Browsing Tag How-to

Here is how to tweet from Siri completely hands-free. By the way, I wrote this post by dictating to Siri (which is #eduawesome).

Update Sept. 20: If you have iOS 6, Siri now allows you to Tweet. Twitter is deeply integrated into the new operation system. (If you’re running iOS 5, you may read on.)

Go to Twitter.com settings, and click Mobile. Enter your mobile number and Activate Phone. Copy the phone number, and add that number to a new contact. Call that contact Twitter.

Now from Siri you can say, “Send a message to Twitter,” and it will automatically post to Twitter for you. Stoked.

Here’s a few extra tips. Siri understands the word hashtag, so feel free to  use it. You can add your number here. If Twitter is being difficult, here’s a support article about adding your number to Twitter. You can perform some fancy commands, like RT and unfollow, via SMS. Here are the fancy SMS commands. As always, be sure to double check what Siri has dictated before you send it.

My seating chart is on my iPad, and I love it. I made a template of that chart for you: download the spreadsheet for Numbers or Excel.

I created the seating chart as a spreadsheet. When you add points below a student’s name on the seating chart, they automatically appear in a column (called Participation) on the spreadsheet. You can import this spreadsheet into Numbers on your iPad. Then, you simply walk around your classroom and add points (or notes) to the seating chart, and the automatically appear next to the student’s name on your spreadsheet.

This template has five seating charts, and one main spreadsheet. If you’re a

• single subject teacher: use one seating chart per class period
• multiple subject teacher: use one seating chart per content area
• music teacher: use one seating chart per instrument group

Feel free to change the size and layout of the seating chart–it’s just a spreadsheet. If you don’t know how to link cells in a spreadsheet, just watch a YouTube video on it. You can always be low-tech and print out this template, but I think it works best if you have save it on your iPad, so that you can always have an up-to-date gradebook in your hands. You can easily add this spreadsheet to Numbers on your iPad via Dropbox or iCloud.

If you have suggestions or requests, please add them to the comments below. Feel free to share this template–I licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.