Beyond Youtube: Video Resources for Education

Youtube is a great go-to for videos covering pretty much anything, but it isn't the only collection out there that might be of interest for the classroom. Below are a few more video options for when Youtube yields nothing useful. These are great resources for flipping the classroom, self-access or simply explaining a concept as part of a lesson.

"We believe that everyone should have the same opportunity to learn. The best way to make this possible, we believe, is to organize into one, super directory the hundreds of thousands of good videos currently available on the Internet. To make this a reality, we invite teachers, instructors and educators to suggest videos for inclusion into our directory, and then to review, approve, and assign those videos into appropriate categories using a wiki framework and philosophy. The videos are the highest quality found on the World Wide Web, cover all major educational topics from elementary to secondary schools (or age range 1 – 18), and are Kid Safe!"

-WatchKnowLearn.org

Click here

"Classroom Clips allows users to search and explore a wide range of educational content which has been correlated to the Virginia Standards of Learning. Featuring many locally produced programs, users are able to stream video and audio clips on topics such as history, government, science, and art."

-ClassroomClips.org

Click here

The Science and Education section of ehow.co.uk - also available at ehow.com - has videos (and articles) covering a range of topics from how to write a literary essay to how to make a model volcano.

Click here

There are many more sites that offer at least some video content among their resources, but these are the top 3 I've found for consistently yielding useful results. Hope you find them useful too!

Lunapic: Online Image Editor

Lunapic is a product I came across when trying to find a way to remove the white background for images I want to place on my sites containing lessons. Often, I use coloured backgrounds and the usual white filler is visually unattractive. Step in Lunapic. It performs a myriad of tasks to edit an image, but the one I bookmarked it for was the ability to make backgrounds transparent.


Integration: 

• Use Lunapic to brighten up your own learning sites
• Learners can use Lunapic to enhance presentation of tasks they complete, particularly if they are for the public domain

LogoTypeMaker: Create custom logos

LogoTypeMaker makes it very easy to create your own logo. It's as simple as entering your brand name, and waiting a few seconds while it generates a selection of different logos, rather than just one.
I came across this while researching resources for an Apprentice unit that I'll be doing with my learners soon. This will give them the opportunity to create their own brand visual for use in their pitches and presentations. Here's one I created in less than 30 seconds.

Thinglink: 27+ Interesting Ways to Use

A while back I posted about a gadget for emebedding Thinglink into a Google Site. Today, I came across this great presentation that offers up 27+ ways to use Thinglink in the classroom. It has been produced under a Creative Commons licence so anyone is free to add to the ideas. Have a look and be inspired.

Instagrok: A 'Wow!' Search Engine for Education

There are a lot of organisations releasing ways to interrogate the web, but Instagrok is an immediate game-changer in the educational search-engine world. Not only does it generate multimedia results on one page - including the usual videos and images, but also the less usual key facts, quizzes and related concepts - but you can also use the on-screen slider to adjust the difficulty level of the results displayed. This means you can access the basic to the erudite without having to do anything more than dragging your mouse.

Among the other useful features is the ability to register and add findings to your Instagrok journal which you can supplement with other information. Teachers can create accounts for their classes to track what is being researched and pinned: great for monitoring to determine where support is needed.

For a full overview of features, take a look at Instagrok's PDF brochure or watch the video below:

Integration:

This, along with Sweetsearch and Kidrex, offers a guided route through the web to school learners making research a whole lot simpler and more likely to yield useful results.

Geonames: Find Yourself on the Map!

Geonames is an interesting little site where you can type in your name to see if there are any places in the world called the same. I tried it and was surprised to find 6 places called Abena, including one in Spain.

When considering the educational value of this service, I though it might be an nice way to get learners exploring a range of possibilities. Rather than spinning a globe and pointing a finger, this could be an engaging way of launching a topic. It could be used as part of a research project, a writing prompt, a starting point for exploring any data on landscapes, populations or anything else that is to be the subject of study.

Research Reliability

Here's a video you might want to show your learners about the need to cross-check results from search engines and collaborative encyclopedias before taking it as fact. It could be used as a jumping off point for discussing effective research skills, as well as how search engines actually work on popularity rather than reliability.

Zac Browser for Autism

"Over the past 3 years, Zac Browser has helped over 2.5 million children from around the world with autism by providing a free software solution filled with activities and videos." 

Watch the 5-minute introduction to see if you could make use of, or contribute to, the Zac Browser project.

NB Unfortunately, Zac Browser is only currently available for PC, but a Mac release is coming in July. In the meantime, you might like to try out ZacPicto, the "virtual assistant for people with autism."

Tagul and Tagxedo Word Clouds

Wordle is well-known for good reason, but these two alternatives are well worth exploring too if you want more image options (with apologies for not blogging about them sooner).

Tagxedo allows you to create word clouds which form a recognisable image. Here's an example of a Michael Jackson Tagxedo. The resulting words are not clickable but the range of images and customisability is why you might choose it over other options. You can find 101 ways to use Tagxedo here.

Tagul offers a similar service to Wordle although each tag is connected to a url, so you can click on words to carry out a Google search on that term. If you'd like the word to point to a different site, this is an adaptation you can carry out on the site. Here's an example (image only) below. 

Get More out of Google

A conversation with some of my learners surprised me as I learned that they had zero knowledge of search operators, even the most basic ones such as '+' and '-' preceding search terms. Coincidentally, this infographic on searching effectively came to my attention via a NY Times lesson plan on research the same day.

If you want to create a display using the infographic, you may have to fiddle with your page settings to prevent split text, but this one's certainly worth going through with your classes, even if only to make them aware that operators and Google Scholar exist.

Google provide the html to easily display the infographic on your site, so it could be published to your library's or subject's VLE, wiki or blog page for future reference.

Although Google has produced the infographic, the operators will work with many other search engines too.

Created by: HackCollege

Stay Focused - Bye to distractions

This week, one of my learners asked me in her blog how she could self-manage her tendency to go onto sites such as Facebook when sitting down to do some work. It reminded me of an extension I'd read about a while back called Stay Focused. For those using Chrome as a browser (and why would you use anything else?), you can set time limits for particular websites and once the time has elapsed you will not be able to return to that site until the following day. The settings in Stay Focused can be customised so you can wean yourself off hours wasted on social networking or gaming sites.

The great thing about Stay Focused is it allows learners to set their own limits, thereby increasing their independence. If they're mature enough to realise they have a problem, why not give them the tool to sort it out, rather than resorting to teacher or parent monitoring?

Pace Recorder

Pace Recorder is an Android app that allows you to record yourself speaking. There are icons of a rabbit, a turtle and two thumbs up to indicate whether you are speaking too slowly, too quickly or at a reasonable pace for your listeners. A useful tool for teachers and learners to measure the appropriacy of their pace for presenting to an audience.

Here's a one-minute introduction:

Integration:

• Learners who have issues with speaking too quickly or slowly would benefit from using this tool as a visual reminder of hitting the right pace

Next Up Scheduler

NextUp is a handy little tool. It allows you to enter a number of activities with a time limit for each. When you're ready, it displays the first activity and counts it down, then starts the next until they're all done.

Integration:

• I used this with one of my groups for learning stations; I set them a 7-minute slot for each activity with a 30-second transition time in between, leaving me free to circulate and support instead of constantly resetting the timer.
• It could be useful for examination preparation in getting learners used to the amount of time they should spend on a question or section.
• Use NextUp to set the pace for different stages of an activity to keep learners focused and reduce time wasting.

TodaysMeet Backchannel

Sometimes it does take a bit of time for things to filter through, no matter how many times I read them on the numerous blogs I subscribe to. Backchanneling tools definitely come under this category. If it's news to you here's an overview from TodaysMeet:

What finally convinced me to sit up and take notice of this resource was witnessing its use in an inspiring lesson where learners were watching a film and using TodaysMeet to express their thoughts and ask and respond to queries. The teacher was following the stream and was able to feed in comments to alert them to important upcoming sections that they should pay particular attention to or things to listen/watch out for. 

TodaysMeet was the tool of choice, and although there are alternatives (for example Twitter or Google Moderator could be used in a similar way) it's the very simple, no-signup, streamlined interface that lends its appeal. Furthermore, transcripts of the backchannel can be saved as a pdf for future reference. 

Each new topic is assigned a unique url and the backchannel remains open for up to a year.

Typing Skills

I remember the days of a a a a progressing to as as as as so here's another post worthy of re-blogging.  This one features several tools for improving typing including some fun games. After all, if our learners are word-processing on a regular basis, they really could do with some resources to help them with their typing speed and accuracy, right?

View the post here.

Obooko - Free Books!

Obooko is an award-winning site for downloading free books in a wide range of genres spanning fiction and non-fiction. All books are copy-free and various formats are available for e-readers including pdf, mobi and ePub. Anyone is free to upload their books so there is a huge number, constantly growing.

Integration:

• Learners can access many useful books to supplement their studies from literary analyses to historical guides and insights from Buddhism to Nostradamus
• Ambitious writers can produce and submit their own books; alternatively groups could collaborate to produce a collection of shorter writings for a real audience

Oolone

Oolone is a search engine that provides results as a preview of the pages it finds. It gives a very clear shot of each page with a title at the top. Below are the results of a search for 'persuasive language' so you can judge the results for yourself. If you hover your mouse over any of the screenshots on Oolone, it will enlarge them so you can even read the text before deciding if it is worth clicking through. Wanring: unlike some other search engines, it won't make a guess at what you might mean with misspellings, so make sure you've typed what you want to find accurately. 

Integration:
The visual presentation of results, with descriptions, can speed up locating the type of information you are looking for as you don't have to open each result to see what it contains; great for any type of research, project work and good even for looking up definitions of words.

The Printliminator - Print only what you need!

The Printliminator BETA

The Printliminator is a bookmarklet with some simple tools you can use to makes websites print better. One click to activate, and then click to remove elements from the page, remove graphics, and apply better print styling. Here is the bookmarklet:

Printliminator < drag to your bookmarks bar

Quick Video Demo

Credits

By Chris Coyier and Devon Govett. Icons by Function. Print stylesheet based on Hartija.

Digital Storytelling Kit

This free digital storytelling kit from tech4learning.com is available for immediate download and includes articles, examples and lesson plans. The articles are surprisingly convincing in describing how digital storytelling can really improve narratives. As mentioned, lesson plans are provided but there are lots more ideas to be inspired if you take the time to read through the (not very long) articles. The whole kit opens a world of possibilities across the curriculum so certainly worth the 2 minutes it takes to get the materials.

You might also like to have a look at the document below compiled by Richard Byrne of the excellent Freeteach4teachers.com.

10 Digital Storytelling Projects

Crocodoc Document / Website Markup

Crocodoc allows users to upload documents and then "share and review" online. Collaborators can be invited to view and edit the document (or a webpage) with the original user and, if privacy is an issue, they can also be password protected. Documents can also be embedded in blogs, websites and wikis.
Another advantage of the service is the ability to fill out pdf forms online as you can simply write over the document to complete it.
The video below gives an overview of the service.

Integration:

• Crocodoc can be used to provide feedback on assignments; classmates can be invited to provide feedback on each others' work from a distance
• Rather than printing and annotating articles, learners can use Crocodoc to mark it up digitally and then store a version on their computer or online
• Teachers can provide guidance via the annotation and highlighting tools before sharing webpages; great for differentiation where some learners may need information to be more easily located
• The strikeout tool is useful for practising the art of abbreviation and note-taking by crossing out superfluous text and using the highlighter to identify key information; as this can be done collaboratively, learners can share and compare their attempts to support one another