Google Teacher Academy #1: Accepted! Yay!

New York, October 2012
Guess what! I have been selected to attend the Google Teacher Academy in New York in October 2012! Hooray.y.y.y.y!

The Google Teacher Academy is not really all that well known in South Africa yet, but in countries like the USA, Britain and Australia, teachers who are interested in integrating the curriculum with technology clamour to attend. Just as Microsoft has its popular products and free tools, Google provides very useful programs such as Blogger blogs, Google Forms, Google Chrome with its huge selection of extensions designed to make browsing a dream, and Google Reader as a place to read all the blogs you follow - to name but a few.

So recently, when Google announced their next Teacher Academy in New York I decided to apply so as to find out more about Google. To my delight my application was one of the 50 that were successful!  Since then I have started learning more about Google! For example I hadn’t really got to grips with Google +, but as soon as we were accepted we were joined to a Google + circle to communicate privately with one another (as well as on the Twitter hashtag #GTANY which is more public).  The next exciting thing is that we were put into groups of 6 with a leader. 

Our group leader is Lisa Thumann. The leaders also present sessions at the Academy. Lisa is from Kean University and judging by this photo in Google + she is quite entertaining. She told us that there had been 567 applications for this upcoming Academy.

Another Google application I have recently been introduced to is a Google hangout! The seven of us had a hangout last week to get to know one other before the event and I can see that this is an amazing free future tool to use. 10 people at a time can participate in a video hangout. 

In the hangout Lisa took a snapshot whilst one of the group was sharing information so here it is (thank goodness I wasn’t speaking at the time…)

So once I am back on October 8th I’ll keep you posted in case you would also like to apply for a Google Teacher Academy and experience the rich community and inspiration that accompanies an event like this. Our SchoolNet webmaster has posted a Google press release on our website in case you would like to view it and find out more. http://www.schoolnet.org.za/.

Webtools #27: Discover the benefits of YouTube in the classroom

Recently I have become very aware of the benefits of YouTube for an educator. There are amazing resources for the classroom - one can so easily start making a collection of useful clips that can add spice to your daily lessons.

Here are some ideas:

1. Chop videos using TubeChop
(http://www.tubechop.com/)

Using TubeChop you can cut interesting bits out of a YouTube video and keep the link. (If you wanted to download it you would probaby have to use Screencastomatic to record the clip)
 
2. Use KeepVid to download YouTube movies
 (http://keepvid.com/)

 

KeepVid is amazing for downloading a movie as an MP4 and then renaming it and storing it on your computer. You could go the extra step and use Windows Movie maker to chop the piece that you particularly like and store that clip on your computer.

3. Make your own instructional videos with TED (http://ed.ted.com/videos)

TED has a great service for educators where you can make a video using online material and create a lesson around it.  This is very useful for the flipped classroom approach. 


4. Create a free SchoolTube channel or TeacherTube channel

If you create videos with your class, either a School Tube or Teacher Tube channel will be a great way to you to store all your videos in one online location for easy access.

So, the above-mentioned applications provide just a few ways that you can make YouTube a great classroom resource. Please take a look through the Slideshare below for more detail. Perhaps you know of even more applications or ideas that you can share with us?

Discover you tube from Fiona Beal

A report back on a fantastic TeachMeet held at Somerset House on 29th August 2012

Submitted by Fiona Beal
On Wednesday 29th August at 6pm I made my way to the Helderberg Basin’s second TeachMeet. This was held at the beautiful Cape Dutch style school  Somerset House in Somerset West and I knew I was in for a treat. If you as a teacher have never been to a TeachMeet, please consider it – you come away inspired and enthusiastic and you just want to try EVERYHING that was recommended. 

Teachers appeared from all around Somerset West, ready for an engaging evening. Somerset House always provide a light supper of soup and rolls before the event so that everyone can start networking straight away. So, let me tell how the evening transpired. First of all Siobhan Lowe, the enthusiastic ITC teacher at Somerset Huse welcomed everybody and explained how a TeachMeet works. 

We used the Class Tools random name selector to choose the speakers at random.
http://www.classtools.net/education-games-php/fruit_machine. This always brings an element of fun to the evening.

1) The use of BYOD at Somerset House

Somerset House is a private primary school which has recently embarked on a BYOD (Bring your own device) pilot for technology. The principal, Chris Storey, was very excited about how successfully the pilot is progressing and gave us a report back at the TeachMeet. The BYOD approach is being used at some High Schools around South Africa, but Chris didn’t know of any primary schools to date that are trying this out. The parents and students at the school have responded very favourably to this approach, and there are some interesting plans afoot to make it work even more successfully in 2013. 

Chris Storey also showed a motivational YouTube video called ‘Engage Me’ where pupils from Robin Hood Primary School, Birmingham, worked with a film crew from the National College for School Leadership to express their desire to use their favourite technologies for learning in school. 

2) KeepVid is a marvelous way to download and store useful video clips

Barbara Brear, the librarian at Somerset House, showed us how she uses KeepVid to download YouTube videos for easier viewing, and then she renames them and organises them for easy access. This was a very helpful, practical session. Barbara also proudly showed her latest Grade 4 History projects where there was no evidence of any plagiarim or copy and paste. At Somerset House the students do their projects at school tduring school time.

3) A groupwork lesson on creating an edible version of a plant or animal cell

This presentation was given by Debbie Underwood of Somerset College where she showed the steps of her group lesson on creating an edible version of a plant or animal cell. She played ‘The Biology Song’ which she ad discovered on the Internet, and showed some of the results of the lesson. What a great way to learn about cells!

4) Flippin’ Verbs – using the Flipped Classroom approach

Jenny Martin from Somerset West showed her new way of teaching verbs using the flipped classroom approach. She was amazed at how quickly her students learned and recalled everything about verbs very effectively in one week – something that had taken so much longer using her previous approach. Jenny used Symbaloo, PowerPoint and Popplet among other web tools and the students had to create multimedia presentations to explain verbs. The results were‘verbilicious’. Jenny even interviewed her students who told us that they much preferred this way of learning.

3) Make a weather map using ICT as a resource

This was a Grade 3 Life Skills lesson presented by Karen Bind of Somerset House.

Karen's class learned about weather at the time of the London Olympics so she was able to bring in useful UK information that interested the learners. For example she introduced the lesson using a BBC weather game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/barnabybear/games/weather_report.shtml

Karen was also able to show Prince Charles giving the weather forecast when introducing the section on giving a report back! This was such a fun lesson and I am sure Karen’s students presented great weather reports as a result of it. 

4) Teaching the short story

Michelle Botha is the new Head of Department at Somerset House and demonstrated a lesson she had used at her previous school on teaching the short story using various multimedia. Her students had really enjoyed this lesson and had easily grasped the elements of writing a story especially from a song that Michelle used.

5) Using QR codes in the classroom

Michelle also demonstrated how she uses QR codes effectively at school. She gave a very good summary of the steps on how to get started, but unfortunately I don’t have access to her presentation. 

6) Use Mybrainshark to give voice to your PowerPoints online and create lovely videos

Fiona Beal from SchoolNet talked about her latest find MyBrainshark from http://mbrainshark.com. With this tool you can create the most amazing multimedia videos that contain one or more of the following – Powerpoints, Word and Excel documents, videos, JPEGS etc . You can include voice over and narration. This is a great tool for student projects and also for flipped classroom scenarios. 

7) Twitter, #edchatsa and SchoolnetSA

Siobhan Lowe from Somerset House spoke about three different things:

a) The benefits of using Twitter as a teacher for professional growth

b) The value of joining in the Monday night #edchatsa discussion on Twitter from 8:30pm – 9:30pm.

c) The value of becoming a SchoolNet premium member.

Siobhan said she really feels that SchoolNet has mentored her over the past year and a half, and she urged the teachers present to join as premium members (a free membership) and experience the same benefits. Since I am from SchoolNet this was very encouraging to hear! So if you are reading this please just go to the Schoolnet site http://www.schoolnet.org.za/ and select ‘Sign up for SchoolNet membership’. We’d love it if you joined us!

.

What I loved about the TeachMeet was seeing how teachers are combining good pedagogy with multimedia for a really great classroom experience. 

Well, all too soon it was time to go, but this was an evening well spent among enthusiastic teachers who want to make a difference in education in South Africa. We really thank Somerset House (and Siobhan Lowe) for hosting this inspiring evening and hope they will be hosting more of these in the future. 

Record of tweets at the event 
If you would like to see a record of the tweets for the hashtag #SHttwt from the evening I captured them using Storify.com.  You can view them at this URL:
http://storify.com/fibeal/somerset-house-teachmeet-on-weds-29-august-2012#publicize

Webtools #26: Use Slideshare to share online PowerPoints

Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/) is one of my favourite free programmes. It is a way of easily presenting information online.  It could be really useful if you have a classroom blog or wiki because you could upload all sorts of different information for your class to access at home.  It is also a way for your students to present their information online if they are collaborating with another class. 

Basically, with Slideshare you can upload and share (publicly or privately) PowerPoints or PDFs for online viewing. Slideshare says you can also upload Word Documents but I haven’t tried that yet! To date I mainly use SlideShare for uploading PowerPoints and PDFs that I want to share with others. I see now that file formats that are supported by Slideshare are ppt, pps, pot, pptx, ppsx, potx, OpenOffice, and Keynote. Document formats supported are PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel sheets, OpenOffice files and text files. The maxmum allowed file size is 100 MB. There you have it! I see you can also create Slidecasts using voice but I haven't tried that yet!

SchoolNet’s Slideshare account

To show you what a Slideshare looks like I have given the links to Schoolnet’s Slideshare accounts.  Every time you make a presentation and upload it to your account, your account keeps a record of it. This account tells you a lot about your SlideShares – how many you have uploaded, who is following you, how many downloads and embeds have been made by others etc.

		http://www.slideshare.net/Schoolnetsa11

How to join Slideshare and create a Slideshare presentation

There is a really good video from Teacher Tube called 'Slideshare for teachers'  that seems to give a good explanation about Slideshare. It gives an error message when I embed it, so let me rather give the link.. It can be accessed at: http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=100970&title=Slideshare_for_Teachers

Before you start you need to create a PowerPoint presentation on your topic offline. This can then be converted to a PDF OR it can be uploaded just as it is to SlideShare. I also found this tutorial on YouTube giving a step-by-step approach but haven’t had a chance to evaluate it properly yet.



Why use Slideshare?
I found this Slideshare in Slideshare giving some tips on how it can be used! It lists some exciting uses that I confess I haven't yet tried - but will in the future!

SlideShare 101 from Amit Ranjan

Using Slideshare to include videos

There are many ways to use Slideshare that I haven’t explored yet. One of the things I HAVE used though is combining videos with a SlideShare. This works really well.  In fact, I absolutely LOVE this feature of Slideshare where you can embed YouTube videos within Slideshare instead of having a string of them one under the other on your blog page. One of the ways I did this was to gather a collection of Google tutorials - 12 videos - to see if adding a large amount of videos would work. Well, it was a lengthy affair because I first got all the URLS incorrect. You have to use the URL that shows under the video after clicking on 'Share'. Two of the videos would just not take! So, instead of redoing the whole thing and replacing my Slideshare, I thought that I would post it for now...so you could see the problem that occurs when adding the wrong URL.

http://www.slideshare.net/fionabeal/all-things-google-a-collection-of-tutorials

All things Google - a collection of tutorials from Fiona Beal

Uses of SlideShare for teachers

1. Have you ever plugged your flash drive into a laptop, opened a PowerPoint presentation and it doesn't work? Have your students ever done the same thing and then been relieved that they can get out of presenting? Well, if your PowerPoint is uploaded to Slideshare you’ll never have that problem! Before I give a Conference presentation or do a workshop at a school I upload the PowerPoint to Slideshare and then refer everyone to it afterwards in case they would like to have access to it.
2. Have you ever wanted to embed your PowerPoint slides on a wiki to share with students and parents? You can do that so easily with Slideshare.

3. You could have your lesson planned and outlined on Slideshare and as you go through it your video clips and even your Screencasts (if it was a technology linked lesson) could be right there. If this was placed on your classroom blog the students could access it that evening to review.

4. Your students can use this site to communicate with different audiences around the world.  Slideshare allows students to share their work, view other students’ work and make comments.

5. The Slideshare site is a treasure chest of resources for teachers to use since presentations on many different topics can be found using their search feature. There is an Education category in Slideshare where you can view the most popular shared education slideshares.

6. This is an interesting Slideshare shown below. (It is actually given on Authorstream which is another way of presenting PowerPoints but it allows voice in its paid version). This teacher is setting a Slideshare presentation task to his students using his voice as well. Take a listen.

Slideshare Lesson Final Draft

More PowerPoint presentations from cory plough

Try opening a Slideshare account and upload a PowerPoint or a different type of document to it to see what happens!  I am sure you'll start to love using Slideshare.
*Please share your link with me!

Create a Prezi

What is a Prezi?

Prezi is another presentation tool that is fascinating to use.You will find Prezi at http://prezi.com. It is a zooming digital presentation editor that holds the attention of students possibly more than would a PowerPoint.  (Last week I attended a primary school ‘Technology Show’ at Micklefield Primary – totally amazing! One grade demonstrated the use of Prezi and their comment was that they think ALL the teachers should use Prezi!) With Prezi you can type text, embed pictures, and insert video in very creative ways! I doubt if anyone would fall asleep during a Prezi demonstration!.  Because it's web based, Prezi can be created and shown on any computer with web access. If there is no web access available during your presentation, a downloadable version can be obtained to show offline anywhere. No other software is needed, not even flash!

How does Prezi compare to PowerPoint?

Prezi differs from PowerPoint in that it is a web-based program that allows you to create more of a canvas presentation instead of a sequential slide presentation. You have to think non-linear! It allows you to incorporate text and pictures,  videos and other presentation objects which is what PowerPoint does as well. You can create your presentation online and then download the final product so that you don’t require an internet connection to display the presentation.

Examples of prezis

This example is from Martin Burrett in England who presented his TeachMeet presentation on useful classroom tools using a Prezi.

TeachMeet Cambridge on Prezi

Where does one start?

1. Get to know Prezi terminology

Copy of Techguru Project on Prezi

2. Let’s start by viewing a step by step tutorial on YouTube

http://youtu.be/MAloWJiCQ-o


3. If you find you learn best from videos there’s a lovely site called ‘Undertenminutes’ and he has two excellent  videos on how he introduced Prezi at his school.
http://www.undertenminutes.com/?p=173

What else can you do with a Prezi?

You can download your completed as a PDF. Use the “Print” option in the middle of the editor screen to create handouts for your audience. In PreziDesktop, there is a "print" option in your window menu bar as well under “File”. When you click Print, your prezi will be converted to a PDF document, where every path step will be one document page. The exported PDF will also include an overview page of your whole prezi.

Classroom ideas

1. This Prezi puts forward a case for using Prezi. I like the way he adds YouTube videos in his Prezi.

The 21st Century Learner and Prezis. on Prezi

2. Make a group presentation on a project.

3. Prezi could be used as a getting to know you tool. Students could write their first name and tell us about themselves and their family. There are numerous charts (timelines, flow charts, etc.) that could be utilized in the content areas as well.”

4. Here is a Prezi giving some thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool.
http://prezi.com/rfsnedhqmhqa/thoughts-on-using-prezi-as-a-teaching-tool/

5. This is a presentation in Google Docs showing 17 interesting ways of using Prezi in the classroom. Unfortunately this doesn't give an embed code, but just click on the link to get to the original. 
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_238djxmbfhd



6. Other ways to use Prezi
a) Zoom into details of a picture
b) A way of embedding a number of relevant YouTube videos
c) You could build up a Prezi over the duration of a topic
d) Use a Prezi as a mind map
e) You could us a Prezi to learn vocabulary
f) You could use a  Prezi to share information in a global class project

Optional task

Make a Prezi and share the link with me
 
Further Reading
1. http://www.emergingedtech.com/2012/01/teachers-recommendations-for-academic-uses-of-5-fun-free-presentation-tools/
2. http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/02/prezi.html#.UDlh9NbiZSg
3. Here are some prezis that one could re-use and just add one’s own information. http://prezi.com/learn/selection-great-reusable-prezis/
4. http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/20/prezi-is-the-coolest-online-presentation-tool-ive-ever-seen/
5. http://prezi.com/ystpnaz3oiom/copy-of-techguru-project/