Mr Bass Online

According to YouTube’s statistics page, “More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010 and 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day.” That’s an amazing amount of video that everyone, students and adults alike, has access to. While some of these videos are of cats riding skateboards, there are also as many instructional and educational videos available for use in the classroom as well as in your own life. Not long ago, my daughter, Molly, was trying to figure out how to get past a certain level in the video game Poptropica. She had worked through previous levels and was stuck. Rather than asking for help, she went to YouTube and did a search for a solution to that level. At 7 years old, she knew that she’d find her answer in an online video and in about 2 minutes, she found it, got through the level and went on her merry way. By watching her dad use the internet and find resources, she had learned that YouTube was someplace where she could find answers.

With all that video, sometimes it’s hard to manage and navigate the YouTube environment. Here are some thing you may know that you could do with YouTube.

1. Create your own playlists – Just like with music services and software, you can create a playlist of YouTube videos that you want to save to watch later. To do that, you need to create an account with Google. (Watch this video for instructions.) If you’re logged into YouTube, under each video you’ll see an “+ Add to” button that will allow you to add it to a playlist.

   
   This playlist can then be accessed clicking on your username in the upper right hand corner and then selecting “Videos” in the dropdown. On that page you’ll see any videos that you’ve uploaded, tagged to watch later or added to a playlist.

2. Share a video- Sharing videos on YouTube may not be new to you, but there are a couple of options that you may not know about. When you click the “Share” button below a video, you’ll see a link to a video where you can email that link to someone or you can click “Embed” and get a code to post that on your website. Those are common features that are readily used but in that same window, you’ll see a “show options” link. One of the features that I like best here is that you can check the “Start at” box and select the point in the video where you want it to start. Then when you share that link with someone, the video starts exactly where you wanted it to without the recipient having to watch the irrelevant parts.

   
   

3. Subscribing to video channels- There have been many times where I have found a set of videos that were uploaded by someone that I really liked and wanted to know when they uploaded more. At one point, I would have to continually go back to that person or organization’s channel to see if they have something new. Now I just subscribe to their channel and receive an email every time they upload a new video. To subscribe to a video channel, click on the “Subscribe” button on the top of the video and you’ve just subscribed yourself. On the popup find the checkbox beside “Also email me for each new upload” and you’ll start getting emails whenever new content is available.

   

4. Show videos without the comments or recommendations – YouTube has lots of busyness on every page with a video. There are comments and suggested videos that may or may not be appropriate as well as ads on the site. Sometimes that can be very distracting. Using a site like Quietube can allow you to focus only on the video by removing all the extras. Go to the Quietube website for directions on how to use it. (See an example here and watch a tutorial here.)

Online video is a part of our lives and it’s not going away anytime soon. Students like my daughter are becoming very adept at using and working with online video but it’s not “just for kids” and it’s not “just for entertainment”. More and more it can be used as a tool for education and for learning. Hopefully these tips can help you navigate the world of YouTube a little more smoothly. If you’d like to talk more about the role online video can play in your classroom, contact me. I’d love to hear from you.

Over the last few years I’ve created a few documents around how to do some interesting things with Google Docs.  I don’t think I have ever actually posted them anywhere on my blog so here are the most recent versions of these documents. As time passes these processes may change but the ideas and techniques behind them are still valid for those who are interested in understanding formulas and functions in Google Spreadsheets. Going forward, I will archive these documents on the Documents page of this blog.

The first one is a process for how to set up a Google Form to email the information that has been put into the form to the email address included as a form field. It’s messy, but it works.

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The second document demonstrates some of the functions and formulas that can be used in Google Spreadsheets with some interesting results.  It specifically targets Google Lookup and adding a gadget.

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The last document shows how to create a self-grading quiz using formulas with a Google Form and corresponding Spreadsheet. The process can now be done with a script called Flubaroo but the process still works and is a good learning experience.

Spring break is finally here and with it hopefully comes some family time, trips and relaxation. Two years ago my family and I went to Disney for 5 days over the spring holiday and, as you might expect, we took some pictures. Nope… we took lots of pictures. Kids with characters, kids on rides, random pictures taken by kids… we had lots of pictures. When we got home I dutifully (under the watchful eye of my wife) went through and looked at the pictures determined to weed out pictures of feet and sky. It didn’t take long before I was kicked off the computer and my wife took over. It didn’t take long before she was frustrated with the way Windows handles pictures and she gave up. We still had many pictures of feet and sky that needed to be taken care of. Additionally, we had some pictures that needed to be cropped down, have the color fixed or sharpened a little bit. I could have spent hours with Photoshop fixing and cropping but what I really needed was a tool that both of us could use to organize and fix our pictures simply and easily.

Enter Google’s Picasa. Picasa is a free piece of photo editing software that you can download at http://picasa.google.com. It’s not on the approved list of software for district computers, but install it on your home computer and see what you think. There’s a little setup at the very beginning where you indicate where on your computer your pictures live. It will do a search of your hard drive and create collections of your pictures based on date taken and folder they were in. Additionally, it has facial recognition software the at is built in that learns who people are so you can search for picutre not only by date, name and folder, but by person as well. The video below will introduce Picasa 3 to you (it’s a YouTube video) and walk you through some of the features.

 

So, no longer are my pictures quite the unweildy mess that they once were. Now, I just need them to create a filter that will find all the pictures of feet that my daughter takes as we walk.

At the beginning of February, Google launched a new tool called the Google Art Project. Using their mapping interface, they have created a space where anyone can navigate virtually though museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of London and the Palace of Versailles and not only see the museum but acutally see the paintings and images of these museums by zooming so far the brush strokes and cracks in the paint can be seen. It’s really an amazing experience.

While the Art Project itself is really impressive, the uses in the classroom are equally impressive. While it lends itself nicely to an art classroom, there are so many other uses that can come in when thinking about the analysis of images and why things might be shown in specific light at different times in history. The “cool factor” is certainly there, but let’s look beyond the cool factor and think about how students think. Looking back at past posts, the focus on using nonlinguistic representation is one that’s been addressed before. Students are more visual now than ever and images are an important part of their lives. So bringing art into a math class to discuss geometric designs and shapes that are used in images can help them to better grasp concepts. Using works of art as story starters in an English class can bring great inspiration to students. In a science classroom these works of art could be discussion starters on the aging process of different elements because you can zoom in so far that you can see the cracks that time has ravaged on these paintings. These pieces can capture the imagination of students by bringing them closer to these historic works than most will ever be in their lives. They can find relevance and meaning inside these images if given the opportunity to be introduced to them.

As with so many things that Google makes, sharing these works is easy inside of the Art Project. You can make your own gallery and essentially bookmark these images for quicker access later as well as get direct links that you could post on a website or in an email. Maybe the best part about it is that it’s all browser based so there’s no software to try to download and install.

Here’s an example of Starry Starry Night by Vincent van Gough brought to you by the Google Art Project.

Google isn’t the only game in town though. Another site called Synthscape has been doing this for quite awhile and has a number of museums where you can take a virtual tour and view artwork. While they don’t seem to have as many museums or virutal tours, they do have similar interactive, high-res images that you’ll find in the Art Project

Here’s an example of the Rivera Court brought to you by Synthscape.

Bringing art into your classroom brings another aspect of history, culture and imagery to your students. Explore these features with an eye for how you can use it in your own content area to connect with your students in meaningful ways. If you know of any other imagery sites like this, please share so more and more students can see these works.

Google has given educators a number of tools for use in the classroom, but their main purpose is still to find information through their search engine. They can find information for us in seconds, but so many times that information is spread across so many different sites that deciphering it becomes the real challenge. Google Squared (http://squared.google.com) is an attempt to make those search results a little more usable. When doing a search in Google Squared, the search term pulls specific information that it sees as relevant and puts it into a grid with categories to organize the information. Here is an example of one I did on British poets.

If you visit the site, you’ll see that the search has pulled the name, picture, description, date of birth, etc. into a grid allowing students to compare the poets in a meaningful way without have to visit site after site. They can then use their critical thinking skills to decide what information is important and what is not. They can even change the categories, share their “squares” or export them to a separate spreadsheet program. Finally, these “squares” can be saved as a webpage, exported to a spreadsheet program or simply save it for future use. It uses Google’s searching techniques, but organizes the information differently. We still need to help students learn how to search for relevant information, but the layout of Google Squared lets students sort that information in a different, and possibly more meaningful, way.

Google Squared
British Poets Save Square
Filmmakers Square

Cross posted on Northeast Middle School Friday Flyer

Web 2.0 has been a buzzword for the last few years and none of the tools that I’m about to tell you about are necessarily new, however, sometimes it’s good to create a list for teacher use. While there are 10 tools here, I don’t mean to make this a top 10 list. Think of it more like a cross section of some of the tools that are out there. So, here, in no particular order are 10 Web 2.0 tools to engage students and make your life easier.

1. Wallwisher – Basically, this is like an online bulletin board that doesn’t require a login for students or teachers to leave a comment, message, image, music or links.

Possible uses:

• Use it as a parking lot for collaborative groups or professional development
• Post assignments
• Student reflection of an activity or daily learning
• Question forum
• Parent sign up as field trip chaperones, sign up to bring things to a party, etc.
• Interest inventory or assessment of prior knowledge

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2. Etherpad – Etherpad was a startup company that was purchased by Google last year. Google decided that they would release the code used to create Etherpad as an open source project for anyone to use. So, Etherpad.com is no longer in existence. But, there are a number of people who have taken the open source project and created their own, free Etherpad sites for public use. Two that are readily available are ietherpad.com and typewith.me. Basically, etherpad is a free online collaborative writing space which requires no login for students and is immediately updated on everyone’s screens. Just send or post the link to your webpage and anyone will be able to join and etherpad gives all users their own text color.

Possible uses:

• Brainstorming
• Schedules
• Group writing
• Group reflections
• Peer editing

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3. Weblist.me – Weblist is a bookmarking portal where a user can create smart lists from URLs, photos, music, videos, documents and files that can then be shared. The smart list is then displayed in thumbnail view for browsing, sharing, and organization.

Possible uses:

• Resource portal for assignment or lectures
• Presentation url list
• Bookmarks
• Organizing research
• Sharing images and video

Sample Smart list

• Copyright Friendly Image Search
• Math Sites for K-2

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4. Delicious – A social bookmarking site that allows you to tag and keep bookmarks like you would in a browser, but allows access on any computer with an internet connection. Each time the user bookmarks a site there is the option to categorize the site using tags that you generate that can then be sorted and searched. Each tag and bookmark list also creates an RSS feed for subscriptions.

Possible uses:

• Resource list
• Research
• Annotations
• Sharing sites with classmates

Delicious Examples:

• All My Bookmarks
• My bookmarks tagged “Google”

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5. Skype - Skype is a great instant messaging/VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) allowing you to use your computer as a phone of sorts. Using Skype you can make voice and video calls to another computer as well as communicate with any of your Skype contacts through text as an instant messaging client. When making a voice call, you can even share your screen with whomever you’ve called to show them a document or how to do something on the computer. The Instructional Technology department uses it every single day to communicate across the district.

Possible uses:

• Virtual office hours
• Remote assistance
• Video conferencing with experts
• Homework help
• Video conferencing with students who are absent (long term illness)

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6. Mailcatch – Mailcatch is a service that provides disposable email addresses so students that don’t have email addresses can sign up for services like Google Docs or Voicethread. So many services require valid email address in order to create an account and then they send a link to that email account to verify that whoever is trying to sign up for their service is actually a person and not a automated computer. I have not been comfortable having students create email addresses without their parents’ permission, yet I still want them to have access to the tools we are using. Enter mailcatch. Students can sign up with a mailcatch.com email address, but they can’t actually send email from it, they can only receive email, click the verification link and then they can sign in to the web service with an account, but no email. To see an example of how this might work, I’ve created a video that walks you through the steps to sign up for Voicethread.

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7. Glogster – Glogster is a tool that allows users to create virtual, multi-media posters that can include text, images, and video. Teachers can create glogs for their students to use and students can make glogs as class projects. Here are some examples categorized by content area.

Possible uses:

• Webquest
• Projects
• Anything that you’d normally create a print poster could be made into a glog

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8. Google Squared – Google has given educators a ton of tools for use in the classroom, but their main purpose is still a search engine. Google can find information for us in seconds, but so many times that information is spread across so many different sites that deciphering it becomes the real challenge. Google Squared is an attempt to make those search results a little more usable. When doing a search in Google Squared, the search term pulls what it sees as the relevant information and puts it into a grid with categories to organize the information. Here is an example of one I did on film makers. If you visit the site, you’ll see that the search has pulled the name, picture, description, date of birth, etc. into a grid allowing students to compare the film makers in a meaningful way without have to visit site after site. They can then use their critical thinking skills to decide what information is important and what is not. They can even change the categories, share their “squares” or export them to a separate spreadsheet program. It uses Google’s searching techniques, but organizes the information differently.

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9. Bubbl.us – Mind mapping software is not anything new, we’ve been using Inspiration in the district for years, but Bubbl.us is an online version that seems to work really well. What’s nice about this version is that it’s sharable and since it’s online, no software is required on your computer, everything is online. That means that when you (or your students) need to work on a project on different computers, there is no need to try to transfer via a flash drive or save it to server space, Bubbl.us stores it online. Just login and all your mind maps are right there. Below is an example of part of a mind map that I made as a part of a presentation that I did on writing in the 21st century. The audience gave me suggestions and we plugged them in as we went.

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10. Dropbox - Do you use more than one computer? I do. Actually, I use lots of them. Dropbox allows me to share my files across computers by syncing anything that I place in a specific folder to their webservers. The client can be installed on any number of computers and all files that are synced to the Dropbox servers are then synced across any computer (regardless of operating system) with the client installed. Additionally, all files can then be access from any computer with an internet connection as well as many mobile devices. You can also share your Dropbox folder with other people so if you’re collaborating on a project, sharing files is a snap. All files are backed up to the Dropbox service included as a part of the basic service.

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This is not an exhaustive list of Web 2.0 tools by any means but it does give you a starting point for some that are less well known. Good luck and enjoy your online journey.

This post was written in response to a request made at a technology meeting by teachers looking for some new tools to use with their students.

If you currently don’t use Google Chrome as your browser, this is a good reason.

I’ve used Chrome for about a year now and it’s become my default browser.  However, some sites/applications don’t necessarily work well inside Chrome so I have Firefox and Flock as backups.

One of my favorite tools in the Google arsenal is that of Google Alerts. Essentially, Google Alerts is a tool that will do an ongoing search for you automatically and then email you the results on a regular basis.  So, imagine that you are in the market for a new netbook (as I was last summer).  Asus had just come out with the eeepc 1000HE and I was interested. However, I wanted to let some of the early adopters get one and make their recommendations as to the feel and workings of the machine.  Instead of going everyday and doing a blog search looking for reviews, I set up a Google Alert to do a comprehensive search on the term “eeepc 1000HE” and to email me the results once a day.

From then on I got a daily email anytime there was a website that would have shown up in my search results.  I love Alerts for the same reason that I love RSS, it saves me time and energy. My searches come to my inbox automatically and I can use my time in other ways.  Give it a try.

This morning I did a round table sessions at the NCTE Annual Convention on the use of various Google tools in the classroom. The session itself went very well and I had the opportunity to meet a number of teachers from around the country who are doing amazing things.  In this session I talked about a variety of Google tools, some common, some more obscure, but as I talked about each tool, I tried to give specific examples as to how it might be used in the classroom on a daily basis and, more importantly, ideas on how they could start using it immediately.  I made my best effort to give and overview of each of 8 tools in a 20 minute time period and, while I know I didn’t do any single tool the justice that I would have liked, I think I did bring an awareness of some possibilities of each tool.  As I now sit and reflect on the session, I think that was my overall goal.  There are thousands of how-to’s on all of these tools online and, truly, is a conference really the best place to show people what to click on?  I’ve seen too many conference presentations in which a presenter goes through a process of showing how to create a wiki or podcast. Luckily, at NCTE, Kylene Beers brought in Tech-to-go kiosks where people can learn about the specifics of a program or the process of a project. With the introduction of these kiosks, that really should limit the need for the how-to and give presenters far more freedom to explore possibilities and frame the content in theory and real world examples.  Now, whether I did that or not, I’m not completely sure, but I think that everyone walked away with something new, either a tool or an idea.  At least that’s my hope.

This brings me to why I present at conferences, blog and teach teachers about technology integration.  Basically, I remember being in a classroom. I remember what it was like to be so overwhelmed with grades, grading and discipline.  I remember the frustration I felt when I was told “No!” by my technology department. But I also remember coming to NCTE for the first time and feeling like my world opened up as a teacher.  I also remember trying something new with my students using technology and having it work.  I also remember how my students reacted when I told them I needed their help to try something new and how willing they were to give me feedback and help me change my practice.  All these things I remember have made me the educator that I am.  I try not to say “no” very often and I try to share my knowledge.  When I have the opportunity to present content to teachers, I want it to be worth their while, regardless of their technology proficiency, age or content area.  I want them to know the “why” as well as the “how.” And I want them to be successful so they will be willing to continue to grow in their journey. That’s why I do what I do.  It’s not groundbreaking or all that innovative, but I do believe that it’s real and that, in a small way, it helps.

I just found out that Google added a new feature in Google Docs. You can now create drawings that may just simulate graphic organizers. I don’t think that it will replace tools like Inspiration, but it will create another option for those teachers using Google Docs with their students. It’s as simple as selecting “Insert” –> “Drawing”. For more information, visit the Google Docs Blog.