David Lee EdTech

Google has introduced an app that let's you donate $1 a day to non-profit organizations from your Android phone. According to the  Huffington Post , a non-profit organization is featured every day with a description of how the organization will use its donations. As the app gradually learns your philanthropy preferences, it will start to feature non-profit organizations that you are more interested in. However, since One Today is still a pilot program, the app is only available in the U.S. and you must "Request an Invite" to receive the app.  How  One Today  Can Enhance Your Philanthropy Unit Our school's 5th grade curriculum contains a philanthropy unit that requires students to research and identify examples of philanthropy. Unfortunately, students often research wealthy philanthropists who donate millions of dollars to non-profit organizations. They have a hard time grasping the idea that donating smaller amounts of money is still considered philanthr...

StoryToys Entertainment Limited  has released a series of 3D interactive pop-up books based on classic fairytales. As you can see in the image below, these book apps provide gorgeous design and illustrations, as well as interactive and engaging activities that  bring the stories to life.  Most importantly, students can practice their reading skills in "Read it Myself" mode.   Here are the StoryToys book apps that are currently free (as of 4/24/13): Rapunzel    Sleeping Beauty Snow White   Read Riding Hood  Hansel & Gretel Little Mermaid Puss in Boots

Google reported that there were  some issues with their Google Apps  services for a small population of their users on April 17th. I did not notice the outage at all, but I am sure that there were some teachers who were trying hysterically to access their online content. If this ever happens to you, don't flood your tech coordinator, edtech specialist, or IT team with phone calls about how you can't access your Google apps. First, simply go to  Apps Status Dashboard  to check whether or not it is an internal school issue or a disruption to all Google users.  The colored circles indicate when the disruptions happened (yellow: No Issues, orange: Service Disruption, red: Service Outage). You can also click on the circles to find out the full details.

In this Edutopia video, Constance Steinkuehler explains how video games do an amazing job in capturing the interest and motivation of students, mostly teenage boys. She has found a way to use video games to help resolve the literacy crisis among teenage boys. Watch the video to see how she replaced her structured, lecture-based lessons to a more effective "resource" method. This method provides students with activities that are based on their interests, and includes teachers supplying them with the resources they need to learn.  Interest-driven learning results in students self-correcting their own mistakes. 

If you are a teacher who wants to connect your Google+ Page to the your class YouTube channel, then this blog post is for you. This option gives me another way to separate my personal life and my work life. I always felt uncomfortable having my personal Google+ account connected to my YouTube channel. According to the  Official YouTube Partners & Creators Blog , this option also allows you to add multiple managers to your channel, choose a name for your channel, and improve video sharing capabilities.  Steps you will need to take ( via YouTube Blog ):  1. Go to the YouTube  advanced account settings  and click on "Connect with a Google+ page (beta)." If you do not have this button,  click here  to see why you might not have this link.  2. Select your existing Google+ page, and then click "Next."   2. Click "OK." This will let your YouTube channel display the same name and photo of you Google+ page.

This post features all the resources I used to create my  Chrome App  (The app is actually only a link to my website.). You can download the app at the  Chrome Web Store . Resources I used to create my Chrome App: 1. First, I created my Chrome app image with  Google Drawing . 2. Second, I converted my image to a Chrome icon with  IconJ . You must have  specific dimensions  for your PNG icon. 3. Then I used the Chrome tutorial,  "Create a Chrome app,"  to build, text, and pack my app.  Here is the example Google provides you with for your manifest.json .txt file. 4. Next, I used the Google Developers tutorial to  publish my app.   This process included registering to Google Checkout Merchant, paying the developer signup fee, and verifying that I was the owner of the website. Since my website domain, davidleeedtech.org, is under  Networks Solutions , I had to  complete a specific process  to...

IconJ  is a cool website that helps you to convert your pictures into icons. You can convert your pictures into  Android, iPad, iPhone, Windows, or website favicon icons. I used this tool to create my  EdTech  website favicon. This 16X16 pixels icon is the image you see on your web browser tab when you open a website. Here are the steps you will need to take.  1. Click on the 'Upload' button and choose the image you want to convert. 2. Select the dimensions, file type, cropping, and sharpening level options. Click on 'Continue.'       3. If your icon has been successfully generated, click on the link to download the icon.