Inserting images in Socrative quizzes

A little while ago the very popular instant response app Socrative announced the introduction of a much requested new feature: the ability to add images to quizzes (and gradable short answers) and after a little bit of bug fixing it is now fully up and running. Here’s a quick look at how to do it on a PC/Mac and how to do it using only your iPad. There are probably lots of other ways to do this, but since I haven’t written a blog post in a long time this seemed a sensible opportunity to share my methods.

Signing up for access to the new features

Sadly the new features don’t just appear automatically, you have to complete your teacher profile first – remember to enter the email address you signed up to Socrative with and your account will be upgraded with the new features as if by magic.

How to create and insert images for a Socrative quiz on a PC/Mac

Let’s assume that you haven’t actually got any images to insert into your Socrative quiz yet – or you have but they are in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

1) Create/open your quiz in PowerPoint or Keynote ensuring that each question has its own slide (see example below).

2) Select ‘File’ then ‘Save as’ – if you have the option to ‘Save as Pictures’ this will save you a step.

3) Depending on the version of PowerPoint/Keynote you are running, you may need to select ‘Other Formats’ to access the alternative file formats. Select ‘Format’ or ‘Save as type’ and scroll down to select JPEG, then select ‘Save’. You may then be offered the chance to save all of the slides in your presentation as JPEGs or only the current slide.

4) Visit the Socrative website and login as a teacher to create your new quiz

5) Select ‘Manage Quizzes’ and ‘Create a Quiz’. When you select your question type you should now see the option to ‘Add Image’ below the question box. Select the ‘Add Image’ option, browse for your JPEG file and insert it into your quiz!

Of course, you could do all of this on your iPad…

1) Create your quiz using Keynote following the ‘single slide per question’ rule as above. NOTE: you don’t have to use Keynote, any iPad app that allows you to save as a PDF (e.g. Explain Everything, Pages, Notability) would also work for you here.

2) There are two options I have found useful here:

• Switch Keynote to fullscreen mode and take a screenshot of each slide that you would like to insert into your quiz, automatically saving your required images to the camera roll
• If you have lots of slides to import into your quiz, it may be quicker to export your file as a PDF to another app. If you select to export as a PDF to DocScanHD,  you will then be able to export the entire PDF as multiple image files to your camera roll (see image)

3) Open the Socrative app and select ‘Manage Quizzes’ and ‘Create a Quiz’ as before. When you select your question type you should now see the option to ‘Add Image’ below the question box. Select the ‘Add Image’ option, ‘Choose Existing’ and insert the required image from your camera roll. Job done.

Please get in touch if you have any other ways of making these new Socrative features work for you.

Bett 2013 – A collection of random thoughts…

2013 saw my first trip to Bett, so I jumped on the train with @carledgar86 and headed down to London armed with a double pack of Lucozade and six Twix caramel slices.

I would like to think that most people attending Bett this year would have been a little disappointed to be greeted by over a dozen companies selling interactive whiteboards – most of which seemed to be almost identical to each other. However, I got the increasing feeling that this was merely the norm. That said, it didn’t appear to stop floods of people from visiting these stands (or indeed the companies from lashing out in excess of £50k to be there for the week). One unnamed interactive whiteboard firm had even managed to differentiate its interactive whiteboard range from the others by lying it on its side and turning it into a table. It goes without saying that they were the most popular.

The same could be said for the plethora of companies selling visualisers, which are apparently still able to supply enough to meet their ever increasing levels of expected demand. At least a bit of healthy competition might help drive the price down a little. The point made by @James_Bowkett leaves little else to be said about the matter.

Any half decent tablet makes Interactive Whiteboards and Visualisers totally obsolete yet they are everywhere at #BETT13

— James Bowkett (@James_Bowkett) February 2, 2013

I would also like to think that most people would have been disappointed to see plenty of VLEs at this year’s event. But let’s face it, no educational technology show would be complete without their fair share of VLEs and bright colours, which irresistibly combine to make them infinitely more attractive to potential customers. I spent a reasonable amount of time playing with the soon-to-be-launched Frog4OS – interested to see if they had been able to design a VLE that is fully compatible with mobile devices (after watching a Frog employee try five times to drag a dashboard widget into place I decided enough was enough). I had one question – ‘will you be able to upload and download all types of files from your iPad into Frog?’. The answer was ‘well, er…the iPad doesn’t have a native file browser so that isn’t possible’. No further questions were asked. I arrived expecting that attempting to integrate a Frog VLE into an iPad 1:1 would be unecessarily difficult, I left knowing that attempting to integrate a Frog VLE into an iPad 1:1 would be unecessarily difficult.

Moan over. There was lots of great stuff – here were my 5 highlights:

Mathspace - I was generously pointed in the direction of Mathspace by @timstirrup, who kindly alerted me to its potential greatness and then even more kindly told me where it was when I couldn’t find it. Billing itself as ‘online maths training like you’ve never seen before’ – Mathspace might just signal a new generation of exciting maths products. Currently only available in Australia and under development for the UK curriculum at the moment, Mathspace is a web based tool or iPad app and there is a free trial available if you can’t wait for it arrive permanently. I haven’t bothered explaining what it actually does, the video below covers that. I just hope they don’t price themselves out of the UK market.

Zondle - I was almost slightly embarrassed to have never come across Zondle before. A games based learning site with versions available for mobile devices, Zondle allows teachers to create and access previously made quizzes on any subject whilst managing the progress of their class. Zondle is different from other games based learning sites in that you can ‘play any quiz, with any game’, cleverly separating them to ensure that a topic is not only associated with a specific game. Most of the content is aimed at younger students (primary or KS3), but you can easily develop your own quizzes in a matter of seconds. Their website also contains the words ‘Zondle is free, and always will be!’

Beluga Maths - Beluga have recently released their Learn Maths with Beluga iPad app, a games based approach to learning mathematics that really aims to develop an understanding of each topic. The content is currently only aimed at younger students, but will soon be extending all the way up to A Level problems, with a HTML5 web-based version on its way soon too. It will be really interesting to see how this one develops. Their website also contains the words ‘free forever, with unlimited updates’. Very nice, although student tracking comes at an additional cost.

Showbie – I have long been a fan of Showbie for iPad workflow, but I became more a fan this week when it became free to all users. It isn’t the finished product, but it definitely offers the easiest workflow for teachers looking to collect, mark and redistribute content created on the iPad.

Hackasaurus - This wasn’t technically a Bett discovery since I came across this following #tmbett2013 courtesy of @mberry, but I can scarcely believe how great it is as an introduction to coding. Hackasaurus is a bookmark that allows you to see and alter the code for any web page – watching the end result change as you remix it. An alternative version of my blog may be on the cards.

iPad workflow & feedback

There is little doubt about it, iPad workflow is a nightmare. To the many technologically unsure educators the process of distributing, collecting, marking and redistributing student work on the iPad remains somewhat of a minefield. There are certainly lots of options – see this slideshow by @gregkulowiec and this excellent PDF guide by @john_larkin titled ‘Sharing your iPad Stuff: Not that easy’. Sometimes lots of options can be a bad thing. Especially when none of the options are particularly effective.

Have a look at this well versed workflow model:

1. The teacher distributes a worksheet/assignment
2. The students complete the worksheet in their books/on a sheet
3. The students hand their work in to the teacher
4. The teacher marks the work
5. The teacher hands the work back to the students
6. The students (supposedly) read the helpful comments the teacher has written on their work and learn greatly from the formative feedback that they have received

The question is, can that model be improved upon using an iPad? As it stands at the moment, the answer is a resounding no (if you believe this is not to be true, please get in touch).

This blog post is largely inspired by a post I came across yesterday about one of my favourite models for technology integration – the SAMR model of Ruben R. Puentedura (see below). As a general rule, redefinition is the aim; if you can only achieve substitution then integrating a technology probably isn’t worthwhile.

When you consider the integration of iPads purely in terms of a traditional workflow model, the iPad is nowhere near achieving the lowly ‘substitution’ status afforded by the SAMR model above. It clearly isn’t a direct tool substitute; to achieve the equivalent six point ‘traditional’ process would actually result in a functional loss, given how difficult replicating the process currently is on the iPad.

Of course the iPad offers plenty of other opportunities for redefinition and modification, otherwise presumably it wouldn’t have been so heavily integrated into education already. The problem is that formative assessment is considered a hugely important part of the learning cycle and it seems that this part of iPad pedagogy has largely escaped without consideration. There seems little point in teachers printing off student work completed on the iPad to re-enact the time honoured workflow model with pen and paper.

So lets take a bit of time to pick apart some of the potential (free) iPad workflow solutions that exist.

• Dropbox - great for sharing work with students, which can be done via a shared folder (Otixo and WebDAV can provide access to Dropbox from iWork apps). The problems begin when students need to return work to the teacher. This can be done by the shared folder again, but then the class will be able view each others work. Each student could share a folder individually with the teacher, but having a shared folder with every student you teach is likely to cause more confusion than it is worth unless you organise your shared folders with pinpoint precision. Using sendtodropbox presents similar problems with vast quantities of email addresses required. It is possible to recreate a traditional workflow, but I wouldn’t like to try and convince any newcomers that it is possible with ‘no functional change’.

• Edmodo - again, great for sharing work with students. Great for posting links to video content and can work in tandem with Dropbox using copied links. Unfortunately, using Edmodo to try and recreate the traditional workflow model involves a process that can only be generously described as lengthy, since you can’t upload to Edmodo from your iPad.

• Evernote – again, pretty good for sharing work with students. Work can be submitted to the teacher using the Evernote email address, but unless you are a premium user (£££) you are somewhat back to square one when it comes to marking and returning work to your students.

• Email – the classic fallback option, always there if all else fails. In fact, if you are prepared to put up with a serious increase in inbox activity that will result in each student in each of your classes emailing you work it isn’t a bad solution. Presumably though you’ll still want download each piece of work and save a copy for yourself at some point.

• Google Docs – have you tried using Google Docs on the iPad?

When you consider both the options and the resources created on iPad workflow, you will notice they concentrate almost entirely ‘sharing and submitting’. What comes next, which is surely almost as important, appears to have been largely ignored.

Showbie appears to be a little different and – unlike its paid alternatives – offers considerable functionality in its free version:

• Web version for staff/student access
• New iPad app
• Very straightforward setup method of creating a class and sharing a code
• Students only have access to files shared with them as part of each ‘assignment’
• WebDAV access to files and folders from a huge selection of apps
• Ability to access submitted work and provide feedback to individuals
• Teachers can ‘archive’ assignments for future reference
• In-built voice feedback tool (currently only in the iPhone/iPod touch version but soon to be on the iPad)

It is by no means perfect but definitely represents a huge step in the right direction. The new iPad app has a bit of a propensity to crash at the moment and it would also benefit from allowing links to be submitted as assignments. It also deliberately has no social aspect, but could function happily alongside Edmodo. The good news is that as far as workflow goes, it works and it isn’t complicated either. It might even achieve ‘substitution’.

Moving forward, with tools like Showbie functional improvements may even be on the horizon with workflow and feedback. Feasibly, student presentations created in Keynote could be sent via WebDAV to the teacher, opened, annotated with voice recordings by the teacher in Notability and returned to the student using WebDAV at their leisure (I say feasibly because Notability appears to have WebDAV issues at the moment). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

If you have any alternative iPad workflow models that work, please please get in touch.

iTunes U & 1:1 iPads

You may have noticed I have become a little obsessed with iTunes U recently. Whilst this obsession hasn’t yet become too serious (relatively I have spent far more time sorting out my fantasy football side this week) it seems to be a problem that is set to stay.

Here’s why:

Apple recently announced that anyone with an Apple ID will be able to create courses for sharing, without having to upload them to the iTunes U catalogue as part of a registered institution. This is a pretty big deal for schools.

Here’s why:

Previously iTunes U was a place largely reserved for universities where you could readily indulge in a course on pretty much anything, provided it has some suitably complicated content. Whilst publicly – as far as action in the iTunes U catalogue goes – that is likely to remain the case, Apple’s recent announcement opens up a lot of opportunities for schools to make use of iTunes U privately.

iTunes U Course Manager is the tool that allows you to create iTunes U Courses. It is a relatively straightforward web-based tool that allows you to use iTunes U as a course management system; when you update your course in iTunes U Course Manager, it updates (almost) instantly on the students’ devices. The ideal-for-use-with-classes option of creating an in-session course allows your students to access the course in a ‘calendar style’ as assignments are given a selected date.

A successfully created iTunes U provides 24/7 access to all of the required study materials for each course as part of an iPad 1:1 program. As a result, it is an ideal platform for those willing to trial a flipped classroom approach. Create the content you wish to share with your students on the iPad, upload it using iTunes U Course Manager on your PC/Mac, create an assignment, specify a date and test it for yourself. The lesson that follows should benefit hugely from the time saved due to not having explain the new concept(s) in detail from the beginning.

Here’s some help:

As part of my recent obsession with iTunes U, I stuck together a course using iTunes U Course Manager called ‘Creating iTunes U Courses‘. I’ve also stuck the videos that are part of that course on YouTube, although collectively they don’t make much sense without the waffle that precedes them in the course.

Here’s where it needs to go:

iTunes U lacks one huge thing: a social aspect. To be truly effective as a course management system or as part of a flipped classroom, iTunes U needs to integrate discussion and chat facilities as a minimum requirement. Having access to videos and note-taking opportunities galore is great, but by no means a substitute for students learning collaboratively. For now, running courses alongside an Edmodo group appears to be the next best alternative.

Oh, and I would love to see iTunes U Course Manager available in a browser other than Safari. But something tells me that is far less likely to happen.

iPad workflow with Edmodo

Workflow seems to be a continuous topic for discussion with the introduction of iPads into the classroom. How best to distribute work to students, receive it back once they have completed it and then mark it and return it to them using only iPads? Can it really be that difficult?

It certainly isn’t overly straightforward. Dropbox, Evernote and several alternatives are great, but they don’t offer the personalisation of a tool like Edmodo. As well as being a great tool for student and teacher communication, Edmodo can be used as part of an iPad 1:1 workflow alongside Dropbox (thanks to Darren Coxon here). What follows is my attempt to describe the process by which it can be done.

Part 1 - Creating and setting the assignment

Part 2 – Receiving, completing and returning the assignment (The student part)

Part 3 – Collecting the assignment, marking it and returning it to your students

Remember when I said it wasn’t overly straightforward?

DragonBox – ‘The first real Algebra game’

I have been fairly critical in the past of the majority of Maths iPad apps, since very few offer anything other than mind-numbingly repetitive practice of number skills. They are often 21st century versions of worksheets containing 100 questions on that have been known to be used for detentions.

Yesterday I came across an app that is a little bit different. It is called DragonBox, it is available in the Apple and Android stores for £1.99 and it aims to teach you algebra. It arrives in Britain off the back of some impressive success elsewhere in Europe (check out what Wired had to say about it here). After about 24 hours of owning the app, I can honestly say I am seriously impressed.

Here’s the difference between DragonBox and most other Maths apps: you learn concepts by playing it. DragonBox does a great job of introducing equations, the idea of balancing and the role of the equals symbol without explicitly teaching you what you are doing. Our Maths department were instantly impressed, as were the 9 year olds I tested it on yesterday.

The wired article raises some important issues. Whilst DragonBox constantly encourages you to figure out things for yourself, it can result in you knowing how to play the game without knowing why something is true. A blue monster divided by a blue monster equals 1. Is this really a problem? Understanding of the rules can easily be built upon with the necessities of why?

There are also the difficulties of how it could be used in a school setting, citing evidence that teachers ‘didn’t know what to do with this’. Surely developing the understanding of why would be an ideal role the teacher? A few simple substitutions of the blue monster to a number and the question of why is accounted for. I have just signed up to trial their web-based version and cannot wait to give it a go.

It is about time a Maths app like this arrived on the market and I am already looking forward to seeing what they can come up with next, or perhaps more importantly – what they can inspire others to come up with next.

A Maths lesson using only Google Docs…

I am a huge fan of Google Docs. I expend a lot of energy trying to convince other members of staff to utilise its collaborative power in their lessons. The hypocrisy has never been lost on me. I have never used it in a lesson myself. Until today.

As a Maths teacher, I have always been able to convince myself that Google Docs has greater applications in other subjects. Trying to incorporate Google Docs into a relatively inspiring non-spreadsheet-based Maths lesson has always struck me as a little bit of a challenge. You can only imagine my delight then, when I realised that I was scheduled to be teaching ‘Designing an effective questionnaire’ to my Year 7 class. Of all of the topics Maths teachers are forced to teach, this one is pretty much a nailed-on-certainty to provide at least a few calls of ‘what’s this got to do with Maths?’. Ideal.

After a little planning, I decided to give it a go.

Connect

My students had signed up for a Google account prior to the lesson, so I placed a link to a Google Spreadsheet on the class wiki. They were charged with answering the 6 questions next to their names (blanked on the video for obvious reasons). Unsurprisingly, one of them realised that whatever they typed in appears on everybody’s screen and I was promptly faced with a short barrage of hi, hey xx, lol and <3 cells. After the initial excitement subsided, some semi-useful data was collected ready for analysis later, all in only 1 minute. Look out for the confused soul who wrote ‘i dont know’ in the formula bar and other ‘anomalies’. The video was made using Screenr.com to record my laptop screen.

Activate

Students were presented with the timeless ‘Mr Riley’s Questionnaire‘ worksheet. After a short discussion and a couple of examples, the students were given the task of filling in one of the simplest Google Forms ever created, on which they were to explain the problems with each of the questions on the sheet. Of course the results were beamed back to my computer in a handy Google spreadsheet. Google Forms really are a superb tool.

Demonstrate

Now for the creative bit. The students were given ten topics to design questions for using their own Google Forms – which I had to briefly show them how to use. They were under strict instructions to make sure that their resultant spreadsheet was shared with me before starting so I could access their work, which we just about managed. Given the simplicity of Google Forms it wasn’t a surprise to see how quickly they picked it up. To make sure they stayed on task, they were told that their questionnaires would be shared with the whole class at the end. It all worked fairly well, but we were never likely to have enough time to share them at the end.

Consolidate

And so it proved. There was nowhere near enough time left for this part. Ofsted would not have been happy. I was more than content. There were plenty of ideas left in the tank for the consolidate activity, even for another lesson or two. It would have been really nice to have the students test their questionnaires with each other, but that may have to wait. Lots of data had been collected, I had lots of evidence all in one place and the students had encountered something new. I was left contemplating what to do with all the information.

Conclusion

There is a lot of potential for the use of Google Docs within Maths, especially within the topic of data collection, processing and presenting. We didn’t have chance to utilise the data collected at the beginning of the lesson, but a similar data collection session could be used to introduce any data presentation method - frequency tables, bar charts or scatter graphs for example. It undoubtedly requires careful planning in advance but certainly helps introduce a real life element into students’ Maths lessons. Now for completing our Google Apps deployment…

Using Google Docs to track students’ progress (updated)

Most Maths teachers (and many other subject teachers) will have tried to use an exam topic tracker before. Often, these are created using a simple  time-consuming spreadsheet into which the teacher has to manually enter the marks gained – by each student – for each question. This then allows the teacher to analyse the results and target areas of weakness.

This seems to miss the point a little. Our students need to be more independent and responsible than this ‘teacher reliance’. If they are aware of their own weaknesses then they can act responsibly to correct these. Surely students need to have their own version of an exam topic tracker if they are to analyse their results themselves?

Using Google Docs, each student can have a copy of their own  tracker, which they can then share with the class teacher. Upon receiving exam papers back, each student then updates their tracker with the marks they obtained for each question. Depending on the marks obtained, each cell is turned either green, yellow or red. This information can then be used by both the student and the teacher to drive progress (and the teacher hasn’t even had to lift a finger yet – marking aside). Feel free to have a play with the spreadsheet by clicking on the image below.

Utilising videos of exam answers

The updated spreadsheet contains a hyperlinked video solution to each question. I encourage my students to watch the videos to the questions they have got incorrect. I find the videos to be a helpful tool in my students’ assessment of their own knowledge; by watching the short video explanation they can usually gauge their level of understanding of a topic.

Unfortunately, all of the video answers are Youtube clips, which means they are still not accessible within the majority of schools. Until we all have access to YoutubeEDU, this means the videos can only be accessed outside of school by students. Of course this isn’t a problem, since students can access their Google Docs anywhere via any web browser.

Using Google Docs to enter into a dialogue with students about their progress

Getting students to reflect on their learning and target their own areas for improvement can be difficult to achieve. I didn’t want my students taking the time to complete the spreadsheet and watching the videos without any reflection at all. After completing the spreadsheet and watching the videos, I usually get my students to set 3 targets for themselves to work on before their next exam, which can be written on the spreadsheet as a reminder.

Sadly the ‘Comments’ function of Google Spreadsheets are not quite up to the standard of Documents. However, they still provide a nice way of communicating with students. Once the students have used the spreadsheet and completed their targets, the teacher can then right-click on the appropriate cell and choose ‘Insert Comment’. The comments can be used in lots of ways, such as directing students to resources to further their knowledge, or suggesting targets the student may have missed. Comments appear as small orange triangles in the top right hand corner of cells.

Sharing your Google Doc tracker with your students

There are lots of different options for sharing a Google Doc tracker with your students, but here is my method – and you only have to do this once.

• Keep a master copy of the spreadsheet (you can have a copy for yourself by going to ‘File’ >  ’Make a Copy’) and don’t use it for anything, except any necessary updates. You can then use this copy to send any updates to your students’ spreadsheets. I have a master version and also a copied version that I share with students.
• Make sure each of your students is logged in to Google Docs (signing up just a few seconds) and provide them with a link to the copied version of the tracker – via wiki, VLE link, email etc.
• The Google Doc will then open, students click on ‘File’ > ‘Make a Copy’ > Tick the box ‘Also copy document collaborators’ > Rename the file containing the students name/initials.
• The teacher will then automatically have access to each student’s spreadsheet (without even sharing email addresses). I recommend creating a ‘collection’ for each class and moving your classes’ spreadsheets into one collection.

Using a Google Doc tracker with your students over a longer period of time

Of course, you may not want to share a giant spreadsheet with your students containing video answers to every paper they might sit in the next two years. By making another copy of your master version, you can reduce the spreadsheet so it contains only the exam papers relevant to you, and slowly add more papers to your students’ spreadsheets. Here is an example of how:

• As your students sit an exam at the beginning of Year 10, you can go through the process above but share with them only the exam papers they have completed.
• Next time your class complete an exam paper, return to your ‘master version’ and find the exam paper you would now like to share with your students.
• On the sheet you would like your students to now have access to, click on the sheet name at the bottom and click ‘Copy to’.
• Tick the box next to each student’s spreadsheet to add your new sheet to their tracker. You are done!

I recognise this post is almost disturbingly focused on improving students’ exam scores. However, it is also primarily about encouraging students to reflect and take responsibility for their learning. If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet,  use the same ‘Make a copy’ trick mentioned above and give it a go. Thanks to Tim Buckton (@mrbuckton4maths) and Carl Roberts (@carledgar86) for providing some of the videos. If you have any questions or recommendations please leave a comment below or contact me on Twitter (@riley_ed).

10 ways Evernote can help make students more productive

For those of you who haven’t come across it, Evernote is a remember-everything app. It remembers, everything. When used to its full potential, it has the capacity to improve the productivity of our students. Here are 10 reasons I think it could help to do just that, with a particular focus on the role of Evernote in 1:1 iPad schemes.

1) Evernote makes you organised. I am the opposite of an organised person. However, a peek inside my Evernote account reveals a different story. All of my notes are tagged and saved into one of my notebooks and give more than an illusion of organisation. These notes contain typed notes, handwritten notes, pictures, webpages, audio files, documents, pdfs, powerpoints and much, much more. The same tagging system can be used to allow students to organise their notes for different subjects, modules and even lessons between their devices.

2) You can email to Evernote. Every Evernote account comes with its own unique email address, which allows you to instantly save into Evernote. One of the frustrating problems associated with a lot of iPad apps can be a lack of export options, but with this handy feature you will always be able to email your work to Evernote and you can even choose the notebook and tagging options in your email too.

3) The Evernote web clippers. This is how I first began using Evernote; as a way of storing information that I have come across that I may need again in the future. Evernote has web clippers for all of the major web browsers that allow you to clip a webpage so you can tag it and make its contents searchable. This makes Evernote  ideal for collecting ideas and evidence for projects.

For the iPad, the process is a little more complicated. You can’t add an Evernote extension to the iPad’s Safari browser, but there are a couple of clever workarounds. One option is to copy the contents of a webpage, choose the ‘mail link to this page’ option and paste the contents into an email directly to your Evernote account (see the demo below). Alternatively, you can use the bookmarks function in Safari to set up your own Evernote web clipper for iPad. The two options offer fairly equal functionality and speed.

4) Evernote gives you access to your notes on multiple devices. The Evernote iPad app does some very impressive things, but doesn’t quite give you the full functionality of the desktop version. Of course, it doesn’t matter too much since Evernote automatically syncs your notes between all of your devices. This allows you to have your notes with you all of the time, meaning you can create notes and organise yourself on the move.

5) Using Evernote to share notebooks. Shared notebooks opens up yet more possibilities for the role of Evernote in education. It is another possible solution to the ‘How best to share documents with your students?’ question concerning iPads (along with Dropbox, email, blogs/sites and iTunesU). This impressive setup of a Science teacher in California shows what can be achieved through sharing notebooks with students, allowing them to access all of their course documents whenever they like.

6) Use Evernote to search your notes. Evernote is all about organisation and efficiency. The ability to search your notes provides a serious time-saver. In the past I could regularly be found scrolling through dozens of pages of my web browsers’ history in order to find a website containing something interesting that I forgot to favourite. Not any more. Evernote makes all of your notes searchable, including any clipped webpages, so if you know what you are looking for, Evernote will return all of your saved notes containing that term within seconds.

7) Use Evernote to search images. This particular feature adds a good element of wow factor to Evernote (see the video below). It has always surprised me just how effective the image search feature is, but having taken pictures of notes written in my own unique handwriting style Evernote still hasn’t had any issues searching my images for text. This option means students can take snapshots of their handwritten notes and save them to Evernote, allowing them to search all of their documents for keywords.

8) You can create Evernote notes automatically. Using the genius of If This Then That, you can choose certain triggers that send notes directly to Evernote. For example, you can set up RSS feeds that create a new note every time a new item appears in the feed, or you can set up a trigger that fires every time a new tweet matches a given search query.

9) You can make revision flashcards from your Evernote notes. Those lucky enough to own a smart cover for their iPad can enjoy the luxuries of Evernote Peek, a handy revision tool that converts your notes into study materials. For the rest of us, Evernote also integrates into the excellent flashcard creator StudyBlue, which allows you to access your notes for customising as flashcards.

10) It is free.

Using StudyBlue Flashcards as revision materials

I have been trying to get away from the painful process of handing out flashcards to students this year (yes, I know they should make their own).  In an effort to embrace mobile technology I turned to the flashcard site StudyBlue – after trialling several alternatives. I was impressed with their simple but effective site and the quality of their own iPad, iPhone and Android apps. It took me a while to get going and the site isn’t without its issues, but hidden somewhere beneath is a potential gem of a revision tool – and it’s free.

I began by searching for a collection of Grade C Revision Cards and settled on this TES Maths Resource as it was handily divided up into the different strands of the curriculum. After creating an account and linking it to my school, I made four sets of flashcards in my StudyBlue ‘backpack’ based on the resource above – you will have to create an account to view the flashcards hyperlinked below. Click on ‘Flip Flashcards’ to (hopefully) be impressed.

GCSE Maths Geometry & Measures

GCSE Maths Foundation Number

GCSE Maths Foundation Algebra

GCSE Maths Foundation Statistics

These flashcards are all housed in a ‘GCSE FOUNDATION MATHS’ class I set up, which has a class code that students can use to access the materials when they sign up. Alternatively, you can just search for flashcards by topic or email invites to individuals. The site keeps a track of results, flashcards you are struggling with and will chart your progress.

Which is all good. But the fact that it can be accessed from the large majority of mobile apps including whilst offline, is my favourite part. iPad user? Get the studyblue ipad app, register, search for GCSE Maths and away you go…if you’ve already connected to the class then all of your revision materials will already be there for you.

I will be fine tuning the resources before rolling them out shortly. In the meantime, I’d be very keen to hear what you think. Here is a little guide to using StudyBlue for any interested parties. StudyBlue allows students to create their own flashcards and can also create content based on your Evernote notes, but I haven’t got that far yet…