Sunrise Calendar App: Free App for Mac, Chrome Desktop, iOS or Android Devices

Sunrise Calendar App is an excellent way to gain access to your Google Calendars across multiple platforms. Recently, Sunrise became available as a stand-alone Mac App in addition to being available for iOS devices, Android devices, and Chrome. The best thing about Sunrise right now is that it’s free. It is easy to use and simply gives you easy access to your Google calendar. You can also connect some social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as Evernote. It’s simple interface makes it an excellent choice for a Calendar app across all your devices.

Sunrise Mac App Interface

Here are some other interesting features of the Sunrise Calendar App.

• Compatible with Google Calendar, iCloud and Exchange
• Synchronizes in real time
• Quick Add Event Feature
• Reminders
• Connect to multiple Google Calendars
• Supports Mac notifications
• Offline Mode

If you’re looking for a calendar app for your Mac, Desktop or handheld device, you will find Sunrise Calendar App's simplicity and ease of use reason enough to download it today. For more information about the Sunrise Apps, check out their web site (https://calendar.sunrise.am/).

BoomWriter Delivers a Free Common Core Aligned Personalized Literacy Tool

BoomWriter is an award-winning educational technology resource that is free for teachers and allows their students to create, share, and even publish stories and other original content.  BoomWriter’s interactive collaborative writing platform lets teachers deliver a fun and engaging personalized learning experience, while elementary, middle, and high school age students work online to develop their reading, writing, and peer assessment skills.  By blending writing and technology use—two skills of increasing importance for success in the 21st century world—BoomWriter provides teachers and students the necessary space to explore creativity, hone writing skills, and develop a deeper understanding of literary elements, all while aligning with the Common Core.

BoomWriter uses a simple process but with a technology twist.  The teacher selects a “story start”, either from a database of original first chapters or they can create their own prompt, and students then individually write what they think should be the next chapter/section.  The teacher reviews each submission online before allowing the students to read and vote on the anonymous chapter/s that they would like to see included as the next part of the piece.  There’s an easily managed voting system that fairly determines the winning chapter, while not requiring students to read all of their peers’ submissions (and they do not see their own during voting).  The process continues until the story is completed, which is determined by the teacher.  Once finished, BoomWriter will even convert the project into an actual published book containing the names of all of the participating students.  Completed books are then made available for purchase from the BoomWriter Bookstore.

BoomWriter can be used by teachers in a variety roles and educational settings, such as whole class, small group, before, during, and after school.  Boomwriter is also completely safe for students, since all of their work is created and stored in a closed digital environment.  BoomWriter is a helpful and effective instructional tool, allowing teachers to go online to monitor students’ progress, and provide individualized feedback and personalized instruction from anywhere.  Teachers are also able to provide helpful guidance notes to the group prior to each writing phase, creating relevant practice and application opportunities for specific skills and/or understandings covered in class.

BoomWriter started in a middle school classroom and now has a presence in close to 10,000 classrooms spread throughout more than 60 countries!  The more BoomWriter grows, the more ways teachers find to use this approach to writing in their own classroom.  One high school teacher in Kansas used BoomWriter with her students to create a modern day version of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible that explores the events of the Salem witchcraft trials.  According to the teacher, while collaboratively engaged in a contemporary retelling on BoomWriter the students explored “how the themes and ideas that Miller wrote about are still prevalent in today's world.”  

BoomWriter has also identified a way to support large urban school districts and inspire students to write using technology through its Technology Heroes Program.  Tech Heroes, which “helps teachers be champions of technology in their classrooms”, consists of BoomWriter partnering with larger districts and a third party corporate sponsor to provide every student and teacher with their very own free copy of the book they created using BoomWriter!  Tech Heroes programs have taken place within Boston Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, and the Oakland Unified School District, to name a few.  In a survey conducted of participating Tech Heroes teachers just last spring, 95% found BoomWriter to be an “effective instructional tool” and 97% of teachers would use it again in their classrooms.  One teacher raved, “I really enjoyed hearing my students beg to write. Students were thinking at home but writing in class.  They were talking about their stories during recess.  Students who never wrote full stories, began to write and complete their writing.  I am delighted with BoomWriter.  It is a valuable asset to my classroom.”

BoomWriter continues to add new free resources and features to support teachers, such as ELA lesson plans, providing teachers step-by-step instructions on how to incorporate elements of personal narrative or literature into their projects.  By the start of the upcoming school year, BoomWriter will also feature two new products for use within and beyond the classroom.  The first is an interactive vocabulary application called “WordWriter” that will deliver an interactive vocabulary experience allowing students to apply, share, and assess newly learned words in original content.  The second will facilitate non-fiction group-writing projects around Social Studies/History and Science/Technical subjects, and BoomWriter will support teachers with these efforts by providing free lesson plans.   

Increase the levels of collaboration taking place in your school’s classroom by registering for free at: BoomWriter!

Guest Post by Ashleigh West, Media Specialist at BoomWriter Media

Scribe: An Inexpensive Outliner Note-Taking Software Alternative for Mac Users

Recently,  I found myself in search of a simple program that would allow me to outline my readings for my doctoral program. Obviously, I could create those outlines within a word-processor like MS Word or Pages, but when I’m taking notes, simplicity in operation is important. I found a simple outline program in Scribe by Peppered Software. It is a simple outline program that provides minimal features for simple note-taking.

• Easy keyboard shortcuts
• Minimalist interface that keeps superfluous features from getting in the way
• Ability to export your outlines to multiple formats, including: OPML, Rich Text (For your MS Word or Open Office programs), or plain text.

For the Mac user looking for a simple, inexpensive Outliner note-taking program, Scribe has proven for me an excellent choice.

Scribe Interface

Note: I haven't received any compensation for the promotion of this software.

ReadKit: An Inexpensive RSS Feed Reader for Your Mac

Since purchasing a MacBook Pro last weekend, I’ve been exploring RSS Feed Reader programs. Of course there’s the web-based stand-by programs such as Feedly or NewsBlur which I’ve written about before. But somehow, since the demise of Google Reader, I’ve been using either one of these, and I haven’t been entirely pleased with the experience of these two reader options. Both seemed to be plagued by bugs and misfires, at least in my experience, so while using Windows, I used them because there just didn’t seem to be a great deal of options.
Since becoming a Mac user, I have been trying some RSS feed readers, and in ReadKit, I think I’ve found a solid reader that has a clear interface as well as the ability to share articles directly from the reader to a number of other web services. The program allows users to share to the usual social media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook, as well as sharing to other collection apps such as Pocket or Instapaper. Users can also customize the interface to their own needs like most other Feed readers, and they can also use their usually RSS feed services such as Feedly, Fever, NewsBlur, Feed Wrangler and Feed and Feedbin. While most other Readers provide all of these features, for the most part, ReadKit has proven to reliable and less buggy than other readers I’ve tried, and it has a well-laid out interface with easy to learn features. Currently, ReadKit is on sale for $4.99 in the App Store. It is an excellent Feed Reader for Mac Users.

MarsEdit---Functional Blog Editor for Mac Users Looking for a Live Writer Option

One thing I obviously discovered immediately in my Mac conversion this weekend was my loss of Windows Live Writer, the free blogging software. I used Live Writer quite often, especially when scratching out the earliest drafts of a blog post. What I discovered this weekend is that it isn’t available for Mac and there’s really no equivalent solution available of my MacBook Pro.

I searched the web and stumbled across this article, “A Blogging Tool for the Mac That Is Close to the Windows Live Writer.” It describes an application called MarsEdit, an blog editor for Mac users. I immediately found the application in the App Store, and saw that it wasn’t free; it was $39.99.  After obviously getting Live Writer free all these years, I was reluctant to pay that price. Still, I wanted some kind of blogging software that allowed me to compose blog posts offline. I continued to search, but I found nothing else. Being able to compose blog posts offline is important for me. Many of those posts stay forever doomed to spend their days in my local draft folder, but my writing processes means I have to often slog through those posts to get to the ones I want to post. There are also times I sit and compose drafts without an Internet connection, so being able to find a blogging editor that allows me to compose offline was important.

I finally relented and downloaded MarsEdit, even at the $39.99 price. While its interface obviously isn’t the same as Live Writer, it does provide me with the same functionality. I can, for example:

• Compose blog posts while offline.
• I can format text and posts easily, though the formatting tools in MarsEdit are located in a drop-down menu and not as buttons within the interface.
• I can preview posts before posting, though not with my true blog theme in the background.
• I can easily select categories for my posts or tags.
• I can post either as a draft or as a live post with the click of a button.

My overall assessment of MarsEdit? It is a functional blog editor for those Mac users who, like me, are looking for a way to compose posts offline and don’t particularly care for the online Blogger interface. Obviously, I could compose those posts in a word processor or other text processing tool, but as you know, when you copy and paste that text into the Blogger editor online, sometime very quirky things happen. All in all, I am satisfied with MarsEdit. It is a completely functional blog editor.

MarsEdit Interface

PlayScience II: iPad App for the Science Classroom

PlayScience II is an interesting iPad app that covers all essential topics in Grade 2 Science, such as Plants, Animals, Earth, Weather & Sky, Matter and Motion & Energy. It also has several activities such as a memory game, jigsaw puzzles, crosswords etc. along with animations, voice over and interaction that make learning fun for children. Because it caters to the entire Grade 2 syllabus, it can be used by parents to complement what their children learn at school or can be used by elementary teachers in their classrooms. The app does not require internet connection, and can be used anywhere - at home or at school. The makers of PlayScience II currently offer a "Lite" version for free and the paid version for $7.99.

For more information about PlayScience II check out them out in iTunes here.

PlayScience II Interface