May 2, 2014 - Everyone Surfing on the Same Page

Happy Friday everyone!!

Have you ever wished you could remotely take control of your students’ computers while teaching a lesson so that you could directly walk them through what you wanted completed on a website? Or at least know that they are all on ‘the same page’?  With the new tech tool I have for you this week – YOU CAN!!

Surfly is a real-time web sharing tool which allows you to link to a web address and when your participants join into the session, you are able to illustrate and have them follow along with your web tour.   Here’s how…

Simply head to the Surfly website (www.surfly.com) and create a free account.  Surfly will send you an activation email and you are ready to begin.  Once you log, in you will see a pop-up window asking for the web address of the site you would like to share with your students, colleagues etc.  Merely type in (or copy and paste) the web address you have chosen and click on ‘Start a Session’.

You will be given a unique link to the guided web tour which you can post on the board for students to enter online, or share it with them via the UGCloud where they can click on the link.

Once students begin utilizing the link you will receive notifications that friends have joined your session (this way you can tell if you are missing anyone in the tour).  Students will not only be able to view exactly which website you are sharing with them, and follow you as you click on and travel to other sites along the way, but they can also watch as your highlighted pointer show them what you are clicking on, hovering over, etc.  When you wish to terminate your session simply click on the red X in the tool bar along the left-hand side of the page (see image at right) and everyone will be released to begin surfing on their own again.

I hope that this will be a useful tool you can keep in your repertoire and may come in handy in the future.   If you have an idea for a future blog topic, please feel free to pass it along to me.

Cheers,
Stace