Today’s Meet- backchannel in your classroom
Todays Meet helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime.
Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.
Students can have a discussion about class, ask questions, and be engaged in the classroom with the use of Today’s Meet. Check it out Today!
What is the back-channel?
The backchannel is everything going on in the room that isn’t coming from the presenter. The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, and give you the most immediate feedback you’ll ever get. Instead of ignoring the backchannel, Todays Meet helps you leverage its power.
Tapping into the backchannel lets you tailor and direct your presentation to the audience in front of you, and unifying the backchannel means the audience can share insights, questions and answers like never before.
ZooBurst- Online 3-D Digital Story
ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life.
ZooBurst books “live” online and can be experienced using nothing more than a web browser running the Adobe Flash plug-in. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials.
Once constructed, books can be inspected from any angle from within a 3D space, and rotating around a book is as easy as dragging and dropping a mouse. In addition, authors can choose to make items “clickable,” allowing readers to learn more about individual characters within a story. Each character can have its own “chat bubble” that pops up when that character is clicked. In addition, authors can also record their own voices using the ZooBurst audio recorder to have their characters really “speak” when clicked!
As an educational tool, ZooBurst provides students with new ways in which they can tell stories, deliver presentations, write reports and express complex ideas. ZooBurst contains a powerful “classroom management” feature for teachers that lets them easily set up protected, safe spaces for their students. Teachers can assign usernames and passwords to their students without having to input any sensitive or personal information, and can manage and moderate student work in a protected environment.
The best way to learn more about ZooBurst is to give it a try! It’s free!
Online Sticky Note Collaboration
Edistorm is an interesting website that allows users to create an online forum of sticky notes. Students can collaborate and brainstorm ideas using Edistorm. The online sticky notes are called “storms” which can be made public or private. Check it out today!
Animoto- Create a powerful Digital Story
Animoto is another simple program online to create simple videos from pictures, sound, text, and existing video clips. Animoto makes it possible to quickly create a video using still images, music, and text. In the last year Animoto has added the option to include video clips in your videos too. If you can make a slideshow presentation, you can make a video using Animoto. It’s free service limits you to 30 second videos.
You can create longer videos if you apply for an education account. I like to use Animoto early in the school year to introduce my new students to some of the basic skills that will be carried across to more complex video creation like iMovie later in the year.
Here is a sample link to a video I made for my AP class interest group project for next school year.
TimerTab
I learned about TimerTab from MakeUseOf.com. They said that “there are several applications and websites that have time related functions but having all of them right from within your browser helps a lot. TimerTab is a Chrome extension that gives you a timer, stopwatch and alarm in a browser tab. You can start the alarm and timer with a single click and even pause the stopwatch whenever you need to.”
Read more: TimerTab: Google Chrome Based Stopwatch, Alarm & Timer
File Stork- Collect Files via Dropbox.
This year my classroom is going to be a paperless classroom in terms of student assignments. I plan on having students submit files using Edmodo, Google Docs, and Dropbox.
Going digital in terms of paper collection will allow me to cut down on emails in my inbox as well as paper on my desk. I have had students use DropitTOme this past school year. This coming school year I am going to have them use FileStork, which can send files to my online Dropbox account.
I learned about FileStork from Richard Bryne at Free Technology for Teachers. He said “You can make an individual file request by sending an email to someone. The other way, and the more practical way for teachers, is to create a “stand alone” request which will allow you to post an upload link on your blog or website. Visitors can then use that link to upload a file to your Dropbox where you can view it and download it if you like.” Thanks Richard for the Great idea!
Just Paste It!
Just Paste it is probably the easiest website to share text or a links with another person. This website would be ideal if you give your student’s a group project or a research assignment. They could paste the links and then share the url with their group members.
From the Just Paste it website:
Why JustPaste.it is so special?
What you can share with it?
- longer comments on Twitter
- selected parts of text
- favorites pictures
- articles to Digg.com or RedDit.com
- school notes
- ideas and appeals
Here is what other websites and blogs are saying:
Google Voice a Convenient Way to Call Parents
Google Voice is a fantastic application to add to any smart phone for voice-mail and an additional number. Educators can use this system to transcribe important conversations with parents of students. I love this application because it allows me to have a number solely reserved for school that connects right to my personal cell phone and it gives me a “local” number. My students can also text my phone and call my phone number and it keeps a record of each call or text.
Check out this blog for more information.
Footnote-Primary Documents at your Finger Tips
Footnote is a history teacher’s dream website, with more than 60 million original historical documents to search through. You can search through millions of historical primary sources through the National Archives and The Library of Congress. Check out Footnote today!
A Cleaner Youtube
I learned about A Cleaner Youtube from Richard Bryne’s Blog called Free Technology for Teachers. I already love the clean version of youtube without all the distractions. Richard Bryne states that,” A Cleaner YouTube is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Once installed A Cleaner YouTube allows you to display YouTube videos without any of the “related videos,” comments, or display advertising. There are other tools that do the same thing, but what makes A Cleaner YouTube different is that not only can you display videos without the related materials, but you can also search YouTube without viewing any of the “related videos,” comments, suggested videos, or advertisements. I have before and after images displayed below.”
Before:
After:
Knovio-Online Video Presentation
I learned about Knovio from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. He wrote a blog post about the online video presentation FREE program called Knovio. It is an easy to use program that allows any user to create an online video presentation. The first step is to upload a PowerPoint presentation, Record a video, and then publish/share your presentation. It’s free. Check it out today.
Digital History Website
When I do a US history project or I am looking for an interesting way to teach a particular concept my first website I go to is the Digital History Website. It is extremely user friendly because you can search by topic or a specific era in American history. This website is packed with information from alternative textbook readings to primary sources to media and even teaching ideas. It is truly a “one stop shop” to find out more information about any U.S. history topic. It is a wonderful resource and it makes my life just a little bit easier.
BBC Witness Podcast- Bring Primary Sources into your Classroom
I learned about BBC Witness Podcast from Richard Bryne’s Blog called Free Technology for Teachers BBC Witness Podcast is a series of short audio recordings of newscasts and interview of people who experience historical events first-hand.
There are 168 podcasts available and the website is updated daily. This site is a great way to easily bring primary sources into the classroom who experienced the historical events first hand. Bring Primary Sources into your Classroom with BBC Witness Podcast.
TubeChop-Cut Youtube clips with easy
TubeChop is a website that allows users to take their favorite parts of a youtube clip and chop them into smaller video clips and then share it.
How it works?
1. Find the video you want to chop.
2. Select & cut interesting part of the video.
3. Share it with friends.
Application: This would be very useful when showing a particular clip to the class or with digital storytelling. This site could save teachers or students time by focusing on a particular part of a video clip, as compared to the entire clip. Here are some examples