Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Use the AMAZING Print Friendly to print any web page… and much more!

Have you ever found that you are on a website and you want to quickly print the page or a portion of the page? When it prints it is lopsided because it was meant to be on landscape, it is 16 pages long which you didn’t realise plus you have wasted ink with a whole lot if unnecessary pictures and words (not to mention unwanted ads!)? That has happened to me so I was delighted to come across Print Friendly (http://www.printfriendly.com/) .

After opening Print Friendly, the first thing I did was impulsively add the little button to the browser bar so that Print Friendly is easily accessible. After that I watched the video on how to use it! I am embedding this video below because it is very useful.

So how does Print friendly work?

1. Find the article you want to print and copy the URL.

Paste it into Print Friendly at the designated place

2. Look at your amazing options:

You can print, make a PDF, email, make th print bigger, remove pictures and more!

3. Let’s take a detailed look:

a) Print: I tried this and it worked like a charm

b) Make a PDF: This is such a useful feature. I always do this using Google Docs but here is another way. When you click on this feature it gives you a button to download as a PDF. This could be WAY quicker than using Google Docs.

c) Email: When you click on email it opens a window. I have emailed this article to mayself so let’s see if it arrives. WOW! it worked like a charm!

d) Increase text size: The highest seemed to be size 15 but that was okay.

e) Remove images: They all disappeared. Quite amazing. What I also discovered is that if you have say three images and you just want to include 1, you can click on the other two and they disappear.

4. This is the best - Add a Chrome extension

Being a lover of Chrome and all its extensions I used this last. It neatly added itself to my Chrome extensions on the browser bar.

This is definitely the best option! You can do so much more. You can highlight and just click on text you don’t want to include and it disappears. (So that little bookmarklet I added to my browser when i first started will no longer be used by me – I will go for the Chrome extension! This image shows some of the benefits.

This is going to be a very useful tool. It will be especially important and useful for your students when they want to print something and just print bits of the page. Do try Print Friendly as soon as you can.

Use KeepVid to successfully download YouTube videos to use offline

You may run into times when you're offline and want to watch a YouTube video, or you want to share a YouTube video with your class without going online and waiting for the video to open (a problem in SA with bandwidth). In those cases, you need an actual copy of the video rather than a link to the YouTube site. You can download videos to your computer using a marvelous free online tool called KeepVid (http://keepvid.com). This post aims to give directions on how to do this if you are new to KeepVid

1. Find the video you would like to download on YouTube

For example I have chose a LEARNit-in-5 video called ‘How to use Lino’.

2. Highlight and copy the URL from YouTube

This video from LEARNit-in-5 has the following YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTLYxmrNATs&feature=channel&list=UL

3. Open http://keepvid.com/ in another window

4. Paste your copied URL from YouTube into the blue rectangle and click on Download

(Ignore any big blue and green download advertisement buttons! It is easy to click them in error) By the way you will need to have Java installed – but most computers today have Java installed in order to open a lot of web applications. It is available free online.

5. You will always get this security warning, so accept the risk and click "Run"

Your video will start the download process and suddenly the security warning appears. Accept it to continue.

6. Keepvid will give you many different options for the download.

I nearly always choose MP4 because it will play in PowerPoint if you insert it there, but .FLV is also an option.

7. Click the download that you would like to make and save it

Save it wherever you would like to save it – probably in My Videos on your PC. If your computer just saves it without asking you, you will most likely find it in your Downloads file.

Your video will now be available to play whenever you need to. I have discovered in the past that this is the best way to go when you want to play something from YouTube for students in a class.

Further reading

1. How to Download Videos From YouTube Using KeepVid

Monday, July 23, 2012

Use Today’sMeet for useful backchannel discussions

Often when you are watching a presentation and you have computer access you want to make a comment on what the presenter is saying. Twitter is most often used for this. But often, if one wishes the responses to be more private a backchanneling programme like Today’s Meet is used.

What is Today’sMeet?

Today’s meet is a simple way to set up an instant live chat room. It allows participants to ‘backchannel’. This means they can get fully involved by adding their comments and thoughts for everyone to read as the presentation is being delivered. In a backchannel participants can ask questions, discuss what is being presented, share links and reflect on their learning. A backchannel is a great way to enable peer support and the beautiy of it is that you can look through it afterwards to see what to comment on or clarify.

How to create a backchannel using Today"sMeet

1. This isa web-based tool so can only be used online. Open it at http://todaysmeet.com

2. Create a ‘room’ (this is the lingo when creating a backchannel). The following graphic is taken from Nik Peachy’s blog

If you look at the image above you’ll notice that there is place to:

a) Name your room: This might be the name of the presentation, teacher, subject or whatever you choose. You’ll see that a green tick appears if the name is available. If not available, make another choice.

b) Choose when to delete your room and all the data. The time range can be anything up to one year.

c) Set a password if you wish to.

d) Click on “Create your Room”. You can now give out the URL to others. The URL will have a specific format starting with http://today’smeet.com/name.

How does a participant join a backchannel?

1. If you are joining a backchannel that has been creating simply type the URL into your browser.

2. You will be asked to type your name in the blue box and to click join. The following two graphics come from the Teaching Generation Now blog

3. Thereafter you will type your message in the blue box and click on ‘Say’.

If you are using a data projector the backchannel will be displayed. At the bottom of the screen you will see the words ‘Transcript’. When you click on this you will be able to see the whole conversation.

When would one use a backchannel in the classroom?

Students would need access to computers. The backchannel could be used:

for Skype calls
for listening to audio podcasts or watching educational videos
for revision classes
during debates
when listening to guest speakers
for oral presentations
when learning new skills
to teach students about online etiquette

Further reading

1. Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking- Information Scribes

2. lTry TodaysMeet for backchannel chat without distraction
3. TodaysMeet: Perfect Tool for On-the-Spot, Total Student Engagement
3. http://www.teachgennow.com.au/2011/04/35-todaysmeet/
4. http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/06/tap-into-backchannel-in-your.html

Have you tried using Audacity for creating MP3s and podcasts?

(This is a cross post for a post I wrote on the SchoolNet blog)

Audacity is not really a webtool as such but it is a free tool that can be downloaded from the web. It is one of those tools that you simply cannot be without as a teacher! To put it in a nutshell, Audacity is a simple sound editing programme that is used to create MP3s.

What can Audacity be used for?

Audacity can be used across platforms from any operating system which is a big plus. It can be used to record live audio and even edit various sound files. It can export files as MP3s but for this purpose you have to also download LAME along with it. Directions for doing this can be found here:

What do you need to be able to use Audacity?

1. The programme should be downloaded from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

2. Download LAME so that Audacity can be exported as a MP3 (see below)
3. A microphone.
4. A computer

How to download LAME to use with Audacity

I’ll just copy and paste the directions for Windows since that is what I am using.
Go to the LAME download page.

Under "For Audacity on Windows", left-click the link "Lame v3.99.3 for Windows.exe" and save the file anywhere on your computer. Do not right-click the link to the .exe file.
Double-click "Lame v3.99.3 for Windows.exe" to launch it (you can safely ignore any warnings that the "publisher could not be verified").
Follow the "Setup" instructions to install LAME for Audacity. Do not change the offered destination location of "C:\Program Files\Lame for Audacity".
The first time you use the "Export as MP3" command, Audacity will ask for the location of "lame_enc.dll". Navigate to "C:\Program Files\Lame for Audacity", select "lame_enc.dll", then click "Open" and "OK".
If you prefer the Zip option for the LAME download, save the zip file to anywhere on your computer, extract "lame_enc.dll" to any location, then show Audacity where to find it as in Step 5 above.
In case of difficulty, please view our more detailed instructions on the Audacity Wiki.

Using Audacity for the first time

1. Once Audacity is downloaded and Lame is downloaded and installed it is A for Away! The toolbar can look rather daunting at first, but once you realise that you only need to know a few of the icons and what they do it suddenly becomes a whole lot easier.

2. Just make sure Audacity has automatically picked up your speakers and microphone.

3. To start recording click on the big red microphone circle. It will start recording immediately so start speaking into your microsphone right away. Your voice will appear as a long jagged line with rises every now and again like this:

4. When you are finished recording press the yellow square. If you want to test out the recording you have just made, press the green triangle.

How to save your file

You can just save the project at this stage if you wish by clicking on Save project as.

Otherwise you can do what I always do and that is export the file as an MP3.

It will then save as an MP3 and you can save this file wherever you wish on your computer. That is how easy it is to record using Audacity. Of course there are a lot more complicated things you can do with audacity but for a teacher, this is enough to go by.Here is a YouTube tutorial that can take you though those steps again.

How can Audacity be used in the classroom?
These are some of the ways I have used Audacity:

1. You could record your students speaking and then upload to Voki to create speaking Avatars. this is useful on a bog to greet visitors.

2. You can create podcasts of book reviews, poetry readings, book reading, orals etc. You can document reading through the year to note students’ progress.

3. You can create sound files to go with a PowerPoint presentation or a Windows Movie Maker Movie or Photostory.

Here is a Slideshare showing how Audacity and Photostory 3 can be used together.

Audacity And Photo Story In The Classroom from lisashusband

4. You can upload these to an online recording service such as Vocaroo.com so that they can be embedded in a blog or wiki. Notice the upload button just under the little girl on the right in the image below.

5. You can record messages and email them to penfriends as MP3 files.

6. You can record sound to add to Voicethreads.

So, give Audacity a try! You won’t regret it.

Further reading

1. 10 great ways to use Audacity with your students

2. How to make a basic podcasting recording with Audacity

3. Audacity in the First Grade classroom

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Use Pinterest as a classroom resource

Submitted by Fiona Beal
Pinterest is one of those social networking programmes that everybody is talking about. It is one of those applications that you know you are going to have to do something about joining at some stage! So, when a friend recently invited me to join Pinterest, I knew the moment of joining and trying out this amazing and popular application had arrived. I made a start by reading Edudemic’s ‘Teacher’s Quick Guide to Pinterest. http://edudemic.com/2012/03/the-teachers-quick-guide-to-pinterest/

What exactly is Pinterest?

Pinterest is another curating tool in the form of a visual pin board that allows you to pin images from blogs and websites so that you can easily refer to them at any stage. Recently Pinterest has added the use of YouTube videos to its features, so now with one click you can get your videos to an already existing collection on your Pinterest wall or on a new one. Pinterest allows you to tweet your pin or share it over Facebook if you chose to link your account with Pinterest. You can also play and watch the videos you include without leaving the website.. It seems that Slideshare and Pinterest have reached an arrangement as well.

Policies

Earlier this year educators were worried about Pinterest’s privacy policies, but Edudemic recently advised that Pinterest has now corrected “some potentially disastrous mistakes: their Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy.”
http://edudemic.com/2012/03/why-ill-start-using-pinterest-again-after-april-6th/

How to create a Pinterest board

This is a helpful YouTube video showing how to go about creating a Pinterest board.

I also came across this Slideshare which had a lot of useful information about Pinterest
http://www.slideshare.net/krisrocs/pinterest-slideshare

Pinterest SlideShare from Kristie Johnson

Following others

One of the features I love about about Pinterest is that you can follow people who have interesting boards. After reading the Teacher’s Quick Guide mentioned above I came across this post called ‘30 inspiring pinterest pins for teachers'.
http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/01/02/30-inspiring-pinterest-pins-for-teachers/
This seemed to be a good place to follow others.

How can Pinterest be used in the classroom?

Educational technology experts have started digging into pinterest's educational potential and quite a number of articles have been written on this topic so far.
http://edudemic.com/2012/06/3-ways-to-use-pinterest-for-education/

1. Add subject specific images to use in an assignment or a class discussion

2. Find crafts and projects for school

3. Get lunch ideas for kids

4. Use it to pin infographics

5. Find new books to read and recommend

6. Summarise a conference or event
http://pinterest.com/coolcatteacher/iste12/

7. Keep a record of your lesson plans
http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/

8. Homeschoolers have found a great number of ways to use Pinterest. Here are 30 of their ideas. http://edudemic.com/2012/02/homeschool-pinterest/

9. Pinterest is a great tool for librarians.
http://edudemic.com/2012/03/20-ways-libraries-are-using-pinterest-right-now/

My Pinterest boards

I have started four pinboards to date:
a) Places to find lesson plans
http://pinterest.com/fibeal/places-to-find-lesson-plans/

b) ESL Language Learning Resources
http://pinterest.com/fibeal/esl-language-learning-resources/

c) My favourite blogs (still in the early stages)

d) Our e-books (still in the early stages)

Further reading

a) Four ways to use Pinterest in Education
b) A LiveBinder called Pinterest for Education:
c) Pinterest resources for teachers from Cool Cat Teacher Blog

d) Teaching history:

e) Social pinboards:

f) Middle Ages pinboard

Monday, July 16, 2012

Webtools #9: Create PDFs from webpages using the Chrome Extension ‘Send to Google Docs”

Recently I was faced with a problem. Some of the Constant Contact newsletter links that I had placed on the blog no longer worked…they had expired. I thought the best thing to do would be to convert the newsletters to PDFs and upload them to Box.net with a link to the blog. But, Constant Contact didn’t seem to supply any way of converting these newsletters to PDF.

Google Chrome extension – Send to Google Docs.

Then I remembered the wonderful free Chrome extensions for Google Chrome. They seem to provide the answers to many a problem. I went to the Chrome Web Store and searched for the ‘Send to Google Docs’ extension…and installed it.

It neatly took its place alongside my other Chrome Extensions on the top right side of my Chrome browser. I then did what I had to do and converted the newsletters to PDFs. This is an amazing feature in Google Docs. You can take any web page and convert it to a PDF in this manner.

How to save a web page as a PDF

Step 1: Find the web page you would like to save

Step 2: Click on the installed Chrome extension ‘Send to Google Docs’ on the browser bar

The web page will appear in your Google Docs in no time at all.

Step 3: You’ll notice at the top of the page in Google Docs that three options are given.

You can actually do all three! I chose to download the original which it does in a PDF format which is perfect. From then on you can either link the document from Google Docs to a blog, wiki or website or you can upload it to a programme like Box.net to link from there.

So, why not download the Google Chrome extension ‘Send to Google Docs’? It is a marvelous way of saving webpages as PDFs.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Use Mergely to edit and compare documents

Have you ever tried to open two documents to compare them? You wish you could see immediately what changes you have already made? Comparing, editing and sharing documents is really a way of life for most of us – and Mergely provides a way of doing this easily.

What is Mergely and how does it work?

Mergely is a useful online tool that can help you merge text documents and highlight changes made to existing documents. To do this you open Mergely and paste the original document into the left column. Make changes in the right hand version and the edited changes can then e seen in the right column.When you are finished you can generate and share a URL and send the documents to someone else.

What are the Mergely buttons used for?

Next to the search box, you will find seven buttons.
*The first one is a search button.
The second one lets you replace the right file with the left or the inverse.
*The third one is for swapping left and right.
*The next one clears the entire scroll area, and the last button is to download and save a file.
*The next two buttons are are download buttons (one as a .diff file)
*The last one is to open a file on your computer and load it if you so wish.

The main save button allows you to save a file online. When you click on save a message appears.

Two new buttons appear.

'Share' gives you a URL that you can share and open from any remote location.

'Fork' creates a new version of the same documents with a new unique URL. It helps for multiple sharing and making back up copies.

Summary of features

Free and easy to use.
Compare documents and highlight changes.
Upload documents from your PC
Either download or share these as a unique URL.

Classroom uses

This is a handy tool for Language teachers to teach writing composition and show how to edit a document.
A useful feature is the ability to share a URL to share with others. This will enable documents to be passed around
Students could use Mergely to review a document without editing the original.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Use Tweetchat to take part in Twitter discussions

All it took was a set date, a topic, and a hashtag, namely #edchatsa. SA teachers who were on Twitter were then notified that a tweetchat for SA teachers would take place every Monday night from 8:30pm – 9:30pm; and so our regular and popular tweetchat was born! Arthur Preston from Elkanah House put this all into motion. Very soon teachers told other teachers and so the news spread and the numbers are growing steadily. If you would like to know more, Arthur has set up a website http://edchatsa.co.za with all the necessary information. This website is also the place where we go during the week to vote from the choice of topics for the following Monday night’s chat. A new development is that the chats are being summarised each week by volunteers using Storify. You’ll notice these summaries on the website.

What is the point of a Twitter chat for teachers?

There are quite a few educational Twitter chats that take place around the world, the two most well-known (to me) being #edchat and #ukedchat. Basically educationists get together to air their views and opinions on matters of education. Education world-wide is going through a major revamp and rethink! It is vital to cross-pollinate with teachers from other locations and share ideas and is so worthwhile when teachers prioritize and make time for this valuable interaction.

How does one follow a Twitter chat using Tweetchat.com?

The best application for following a twitter chat is Tweetchat. (http://tweetchat.com.)
Sean Hampton-Cole, one of the #edchatsa tweeters kindly sent me a PowerPoint on how to use Tweetchat which I am embedding below.

How to use Tweetchat for a twitter discussion

View more presentations from Schoolnet SA .

Benefits of using Tweetchat

You can tweet to the chat without typing the hashtag, as well as retweet, reply to and favour others’ tweets as you chat.
You can adjust the refresh speed to 5 seconds which is the minimum available
You can keep everything on one screen easily so as to focus on the discussion that is taking place.

Join us on a Monday night

So why not open up Tweetchat on a Monday night, type in the hashtag #edchatsa and join the conversation?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Make Wordclouds using Wordle or Tagxedo

What are Wordclouds?

Wordclouds are such fun to use in the classroom, especially when it comes to vocabulary building. Basically, using a wordcloud application one can transfer words into a cloud of interconnected words that can be arranged and used in different ways. Users can change the layout, color scheme, and fonts. Students love working with wordclouds. Two very popular free wordcloud webtools are Wordle and Tagxeedo, and I am going to explain each below plus give ideas of how to use them in the classroom

1. Wordle (http://wordle.net)

Wordle is an online tool for creating word clouds from passages of text. The more frequently a word appears in the text, the larger it shows up in the word cloud. It has so many amazing uses which you will enjoy experimenting with.

Taken from Ted Teachers’ network (http://tedteachersnetwork.pbworks.com)

How to use Wordle step-by-step

This is a great introductory video from Radford Education to show you how to sign up for and use Wordle.

How can Wordle be used in the classroom?

There are so many ways to use Wordle that several educators have been collecting ideas. I will post two of these collections below.

Wordle Ideas

View more PowerPoint from ProjectsByJen.com

50 ways to use Wordle in the classroom

View more PowerPoint from Gemma Holtam

2. Tagxeedo
http://www.tagxedo.com/

Tagxeedo is an online wordcloud tool that takes things a step further by providing a number of different shapes you can choose from for your words. You can also upload a picture you like and Tagxeedo uses it as an outline.

From the Tagxeedo blog (http://daily.tagxedo.com/)

How to use Tagxeedo

This video gives the basic steps in using Tagxedo. Take a look.

How can Tagxedo be used in the classroom?

As with Wordle, there are many ways to use Tagxeedo. Here is a slideshow showing a whole collection of ideas from the Tagxedo blog.

101 Ways to Use Tagxedo

View more PowerPoint from sandiadams

More ways of using wordclouds in the classroom

1. Introduce a topic via vocabulary and use a word cloud to arrange this. You can then get the students to guess the theme, identify unknown words and make sentences with words.
2. For pre-reading tasks. You could show students a collection of words from the new text and let them predict what the text is about.

3. Speed sentence writing. Use recent vocabulary for this and let the students write as many sentences as they can using the words in the word cloud.
4. This is a good fun activity. Display a word cloud containing some recently covered vocabulary and tell the students they have x minutes to write as many sentneces as they can using the words on display. This works best in pairs or groups and is a great way to review and recycle language.
5. Guess the wordle idea:Three times a week Guess the Wordle will post a new Wordle. Then based on the Wordle students can guess what the topic of the Wordle is. Guess the Wordle could be a fun warm-up activity to use with students. http://projectsbyjen.com/GTW/
6. Analyse writing: Students can enter all their text into a wordcloud and see which words come out the largest due to being used frequently. One could analyse text from website articles in the same way.

Further reading

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teacher-boot-camp-wordle-lisa-dabbs
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/more-wordle-in-classroom-ideas.html
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/more-wordle-ideas.html
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/07/guess-wordle-and-summer-vacation.html
http://groups.diigo.com/group/wordle

Monday, July 9, 2012

Curating with Paper.li

Submitted by Fiona Beal
Have you discovered, like me, that Twitter is a very beneficial way of learning from a PLN (Personal Learning Community)? I find most of my ideas stem from my educational Twitter community. Every day I come across an educational newspaper that has been created by a PLN member using Paper.Li and their Twitter feeds so I decided it was time to try it out for myself.

What is Paper.li?

Curation, as you probably know, is the new buzz word. Paper.li is a free curation tool that takes Twitter links from people you follow or specify and automatically publishes a digital newspaper on a daily or weekly basis. What happens, in more detail, is you tell it which sources to use. Paper.Li then pulls from those sources and arranges the material in different categories. Very clever! After you have signed in you will be asked to Start your paper. Paper.li is a free service that takes links from the people you follow on Twitter and organizes those links into a virtual paper for easy reading.

Finding sources to add

Once you click on 'Start your paper' as shown on the right you will be required to choose your sources. One has to be choosy in who you add as your sources if you have a desired outcome for the final version. Paper.li allows you to add around 25 sources from traditional news sources, Twitter hashtags, or Twitter list feeds. I experimented about four times with this not realising that each time my Paper.Li might have been circulating among my Twitter followers! Oh dear! If that happens to you, then delete the newspaper each time when you start again because it saves automatically.

The diagram on the left shows how the page looks when you are adding your various sources.At this point you have to be very selective and only choose the sources you really want to draw from. Make your selections from the left grey bar, or add your own hashtags to the window at the tip of the middle column, and drag them accross.

How to make your own Paper.li

So let’s get started. Give Paper.Li a try. Here is a short basic list of steps:

1. Ask Google for http://paper.li/
2. Select “Start your paper Paper”.
3. You will be prompted to sign in using Twitter.
4. Select “Create a newspaper”
5. Provide the sources for your paper – lists, hashtags, or twitter accounts from which you want the paper created

I came across a very good screencast from an educator saying how she went about making her first Paper.li so I am going to embed it here.

http://www.screenr.com/92Ss

The structure of a Paper.li (click on the thumbnail)

This picture shows how a Paper.Li turns out. Basically you don’t much say over what appears – the tweets are sourced by Paper.Li from the sources you provided. I found that I deleted a number of the tweets as they weren’t relevant to what I wanted, and then Paper.li just added another. If you click on this thumbnail you’ll be taken to the actual paper I created which gives a good idea of the structure. If you are unsuccessful here is the URL: http://paper.li/fibeal/1341787139#

How to use Paper.Li as an educator

1. Set up a class hashtag if your school allows it. Recognize that tweets with links to articles, videos, and images, make the best content for Paper.li. You could even create a relevant paper a week for your students.

2. Student’s could use paper.li to create newspapers that are aligned to a particular topic. They would then have to source people who write or tweet on their topic, or a hashtag that is used for that particular topic. Here are three examples of subject specific Paper.Li’s from Lucy Grey. One is devoted to global education, another to mobile learning and a third focuses on her favourite general education resources and thought leaders.

3. You could set up a hashtag based on a Unit of work you want to cover, and then tweet a series of web pages, videos, articles, etc. on that topic. Your students could then read your Tweet Paper for the day to get information.

Undoubtedly as you read this blogpost your mind will be jumping to ideas that are relevant and specific to you for trying out Paper.Li. Would love to hear about them!

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