Web 2.0
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Many Faces of Google Searching
If you are like me you are constantly using the search function in Google Drive. You are also a person that uses Google Chrome’s omnibar for everything. Did you know you can type in youtube.com and press tab and it creates a search of youtube for you? Type away your search. Now there are a lot of search engines listed in Chrome but you can create your own! Thank you so much ShakeUpLearning for cluing me in. How to Edit Your Chrome Search Engines: Right-click on the Omnibox, and select, “Edit Search Engines.” This will open your search engine settings in Google Chrome. From here, scroll down to the very…
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Live From Olympia
Project Inspiration: Students are fascinated with Ancient Greece and I thought it would be interesting for students to take their inquiry questions and interest video-making and combine it into a collaborative project. This project could be for grades 6 and up depending on the curriculum. Essential Question: What if we lived in Ancient Greece? What is the importance of Ancient Greece to us today? What can we learn about ourselves from the Ancient Greeks? The Situation: A film crew has been transported back in time to report on Ancient Greece. It is your job to do research on an aspect of Ancient Greek life for the film crew. You are also…
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WeVideo & GreenScreen
With the shutting down of Jaycut quite a few years ago I was crestfallen to be able to edit videos with greenscreen (chromakey) online. On the chromebooks this is challenging. I did bite the bullet and purchase a pro-account because chromakey was extremely important to me. However, if it is not the free version really works really well. If you are a fan of Animoto it is a more robust version. Students would sometimes get frustrated by the limits of Animoto but were not yet ready for a full-fledged video editor so there are two different modes – timeline and storyboard (easier). You can easily toggle between both of them.…
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Google Classroom: Share to the Classroom
I was very excited about Google Classroom when it first came out and was one of the few that got access pretty early on. My Tech coordinator was intrigued as was I. I started to play with it and found I could not do everything I wanted to do: More than One Teacher Online Rubrics (Goobric) Comment on Documents when first created Add students outside my domain I am happy to say that these issues have been fixed. It is not the robust LMS of something like Schoology but it really gets the job done very relative ease. Co-teachers can now both be in the class (as educators/admins) within Google…
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Slides Carnival
Google Slides is a wonderful tool to use with students for presentations. However the selection of created templates is rather limited. You can of course go to the plethora of templates @ Google Templates however they tend to be more of the same. Slides Carnival has created professional looking templates that are very easy to use. A few clicks are you are on your way to a professional looking presentation with all the unique slides many have expected from Microsoft Powerpoint. In all my research the presentations remain totally free.
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EasyBib & Google Addons
EasyBib is a great app and it has recently been included in Google Docs Addons. Addons are a recent addition to Google Docs and a great one. I can only assume that more addons will be added in the future. Students can easily add their citations in their papers with the add on. The addon allows students to stay in the same window. You are able to achieve a lot with the free version. The paid version gives you more options including taking notes. Though I will review Evernote very soon and I am starting to prefer this to noodletools and other notetaking sites. Citation is the bread and…
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Apple vs. Android
So I was reading a blog that did a nice job laying out public opinion on the Apple vs. Android discussion. Should schools get iPads or Android Tablets? Which is the best solution? One of the big concerns with Apple is the way they are marketing the iPad. Users seems to be looking for a netbook replacement. They want to be able to hook in their peripherals. They want USB, HDMI, & SD Card ports, not to mention the limits of Google Apps on iPads. Android allows users to use Flash and other popular tools. Though with the transition to HTML5, maybe Flash will not be such a big deal…
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HTML & CSS CodeAcademy
Students are always asking me how to code HTML and CSS. In the past there are very few places to send them to go step by step in understanding how it all works. Thankfully this has changed with the recent update to CodeAcademy. CodeAcademy is an interactive site designed to help people understand and create HTML, CSS, and much much more (including Coding Java). I am so excited to share this site with my students. Thanks Technology for Teachers for pointing out the update in the site. I can see myself using this site to brush up on some basics and beyond. The lessons in basic HTML really break down…
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Meograph: Timeline Creator
Timelines are a staple in social studies and ela. They help students keep track of dates and facts. I have been searching for a good online-timeline creator for a while. I have tried Dipity which is good but I find that it is very slow to load and is limited to the number you can create and information mediums. So I searched and searched for an alternative and lo and behold I found Meograph. Not only is it free (YAY!) it can embed videos, text, audio, and uses Google Maps. I was in heaven. I did this with a class and it went smoothly. Well almost smoothly (internet went down…
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Livebinders
Quite awhile ago I talked about how I found the livebinders site a bit clunky. Well I must revise my statement because the site has worked very well for several research projects I have been doing. It is so nice to be able to embed websites within one website. This is extremely helpful with databases because no one can ever find the sheet with the passwords. We want students, staff, and parents to access and utilize the resources we sink tons of money into. They are fabulous resources and anything I can do to increase use and accessibility is key. In terms of how I have been using the product.…
