Need A Geography Project?

An elementary teacher asked me today about how to make a travel video (with arrows flying across the map and everything) on her pc like  Apple's iPhoto will do on her Macbook.  The question threw me back three years to a Discovery Education Network institute I attended in Boston.  My group wanted to create a video that included all of our home towns, some state facts, and we had little time to do it.

Enter TripWow.  Officially found at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com , TripWow is incredibly easy to use.  Just upload photos and tag each one with the city it was taken. You can rearrange them, add captions to them, and even choose music other than the automatically geographically-centric music that plays during the show.

I sat down and in ten minutes made the video below. Super easy!

Our Field Trip to Mexico And Beyond Slideshow: Mrmartinsclass’s trip from Austin, Texas, United States to 4 cities Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Panama City and Amazon River was created by TripAdvisor. See another Mexico slideshow. Create your own stunning free slideshow from your travel photos.

Extensions?  All of my photos were taken from the Creative Commons in Flicker. I should cite each individual picture, but the Creative Commons exists for people to share and use photos in this community. There are over 35 million photos there and you are free to use them in the classroom!  Search the Commons for countries or historical locations to put into your geography trip.

What a great way to show Coronado's trip across North America, the Oregon Trail, or supplement a Google Lit Trip with a video about the places the character traveled.   How would you use this?

hm

Need A Teacher Webpage?

A teacher's webpage can be used in many different ways.  The website can be used to communicate with parents, a classroom environment for the students, or a project pace that the class could share with another class at any other school.   The historical problem with teacher webpages is that creating and maintaining the webpage could be a daunting adventure requiring special software and knowledge of internet publishing.

In Austin, teachers were given a webpage tool that was fully supported by the district. These teacher webpages were simple, but integrated into the district's network so that the creation was mostly content creation and not website creation.  Instructional Technology staff have been training campuses for a couple of years now and training is still available from the old IT wiki:

AISD Teacher Webpage Setups - From the Great and Wonderful Susan Monahan

          The pages below, but on their own page:  Teacher Webpages
          Page, Properties, and Photo   1_prop_photo.pdf
          Handouts  2_tchwebpage_handouts.pdf
           Calendar  3_tchwebpage_calendar.pdf 
           News  4_tchwebpage_news.pdf
           Links  5_tchwebpage_links.pdf
           FAQ's  6_tchwebpage_faq.pdf
           Add a Page  7_tchwebpage_addpage.pdf

The New Alternative - Google Sites

When the district adopted the use of Google Apps, we were able to include the use of Google Sites as a district-supported website creation tool.  Teachers can find the Google Sites resource by going to the AISD Cloud, opening Google Apps (AISD - Start - Collaboration - Google Apps) and clicking the white 'Sites' link at the top of the page.

Google Sites not only provides a very customizable website location, but also provides many templates for education webpages.  The templates are pre-formatted for classrooms, after school activities, or just teacher communication sites.  Once you understand the editing process, you can quickly update the content without every having to do any design work.

AISD teachers can sign up for summer training on Google Sites through the eCampus professional development catalog. There will be a full day training offered that will get almost any teacher up and running before the end of the day.

For the self-starters or independent-level technology users, Google has provided many resources for educators to use to help create their functional website.  One resource, http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-5-sites   is the classroom component for some online Google courses.  Self-starters should be able to use this site to create their own Google Site.

There is much one can do to customize Google Sites, including embedding web content from other sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or Flickr.com. The site can have multiple pages and a teacher can assign edit rights to specific pages to specific teachers or students with AISD usernames.

Do you have a Google Site already?   Comment below and share your site address so we can share in your success!

hm

AISD Technology Refresh Support

AISD has been working with campuses in providing refresh technology that will replace some of the old, end-of-life technology that is currently on campuses.  Training videos have been created and have been placed on a website along with other online support resources.  Please share this with your campus.

https://sites.google.com/a/austinisd.org/techtraining/

On this site, you will find introductory videos as well as training videos for the new Apple iMac, Asus netbook, iPad2, Lenovo Android tablet, and Manda Pro all-in-one desktop computer.

Easy Publishing - Posterous.com

One of the hassles of putting your work on a website is learning how to set it up and then having to go to the site to post on it.  There are some great tools out there to minimize the hassles, like the blogs out there that let you update your posts just by sending an email. Well, Posterous.com goes one step farther, er, or easier.

I've had a Posterous account for a number of years and missed one major advantage to Posterous.  The first-time user can start their Posterous account, simply by emailing posterous@posterous.com from the email account they wish to use.  The resulting reply email has already begun the setup process and you are technically a couple of click away from immediate posting!  The video below gives a great demo for Posterous.



Once it is setup, you can simply email your text, picture, document, or video to your Posterous email account and it will get published on your site.  You can still edit and manage the post from your Posterous management page, but you don't have to.

Also, cross-posting is a breeze.  Posterous allows you to connect to your blogs, Twitter, or Facebook accounts and auto post to them from your single Posterous posting. Very easy!

Why Posterous for the classroom? Your main Posterous webpage is organized as a blog. You could have the student of the week send an email at the end (or beginning) of the day to post the day's agenda or assignment list. Since you can post via email, sharing iPad creations via an app's Share via Email options can make sharing iPad products easy without having to setup network printing or filesharing on the iPads.

How would YOU use Posterous in the classroom?  Would love to hear from you.

Make Your QR Code Talk To You!

QR codes are pretty popular these days and I've already posted a couple of times about it.  This time I'm sharing a website that you can use to make your QR Code TALK TO YOU!

First of all, why?   A number of my schools have said that they are using QR codes in scavenger hunts around the school.  What if your students are English Language Learners or early readers?  When the students get to the answer spot and hit the QR code, this time the code will congratulate them on their correct answer and give them there next direction. 

scan this with your mobile camera!

This is incredibly hard for the teachers.   You have to go to http://qrvoice.net/ and type your short sentence in the blank.  Click the small barcode enter button and you get your new barcode.    That's it!

Copy and your post QR codes for the students to scan.  On my Android phone, I did have to click 'browse' once the code was scanned and then click 'execute' to hear the voice.  My iPad played it right after scanning once.

How would you use this in your classroom?