Category Archives: Tools

Whizz-bang cool stuff to do whizz-bang cool stuff!

Ten Online Tools to Kick Start the Year

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Loved this session – I think it’s the oooohs & the ahhhhhhs that teachers let out when they “dabble” a little with the tools.

LiveBinders was perfect for introducing 9 other fabulous tools to use in the classroom – not just at the start of the year, but all year long.  Please, feel free to add your ideas to the side text boxes if you’re using these simple tools in the classroom too.

I loved the format of our session, so I thought I’d share that with you too:

Featured LiveBinders
  • Share the LiveBinders link:  http://livebinders.com
  • Search for teachingsagittarian in public binders
  • Begin with Tab #10 (LiveBinders of course)
  • Show sign-up, a few features like edit menu, text layout – set the timer for 7 minutes and have sand-pit (dabble) time
  • When the timer goes, you have to share something you discovered when playing around with the tool, with the person sitting next to you (3 minutes)
  • Repeat with next tool – Tab #1 – #9

This is a really good way to minimize the “teacher is the expert” thinking or expectation in your classroom.  I always “dabble” a little before I introduce any new tool to my students – but I let them “discover” things too.  Almost every time I do this, someone discovers something else I didn’t know about the tool – it’s very empowering for students to discover something the teacher doesn’t know!  I love it! And in less than 20 minutes most of the students in your class have a fair idea of how that tool works!  Sometimes I’ll ask for 4-6 volunteers to show small group something they’ve learned to do – then we’ll do a round robin of discovery – it takes a bit to organise, but worth the effort too.

So, here it is – The LiveBinder “10 Online Tools to Kick Start the Year (click the images or the link)

10 Online Tools to Kick Start the Year
Uploaded with Skitch!

Hope you find it useful!  What are your favourite online tools?

Summer PD in the Comfort of Your Own Home

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The wonderful folks over at Edublogs have put together the best summer PD you could ever imagine  - they’ve organised the  Teacher Challenge: 23 Free Web Tools.  It’s part of the “30 days to using the best of the web’s free tools for educators” series.

Each of the 23 links below take you to an Edublogs Teacher Challenge page for a tool with an overview, a task & challenge plus help & support links.

What a perfect challenge for the summer if you’ve got time to dabble with this list of free web tools.  It will only take 30 days!  Some of them you will have heard of before.  Which ones will you try out?

#1 – Wallwisher
A Web 2.0 free online tool where anyone can build a “wall”.  Discussing a new idea? Taking notes? Giving feedback? Voicing opinion? Wishing a happy birthday?  Your students can then go onto the internet and stick post-it notes electronically onto your wall.  The notes can include linked pictures, You Tube videos, PowerPoints, PDF documents, Excel Spreadsheets, or web page links.

#2 – Self-grading Quizzes
Learn how to create a self grading, multiple choice quiz using Google Docs

#3 – Bitstrips for Schools
A web-based resource that enables any student to write their own great-looking, original comic strips without having to draw.

#4 – Classtools.net
Free flash tool website that allows you to create quizzes, diagrams, and educational games. You can then host them on your own site free of charge.

#5 – Edmodo
Web 2.0 tool that allows teachers to safely share ideas, files, assignments, videos, projects, etc.with students and with other teachers in real time. It is a safe and secure social learning site for classrooms.

#6 – DoInk
A simple & friendly vector editor that can create flash-style animations.  You can download your art, post to YouTube or Facebook and use the community art or just your art.

#7 – Kerpoof
Kerpoof is all about having fun, discovering things, and being creative. Here are just a few ways that you can use Kerpoof: Make artwork (even if you aren’t good at drawing!); Make an animated movie (really! it’s easy!); Earn Koins which you can trade for fun things in the Kerpoof Store; Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug; Tell a story; Make a drawing; Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made.

#8 – Glogster
GlogsterEDU (the Basic, Free version) is a Web 2.0 tool that allows students, or yourself, to create an online interactive poster/presentation/research on any topic that combines graphics, backgrounds, videos, images, sound, text and hyperlinks.  (This is one of my most favourite free web2.0 tools for the classroom)

#9 – ToonDoo
Free, fast, and facile comic strip creator.

#10 – Wordle
A word cloud, helps to interpret the meaning of the words by assigning font size according to how frequently the word appears in the targeted text. (Another favourite of mine)

#11 – Skype
Free voice and video calls using Skype is great for talking with authors, experts, peer classrooms, language classes, and more.  (Highly recommend this one!)

#12 – Animoto
Web 2.0 tool that allows teachers and students to create impressive and unique digital stories and presentations (incorporating images, video clips, music and text) quickly and easily. Animoto is a wonderful tool for students because it allows them to focus on content creation rather than trying to learn an editing or manipulation tool. In the school context, Animoto For Education is ideal tool for students to create their own booktrailers, digital stories or music videos.

#13 – VoiceThreads
An application that can be used right from your browser, which allows you to use different types of media to create an interactive slideshow.  You can use pictures, videos, documents, or even presentations.  Then, you or your students can record video/audio that allows you to describe each slide in more detail.  You can even draw right on the slide to circle or highlight different areas of interest.  (Love this tool!)

#14 – PhotoFiltre
We, and our students, all need to edit and manipulate images at some point. There are many image editors we can use to do this. However most of these are quite complex to learn and are also often only available at a relatively high cost. PhotoFiltre is both simple to use and free to download.

#15 – Livebinders
A digital 3 ring binder that you can put virtually anything into; webpage, PDF, document, image, or video. Everything is organized by tab and you can even have subtabs within those tabs.

#16 – WeeBehave
WeeBehave provides online chore and behavior charts to help teachers and parents track and record behavior patterns. The WeeBehave philosophy is that children can be better self-managed when using behavior and chore charts. Research shows that children will accomplish more if they can visibly see their results and participate in the goal setting process. This website helps accomplish that!

#17 – DropBox
A free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again! (Personally, I adore this application & wouldn’t leave home without it!)

#18 – Jing
Jing is a screen sharing tool. It allows you to capture anything on your computer screen either as a still image or as a video up to 5 minutes long. It is a good free  tool for narrating and sharing what is on your screen.  (ISB staff – you already have jing installed on your laptops – just type jing in the spotlight to find it)

#19 – Audacity
Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. (Similar to GarageBand)

#20 – LearnBoost
LearnBoost empowers with a free all-in-one online classroom management solution so they can track student grades and progress, create standards-aligned lesson plans, generate beautiful analytics and reports, and organize their schedules from a central dashboard, all while integrating with Google Apps. Teachers can share academic progress and attendance with parents and students using the safe and secure student and parent platform.

#21 – Wetoku
A simple platform for interviewing someone via the Internet. Collaborating globally is a must for our students and as result interviewing can be a challenge. Wetoku makes doing an interview as easy as filling out some basic information, creating an interview session and then sending the creative interview session’s URL to the interviewee.

#22 – Little Bird Tales
Little Bird Tales is an incredibly easy to create a high-quality digital story. The site allows users to create narrated slideshows, using their own photos or illustrations and their own voices.

#23 – Wikispaces
Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “quick” and a wiki is a website that can be modified quickly and easily.

And here’s one of my own personal favourites that is well worth “dabbling” with over the summer …
# – Prezi
An easy to use, online editor that makes zooming presentations.  CheatSheets & Video Tutorials to help you learn Prezi are provided!

Share and Share-Alike

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The power of your personal network really shines through when you share. Share

Today I shared 10 minutes of my time by skyping into @jasongraham99′s staff meeting in Jakarta, and sharing “3 apps and a tip” for the iPad. I have to say it was pretty hard to narrow the choice down to only 3 apps (so during the “tip” I managed to sneak in another app!).

By using the document camera, the iPad and the share screen function of the Skype (for Mac), I was able to demo the apps and the tips really clearly.

So what did I share?
App 1: Idea Sketch FREE
- fantastic for brainstorming, can email ideas, save to photos.  It lets you easily draw a diagram – mind map, concept map, or flow chart – and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa.

App 2: Chicktionary FREE
-excellent vocabulary/spelling “game” – remember when the teacher put up a word on the board & you had to see how many words you could make from the letters – well this is it iPad style and it’s one of my FAVOURITES!

App 3: Talking Tom FREE
-demo-ed how you can video “Talking Tom” - great for students who are learning English or any other language for that matter, great for reluctant speakers (remember using “puppets”?) who don’t like to talk to “others” but for some reason they love to talk to Tom! The video could easily be a record of oral progress! (Once you get over the initial giggles of course!)

Tip: Install iBooks and get the iPad User Guide as a free download because it’s got a tonne of tips in there!  (see how I sneakily got that extra app in there!!)
Here’s an extra link – just for you dear reader(s) – download this awesome FREE PDF from makeuseof.com with a wealth of tips & tricks for the iPad.

I did show how you can tap a word in iBooks and you can instantly look up the meaning of that word, and I did show how to do a screenshot of anything on the iPad by holding down the home button and the power button at the same time (& the images automatically ends up in photos) so I guess that I snuck in 2 extra tips as well!!  My mother always told me I was not a very good counter!

What would you share if @jasongraham99 asked you to skype into his next staff meeting?

Easy Peasy Attribution AND Creative Commons!

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So I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about blogging – or my LACK of it – and wondering why there’s a LACK of it, ways that I can change this slack LACK-of-blogging habit, I have so easily fallen into, and involving myself in lots and lots of looking at how my favourite bloggers appear to be so prolific!

And I know what it is …….. when I’m excited about something ……. I want to share it!  So here’s something that I’m very excited about!  I’ve been working with Grades 2 and 3 recently, using Compfight to find creative commons images for their poetry – and teaching them about attribution at the same time.  Yes, these gorgeous little 8/9 year olds know the word attribution and they know it means giving credit to someone whose work you’ve used.  Bless their hearts, they’ve followed cheat sheets, ask questions and really tried hard to search on compfight, download images to the desktop, rename files, copy URLs, copy Usernames or Real Names and paste them on the last slide of their powerpoints!

In Grade 5, there’s image searching going on for presentations for the Sustainability unit and of course there’s a tonne of blogging going in this grade, as well as Grade 4 & two classes in Grade 3, so I’m always reminding everyone about Creative Commons & Attribution – making tutorials, creating cheat sheets and writing blog posts on embedding and attributing correctly.  All while, mainly using compfight – I do love this site very much – I really do. (And it’s still a great site if you need to download the image files for use in offline presentation such as powerpoint/keynote etc)

But now, tonight, through twitter (thanks to the fabulous Ms Tara aka @bookchica retweeting @colingally) I’ve gone to Technology Coach heaven – and compfight has been toppled!  (well for embedding creative commons images & attribution in a blog post!)

Introducing Wylio.com

For bloggers, it’s SO simple, so easy and only 4 steps from finding a creative commons image to embedding it in a post for your blog!!

Step 1

Free Pictures - Wylio.com

Step 2

Step 2

Step 3

step3

Step 4

step 4
All images uploaded with Skitch!

Unbelievably easy and PERFECT for little bloggers!  Wylio – you rock!!

***Update****

Wylio.com - free pictures

Of course, in this ever changing world of technology – Wylio has changed slightly since I first posted about it!
Due to it’s growing popularity ….. Wylio now requires you to create a free account & login to use. You can use your google account if you have one!

My advice, for classroom teachers would be to create a class google account for Wylio – one email address, one password – for the whole class to remember.
(A class google account can come in handy for all kinds of other things in the classroom – another blog post for later).

Another FlickrCC Search Tool

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The fabulous Mr U, (aka: Jeff Utecht) showed me this FlickrCC search tool after our meeting the other day.

Skitch

Click on the image you like the look of, and this screen appears next:

A flickr CC search toy

As a presenter, the stamp option is fabulous!! Check out what it does below!

stamp.php (500մ61)

I do wish this site did have a safe-search option ……… I’d love to introduce it to our students, but for now, I think we will stick with Compfight as it allows us to have a Safe-Search on, which makes it appropriate for use at school.

You can find out more about what we’ve been discussing with our students about Creative Commons & using Compfight over at our “model blog” for student blogging.

What conversations are you having at your school with students about the use of images in our work?

Multiple Intelligences & Web 2.0 tools

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I’ve long been a fan of Multiple Intelligences and of course am a complete geek when it comes to web 2.0 tools in the classroom!

As I prepare myself, both mentally & physically, to come out of the classroom in August to begin a new role at ISB – Technology and Learning Coach, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and checking out a lot of tools (new and old). Part of my daily routine during the summer break has been to check out my TwitterTim.es feed. (Love this!!)

Today I came across this slideshare presentation by Jacqui Sharp (a fellow Kiwi I might add with a blog worth following) about Multiple Intelligences & Web 2.0 tools. What I love about this presentation is that Jacqui has simplified what each Intelligence means in terms of specific abilities and everyday use, and then she has added possible delivery methods with suggested Web2.0 tools to help you do that.  Awesome!

Multiple intelligences and Web2.0

View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.

Checking out Flixtime

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Flixtime – it’s been in my “lookatlater” list on delicious for a while and now that it’s Summer Break here in Thailand, I’ve got some time to check out everything on this list.  Some changes have been made to Flixtime since I first bookmarked it and I think that those changes will push Flixtime ahead of PhotoPeach and Animoto for digital storytelling. It’s easy to create an account and I like that you can create 60s videos for free.

Flixtime is very simple to use.  Create new video, name your video, add a description, upload your photos/video, choose your title image, add music (it automatically adjusts the time to the length of your images/video) add text, save and render.

Flixtime create a new video

Flixtime - Water Fun!

What Flixtime offers, that PhotoPeach doesn’t, is that you can add voice over too. The tool button to do that does not appear until you have saved and rendered your video though.

flixtime

You can either upload your recorded voice or you can record on the spot. I like that feature too.

Flixtime mix your video

A few photos, no captions, a bit of music, no voice over (but I will get my son to make his own video about this) and a few minutes (it was very quick), here’s my finished product. All the transitions are done automatically by flixtime.

CreativeCommons Image Searching

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Since becoming more aware about Presentation Zen, the need to search for suitable images has increased. Using images licensed under Creative Commons goes without saying, and as a classroom teacher, I believe it’s very important for me to model image attribution and Creative Commons usage to my students.

Usually I just use the advanced search on flickr but I’ve been feeling the need for something more …….

Today, just by happy accident, I stumbled across this delicious bookmark I’d made a while back but hadn’t had a chance to read properly. (I tag anything with that I haven’t had a chance to really explore or read if I’m in the middle of looking for something else, or working on something, with lookatlater – very handy!)

Amongst the glorious things that you can do with flickr, here was that need for something more ……

Q: I know Flickr offers a search engine but it won’t display more than 24 pictures at a time. Is there a better alternative ?

A: Switch to either Compfight or PictureSandbox – these are some of best Flickr search tools on the web, even better than Flickr’s built-in search engine.

PictureSandbox

PictureSandbox - Free Stock Photos - Find The Good Stuff

PictureSandbox - Free Stock Photos - Find The Good Stuff

Don’t you love how easy Picturesandbox makes image searching?

Compfight

compfight a flickr2122 search tool

It really doesn’t get much better than this does it?  What I’d like to find next, is a simple add-on that will get the attribution for me automatically (less clicks for me).  So I’m off to find that now.

How do you search for your CreativeCommons images?