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Tuesday Teacher Tips - May 6, 2014 Rewordify, Notability & Understanding Science



Rewordify

I just learned about Rewordify this morning from Richard Byrne on Twitter @rmbyrne. In the article “By Request – Five Apps and Sites to Help Students Develop Reading Comprehension Skills” on the blog Technology for Teachers for Teachers, Byrne describes Rewordify, a free site developed by a special education teacher and former computer programmer.  The site allows you to copy and paste or type a complicated passage into a box, then it rephrases it.  Words that are replaced are highlighted in yellow.  This could be a great resource for students who need rephrasing, or for students who are struggling with a difficult section of text.  

Check out the video: http://youtu.be/yURGZ960wWc

Notability

Notability is a great app that was just listed as the iTunes app of the week.  One of the great features of the Notability app, besides the ability to create and manage your own notes, is that you can use the Notability app to annotate PDFs.  For the classroom teacher dealing with a lot of reports or for students who are working with different PDF file articles or even handouts, this could be a great tool for highlighting, making notes or providing responses. 


With Notability you can then email your notes and annotated PDFs or save them in your Google Drive or Dropbox.  Here at school a great option would be to have students send their work to you using WebDAV.  Don’t know what WebDAV is? WebDav is a way in which a person can access and save to a shared folder.  Stop by and see me and I can help you out with that or setting up a generic classroom Google Drive.

See the basics of using Notability below:



Learn how to pull a PDF into Notability, Annotate and Save.




Understanding Science: How Science Really Works

In last Thursday night’s #NGSSchat on Twitter, a science teacher shared out a link to the Understanding Science Webpage.  This is a great resource as we transition into the NGSS.  On the Teacher Resources page, you can find many exceptional links including: Teacher Lounges by grade level, a Guide to Understanding Science, Teaching Tools, a Resource Database, Image Library, information about misconceptions and research.  On the Teaching Tools page, you can find PDF versions of checklists, flowcharts per grade level and a toolkit.  On the Teacher Resources page, you can limit the results by grade level and discover new ideas for science related lessons and activities you might want to try out. 

#NGSSchat happens every Thursday from 9-10 pm EST on Twitter, check it out if you have time!  There is always great discussion and plenty of resources!   

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