5 Back to School LiveBinders

The 2014 school year has kicked off for many schools recently.  Teachers are collecting and organizing resources for lesson plans and students are building E-Portfolios to demonstrate and reflect upon their learning.

Here are 5 LiveBinders to help you and your students for back to school:

1.  Know your Students by Chandra Manning

Know Your Students

This LiveBinder is full of excellent resources.  Resources range from: Meet the teacher, icebreakers and learning styles.  This binder is a must to start planning your year!

2.  First Five Days by Joy Kirr

First Five Days

This LiveBinder, from Joy Kirr, is a outstanding resource to get your school year started!  This binder includes icebreakers, letters and videos examples you can send home with your students and blog posts about the first days of school.  Another must have LiveBiinder to add to your resources!

3.  Ipads in Schools by Mike Fisher

iPads in Schools

If you are looking to use Ipads in your classroom this year, this LiveBinder is where you will want to start. Voted one of the Top 10 LiveBinders in 2011, this LiveBinder has everything from lesson plans, lists of multiple apps and resources for Special Education.

4.  Evernote for Educators by Justin Stallings

Evernote for Educators

Evernote for Educators, created by myself, was voted as one of the Top 10 LiveBinders in 2013.  If you are looking to get started with Evernote this year, this binder has you covered.

5.  Free Technology Tools for Teachers by Mickie Mueller

Free Technology Tools for Teachers

Voted as a one of the Top 10 LiveBinders of 2012, this LiveBinder is packed full of resources.  If you need resources for photo editing, Google, coding and presentation tools then this binder will have what you are looking for.

Looking to get involved with LiveBinders this year in your classroom?  Check out my recently released guide, Educator's Guide to LiveBinders on theedublogger.com.  Special thanks to The Edublogger and the ladies at LiveBinders for their help on putting the guide together!

Back to School Tech Part 2: Livebinders

If you are looking to get into Educational Technology this year, Livebinders is the best place to start.  From a personal standpoint, Livebinders is where I started my journal in professional development in education and Dducational Technology after I graduated college.  To say that Livebinders opened my world to all kinds of educators and new ways to learn would be a understatement.  Here's a brief look at this awesome tool:

Livebinders - collect and share resources

Livebinders can be your one central source to collect resources, share resources, and collaborate with other educators and technology enthusiasts.  You can collect web addresses, documents,  photos and many other things in your Livebinder.  You can create a specific Livebinder for any purpose that you have interest in and want to share with others or you can choose to create a private one and keep it personal.     

For example, I've been a member of Livebinders since 2011.  Since that time, I've collected and shared multiple resources like Evernote, Study Blue, Social Studies topics and many other categories.  Here's some of my Livebinders:

Livebinders - collaborate and reflect with other educators

As I previously stated, Livebinders is where I started getting involved in professional development with other educators in educational technology.  As I started watching how other people were using Livebinders and sharing them on Twitter, I became increasingly eager to become involved.  One of my very good Twitter friends, Jen Petras (@jenpetras), one day asked if I would collaborate with her on a Livebinder over Cyberbullying.  Over the course of a few weeks, we were able to gather and collect resources into one Livebinder.  Here's where it is today:

Cyber Bullying

What is great about this is that I live in Texas and she lives in Ohio - two people who live in different states collaborating with each other.  Just imagine if all educators and students took advantage of this opportunity!

Why Livebinders?

I can not speak of Livebinders highly enough.  There a ton of reasons to use Livebinders and incorporate it in your classroom or personal life.  It's free, it's extremely easy to use, you will meet some amazing people and the list goes on.  One thing, however, stands out for me and that's the creators.  Tina and Barbara (@livebinders) provide the best support I've ever experienced with anything related to technology.  They love to share other's Livebinders and love to hear how what they created is making a difference.  They also are happy to provide you tech support in case you need assistance.  I once needed to correct a error on my username on my account so I sent them a Twitter message and it had been completed within a couple of hours - proof that they care for their customers.

I've previously told Tina and Barbara that "Livebinders have changed the face of education"...I firmly believe this has rung true.

Want more Livebinders info?  Here are some more resources:

My other blog posts about Livebinders:  http://engagedwithtech.blogspot.com/search/label/livebinders#.Ujz6OYZwqSo

Livebinders website: www.livebinders.com

Back to School Tech Part 1: Classroom Architect

Believe it or not, the first day back to school is just around the corner!  To kick off another year of learning, here is the first post of many with educational technology resources for educators and students to use.  

Classroom Architect

Classroom Architect, an excellent tool from 4teachers.org, helps you to setup a floor plan for your classroom.

  

With Classroom Architect, you can create a visual of how you want your classroom setup and then print or save your floor plan for future use.  Here's an example of how you can use Classroom Architech:

You can set the dimensions of your classroom, use objects such as: rugs, desks, tables, shelves, TV stands, and computer desks, and use the drawing tool to draw anything else you may need.  

This will come in handy when you first get into the classroom and start deciding how you will best setup your classroom to optimize your learning goals - which is something the website address as well.  The article, Environments that Promote Learning, talks about best practices to use when setting up your classroom and also provides helpful tips.

As we start the school year, I would like to wish all of the educators out there the best of luck!  You are the toughest and most dedicated professionals in this country today.  Thanks to you, the lives of many students will be changed for the better this year!  

Need more resources?  Feel free to visit my Livebinder page for many other useful tools by going to the "My Livebinders" tab on this blog.