Using videos to create complete lessons

If you are interested in flipping your classroom (where students watch the lecture at home and do the work in the classroom), you may be assigning videos as homework. There are a number of tools that let you modify your own videos (or videos from YouTube, Khan Academy and lots of other places) to get better information about how students are interacting with and learning from what they're watching. Two easy-to-use tools are EdPuzzle and Zaption. Both let you crop a video, add your voice and embed quizzes at specific parts of the video for student response. You can also view analytics (student quiz results, time spent on the videos, etc.) for each.

With EdPuzzle, you can log in with your GAFE account, and select a video from wherever you want. Then you crop it to use only the part you like. You can add a vocal overlay, or you can add audio notes (like text notes). You can also add as many embedded quizzes as you like, with open-ended questions, multiple choice, or "comments". EdPuzzle also allows you to set up classes (like Google Classroom) where you can see data on who viewed the video and how they did. Students do need to have an account to join a class (but they can also log in with their GAFE accounts). You can see an example here, although you'll need to join my class to participate.

Zaption is another tool with much the same functionality. It looks a lot like Google Drive in its interface, so it feels familiar and is pretty easy to use, but is intended for a broader market (EdPuzzle seems primarily for education). Zaption does have the option to add videos to a single lesson, so you can have multiple clips from different sources in the same lesson, which is very useful if you really want to flip your classrooms It also does not require that students join a class -- they can simply follow a link and enter their names. Here's a Zaption sample.

Both have "pro" features, which are paid accounts that can enhance functionality, but you can do most everything you might want with a free option.  Check them both out and see which works for you! This video below does a great side-by-side comparison of the two tools as well.

Web-based ways to design beautiful posters and infographics

Made with Canva in 15 seconds

One of the benefits (or limitations) of using Chromebooks and mobile devices in the classroom is our reliance on the design tools of MS Office, like brochures in Word or slide shows in PowerPoint. There are well-known web-based options for presentations, like Google Slides and Prezi for presentations, but there are also some great tools for posters, infographics and more.

Piktochart (www.piktochart.com) and Easel.ly (www.easel.ly) lets you create an infographic, report, banner or presentation graphic from a variety of templates. It provides a huge number of shapes, icons, backgrounds and fonts to beautifully customize a poster or document. You can import and display data in various ways and can even connect an infographic to dynamic data (like a Google Form that continues to populate). It's a good alternative to the design features of the Microsoft suite and an addition to the limited design options available in Google Apps for Education.

Canva (http://www.canva.com) is a beautiful and very easy-to-use option for posters, brochures, and other display formats. It also offers design tutorials, with lessons on using color, fonts, images and backgrounds, and even an introduction to branding.

There are Pro options for Piktochart, Easel.ly and Canva, but most of the features in the free versions are plenty for creative presentation of information.

Google Classroom update

For those of you using Google Classroom to manage and respond to students' assignments, there is a new Classroom app for both iOS and Android, which allows students to view class resources and interact with Classroom from their mobile devices. It's also now on the campus Chromebooks.

Check it out on the App Store for Apple devices or on Google Play for Android. You can also learn more from Google here.

If you want to know more about Google Classroom or other tech tools, please contact the library or sign up for a training here.