A Reminder To Self: Useful Sites and Tools

Online Tools for Education

This post is about some of the online tools that I found useful last year...

I wanted to describe them all in one place (with links) so I could return at a later date if I was ever stuck for a way to make learning online more creative for my students.  

Most of these tools are easy to use, and could just as easily be used by students. They could create something for themselves, or something to share with their peers (or wider audience) based on what they have learned. 

I'm sure that I have missed a lot of great tools! It would be really helpful if anyone could post sites that I have missed in the comments section below to help build up an even bigger inventory of resources to share. 

VOCAROO - Uneditted voice recordings. Could be used to remind students about homework and school events etc. A quick and easy way to communicate with students at home. Gives you an embed code to put on your site or blog.

PADLET - A virtual post-it wall. Create a padlet, double-click to make a posting with instructions or an example. This can also give you an embed code to insert into your site, and students can interact with it without leaving your site.

INSTA-GROK – good for gathering information. Type in a question and it displays information as an interactive spiderweb. Hover mouse over it to see information expanded. You can adjust the slider at the top from “brand new” to “expert” to change the complexity of the information displayed. I personally find this confusing but other learners may enjoy the links and visual nature of the spiderweb.

THINGLINK – is extremely simple. Use any image from the web and add interactive links to it that will lead students off on an adventure of their choosing. Provides an embed code for your site as well.

LINOIT - similar to padlet but you have more control over the background colour. Doesn't appear to have any embed codes available.

WIKISPACES - you may have to fully commit to wikispaces as your organisational platform (like EDMODO) so students know to regularly return to it. Or just use it for a short time to run and monitor a discussion.

GO!ANIMATE – used to make little animated videos or moving comic strips. I would now only use this for a short home-learning summary task as it can be quite an involved and time-consuming process.

ABCYA ANIMATE - similar to the old Paint with brushes and pencils of varying size and colour. The tutorial is clear. It is easy to draw with and change. You can't change the speed of presentation of the animation and you can't embed it but you can export the final product as a gif and then upload it.

LEARNIST – this site was a little tricky to get into. You can create a 'board' and then add up to 5 articles, videos, or images, along with a heading and description for each. You need to add them one at a time, finish writing everything, and then the final step is to rearrange everything into the order you want students to meet the information. There is an embed code but it doesn't appear to work in my site; instead you could share it on Google+.

PINTEREST - create 'boards' for concepts and search for 'pins' to add to it. Easy to collate ideas in one place. Can't embed it but can share it in other ways. 

SCOOP IT – similar to learnist but looks more like a facebook feed. You can collect and collate videos and articles, and write a description for each one much the same as learnist. However I think it would be quite nice if students could intersperse these with posts of their reflections on each one, kind of like 'status updates' on Facebook.

EDUCREATIONS – started as a digital whiteboard but has since been upgraded. Register as a teacher, set up a class, get a code and start to create lessons. Insert a picture while annotating it and talking, and it saves it as a video.

EDMODO – learning community that looks like Facebook. Access to the class is code protected, and because it is like Facebook it is pretty quick and easy to use. It has folders to drop work into, powerpoints, and you can import from learnit and scoopit etc. Useful for handing in work and marking online, especially for setting deadlines with shutoffs. You can also run quizzes and polls through it.

PEERWISE – this site is run by the University of Auckland. Log in, create a class, and invite students to join by importing their emails from KAMAR or teacher dashboard. IT IS AWESOME! Students create multiple choice questions, answer their peers questions, and can also provide their peers feedback on the difficulty or accuracy of their questions. They earn badges by asking and answering more questions, or providing more feedback.

PREZI – like a cool, moving powerpoint online. Easy to use and many students have experience with it before. You can also easily embed these onto your sites.

DVOLVER MOVIEMAKER - the easiest site for animations, as it has turned the process into 6 multi-choice steps, e.g. choose the background, choose the character, type some text.. No ability to embed or share though, aside from email. Therefore may just be good as a home-learning task or exit ticket.

SOCRATIVE - log in as a teacher to create a quiz, ask a quick question, make an exit ticket or have a SPACE RACE! I like the space race because when students log into the room they are randomly assigned to a team with others in the class. Then students answer the questions you have created, and whenever they get them right they help their teams' space rocket to blast closer to the finish line!

ACTIVELY LEARN - a close reading tool. Log in, create a class and walk through some very clear tutorials. Then chose some readings, set a task or set an assignment. You can search through content (short articles, longer stories, etc) and when you find ones that you like you can send them to your 'workspace.' Sometimes articles that you select will have assignments attached to them that other teachers have created for it, and you can look through them and select one of them too if you'd like. Once it's in your workspace you can add questions (multi-choice or short answer) for students to answer as an assignment. You can also choose whether to attach multimedia to your assignment.

QUIZLET - online flashcards! And not only that, you can create classes, get students to log in and then keep track of the high scores for two games at the end of the quizlet. Students need to learn the words and definitions to get a really good score. The leaderboard is public within your class, so students can see what their friends are scoring. Can get quite competitive and many students have gone home to continue playing.

KAHOOT - click this link to be taken to the teacher login where you can create your own quiz (or select from existing ones). You will need to go to kahoot.it when you want your class to play. This is fantastic for revision and students appear to love it! I wonder if it also has something to do with the dramatic background music while they're playing, and the public scoreboards again at the end of each question.

INFOGR.AM - helps you to create infographics using templates. Only appears to give you 5 templates with identical layout, just different colours. You need to adjust the graphs using your own data. Good if you have 1 set of data or 1 graph you want students to present and explain. Probably better for maths or science than anything else.

PIKTOCHART - I love piktochart. It's very intuitive to use and has a whole lot of different templates (infographic, report, chart and presentation), and if you scroll down there are so many themes within them to chose from. After that, just double click to alter or delete any of the text or images, and drag and drop new ones. Great for student creations.

CANVA - similar to piktochart and just as intuitive. Canva has images that you need to pay to download though, although you can still add them to your poster or infographic (they will just have faint lines and the word Canva across them).

MOVENOTE - links really well with all of our Googly docs and presentations. Open movenote, select which docs or slides you want to talk about, then press record. It will film you talking (so students can see your face) as you click through the different things. It will also show where your mouse is so you can circle around what you're talking about. However it appears to only be shareable via Gmail, not embedded anywhere.

QR READER - downloaded onto phones.. it can be fun to send students on a mission to find and scan different QR codes. This app was being used a lot in Pt England school last year, with the 5 year old iPad class!

COOL TEXT - great for making buttons for your site and simple to use; select the font style that you want, type what you want on the button, and screenshot!

POWTOON - presentations or animation videos. Free signup. Not too bad to manipulate, much simpler than GoAnimate! and it provides an embed code for sites.

PICMONKEY - upload a photo or screenshot and then add text (great fonts) or little images such as blog critters or ladybugs.. I use this to make pretty buttons for my sites.

Google Presentation Animations and How to Embed Them

Let me begin by saying that while I used Google Presentation to animate to the concept of balancing chemical equations and that teachers could also use it to illustrate concepts, it can also be used by students to create animations - of a story they read, of a scientific concept, of anything!

Click here to see a gorgeous example of this - the tale of two Pukekos at the Beach

First of all you need to actually create the animation. This will require a lot of copying and pasting of slides, because to get a smooth animation you need to move objects in the animation the tiniest amount between slides. 

You can see what I mean in the picture below, where the line in the middle of the slides is only slightly longer from one slide to the next. This will make the growth of the line smooth when the animation is played. 

Another thing to consider is the amount of time it will take people to read any text in your animation. Because the slides will flick very quickly during the animation, you may need to have the same information shown on 10, 15 or 20 slides. Just copy and paste the slide with words on it to give your viewers time to read.

Once you are happy with your animation you need click 'File' and then 'Publish it to the Web' 

This box will pop up.  There are a couple of things you need to do with this box.

First of all, change the 'Presentation Size' to Small. If you choose medium or large it may take too long to load on your site.

Next, change the speed of your presentation. 

Now there are some boxes for you to tick. These are important. Tick the box that says 'start slideshow as soon as the player loads.' This will make your animation automatically load and play when people come to your site. If you tick 'restart slideshow after the last slide' then the slideshow will just keep on playing over and over until your students hit the pause button.

Now you are ready to copy the 'embed code.' 

Go to your site and edit the page you want the animation on.  Click on 'insert' and click on '...more gadgets...' 

Search for the 'embed gadget' in the search box.  After you hit the search button the two options shown in the picture below will pop up.  Click on the second one - the 'embed gadget' one.

Select it.

An empty box will pop up. Paste in the embed code that you copied from the Google Presentation. It should look like the picture below after you have pasted it. 

You will notice in the code that it tells you the width and height of your animation. In this case, it is 480 and 299. 

You will also notice that the width and height of your embed gadget is already set at 400 and 400. This will not do, because it will cut off the sides of your animation and leave extra space below and above it.

 Change the width and height to match the animation.

Now this is the important bit! This changes your Google presentation into an animation. You need to change the time delay between slides. It is set at 1000, and that is just far too slow.

Change the time delay (false&delayms=) to somewhere between 300 and 700. I like 300. It is nice and fast. If your animation is flicking too quickly when you watch it though, you can come back and make this number bigger to make the gap between slides bigger. The other thing you could do is to reopen your Google Presentation and add more slides where you need longer to read things (just copy and paste the slides you want to show for longer). 

The last thing you need to do is scroll down and untick the two boxes that say 'include a border around the gadget' and 'display title on gadget.' This just makes the animation much tidier on your site. 

Once you save your page and go to view it, you should have a lovely animation to watch :) Check the timing is right and when you are happy, share it with your class! (Or if they are making it, get them to share it with you!!)

You can see my animation about balancing chemical equations here, or make a copy of it for your science site here.

Using Youtube to Create and Edit Videos

Youtube - not just a place to watch videos about how to communicate with giraffes or watching Koko the Gorilla bonding with kittens... This blog post is all about how to create and edit a movie using only youtube! 

First of all you need to upload videos to youtube. You can do this by clicking the 'Upload' button and recording direct from your webcam, or selecting files already on your device to upload. 

Another way to upload videos is to email them to your youtube. This is particularly useful because most people have cameras on their phone. Students doing group projects can film multiple angles at the same time and then send them to the same youtube account for combining and editing. To find out the email of your youtube account, first click on your youtube user - mine is wells@tamaki.ac.nz. A menu will open. 

Click on youtube settings and you will be taken to this page. You will see next to 'Mobile Uploads' an email xxxxxxxx@m.youtube.com. Once your students have finished editing and published the videos you can change this email by pressing 'Click here.' 

Right, now all your videos have been filmed or uploaded you'll want to edit them. Click on your account name again to open the menu. This time click on 'Video Manager.' 

On the left hand side of the screen you will see a menu for 'Video Manager.' Click on 'Creation Tools.' 

You will be taken to a page called 'Audio Library.' This contains all the music that is free for you to use when making your video. It's too early to worry about that though. First of all you need to get your actual video looking good, before you start to think about adding music or sound effects. 

Under creation tools select 'Video Editor.' 

You will be taken to a screen that looks like this, except where it ays "no videos were found" there will be all the videos that you have filmed and uploaded. Pick which one you would like to edit, then drag and drop it into the row next to the film camera. 

There are other features available to you as well.  One of those is found under the creative commons (the logo with CC inside a circle).  These are videos free for you to use!  You can drag and drop any of them into your video. 

The other options are to add photos, add sound, change the transitions between scenes and to add text. 

Once you have added everything that you want, you can start chopping them up and adding extra effects to the individual segments. To cut a segment in half click on the segment and click on the scissors. Then move the blue bar to where you want to cut, and click your mouse just once. 

Next you can add effects to the different segments you have created. Click on the segment in your bar and this white section will pop up, allowing you to add filters to the segment (just like Instagram), text, sound effects, slow it down, change the brightness, and stabilise it (useful for steadying videos filmed on shaky camera phones). 

 Once you have a finished product that you are happy with, click 'Publish' in the top right hand corner. Check the sharing settings are what you want. Below I have included a screencast saying everything I have just written (for those of you who are visual learners).