IA Writer: Interesting Writing App for Mac and iPad

IA Writer offers writers a minimalist environment for composition. As you write, you are not distracted by formats, fonts, and the normal trappings of a word processing program. You basically have a blank screen on which to type your thoughts and words. There's something interesting about writing in this manner. You aren't distracted by whether you should use this font or bullets. You simply type your text. I can see how composing in this environment would be attractive. IA Writer Pro is available for $19.99 for both the iPad application and the Mac application, which I have found equally useful.

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/).

Pause and Delete: Sometimes Our Best Response to Those Passionate Emails We Receive

“Pause before sending an email. What do I want to see come out of this communication? The other party to feel diminished or encouraged?” Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace

Email has made it quite easy to speak your mind. How many of us are guilty of pounding out a scathing response to an email that we received from someone else who wrote from a moment of passion? Chances are, unless you’ve been asleep for the first decade of the 21st century, you have had your own experiences of composing and sending an email that did little to be helpful and much to be hurtful or detrimental to an already emotional situation. There’s something about email that seems to make it OK to speak to other people in ways that we would dare not speak to them in person.

This tendency to respond out of passion is all the more reason to “Pause” before sending that email when we find ourselves ruled by passion. A simple test I follow is this:

I ask myself: Will this email response be useful? And, as Sharon Salzberg indicates, “What do I want to see come out of this communication?” If the answer is harm to another person, then perhaps the delete button is the best option. If my email response will bring about harm to another, even in the spirit of revenge, then is it really expedient to send that message?

We don’t have to be discourteous and thoughtless with our messages. In fact, in our times, there’s just too much polarization and hate to go around already. Why would we choose to add more simply because it satisfies our own sense of revenge?

Today, don’t be afraid to “Pause” before sending that email-of-vengence.” If our message is harmful to others, no good can come from it. The delete button is sometimes the best option.

More on OpenEd's Free Online Assessment Tools: How-to Videos

OpenEd recently released its Free Assessment tool. OpenEd's assessment tool not only provides the question types required by the Common Core curriculum, but it also has some unique capabilities as well, such as suggesting videos to students who miss specific questions. It also suggests questions to teachers to add to their Common Core assessments.

OpenEd offers educators the largest K-12 resource catalog online today. Here's a couple of interesting videos about their new online assessment tool. Check them out!

NC Legislature Shows Love for Charters & Hostility to Traditional Public Schools

Here’s some more evidence that our North Carolina State Legislature despises traditional public schools and favors charter schools that don’t have to play by the same rules as other public schools. Yesterday, the North Carolina House voted to allow charter schools to once again play by different rules.
While traditional public schools have been required to disclose to names and salaries of all its employees to newspapers and the other media under public records laws, it seems our legislature does not believe charter schools should have to do the same. The bill passed by the North Carolina House does not require charter schools to disclose the names of employees with the salaries with public records requests. The logic used to justify this measure by NC Representatives Charles Jeter and David Lewis? “Disclosing the charter school salaries by name creates a hostile work environment.” (See “NC House Votes to Block Charter Employees’ Names with Pay.”)

As far as I am concerned, the logic and intentions of this legislature is clear. It simply despises public schools. period. Through this bill, our legislature finally admits, though tacitly, that it “wants to create a hostile work environment” in traditional public schools, because they are unwilling to protect public school employees from some “theoretical hostile work environment.”

Once again, this North Carolina Legislature proves its hostile intentions toward traditional public education. For the past several years, all employees in school districts in our region have endured having their salaries publicly available in data-bases located on newspaper web sites. Has it caused a hostile work environment? I’m not sure it has. Most of us don’t even bother to access that data anymore. But the fact that our political leaders somehow want to hide how charter schools operate and spend money, definitely shows hostile intentions toward traditional public schools.

These two state legislators, Jeter and Lewis, prove that what they really want to protect is how charter schools actually spend public money. Charters in our area have been known to pay exorbitant salaries to administrators. One charter in Charlotte, North Carolina recently imploded due to bloated administrator salaries. (See “Troubled StudentFirst Charter School Closes Abruptly")

If anyone needs names and salaries disclosed it is public charter schools. Because they are not required to play by the same employment laws as traditional public schools, the public has an even greater interest in making sure these schools do not waste tax payer money. Perhaps this is once again that the signs of intelligent life in our North Carolina Legislature grow even dimmer.

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

NC State Senate Bill Proposes Paying Teachers Through Donations & License Plate Sales

NC Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest’s proposal to fund teacher pay raises by collecting donations and selling special license plates is now a bill proposed by the North Carolina Senate Education Committee. The proposed bill would collect money from individuals and businesses and place these funds in an endowment. Lieutenant Governor Forest stated in May that his idea was “a creative response to tough economic times.” Now, Republican Senator Jerry Tillman has bought into the idea by starting that they are “looking for ways to build up and enhance education dollars…"

Instead of looking for “creative" ways to fund teacher pay and education in general, I suspect Forest and Tillman are looking for “creative ways to avoid adequately funding public education.

They don’t won’t to fund education the way it should be funded because they do not want it to exist.

It’s clear that our North Carolina Legislature still continues its anti-public education campaign with Lt. Governor Forest and NC Senator Jerry Tillman in the lead. For more info, check out “NC Bill Asks for Donations, License Plates to Pay Teachers More."