Innovation 4 Everyone

I recently began exploring the different features that YouTube offers to edit your videos. They are so easy to use and so helpful! This is the first of a series of 3 blog posts related to YouTube Editing.   Basic Editing Steps: Log in to your Google Account. Yes, YouTube is another Google App! Upload video. You can also record right there or upload images as a slideshow.  Now you're ready to edit. Go to the Video Manager button and look for the Enhancements option in the pull down menu, next to " E dit". Look for the following options and don't be afraid to try them out. I suggest you upload a video just for testing purposes. A very helpful feature is the split window where you can see the original clip on one side and a preview with the changes you're making.   Enhancements: Autofix Stabilize Trim Rotate Revert to Original Fine tune lighting and color Additional Features : Blur all faces (cannot revert) Save/Save As Some things to k...

Can you visualize a long list of words or a long piece of text?  Can you grasp the main idea of a paragraph, with one quick look? Can you tell how many times does the same word appear, with a simple glance? Not that easy, huh? Well, all these tasks become very easy with the help of word clouds. A word cloud is a cluster of words, with a variety of design elements that will make it more attractive. A special characteristic is that the words that are repeated the most will appear larger than the rest. Word clouds can be generated from different sources: a list of words, text or paragraphs, a URL, poems, the contents of a blog, your Twitter feed, and more! Imagine, as a teacher, you'd like to know what three words come to your students' mind when they think of something, let's say "Electricity". You could create a list on the whiteboard, have them hand in papers, or...create a Google form, have the students enter the 3 words, and when all are entered, copy-pa...

At this time I'm going to review another very useful iPad app I've been using. It's the Wireless Transfer App .   With this app it is so easy to wirelessly transfer videos and photos from iPad to iPad, Computer to iPad and iPad to Computer. I'm talking about iPads because that's what I use at school and for myself, but instead of an iPad you can do it with an iPhone, iPod, or between any two iDevices. Works for both PCs and Macs too. Are you frustrated trying to send a video that is too big to be emailed? Don't want to mess with accounts and upload to YouTube? Don't worry about that anymore, with Wireless Transfer you can transfer large videos in a cinch! Get star ted: Purchase the app for only 2.99 USD. Tap on "Send" or "Receive".  Select which device to send to : "Computer" or "iPad". For " Computer ", you will be given a URL.  That's all you nee d! Enter the URL ...

I am very excited to share with you an iPad app that I've been trying out. The app I'm referring to is called " Google Search ". It brings the power of Google to your fingertips...literally!    Google Search is a free app that you can find in the iTunes store , yet so powerful. Let me show you br iefly how it works. After you open the app, you will find some options to choose from:   What I use the most is "Apps", which looks like this...   I basically use "Calendar", which shows your daily agenda, and "Docs", which gives you the mobile view of your docs. Cool so far! But wait... The amazing options I'm so excited about that I've been trying out are "Voice" and "Goggles". With Voice you can speak and enter a search query. Here's a video that demonstrates this.   ...

In our school, the students at the Elementary Campus pledge to follow the Eagle Way and be an example to others and to themselves. The Eagle Way is: Be Responsible, Be Respectful, Be Caring, Be Honest, and Be a Thinker. This applies to all aspects of the student's life.  Having a strong technology program at school, I was curious to know what an Eagle would look like in terms of technology. After talking it through with a few colleagues, they suggested I should ask the kids. Great idea! So I prepared a Google Form and sent it to the Technology teachers so they could apply the survey during Tech Class. Wow! I received hundreds of answers from PK - 5th grade! Awesome! I read through all the replies and narrowed their suggestions down to 5 main ideas for each of the Eagle Way attributes. Now we can see how a Digital Eagle Way can be an example to others. To provide a visual, I created a word cloud with all the words in their replies. Be responsible: Go to w...

Greetings ! Would you like to be able to find many ideas on how to integrate technology to your daily lesson plans and target various instructional strategies, all in one single place ? How? Keep reading... As part of my Action Plan, that followed to my attendance to the Google Teacher Academy MTV12, I proposed a project in which the idea is to create a toolbox for teachers with resources, provided by teachers, in which technology supports the GANAG lesson schema, created by Jane E. Pollock and the 9 high yield instructional strategies, by Marzano, Pickering and Pollock. If you're not familiar with this lesson design and strategies, visit this li nk and the ones included below to learn more.  Project Description: To create a database that will provide ideas, tools, and examples on how to integrate technology to each of the steps in the GANAG lesson schema and the 9 high yield Instructional strategies ( Classroom Instruction that Works, Marzano, Pickering...

Last week, fourth grade students started working on a project about Native Americans. They will create an exhibit of the different tribes that includes artifacts, pictures, posters, and QR codes. Parents will be invited, along with other teachers. The kids are so excited preparing for this special day! What is new to the kids is what is a QR code, how to create one and what to do with it. Well, QR code stands for Quick Response code. It works in a similar way as barcodes do. In this case, the image is a matrix that shows an arrangement of squares.  A QR code contains information. It could be a URL, text, a telephone number, etc. In order to "read" a QR code, you will need a QR scanner. There are apps you can download to your mobile device and easily read these codes. The iPad app we use at school is called " Scan ". There are two QR code generators I suggest using : QR Stuff In this application, you ...