Working in the Cloud, Part 3: Evernote

In this third part of the series, I am going to describe how I use Evernote. In earlier posts, I described my use of Dropbox and Google Drive.

Like Google Drive, Evernote has many features beyond data storage. As in my previous two posts, I will describe how I use it, rather than attempt to be comprehensive. 

First and foremost, Evernote is great for typing up notes of all sorts. At this point, I often find that I start drafting up my ideas for lots of things in Evernote. Even if it is eventually going to be an email or a presentation or a blog post, I will usually start with Evernote. I am often taking notes in meetings, or while on the phone. No longer do I have these notes on various papers that I either have to carry around or that I forget at the office when I am somewhere else. I also make notes for my classes, and keep those in a note. Then I pull up the note on any device, and I am ready for class. I use Evernote to save receipts too, particularly if I need to file for reimbursement later. 

Editing notes is the centerpiece of Evernote, so it can be done on any device. Moreover, the interface looks very similar on tablets, laptops, and the desktop, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time finding the features I use on one device when I move to a different one.

Notes are accessible in a few different ways. I can add tags to my notes, and later pull up notes with a particular tag or set of tags. Notes can also be sorted into different notebooks, which are the equivalent of file folders in other storage systems. Notes that have reminders will be listed under reminders. For a note that I return to frequently, I add it to a list of shortcuts. Finally, notes are sorted by date of creation, with the most recent notes at the top within easy reach. This makes organization, and therefore finding the note I want to work on, pretty easy.

One of my favorite ways to use Evernote is in conjunction with its native reminder feature. For instance, if I need to photocopy something at the office, I might type a quick note to myself in Evernote and set up a reminder. The reminder can have a due date or not. If it does have a due date, Evernote sends an email to you on that day as well. 

Have you ever had the experience of having an email you can’t get to right now but want to answer later? This is where Evernote works really well. Evernote accounts come with an email address. Suppose I have an email from Maria that I want to get to later. I will forward Maria's email to my Evernote address. When it arrives, I add a reminder to the email-now-note, and then I do not forget to respond (reminders can also be added by altering the subject line of the email when I forward it). There are also times when I receive an email request that I can respond to, but also requires additional action later. When I respond, I blind-copy my Evernote address, so that I see the email and it reminds me to follow up on it.

In fact, Evernote interacts well with email in other ways. You can type a quick note as an email, and send it to Evernote. You can even set it up so that the email appends to an existing note, gets filed in a particular notebook, is tagged the way you want it, and it can have a reminder added as well.

Another way that I have come to use Evernote is to save items from the web, in a few different ways. Evernote has a web clipper for your task bar that lets you quickly take a screenshot (entire screen or a selected portion) and save it to Evernote. This works well if there is a graph or some data in a table that I want to save. If I am reading a blog post, often through Feedly or Instapaper, and I decide I want to keep the article, then I save it to Evernote. Then I tag it, and in this way I build a collection of ideas to share with colleagues, with students, with teachers, etc.

I also share my notes in one of two ways. Either I email the entire note, or I get a URL for the note, and share that instead. An advantage of using the URL is that I can post it somewhere, like a Lino or Padlet board, or some other public web space, and anyone can follow the link to see the note. Another advantage is that by following the URL, anyone accessing the note will see the most updated version.

Evernote’s storage limit works differently than Dropbox or Google Drive. Rather than a fixed limit, Evernote allows its users to add up to 60 MB (for the free account) per month. So I don’t worry that I have to go back through old notes to delete them; rather, I just have to be careful of how much I add each month (and I have never hit my limit).

Now we come to limitations. Evernote is great for notes. I also add PDF files, scans of documents, and occasional photos to Evernote. But I do not save other sorts of files, like spreadsheets or LaTeX files. I could save a LaTeX file into Evernote, but I am not sure that I could go through my usual cycle of editing, compiling, editing more, etc. Files other than notes are saved by "clipping" them to a note. Evernote doesn't seem made for the purpose of keeping files that are updated a lot. In this sense, Evernote probably could not be my only cloud service.

Syncing with Evernote is reliable, but not constant. Whereas every change is sent to Google Drive every few seconds as I work, and Dropbox is always working in the background to sync my files once saved, Evernote syncs either when prompted, or at other intervals. This has only come up when I make a last-minute addition to a note for my class in Evernote on my desktop, and then proceed to class with Evernote on a different device. If I don’t hit the sync button on Evernote, it may be a while before it syncs, and therefore I am without the latest version of my notes for class.

Basic (read: free) Evernote accounts require internet access in order to access my notes. This makes it the same as Google Drive. However, because Evernote is not syncing my notes every few seconds, if I am on a slow connection, I am not as likely to lose access to my note. However, I will lose the ability to open other notes if I am without internet. Evernote Premium users can access notes offline by designating particular notebooks that will be stored locally on the device.

Evernote Summary:

Advantages:

+Notes can be created and edited on any device.

+Notes can be organized in multiple ways, including notebooks, tags, reminders, and shortcuts.

+Notes can be added via email.

+Notes can have reminders, with or without dates.

+Notes can be created by saving items from the web.

+Evernote has an upload limit per month, rather than a fixed storage limit.

Disadvantages:

-Evernote is not designed for editing spreadsheets or PDFs or other files besides notes.

-Sync immediately before moving to another device to guarantee notes are up-to-date.

-For Basic users, accessing notes requires an internet connection.

There are certainly a lot more ways to use Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote than I have covered here. Still, I hope this has given readers at least an idea of some of the different ways of taking advantage of these three services.  

Working in the Cloud, Part 2: Google Drive

In my last post, I covered my usage of Dropbox. In this post, I am going to pick up with my usage of Google Drive.

When I only had home and office desktops and a laptop, I was satisfied with Dropbox alone. Two years ago, I got an iPad, and began to explore more apps, including Evernote and Google Drive. Given that I was already a Dropbox user, I have added the other services to fulfill particular needs. If I had come to the others first, my usage of them would probably be different. In this post, I will discuss Google Drive.

Whereas Dropbox is really about file storage, Google Drive is a more expansive system. You can use Google Drive to store files of all types. However, files in Google Drive work especially well with Google’s Documents, Sheets, Forms, Presentations, and Drawings. For me, Google Drive serves to enable collaboration in ways that are difficult with Dropbox. In particular, if I have a document that I am going to co-author, and I want my co-author to be able to view the document with me simultaneously, then I will use Google docs. I also like the feature that allows me to select what people can do with an item I share, where the options are: can view/can comment/can edit. So when I am running a workshop, for instance, my co-facilitators may have editing capability, while participants get viewing capability. And, unlike Dropbox, only files that originate with me count against my file storage limit.

My favorite feature of Google Drive is Google Forms. Google Forms are great for surveys or quizzes. There are several different question formats that you can set up for a question, including multiple choice and short answer. The responses to the form are collected in a Google Sheet. And, with the use of Flubaroo, an add-on to Sheets, I can auto-score a quiz as well, and have the scores emailed to the students.

There are a couple of nice aspects of storage in Google Drive. One is that Google’s native formats (Documents, Sheets, Forms, Presentations, and Drawings) do not count against your storage limit. Another is that items scanned in to Drive get Optical Character Recognition (OCR) applied to them, so that if, for instance, I scan a hard copy of a typed document, I am saved from re-typing it, because OCR converts the scanned content into text.

Google Drive has its own set of limitations. One of the limitations across Google’s native Docs and Forms is that it is difficult to typeset mathematics. (I have a partial work-around, but I’ll save that for another day.) Another issue is that Documents and Sheets are editable on the iPad, but at last check, Drawings and Forms are not. Also, where Dropbox files are stored locally on a laptop or desktop, so that you can work offline, and particular files can be selected for local storage on your tablet, Google Drive files are not generally available offline. I have had the experience of trying to access a file when I have a slow internet connection, and I am stuck unable to access it. (If you use Chrome or Chrome OS, you can set up offline access: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375012?hl=en.)

Google Drive Summary:

Advantages:

+Native editor for proprietary file types.

+Native Document and Sheet editors work on the iPad.

+Forms are great for surveys and quizzes. 

+Form results go in a spreadsheet that can be auto-scored with Flubaroo.

+Files in native Google formats do not count against the storage limit.

+Only my own files count against my storage limit, and not those files shared with me but owned by others.

+OCR lets me convert hard copies into electronic text.

Disadvantages:

-Mathematics is difficult to typeset in Google’s native formats.

-Google Forms, Presentations, and Drawings cannot be edited on an iPad.

-Google files are not available offline except via Chrome or Chrome OS.

Working in the Cloud, Part 1: Dropbox

I use multiple cloud services, primarily Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote. This has been my setup for the past year or so, whereas before that, I used Dropbox exclusively. In this series of posts, I’d like to explore what I like and dislike about each service, and how I have divided my work amongst them. Please note that I am not attempting to be comprehensive, but rather to capture what I have found helps or hinders my own workflow.

Part 1: Dropbox

I discovered Dropbox a few years ago. Before that, I transported important files between work and home using a flash drive. However, I occasionally forgot the drive at home and had to improvise, either by having someone at home email me a file, or by re-creating work, or simply not working on a project that day at the office. Dropbox solves this problem by letting me access files from anywhere. Dropbox is, in part, a special file folder on my computer. If I designate a computer to have Dropbox installed, then all of the files that are in my Dropbox folder will be uploaded and synced to Dropbox, so that the files automatically update between, for instance, my desktop computer at home and my desktop at work. I can also access the files on my iPad, iPod, Samsung tablet, etc. On tablets and phones, Dropbox does not store most of the files on the hard drive by default; instead, it downloads whichever one I want to open when I want it. However, I am also able to designate favorites, which means Dropbox stores a copy locally on the tablet/phone drive. In this way, Dropbox has worked well. 

In addition, there are a few ways to collaborate and share files with others. I can share a link to a file or folder, or I can create a shared folder. A link to a file allows someone else with the file link to view and download the file. A shared folder lets me share an entire folder with another person, with shared editing rights. I have used these options often when I am running a workshop, and I want participants to have access to multiple files that will be used during the workshop. 

One difficulty with shared folders is that edits made by one person affect everyone. This is especially noticeable when one person drags a file from the Dropbox folder to another location on their hard drive. The person is effectively deleting the file from the Dropbox shared folder, and as a result, deleting the copy of it from everyone else’s shared folder as well. I have learned that shared folders are difficult to manage for this reason.

Another limitation of Dropbox is that it is not designed for simultaneous editing on multiple devices. If I leave a file open on one computer, and then I edit it on another device, I will get two copies of the file as a result. Edits are not integrated into an open copy on another machine.

Also note that as with all cloud storage systems, there is a storage limit. If you have a shared folder, the entire folder counts against your limit. Thus, last year, when someone wanted to share a very large folder with me, by choosing to share in that folder, I overran my free space. So I either had to un-join the shared folder, or begin a paid Dropbox plan (I chose the latter).

Another limitation for Dropbox is that there is no native editor. This is not a major limitation, but it can be a nuisance to have to open files with particular apps, especially on a tablet. This can lead to formatting errors when files edited in one app on the desktop are edited with a different app on the tablet.

Dropbox Use Summary:

Advantages:

+Files are stored locally on the hard drives of my desktops and laptop.

+Files can be designated for local storage on tablets and phones.

+Files can be shared for download by others.

+Shared work folders enable collaboration and shared editing.

Disadvantages:

-Files removed from shared folders are removed from all devices.

-A single file cannot be edited by multiple users simultaneously. The file will be split into copies.

-Shared folders count against the storage limit of all participants.

-There is no native ability to edit files of any sort.

Next time, I will describe how I use Google Drive.

The Calculus of (Instructional) Variation

As a professor, I take a lot of professional pride in my teaching. As part of that professionalism, I am always looking for ways to improve the learning experience for my students. In this post I am going to describe how some small changes have made a really noticeable impact in one of my classes. (That's where this post title comes from: a little variation has added up to a big change.)

Before I can describe what I did, I should give a little background about what happens in my classes. For now, I am going to focus on my Transition to Proof course. I teach via inquiry-based learning (IBL). As part of that approach, I use student presenters a lot. This means that students come to class having worked on problems (mostly proofs) at home, and they come to class knowing that for most of the problems, someone will have an opportunity to present their proof attempt in front of the class.

This semester, one of my goals is to improve the quality of the discussions that follow a student's presentation. To achieve this goal, I made a couple of changes. In the past, I collected work from everyone at the beginning of class. Then, a presentation proceeded through the following steps:

1. A student wrote their work on the board 
2. The student explained their work.
3. The class proceeded through a Think-Pair-Share: They were asked to look at the work in silence, then share ideas with a partner, and finally ask questions or make comments to the presenter. 
4. During this entire time, the presenter remained standing to answer questions about their work. 

This term, I started in a small classroom with a small chalkboard and a projector screen fixed in place in front of the chalkboard, so that using (most of) the chalkboard was only possible if I unhooked the screen from the wall and set it on the floor. This was part of the inspiration for a new presentation procedure:

1. I photograph student work and upload it to NotesPlus, and project the student work via iPad. 
2. The student explains their work, but sits down immediately, rather than waiting for questions. 
3. The class proceeds through a Think-Pair-Share: They look at the work in silence, then share ideas with a partner, and finally ask questions or make comments, BUT now the presenter is not on the spot during the discussion, as he or she is sitting down.

In addition, I have changed from collecting work at the beginning of class to collecting at the end of class. During class, students used colored pens (Thanks Clark Dollard and Dana Ernst!) to annotate their work, so that I know what was completed before class. Therefore, students are able to compare their work to the work being presented.

These changes are minor, just changing the medium of the presentation, letting the presenter sit during Q&A, and letting students keep their work in front of them for comparison. But the discussions have been stronger for the four weeks of this semester than in years past. My hypothesis is that the students feel more comfortable asking questions with me at the front, even though I am still directing questions back to the class or to the presenter. The class no longer feels like it is putting the presenter on the spot when they raise issues.  Moreover, they are able to ask questions based on their own efforts that they now have in front of them. I am sure there are other factors involved in the improved discussions, including the fact that cohorts of students vary, and this group seems to have a number of people willing to share. Still, it is amazing how small changes can have such a visible impact. 

Putting technology to work in my classes

After a summer in which I taught a 3-week workshop for middle school math teachers with iPads in everyone's hands, I am returning to my regular classes, in which students may or may not have a mobile device. What to do? How can I use technology to improve the workflow and the learning in my classroom?

I'm sure there's no one right answer to these questions, so I plan to try 3 variations in my 3 classes. 

For the past several years I used technology mostly outside of class, to create and push PDF handouts to students and to keep a grade book. Having used iPads during the summer, though, I feel that I can improve the workflow and my communication with students by doing more with technology.

For my undergraduate classes:

What am I doing? 

Here, my plan is to take snapshots of students' work to be presented, and to use ThreeRing to manage the photos. The rest of the work (homework submissions, exams) will be handled via paper, though students who miss class can submit homework via emailed photos.

Why?

I am hopeful that snapping photos of the work will free some of my in-class attention to monitor the class better and generally to engage a bit more in-the-moment of the presentation. 

In one of the classes, I am projecting the photo via iPad, and making annotations based on the class discussion using NotesPlus, so that the presenter gets back a photo with the annotations the class made to his/her proof.

In addition, for my undergraduate Math for Middle School Teachers course:

What am I doing?

Here, my focus is going to be on using technology to enliven the curriculum. So I intend to "3 act" some of the material, in the sense of Dan Meyer. I'm working on trying to motivate more of the problems by developing more wonder or want-to-know, using photos and videos as appropriate.

Why?

First, with the onset of Common Core, as much as I think I had a good curriculum, I would like to add another layer of making the problems more intriguing, as opposed to, "Do this because I am assigning it." Also, I want to get these pre-service and early career teachers thinking about how to make lessons that have 21st century appeal, that use media to draw students in to the mathematics. If the problems were not valuable, window dressing would not help; but in this case, I think we had good contextual problems, and adding media should draw out more interest and perhaps help students take more ownership of the directions of the questions we pursue in class.

For a graduate course: 

What am I doing?

Here, the students are primarily practicing secondary teachers, and already have one or more mobile devices (smart phone, tablet, laptop). So I am going to use ThreeRing here also, but adding the feature of having students submit homework to ThreeRing on their own. They also have occasional reading assignments which they submit to a Moodle discussion board (something I was already doing in the past).

Why?

As with the other courses, I want to be freed up from my usual note-taking, and just add a few annotations during presentations, so that I can engage myself more with monitoring understanding and pushing the conversation in the room. Beyond that, I want teachers to begin to see the power of tech tools for rethinking their own classroom workflows.

What did I choose not to do?

I considered:

• Opening a backchannel for students to air their questions during student presentations, using something like TodaysMeet. I have split feelings on this issue. This is either harnessing the power of texting for good, or it is letting face-to-face conversation go the way of the dodo bird.
• Using Subtext, which is going to have a web version soon, to have discussions of readings in grad classes. I have not done this, but will consider it if the web app becomes available, or if we require iPads for our grad students, which we are considering.
• Having students create portfolios in a cloud drive for me to access and give feedback. Here, I decided against it because of access issues. I am surveying my students this semester to see if they have their own devices. But if they only use a school computer, then it is more difficult for them to see my feedback than it is when I return things by hand. Because of the importance of the portfolio as a review tool, I choose not to take that risk here (whereas I do not mind doing this with the presentations being returned via ThreeRing, because they present only a few times, and it is less important that they access the feedback quickly).

What am I missing? How do you feel about this plan? I look forward to your thoughts.

App usage in a mathematics institute with iPads for teacher participants

I recently hosted a 3-week institute for middle school mathematics teachers in which all of us were using iPads, and we operated in a (near) paperless environment. As I prepared for this, I was struck by how often I ran across lists of apps, and how rarely I read in-depth discussion of how to integrate various apps into a real classroom. Maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. Nonetheless, this is my small contribution to providing a guide to using apps to support discussion and learning, which I hope will be informative for anyone else, especially in mathematics, looking to make the leap to a one-to-one iPad environment.

Introduction of the iPad:

Of the teachers who signed up for the institute, about two-thirds were new, whereas one-third had already received an iPad last summer and were back to learn more. New participants were introduced to the iPad, shown a few multi-touch gestures, and asked to download a number of apps on a day the week before the institute. This was important because they were unable to complete downloads over the course of an entire morning (too much bandwidth usage in one room).

Sharing content with teacher attendees in a paperless environment:

I worked with a team of facilitators. I created a shared folder for content on Dropbox, so that all of the facilitators could access and add materials. 

I created a master schedule as a Google spreadsheet with hyperlinks to some of the virtual handouts for teachers. The main reason for using a Google spreadsheet was that the hyperlinks in an Excel file saved in Dropbox, for instance, are not active if viewed in Dropbox. Moreover, I did not want to save as a PDF with hyperlinks because I wanted to be able to revise the schedule, and have the teachers' schedule auto-sync with the revisions. I should have told everyone (but only told a few) that they should download Google Drive or bookmark the site for the schedule. In the absence of downloading or bookmarking, teachers had to re-locate the email invitation to view the schedule again.

Note that a shared folder on Dropbox enables those sharing the folder full editing privileges, including the possibility of deleting documents. For this reason, and also because it is sometimes a hassle to search through a folder for the one document needed at a particular moment, teachers were not invited to share the folder with facilitators.

Instead, teachers had already downloaded the Lino app. I sent them a link to a Lino board. They were asked to copy that link onto their own Main Lino board, to save them from having to find the email over and over. (Note that inviting someone to a Lino board does not add that board to "My Boards".) Facilitators then put individual file links on the Lino board, and the file links would lead to particular items in the facilitators' shared Dropbox folder. In this way, participants could download content from Dropbox and keep the content wherever they wished, typically in their own Dropbox, in iBooks, in NotesPlus, or in PDF Notes. 

Doing mathematical work:

When working on mathematics, the problem handouts were almost always created as a PDF and a Dropbox file link shared on the Lino board. For the mathematical work of the teachers, the lead facilitator would create a Baiboard (I think the pronunciation is Bye-board, because the Mandarin for "white" is "bai," pronounced like the English word "bye") and share the board number by writing it on a physical whiteboard in the classroom. The facilitator then asked teachers to post a screenshot of their work (usually done in NotesPlus, perhaps with the help of the TI-Nspire) on a particular one of the 6 pages in a given Baiboard session. Besides being limited to 6 pages, the other limitations of Baiboard are that there is a slight delay between actions being taken by one user and being seen by the other users--however, this delay is not long enough to cause problems. Also, sometimes other teachers would log in to the same board and occasionally, inadvertently, move the photo on a board. 

Note that teachers shared screenshots this way, and not via Lino, because photos posted directly to a Lino board are too small for viewing details. Using Baiboard was also shorter than having teachers export their NotesPlus work as a PDF, saving it to Dropbox, copying the link, and sending the link or posting it in Lino. We had also considered using Instashare for participants' screenshots, but Instashare was unreliable, as it would claim to be sending, but the recipient would not see anything delivered.

In the previous year, facilitators used Reflector to show teachers' work, by having particular teachers connect their iPad wirelessly to a laptop at the front of the room. This year, we did not use Reflector, because for some reason the laptop we were using had trouble getting the signal from the iPad. (It may be that with 40 iPads in a room, there is too much signal noise.)

Apps for specialized duties, Part 1:

On occasion, facilitators ran a session via Nearpod. Since there were more than 30 teachers, it was not possible to have a session running the free version of Nearpod with everyone logged in. Instead, typically one member of a pair or group was assigned to log in and report responses from their work in partnership or in groups. Nearpod saves the responses from a session, which aids in later analysis. I used one of the sessions and created a word cloud with the responses.

I used SurveyMonkey for end-of-day feedback. I used individual email links, and asked teachers to copy the link from the email onto their own Lino board (either Main or one of their own creation).

I wanted to make new groups of teachers each day, so that teachers would meet people from other neighborhood schools, rather than clustering with the teachers from their own school. I used GroupMaker each day to set up groups. It was good in that it gave me a reason to take photos of teachers and helped me put names to faces much more quickly. I used Create Groups each day to make new groups. Within any group, the "random" assignment to groups appears to work only once. That is, you cannot re-sort teachers randomly into groups. After one week, I had groupings named for each day of the week, and I didn't want to keep creating more, so I manually regrouped the participants.

We also tried The Answer Pad (the student app is TAPit). When I tested this with a small group, I set up the list of users and (simple) passwords myself. When I scaled up to the class, I wanted people to register themselves. I had a task in mind for which I wanted to collect teacher responses. I planned to have teachers register and then immediately respond to the task. Self-registration did not work well for this purpose. I had to keep resending the "test" to the new registrants, and even then, not everyone could get in to see it. If I were using it over an entire semester, I would try again, since self-registration is a one-time set-up for a course, but for a single use with a large group, it did not work out.

We spent some time teaching the basic use of the TI-Nspire CAS app, and revisited it as a tool for mathematical modeling on subsequent days. The TI-Nspire seems to be the best app out there right now for doing secondary-type mathematics. We used it to enter data and create linear and quadratic models, to do visual line-of-best-fit, to run simple calculations, solve equations, and to do a summation.

As an alternative to the TI, Wolfram Alpha is nice, but the single line interface means it is hard to edit commands, once entered. Also, if one wants to compare, say, a linear model and a quadratic model of a data set, Wolfram Alpha is not set up to do that.

Apps for specialized duties, Part 2:

These are some of the apps we used, but not to the extent of ones already mentioned.

We used Socrative on the first day. Socrative is convenient for impromptu queries, like classroom clickers, but it does not retain answers from that form. You have to use quizzes instead if you want to view the data later.

Teachers wrote lesson plans and occasionally were asked to take notes in Pages. Unfortunately, when Pages opened Word tables, the formatting turned into a mess, which took a lot of work to fix. But beyond this, Pages is a nice document editor.

Teachers were asked to create a Keynote about one of the lessons they created in the institute, and then to export the Keynote as a PDF in Dropbox, and finally to upload the PDF into Nearpod, and add a poll, so that their viewers could give them feedback. This entire cycle worked out well. Teachers got the full experience of using Nearpod, including visiting the website afterwards to view the feedback they received. Nearpod keeps records of data (i.e. responses) collected during each session. 

The Common Core app was available as a reference.

We showed participants Educreations and ShowMe. In one session, we asked teachers to record their solutions and share them at the front of the class by physically bringing up the iPad and connecting to the projector, but many were embarrassed about hearing their voices. Perhaps if we had made this a regular feature, the embarrassment would have been alleviated.

We spent two sessions using Algebra Tiles, one for balancing equations, and one using it for understanding integers as hot and cold cubes.

We spent a session with iThoughts as a tool for pre-planning lessons.

We spent a session showing the basics of GeometryPad. It quickly became apparent that many more features can be unlocked in the non-free version.

We did one session incorporating Ubersense for its slow motion and freeze frame features.

We had one session where we gave a brief mention to each of several apps that we were not otherwise using in the institute, but that could be helpful: 

• ClassDojo
• TooNoisy
• MyScript calculator
• Slope Slider
• Sketch2Graph
• Remind101
• ThreeRing

I look forward to hearing from any of you out there that have worked with these or other apps. What was your experience? Are there apps that do some of this work better than the ones we chose? Are there ways of using these apps to make them run better?