Downloading Vidoes

Need a YouTube video but don't want all the advertisements? Do you want to show a video but you are afraid that you might loose your internet connection? Then use ClipGrab to save your YouTube video to your computer free of advertisements.

ClipGrab http://clipgrab.org/.

Make a Jeopardy Template with Google Slides

Here is the link to a great post by Kevin Zahner that walks you through the process of making a Jeopardy game using Google Slides.

http://learning.zahnerhistory.com/2016/02/make-jeopardy-template-with-google.html

Adios, Picasa!

From "The Gooru"  02/15/16

Picasa, the Google photo organization and storage app, is being retired on March 15, 2016. In an announcement from the Picasa Blog, the Picasa team describes their reasoning for “moving on from Picasa.” In an effort to unite all photo entities, Google is focusing their photo services in Google Photos. Google Photos was launched last May. The free service provides unlimited storage for photos and video files.

The good news for Picasa users is that your photos from Picasa Web Album are already located on Google Photos. In Google Photos, you can access your previously uploaded images and continue to use Google to store, share, and organize your memories. Access to your tags, comments, or captions in your existing Picasa Web Albums are available through May 1, 2016. The storage for Picasa Web Albums will be determined once May rolls around.

For more information on the upcoming changes, visit the Picasa Blog, and to learn more about Google Photos, here is your personal guide.

Tackk.com for Digital Projects or Student Portfolios

If you are looking for a free, easy way to share content with students, parents or other teachers, you should check out Tackk.com.  Tackk is a free digital creation platform where teachers and students can create, collaborate and share content to support in-classroom learning.

If you use Tackk with students, they will be able to:

• Create digital pages, online reports and assignments building their school portfolio
• Create a Tackkboard that includes text, photos, video, audio, maps and links
• Collaborate and communicate with the teacher and other classmates
• Keep track of project details and share creative work
• Access Tackk from any computer or mobile device with Internet capabilities and receive notification reminders via email (if of age)

The only information required from students to set up a Tackk account is their name, email and a username and password, or Google or Edmodo login info. For students in grades without Google login info, a teacher could set up classroom Tackks under their account for their students’ use.

Another way to use Tackk is to create digital portfolios for your students.  I have created a Tackkboard for each of my students and I’m using them as their writing portfolios.  At the beginning and end of each writing unit, I scan their pre and post assessments and saved them in on my Google Drive.  For each assessment I created a button on each student’s Tackkboard that included the link to that document on my Drive.  Now I have a digital writing portfolios that I can share with students, parents, current year teachers (ELL, Reading Support, Special Education) and next year’s teachers too!  I was able to set up privacy settings on each Tackkhoard so that it is password protected so it restricts public access on the internet.  

Check out these photos of my students’ digital writing portfolios…

Teacher Tackkboard with student individual Tackkboard portfolios:

Here is an example of a Student Tackkboard being used as a digital writing portfolio.  If you click on a button you are brought to the scanned image of the student’s writing.

Tackk can be used in so many ways!  If you want to try it out and you have questions, I’m happy to help!

FREE Online Poster Tool

Have you discovered the free online poster making website Canva? It is similar to Glogster, but without having students create an account. It is a useful classroom tool when you are looking for students to create a poster-like project. There are paid choices that students need to be careful not to select. One way around this was when students did select these in their poster we ended up taking a screenshot of the final product and printing it. This is only useful when you are not including interactive features.

Check it out: www.canva.com Sample Project: Fifth graders were asked to create a poster of an early colonist living in one the original 13 colonies looking to fill jobs in their colony. They needed to include the skills needed to perform the job and who they would trade their goods with:

MORE FREE STUFF! 

 Sign up for a Boston Pubic Library E-Card  http://www.bpl.org/general/circulation/ecards.htm and instantly borrow free digital movies, music, eBooks and more, 24/7 from HOOPLA!   

 

The Gale In Context Databases are synced to Google Classroom!

Below are a couple of great videos that demonstrates how to quickly send selected articles and documents from Gale databases to Google Classroom to use with your students and how to save articles and documents to your Google Drive for later use.