KKUATeach

Today I’m reviewing a photo editing tool, fotor, for my Cool Tool review. Unfortunately, this is the easiest review I’ve done. Right after we signed up for Cool Tools to review, I had a need for a photo editor. Thinking I’d be efficient, I figured I would try fotor out for my needs and for my review. To use the app on my laptop, I needed to download it. That’s when the trouble started. In addition to the photo editing app, I got a browser and a security app – neither which I knew was coming or agreed to. As far as I’m concerned, that’s dirty pool. The first thing I did when I noticed these extra apps was to uninstall fotor. After I did that, the app asked for feedback as to why I was giving it the boot.   I filled out the form and told them it was because I found these other programs and if it wasn’t because of them, they should let me know and I’d try again.   That was about 6 weeks ago. I haven’t heard yet so I’m going on the assumption that the extra programs on my devi...

This week, I’m reviewing a presentation Cool Tool called Slidestory. From their website, Slidestory is a way to create and share presentations .   At first, I thought this would be similar to Google Slides or Powerpoint, but it’s a bit different. What the product does it allow you to record your own narration over top of a series of picture files of your choice. Think being able to record a stereotypical “our vacation photos from an old-style carrousel slide projector” event. As I went to check this product out, three things jumped out at me. The first, the web site shows it’s a beta version. Beta software puts me on guard to start, so immediately I’m skeptical. In order to use it, you also need to create a free account. Now I’ve created accounts with several applications, but the Beta nature had me hesitate a bit more. Then, I noticed at the bottom of the page that you had to download a client application onto your own devices.   Now alarms are officially going off ...

As anybody that has been in a classroom or business conference room in the last 10 years knows, many spaces in which somebody is presenting information have some sort projection technology installed. It may be an interactive white board, LCD projector or even the growing use of interactive LED flatscreens. (Interesting summary here on one analyst’s view of what’s going to happen to interactive whiteboards in North America over the next few years.) So instead of telling you what you already know about the importance and utility of some sort of presentation package, I’m going to instead do a bit of comparison between Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. I’m going to leave Keynote and Prezi out of the comparison. I seldom dip into the Mac world, so I don’t know much about Apple’s presentation tool, Keynote, to help. The quick checks I found on Prezi seem to indicate it’s growing in use, but seems to lag the “big three” in use. Check out others comparisons here or h...

 It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This week I’m going to give my opinion of the Kahoot! app and hopefully give some insightful thoughts on how it can be used effectively in a classroom setting. (Wherever you see the Kahoot! or K! logos, I got them from the Kahoot! website. They make these available for download for anybody that wants to use them in an article.) Let’s get started! WHAT IS Kahoot! ? In a nutshell, Kahoot! is an application that allows teachers to create formative assessments and present them to the class in a game show format. Those are my words. Of course, the company that developed and distributes the app has fancier words. They call it “ a free game-based learning platform for teachers of awesome, classroom superheroes and all learners. ” I guess that’s the difference between an engineering background like mine and the marketing background of whoever wrote that copy.  PLEASE START WITH THE BASICS  HOW DO I GET IT?...

GeoGebra – A Cool Tool for Math Educators GeoGebra (geometry and algebra, get it? If not, you probably shouldn’t waste your time reading the rest) is a neat little program to help students learn and explore math – what could be better? What can you do with GeoGebra you ask? Well, some of the functionality in the tool include: ·          Graphing Calculator (2 and 3 dimensions) ·          Probability Calculator ·          Spreadsheet tool ·          Dynamic Geography Construction and Calculations I have been using the tool just a little in a Geometry class I’m currently taking and it has proven very useful for making geographic constructions to solve problems and create sketches to use in other programs (like word processing). HOW DO I GET IT? There are several ways to use the tool, but the all...