Google Workflow on the iPad

image courtesy of Flickr At the Google Mini-Conference on Saturday, video production teacher Shira Park and I presented on Google Workflow for the iPad. With our district jumping on the GAFE bandwagon, many teachers are now knee deep in using Google apps with their students. There are many ways of handling the workflow of passing out assignments and collecting work from the students. We presented...

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Let YouTube rock your classroom

Today I joined Karl Gustafson (@lvmachead) to present at the CCSD Google mini-conference at Roy Martin MS. Our topic was using YouTube in the Classroom. Our goal was to share practical ways to use videos to engage students. We also shared ways to find videos and collect them in playlists for easy access I've embedded the presentation below. The presentation is mostly for resources to use back in...

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7 ways to use YouTube in the classroom

YouTube currently has over one billion users, with those users watching over six billion hours of video each month. 300 hours worth of new video is uploaded every minute. It's estimated that the average time spent on a session by mobile YouTube users is 40 minutes. (source) That's a lot of video time! Clearly video is a big thing and isn't going away soon.  How can teachers harness the power...

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Search YouTube like a boss!

With over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube is a rich source of video any teacher can use in their classroom. Subtract all the cat videos and you've still got a sizeable chunk of video to sift through to find the perfect one for your class. Luckily, YouTube provides some search filters to help you narrow down those search results. Playlists and channels are great ways to curate...

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Blogging with Blogger

Blogger is Google’s free blogging platform. It is included with any Google account. Blogs are created at blogger.com and hosted at blogspot.com. Students can use blogs to share thoughts, opinions, keep a digital portfolio, and participate in a variety of writing activities. There are many benefits to having students blog, as I've discussed here and here. Kidblog is my all time favorite platform...

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Engage your students with a YouTube playlist

image courtesy of Literary Fusions YouTube has a ton of great videos that can be used in the classroom. Videos can be used to spark discussion, model a concept, hook students, provide real world context, or make lessons more engaging for visual learners. Finding and bookmarking all those great individual videos can be time consuming. Luckily, YouTube has an easy way of curating all those videos...

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Why you should subscribe to YouTube channels

image courtesy Hypebot YouTube lets you watch a variety of videos on practically any topic imaginable. Many users produce a whole series of videos on a particular topic. This series of of videos is called a channel. A channel on YouTube is the home page for an account. It shows the public videos that person has uploaded. Personally I have become interested in woodworking and successfully taught...

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Maker Movement: Bring it on!

image from Mrs. Wideen's blog The Maker Movement seems to be all the rage in education. I've read about it in my Twitter feed and seen many articles about it in Feedly. I've always been drawn to the philosophy of "learning by doing". It drives my teaching and presenting. I feel that hands on lessons and workshops are far more beneficial than "sit and get". I get the Maker Movement and I'm glad...

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