GoAnimate - a quick way to teach (and re-teach) quick ideas

GoAnimate is another one of those great free web tools that have the potential to bring your lessons to life.  It's one of those tools I really love because it creates immediate engagement, is useful for all kinds of topics, all kinds of lessons, and all age levels, and it's very very fast and easy!

Mobile Learning Series: Educreations - creating instructional resources on the fly!

Educreations is an app that makes doing a SmartBoard style lesson easy enough to do on the fly and also keeps it easy by allowing you to capture and share any portion of your lesson.

What I'm Reading Lately (weekly)

• Home - Educator's Toolkit - ResourceGuides at Alaska State Library
  tags: toolkit alaska edtech edtechsec
• Why Haven't Districts Adopted Blended Learning Faster?
  tags: blendedlearning edtechsec
• 5 School Technologies To Watch: Personalized Learning Is Here - Forbes
  tags: personalized edtech onlinelearning edtechsec
• 30 Recommended Apps For Online Students - Edudemic
  tags: onlinelearning apps onlineapps edtechsec

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

What I've Been Using Lately - Screen Casts

I know I know, screen casts are nothing new.  I've been teaching middle school students how to use them for several years now.

Usually at some point during the year, almost every student in one of my tech classes wants to share with me about a new tool they have found that they are very excited about.  Enter - screen casting! This is really an ideal time to show them how to screen cast, and then have them create a screen cast showing off their new tool, and describe how they are using it.  They share these with their class mates, post them on their blogs - fun all around.

I don't know why it's taken me so long, but last year it finally occurred to me that I was spending way too much time searching around YouTube and Vimeo for the perfect short instructional videos to post on my course sites.  One day that bell went off in my head and I said, "Duh, make your own!" I have been a screen casting fool ever since. Here's an example of one of my Hollywood-worthy screen casts about adding a gadget in Blogger.

Why is screen casting better than making a regular instructional video?

One word - time.

I've made plenty of regular instructional videos over the years using my camera and iMovie, and I love them and reuse them at every opportunity.  However, the main downside is, they are more time consuming to make.

It takes very little planning to make a good screen cast. Here are the stages for making a basic screen cast:
1. have a general outline of talking points - if you don't, a lot of your screen cast will be sounds of you going, "aaaaand, uuuummmmm, sooooo," and so forth.
2. Have the pages and tabs you are going to use already open. No sense wasting screen cast time waiting for your lethargic browser to load a page.
3. Keep it short - focus your screen cast on ONE thing.  This is infinitely more useful for students, and far more flexible for you in terms of being able to use the screen cast over again.

What to use?
Nowadays I primarily use Screencast-o-Matic, because it's easy and free.  However, there are other good tools out there. Two others I have used quite a bit are Jing and Screenr - both very easy to use.

Some help for teaching with your iPad

Earlier this year I came across this great wiki called teachwithyouripad.  For those of us using iPads in class for the first time this year, this simple wiki is a link to a wealth of possibilities for helping students to use these as true learning devices.

On the main page of the wiki are four short sections, from the simple (#1. What is an iPad?), to the more useful for those of us who have fully implemented them (#4. How do I teach with it?).  The number 4 section has one link, which opens to a list of 14 sample projects, links included, that could be easily implemented into any classroom.

The bottom of the main wiki page includes a link to a full "Teach With Your iPad" online  newspaper, which seems to be regularly updated, and is a wealth of ideas, articles, and app lists for all grade levels and subject areas.

I really like that none of the options or projects presented are complicated. The iPads are a pretty straightforward device, and both the wiki and this online newspaper seem to be in keeping with the idea of keeping the mystery OUT of them.

Simple, virtual, booklets for your students to create

Simplebooklets is a great site in which you can create any type of virtual booklet. It's easy to insert text, pictures (maps, graphs,etc), sound, and video. Although the booklets are simple to make, they have a very sophisticated look to them.

Simplebooklets reminds me of Glogster - a virtual poster app, but it's much, well...simpler! Also, it loads and runs much much faster than Glogster.

The booklets are easily embedded into a blog or a wiki, and have the little tab in the upper corners for easy page turning by the users.

For those of you looking for students to make great visual presentations using posters, slideshows, or books, Simplebooklets is an easy way to go. Students will love the ease, and also love how creative they can be!

Take a look at this book I embedded from the Simplebooklets site.