Techie Teacher Talk - 10/27/10 Prezi Workshop

Information on Prezi has been posted earlier in the blog.  Please feel free to contact Phil Cook if you have additional questions on this piece of presentation software.

One Note Brief

Here is a screencast showing what we covered in the TTT presentation. OneNote screencast

Google Forms

Creating a Google form is pretty easy and can be a great way to solicit quick feedback from students to survey their understanding on a particular topic.  This tutorial link goes through the mouse clicks and shows how one teacher uses it in his classroom.

You need a Google account to do this.  To register for Google, click here.

Techie Teacher Talk - 9/29/10 (1:45 - 2:45)

Members of the TSC will introduce techniques teachers can use to encourage collaboration including OneNote, VoiceThread, Edmodo, VoiceThread, and Google Docs/Forms. One Techie Teacher Toy will be raffled off at the presentation for attendees who submit their RSVP.

Attendees from the first two workshops will be asked to evaluate the usefulness of the various techniques presented in these first two sessions; full hour, "hands on" workshops on the most useful techniques or tools will presented in future T3 sessions.

Dropbox and VoiceThread

Both of these tools have exceptional tutorials onsite, but our faculty members can help you get going.  For Dropbox, feel free to ask any member of the technology support committee how to get started with this tool.  For VoiceThread, please contact Josh Pretzer for access information and a list of faculty currently using this powerful collorabtion tool.

Jing for Screen Capture

Jing is a screen capture program that was presented by Chris Carrillo in the first Techie Teacher Talk.  The tool is useful to capture and quickly edit images on your screen or capture video tutorials on your computer.  The Jing website has a wonderful tutorial right next to the download spot to put the program on your computer.  Please feel free to contact Chris if you wish to learn or know more about this great little tool.

ToonDoo

ToonDoo is a cartoon and book creation program that is free and web based. Toondoo will let students create cartoons with drag and drop features and provide a variety of characters to choose from. The simplicity and ease of the program will lend itself to many educational endeavors. I have used this program to have my students create political cartoons.

Here is a quick sample:

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GoAnimate

Create your own cartoons and animations easily using this free tool and you do not need to learn flash. You can do all of this online and then embed your project into your Moodle or web page. GoAnimate makes animations easy and fun for students to use. You can use this program educationally to have students publish their ideas in an animated format, create stories, present information, and many more.

I have used GoAnimate in the classroom for students to create conversations between characters to illustrate different concepts.


Here is a video explaining how to use GoAnimate:







This is a sample project discussing an introduction to running for president.



GoAnimate.com: Running for President by gerberm

This project took 15 minutes to create!

Xtranormal

Xtranormal's mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and Xtranormal believes that everyone can make movies with the help of their web-based program. Xtranormal is a fun program for creating animated shows using cartoon 3-D talking characters. You will need to sign up for a free account, choose your characters, background music, set and voices. You will then just type or cut and paste your script into the program and adjust camera angles and sounds. Some classroom applications would be for students to publish their writing, create a conversation between people, write comedies, create a mini movie about at topic. Teachers can use it to embed into their Moodle or web page to give instructions or a review of a topic. The possibilities are endless and it is very user friendly.

In my American Government class, the students created a conversation between someone who was politically liberal and conservative as an assessment and application of the lesson on political ideology. The students emailed me the link to their Xtrnormal project and we watched and assessed the movies they created in class for accuracy.

This is a sample student project:



The following is a sample of a short movie I created for students to use as a review:

Getting Started with Prezi in the Classroom

For our first Techie Teacher Talk, we presented a PowerPoint alternative called Prezi. The original presentation is embedded below.

An Introduction to Prezi on Prezi

Like any new tool, Prezi takes some getting used to. But the controls are surprisingly simple, and I think that within five minutes of use, anyone can create a useful presentation. Prezi has a wealth of tutorials from basic to advanced on their LEARN page, but if you would like an overview of the basics:

One of the new Prezi features is the ability to have up to 10 people simultaneously work on the same Prezi, called Prezi Meeting. This is useful for small group collaboration, or just web-based online presentation to a group who cannot meet face to face.

For more information on the full features of Prezi, check out http://prezi.com/learn/.

Techie Teacher Talk - 9/22/10

The Technology Support Committee will sponsor the first Techie Teacher Talk (T³) on Wednesday, September 22^nd from 11:20 – 12:20 in the Huffington Library Presentation Room.  Phil Cook, Chris Carrillo, and Matt Gerber will present three fun, easy ways to liven up lessons and student work.  All three were previewed in the faculty presentation – Prezi, a free online presentation tool; Jing, a free screen capture application; and various quick programs for animated digital story telling (Einstein and the Queen, for example).  One Techie Teacher Toy will be raffled off at the presentation for attendees who submit their RSVP by Monday, September 20^th via this link.

Introducing the Technology Support Committee