working as a team. A team can work on the mural in real-time, from different computers, in different places, making changes and posting while working together.

I have used Mural.ly with my Taylor Techies groups of 12 students and they all had a good time with the tool.  They first had to pick a topic that they would enjoy collaborating on.  Some of the topics were, fashion, African-American Movies, and Basketball teams.  They were told to narrow down the topic and make a mural about their topic.  I had developed one on dogs as an example.  

One important point to note, as a teacher/counselor presenting the project, you will have to develop the murals first under your account and then get the invitation code and have your students join your murals.  If you don’t do this, you have no control over the murals as you are not a group member and can’t make changes. Each student will have to develop their own account with an email (which most schools are getting with Gmail) so that they will have a profile/screen name.  When you make changes or add items to the canvas there is a log kept on who made the changes.  I made 5 blank canvases first and then got the invitation link and posted the link on a wiki page that the students went to.  This way I didn’t have to email the link to each student.  They got in their groups, chose a group number, went to the wiki and clicked on the number link and the mural.ly page showed up on their computer.  Since they had joined mural.ly, they signed in and I discussed with them the dashboard commands for developing the murals.    It’s a really easy to learn tool and the students were using it without trouble in minutes.  It became one of their tools to use on their down time.  This tool can be used to make a canvas about cyber bullying  internet safety, learning emotions etc.. all while working together.

Check out one of the murals that were made by the students  http://mrl.li/VaIiLc

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ImageChef: An Excellent Tool To Create Word Clouds

Posted on February 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

ImageChef Word Mosaic - ImageChef.com

This lovely word cloud was made using a tool in the ImageChef library of templates.  They call it a word mosaic in their library but what ever you want to call it, you can make some interesting and thought-provoking images with this tool.  I like ImageChef because of its flexibility to be used on the iPad, Android tablet and computer.  ImageChef is free through iTunes but the app costs $1.99 through Google Play android store.  Of course it is free to use on the computer.  These images can be saved to you computer, exported to various social media, and printed out to use as a piece of art.  

These word clouds can be use to create therapeutic statements or poems.  Students can input feelings vocabulary or statements that are thoughtful, the uses are endless.   Allow various students to make them, print them out in color and laminate the print to hang on the wall.  What a beautiful wall quilt when all placed together.  Students love to see their work of expression showcased in your office space.  Check out ImageChef, they have much more templates to create with.  My students also liked the photo frames when using the iPad.  They had a treat laughing at themselves in different frames with captions.  

Here are links to other word cloud makers:  Wordle  this one is often used but not easy to save to the computer.  You have to use a screen shot and then paste into the paint tool where you can crop off the unnecessary items on the frame. Tagxedo is a word cloud that uses images as custom shapes, and choose your fonts.  You can even have the word cloud used for custom printing.  And for the younger students go to ABCYa where they make Word Cloud creations so simple!

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Posted in Android Apps, Ipad Apps, The Apps, Web 2.0 tools

Using Movie Maker or Power Point For Social Emotional Learning

Posted on January 29, 2013 | 1 comment
My Emotional Forecast

My Emotional Forecast

This is a cool idea that I actually got from the video/film teacher at my school.  This Power Point presentation compares weather to emotions and the student can use poetry to add a little flare to the story.   Students choose weather photos from Google images and paste them on their power point slides.  They then can connect some of the character trait vocabulary to the weather slide The  link below that follows the post is a sample of the project that was made by a student for the purpose of expressing their emotions.  You can find a list of character traits on the read write think site here

My Emotional Forecast

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