Show Me!

Many of  you are familiar with the ipad app, Show Me.  This allows users to record their voice over while also recording actions on a whiteboard.  It's a great way to record lessons or think-alouds by students.

Even without an ipad, you can benefit from Show Me.  Check out showme.com and find a collection of recorded lessons in a variety of topics from basic number sense to advance physics.  Sometimes it just helps to have another voice in your classroom to help explain things, or to allow students to review a concept.

Have any of you used showme.com videos at the point of instruction?

Helping out others with technology

Ever thought to yourself "I really wish that I could support my friends/colleagues/parents in using technology", but know that you don't have time to walk them through every detail on how to perform certain tasks (ie. copy & pasting). Well, you're in luck. With Google's Teach Parents Tech, you can now take a very few minutes to send helpful videos to walk them through a wide variety of tasks from changing your screensaver to re-sizing pictures.

Ted Ed - Add Your Voice!

Many teachers already make powerful use of TED Talks as an educational tool in their classrooms. TED's mission is to offer riveting talks, by riveting people, free to the world!  TED started as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The two annual TED conferences, in bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). 

TED is now in the process of creating TED Ed, which is intended to capture and animate the voices of great educators from around the world.  Visit TED Ed to learn more, see some initial lessons that have been created, and possibly submit a proposal to have your best lessons added and animated for TED Ed. 

Have Your Students Create Websites

Weebly for Education is a great online tool, which you can use to allow your students to create websites about any topic they've been researching.  Much like Bit Strips, Weebly for Education allows teachers to create student accounts and manage permission levels.  Students do not require an email address, and do not have to create their own accounts.

Once you have created student accounts (a 2 minute task for a class of 25) and provided your students with their login information, students can access their account at http://students.weebly.com/.  Here, students can create visually appealing websites in an extremely easy to use, drag and drop interface.  Students can add up to 5 pages on their website (unlimited pages if you upgrade to Weebly Pro), upload pictures and files, embed flash video files, and more!

Have students demonstrate their learning by creating and publishing their own website using Weebly!