Chatterpix ... my new favorite app!

After I played with Chatterpix for a while, the original title of this post had to be changed just a bit.

Don't misunderstand me ... kids will LOVE Chatterpix. Adults will too. It's simple, it's fun, and there are all sorts of ways you can use it in the classroom.

Chatterpix from Duck Duck Moose (how cute is that?!?!) is available for FREE in the app store. It's easy ... Snap a picture or use one from your gallery, draw a mouth, then record up to 30 seconds of audio. When you're finished, save your video to your camera roll. You can then send it via email, post it to YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo. 

Check out this short video to see how easy it is to create your own talking pictures.

Remember that you can make anything talk with Chatterpix - a book cover, a picture of a famous person, or the students themselves! How can you use it in your classroom?

Please Explain!

Are you looking for ways to help your students understand basic (or even complex!) concepts? I've recently come across a couple of sites that create and publish animated explanations of all sorts of topics.

C.G.P. Grey is a YouTube video creator. He is known for creating witty and entertaining educational videos. His tagline is "Complex things explained." He has created and shared many videos like Daylight Saving Time Explained, Are Daddy Longlegs Spiders (8 Animal Misconceptions Rundown), and Copyright: Forever Less One Day. Be warned: he's a fast talker, and sometimes his humor might be a little confusing for our younger students. Be sure to watch the video completely first and be sure it's appropriate for your students.

The first video I ever saw from this YouTube channel absolutely fascinated this good ole Texas girl ... check it out!

Explania provides hundreds of animated explanations, interactive tutorials, and instructional videos for a variety of topics including health, money, sports, and even TECHNOLOGY! (Can you guess which subject I've spent the most time exploring?) Some of my favorites are What is Twitter?, How to Choose a Safe Password, and How Does Cloud Computing Work?

What do you think? Do you think some of these explanations would be helpful to you or your students? And seriously, did you know all of that about Texas? Fascinating! =)

Blabberize

Blabberize is an online tool that allows students (or anyone) to create a speaking picture. The site itself is pretty easy to use, but here are a few step-by-step instructions:

• Go to Blabberize and create an account. (Ok, creating an account is technically optional, but if you are going to use it effectively, having an account is important!)
• Click "Make" and "Browse" to upload your picture.
• Crop your picture, if desired. Click the arrow on the bottom of the screen to go to the next step.
• Move the purple and green dots around on your image to identify the "mouth". The large green dot will identify how far down the mouth will move when your image is "talking." Click the arrow to go to the next step.
• Add sound by using a microphone and speaking or by uploading pre-recorded audio. (The call-in phone feature isn't working at this time.) Click OK when finished.
• You can add additional scenes, edit the scene you just made, or click Save to finish.
• Add a title, description, and tag words. I encourage everyone to mark these as PRIVATE, which means it will not be searchable. (Because it's not searchable, the tags are not terrible important. I typically use "blab" as my tag. :)
• Save your Blabberize.

Once you've created and saved your Blabberize project, you can click "share it" to share with others via URL or embed it on a blog or webpage.

Now to the fun stuff ... 

Mrs. Stephens' first grade students have used Blabberize a couple of times already this year. The Pumpkins were the first projects they did. After the success with the pumpkins, they read Run, Turkey, Run in class and talked about different ways Tom the Turkey could hide. The students took a blank "Tom the Turkey" home and parents helped them come up with disguises. The students brought them back to school and used Blabberize to create their Talking Toms.

It was REALLY hard to pick just one turkey to share, so be sure you check them all out on Mrs. Stephens' webpage!

How have you used Blabberize with your students?

Technology Academy 2012

EM-S ISD Faculty and Staff are invited to the second annual Technology Academy.
June 5-6 @ Hollenstein Career & Technology Center

• Sign up in Eduphoria today.
• Don't miss Keynote Speakers Darrell Brown and Dr. Jim Chadwell! (Be sure to sign up for the Opening and Closing sessions too.)
• Smart phones and mobile devices are welcome, but not required.
• Door prizes ... really good ones!

See you then ... at the movies!

End of Year Video Projects

As the end of the school year {quickly} approaches, I've been asked by a few teachers about creating a video project that they can share with their students. There are all sorts of video creation applications available these days - some are downloadable applications that run on your computer. Others are online tools. Check out some of my favorites:

Don't forget that you can edit photos with PicMonkey before using them in video projects. 

Animoto - my favorite tool for creating impressive "Music Video" style videos. I've blogged about it before here, if you want more details. You will need to create an account (be sure to get the educator account if you're a teacher - it will allow you to create full-length videos for FREE!). Once you have an account, you just import pictures, import or select music (they have a nice collection of music you can use for FREE), and let it do its thing to create the video. If you don't like it, just remix it. Your students (and parents and coworkers and administrators ...) will be impressed!

PhotoStory 3 for Windows - it's VERY simple to use. You can import up to 300 pictures (still images, no video), add text/headlines, and select from a wide variety of transitions and custom animations. My favorite feature is the ability to "create" music for your project. Yes, you can import your own music, but you can create your own music in PhotoStory and not have to worry about copyright issues or whether the timing will be right for the number of images, etc. It works all of that out for you! If you are on a district computer (XP operating system), you may already have PhotoStory3 in your programs list. If you do not, have it loaded, you can download it here for free!

MovieMaker - this has been one of my go-to video creation tools for years, but we have experienced glitches from time to time with it. Like PhotoStory3, you can use all sorts of transitions and text/headlines. One big difference is the ability to insert video clips and still images. If you don't already have MovieMaker on your computer, you can download it here.

PowerPoint - yep, I said PowerPoint! Did you know you could import pictures into PowerPoint and create an album in about 12 seconds? Follow the steps in this tutorial from GCF LearnFree.org. You can even save your final project as a move.

Whichever application you choose, your students will enjoy reliving the fun times they've had in your class this year!

Using YouTube Safely

Anyone who's spent any time on YouTube knows that there's some really valuable material out there that can be used effectively in our classrooms.

Anyone who's spent any time on YouTube knows that there's some pretty inappropriate stuff (ads, comments, suggested videos, etc.) out there that should not be a part of our classrooms.

Several tools are available to help clean up all of that "clutter" that is a party of YouTube and allows you use the  videos without fear of what might be coming next. Check out some of these options:

SafeShareTV - Copy/Paste a YouTube link into the field and click "Generate Safe Link". When you click the "Take me to the Safe View" link, your video will open into a new window without any of the extra "stuff" you usually see in YouTube.

ViewPure - Copy/Paste the YouTube link and hit "Create" to open the video into a new, cleaner screen. You can also drag the "Purify" button into your bookmarks toolbar and easily and instantly view a YouTube video in a cleaner environment without having to copy/paste the URL

Want an even simpler option? Simply type the word quiet in front of the "youtube" in the address, and you will see a much cleaner, clutter-free screen.

As always, check with your campus principal before using videos in the classroom. =)

Guest Post: A Few BrainPop Features I Forgot About

I'm excited to share a post from Becky Burnett's Tech Tips and Such blog today. Be sure to check it out. If you'd like to receive emails when her blog is updated, sign up for her mailling list here!

From Tech Tips and Such:

I was in a session earlier today about BrainPop at my local education service center, and decided that there are "A Few BrainPop Features I Forgot About". Since I forgot about them, I thought some of you might have too. Our district is fortunate enough to have a BrainPop subscription, but if your district is not, have no fear, there's some wonderful free features too!

If you have ever seen a BrainPop video you know that they are short and sweet, as well as very informative (if you haven't, click here to view one). I think they are a great way to intro a concept or reinforce. They can be class activities or individual student activities. Also, BrainPop is adding to the collection of activities that support their videos and the concepts that they deliver. Read on to learn (or be reminded) of a few.

FREE STUFF! That's right, I said free =)
You can get free stuff from all of the BrainPop sites (BrainPop, BrainPop Jr., BrainPop Español, BrainPop ESL), but it's best to go from the main BrainPop site so that you can see ALL of the free stuff from ALL of the sites! Just go to the main BrainPop page (brainpop.com) and click the button for free stuff. 

Search By Standards
I think this comes in particularly handy when you have a student or students that are struggling with a particular skill but it's also good for many more reasons. Just click the Standards button, select your state/subject/grade, and then click the link for the proper video or resource. It's not just videos listed here, but also games, which leads me to...

GameUp

These games are ALL FREE and intended to be reinforcement for skills that are demonstrated in the videos. This being said, they work well after a video has been watched, and also for reinforcing a concept that has been covered in class in a different way. The games can be accessed by clicking the GameUp button on the main page, or after a video has been watched.

That's just a few, but there's lots of other great things on their site too. I definitely suggest that you go check it out or revisit if you haven't been there in a while. Enjoy and Happy Friday!!

Thanks Becky! That's good stuff!

Titanic

Ok, so I may have seen Titanic in the movie theater 6 times. I may own two DVD copies (and one VHS, just for kicks!) of the movie. I may have downloaded and printed the entire movie script. I may have a framed movie poster in my bedroom. I may still cry out, "Rose, move over ... there's room for Jack on that door!" each time I watch the movie.
{Perhaps I've admitted too much!}

That being said, the story of the actual Titanic is still fascinating to me. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, your students may be interested to learn a little about it. Be sure to check these out ...

• Unseen Titanic - From National Geographic, this site includes a photo gallery of pictures of the Titanic today, a "Then and Now" photo gallery, an interactive map of the crash site, and an impressive zoomable view of the shipwreck today (a mosaic of 1500 high-resolution photos put together that allows you to see lots of detail).
• BrainPOP's Titanic - you will need to sign in to view the video, but I'm guessing that they will have this video available for free around the anniversary date.
• The Sinking of the Titanic - read Survivor Elizabeth Shute's account of what happened on the Titanic.
• Watch, Know, Learn (a site I'll be blogging about soon!) has an impressive group of videos related to the Titanic's fateful voyage.

I've been planning this post for a while, but was pleasantly surprised to find this post from one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology 4 Teachers in my Google reader this morning. If you're looking for more Titanic resources, don't miss it!

Happy Leap Day!

Click on the picture below (or here) to see Brainpop's video about Leap Year. This is not one of BrainPop's many free subjects, so you will need to log in to see it and have access to the activities. If you are an EM-S ISD teacher (PK-8th grade) and don't know the username/password, check with your CTI, IT, or Computer Lab Manager. If you do not have an account, I recommend signing up for the Free Trial to see how you like it! Thank you Josh Davis, for pointing out that this video is FREE today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Resources

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is coming up! It's a Staff Development Day in our school district, so the kids will be home, but you may want to use a couple of these resources in your classroom during this week. Check out this excellent video about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thank you KB ... Konnected for sharing this great "find"!

Additional Martin Luther King, Jr. Resources

• Enchanted Learning's MLK, Jr Site - this page shares general information about his life, a timeline of important times in his life, and several activity ideas. (Even if you don't have a subscription to this site and cannot download templates, there are still many good ideas!)
• MLK Jr. Interactive Timeline (from funschool.com) - drag your cursor along the timeline to read about Martin Luther King's history and famous quotes.
• "I Have a Dream" Speech - fill in the blanks of this famous speech and check to see if you were right!
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Video - short video from National Geographic Kids (I recommend it!)
• Scholastic's MLK Resources - K-12 resources including multimedia clips, slide show and quiz, interactive whiteboard resources, and more.
• teAchnology MLK Lessons - find technology lesson ideas here

Tech Tip Tuesday ... Magisto!

Do you have a video camera? I'm not talking about a big fancy-schmancy professional camera. I'm talking about a "Flip" style camera, or a digital camera that takes stills AND video, or even a video camera on your smart phone or iPod! Chances are, you have access to some sort of video camera and you may even have hours (or at least minutes) of video just sitting on the device itself or transferred over to your computer. What are you going to do with it? How will you share it with others?

Magisto is a fun and easy way to create and share videos. You will need to register for a {free} account, then begin your first project. Just upload your video files, create a title, and select a soundtrack (they provide some music or you can select your own). Magisto somehow magically analyzes your video and selects the most important portions, adds professional transitions, effects, and highlights and ..... voilà ... you've got a professional looking video ready to share with your students, their parents, and the community!

What is Magisto from magisto on Vimeo.

Guess what? Last week, Magisto released a free iPhone app that allows you to create these professional videos right from your phone!

How can you think of ways to use Magisto with your students? I can't wait to hear some of the ideas and see some of the video projects! If you're an EM-S ISD teacher, don't forget that we have several small video cameras that can be checked out to teachers for classroom use. (Just contact your IT!)

Santa Fun

Do you want PROOF that Santa visited your home or classroom? Check out these fun sites where you can create photos or videos. Neither of these options are free, but they seem fairly reasonable to me!

Capture the Magic
In just three easy steps (and $9.95), you can have 3 high-quality photos of Santa in your own home or classroom! Just upload photos of your home or classroom, select a Santa (they've got LOTS of poses - surely you can find one just right!), and the site will merge the image and you can download your photos. Check out these samples:

Merry Christmas Santa Video
This one is similar in that it uses images you supply, but it actually uses green-screen technology to impose video images of Santa in your own home or classroom for $14.95. Once you're finished, you will receive a streaming video link online or you can download a high quality copy to burn to a DVD, edit, or even add to YouTube! Be sure to check out the short and informative video explaining how easy it is to create a Santa video in your own home or classroom!

I have not personally used either of these two sites, but they look fun to me and have lots of positive reviews. If you use them, I would love to hear how you liked them. More importantly, what did your kids think???

Tech Tip Tuesday ... The Wild Classroom

If you teach science, you should definitely check out The Wild Classroom. This non-profit organization based in Washington state is providing exciting, quality videos that explore a variety of science and biology concepts. Each of their episodes have lesson plans and useful links that can be used with our students.

The videos are exciting, entertaining, AND educational. What more could you want?  

What is Biodiversity? is one of their popular videos. Take a look ... what do you think?


Be sure to check out some of their other popular topics ... Alpine Tundra, Rainforests, Z is for Zebra, and World's Deadliest Snakes (okay, maybe I'll skip that one!).

Don't miss the interactive Biomes of the World map. Click on a biome for more information, informative videos, and links to scientist profiles, travel information, lesson plans, and species profiles for each region.

Thanksgiving Resources (repost)

Looking for Thanksgiving resources for your students this year? Click here to check out my blog post from last year - all of the links still work and it's still great information!

Tech Tip Tuesday ... NeoK12 Educational Videos & More

Wow, what an exciting find for this week!

NeoK12 is a ginormous collection of educational videos, lessons, quizzes, and games for kindergarten through high school students. The topics are conveniently listed by subject-area on the homepage. Just click any desired topic to find a wealth of resources. You will find pictures that can be used for presentations, links to online games and puzzles, and then a list of videos and lessons. All of these resources have been reviewed by K-12 teachers, but it's always a good idea to review these yourself before using them with your class. =)

The Educational Games, Puzzles, and Quizzes is really outstanding. Many of them would be fun to use with an interactive board/projector or even at a computer station in your classroom. Be sure to check them out.

You will also find many Interactive Diagrams that focus on science and social studies skills like Ecosystems, States of Matter, Simple Machines, and the American Civil War.

This example is from the "Label the Diagram of Plant & Flower" interactive diagram:

From any page of the NeoK12 site, you will see a "Today" button on the far right. Click it to see the "What's Up Today?" page with historical events for today, the word of the day, a daily photo gallery, and other interesting facts.

What do you think? Let me know how you're able to use NeoK12 with your students!

CNN Student News

If you are a secondary teacher or even upper elementary, you may want to check out CNN Student News. It's a FREE, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students. (I still strongly recommend that you view the newscast before showing your students each day, just to make sure it's appropriate - especially for our elementary student!)

You may not have time to show this every day (and who am I kidding? Time is precious!) but this is a good site to keep in mind when discussing current events. If you are studying a specific topic, you could even search for it on the site and see if they've talked about it during a past newscast.

The site provides show transcripts as well as Daily discussion suggestions, News Quizzes, Downloadable PDF maps, and other useful information.

If you're interested, check out the broadcast from Monday, March 21:

If you want to know more about how this works and what CNN STudent News is all about, head over to What is CNN Student News?

Are you using CNN Student News in your classroom? If so, how do the kids like it? Find out more it here.

Tech Tip Tuesday ... YouTube Videos in the Classroom!

What is YouTube?
Quite simply, it is is one of the most used, most visited and most popular video sharing sites available on the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, if you've spent much time at all on YouTube, you've probably found some inappropriate content. That doesn't mean it's all bad! If you've been wondering how you can use YouTube videos in the classroom, this post is for you!

The Educational Video Library is a new tool that we are using in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD. It allows teachers to show videos from YouTube without the concern about other viewers' comments or recommendations for other videos. All you see is the video!

When you find a YouTube video that is just perfect for what you're teaching in class right now (of course, which means it is aligned to your curriculum!), all you need to do is submit the video's URL to the Video Library. As soon as it is approved by one of the Instructional Technologists in the district, it will be available to view in district - by you and by any other teacher in the district! 

You can submit the video directly from the Educational Video Library, but you have to be logged in to a district computer to view the Library. The easiest way to submit a video to the Educational Video Library (and the only way to do this from home) is to use this form. Videos will not appear in the Educational Video Library until they have been approved by one of the ITs in the district, so you may want to email me if you submit a video.


Download the Video 

You can also download the video directly from YouTube and save it to use at a later time. In order to use it in the classroom, you will need to save it to a removable flash drive or even save it into your Dropbox folder. Here are a couple of options for saving videos from YouTube:

ConvertFiles

• Go to ConvertFiles.com, enter the YouTube URL in the "Download from" field, choose an output (I would go with whatever it suggests!) and click Convert.
  
  
• As soon as it's finished, you will get a message with instructions on how to download your video.

Another option ... Kick it!

I can hardly believe this works, but it does! When you're at home and find the absolute perfect video, just simply add in the word "kick" in front of "youtube" in the URL.

The page will re-load, this time with the KickYouTube toolbar towards the top of the page. From the toolbar select the format you want. Next, just Click the Go button on the right side of the toolbar.  When it  changes from "Go" to "Down" right click it and select "Save as.."

Original YouTube URL was  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg-vV1lYlP0 
KickTube URL is http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=cg-vV1lYlP0

There are tons of other video converters or ways you can use YouTube clips in the classroom. If you have a favorite, please let us know!

Tech Tip Tuesday ... Animoto

Animoto is one of my absolutely favorite online tools. (I know, I know ... I say that about a lot of sites, but this one is really super cool!)

In just a few short and easy steps, you can create an awesome end-of-year music video that is sure to amaze your students, parents, co-workers, neighbors, administrators, etc. (it's guaranteed to impress!) You upload the pictures, short video clips, and music. You can even choose music from their own collection. Animoto [magically] analyzes your pictures and music, adds fun transitions, and waa laa ... you've got a music video!

In order to do a full-length video for FREE, you will need to sign up for an Animoto Educator account. It takes a day or so to get the account created, so be sure to sign up today at  www.animoto.com/education.

To create your own full-length Animoto, you will need to sign up for a [free] Educator account at www.animoto.com/education. It can take a day or two to receive the email confirmation of your new account, so you'll want to sign up right away.

Non-teacher-types can create free 30 second videos, but to create full length videos, there is a fee. For educators (that's us!) it's FREE! You will need to reapply for your educator account every six months, but Animoto sends email reminders and it's relatively painless. =) 

Animoto Ideas for the Classroom (for teachers or students)

• All About Me project at the beginning of the year
• Field Trip Presentation
• Advertisement/Commercial for upcoming school events (carnival, book fair, etc.)
• Introduce/Conclude a Curriculum Unit
• Digitial Storytelling
• Vocabulary Flashcards

Can you think of other uses? Do you have any Animotos posted to your website? If so, please leave details in the comments so we can check them out!

Tech Tip Tuesday ... Jing

Jing is one of my all-time favorite applications that I've found. It also happens to be FREE, which is a wonderful thing!

 

Download it here!

I will confess that once upon a time, not so long ago, I needed a "picture" of something on my computer screen so I dug through my desk and found my trusty digital camera. I snapped a picture (okay, several pictures until I could get one without the flash!), uploaded it to my computer, and finally used Paint (yes, MS Paint) to crop it down. By the time I got the picture I wanted, I had already forgotten what I wanted to do with it! UGH ... Now with Jing, I can quickly and easily take a screenshot of the entire screen or just a portion of it. 

Jing also takes videos of your screen. Just use your handy-dandy "Britney Spears" headset to narrate what you're doing on screen and you can create your own little video tutorials in no time!

Here are some of the things I do and things you may do too:

• "Snag" a picture off a website to use in class
• Use the video to record yourself creating a PowerPoint, PhotoStory, MovieMaker, or anything
• Save graphics from PDF copies of CBAs to create additional activities
• Create instructional videos for class, other teachers, or anyone
• If your computer is "acting weird", JING it and send the video to me and I can help figure out what's going on =)

Warnings:

• Just because Jing gives you the ability to snag images from just about anywhere, you must still follow copyright rules when using images.
• Before you know it, you will start using "jing" as a verb!  Just JING it!

Do you already use Jing? Do you have any questions about it? Leave them in the comments below.