3 Screen Sharing and Narration Tools for Teachers and Students

I find it really easy to learn tasks from a good video tutorial whether it be a youtube video on how to renovate a  house or narrated screen tutorial of how to do complex tasks in Photoshop.  I found these three tools on Edutecher another great resource for web 2.0  tools that you and your students can use to better explain how to do something on the web or desktop.

Bounce is a simple, yet powerful, Webtool that allows teachers and students to take a screenshot of any website and then annotate it simply by dragging a box around any portion of the screen. The annotated screenshot can then be shared via Email, Social Networks, and even embedded. This is a great way for teachers to explain how to use a site or ask questions of the viewer about the content on the site. Easy to use and very useful.

Bubble Comment: allows you to record a video message that pops up when a user visits a particular website. It's a great way for you to personally point out web page features or topics to others.

Camtasia Studio  If you ever need to make a recording of something on your computer desktop so you can share it, this free open source program does the trick. Anything you can see on your Windows desktop can be turned into a standard AVI movie file. If you ever need to create a tutorial or demonstrate what a piece of software can do, this will do it for you.

If you know of any other great tools we wwould love to hear about them.

Show your Students How Google Works

This tool is a bit like when you grab a glass of milk from the fridge and one of your kids asks where does milk come from?  And you then realise that we often overlook the process behind some of the most common things to discover there is actually an interesting and detailed procedure that needs explaining.

How Google works is the best explanation for students and teachers about how the webs number one tool actually works.  It uses animated diagrams and breaks each step down into a very simple information that anyone will understand and really highlights to students the amount of effort and 'nerdiness' that goes into locating your nearest take-away food store in 0.34342 seconds.

So take a look at it here with your students before you use it next time.



Your students will love getting creative with Pivot Stick Animator in the classroom

Pivot stick animator has been around for quite a while now and my kids have been using it for a number of years.  At first it looks like a really boring animation application that involves stick figures as the key graphical element. 

If you dig a little deeper however you will find that Pivot is one of them most open ended and fun learning opportunities freely available to students.  We have made movies of stories and used it explain concepts behind force and motion as well as a maths tool when creating timed animations.

Pivot Stickfigure Animator is a unique software, that allows you to create stick figure animations easily and without any artistic skills. You can move the sections of the sick figure and easily create a chain of animation frames that can be previewed as you go. You can use more than one stick-figure in the animation, and even create your own stick figures using an easy to use visual editor that lets you assemble objects out of lines and circles. In addition, you can optionally set animation size, speed and more. The result can be saved as animated GIF file. Fun and easy to use, surprisingly well featured.

Essentially the Pivot works like an on-screen flip book. A single image is first of all created by placing the stick figure character in a starting position and then pressing the next frame button. From here simple motion can be created by pressing and holding the mouse over a "pivot Point" and dragging that element to a new position, before pressing the next frame.  Simply repeat the process until the desired result is achieved.

You can download Pivot Animator freely here.



40 ICT Ideas in 40 minutes

Some of the programs and tools are getting slightly dated but the concepts are still very fresh.

Two great sites to teach students about cybersafety

I have written quite a bit about cybersafety in regards to parents, teachers and students taking ownership of the issue and not just burying our heads in the sand and hope that it goes away and in attempt to find out more about it today I came across two great resources that teach students about about cybersafety, protocol and correct use of the internet.

Hector’s World is a valuable educational resource for use in the classroom. Its cybersafety messages are relevant to younger primary school age groups, particularly 5 – 7 year olds.

Age-based lesson plans and activity sheets for each of the episodes have been designed for use in the classroom. The learning objectives are consistent with the principles set out in the national Statements of Learning for Information Communications and Technology and Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship.

At a teacher’s or parent’s discretion the Hector’s World stories may also be used for children under 5 years of age and for older primary students aged above 8 years.

Suggestions for the classroom:

• view the Hector’s World episodes with the class
• use the lesson plans as a guide to enforce key learning objectives
• install the Hector’s World Safety Button™ on classroom computers
• encourage parents to install the Hector’s World Safety Button at home
• use the downloadable Hector’s World learning activities to enhance the learning experience

Cyberquoll is aimed at older kids and looks at the issues of cyber bullying and the undesirable elements of the web and how to deal with them from the perspective of a teacher, parent and student.

Hope you enjoy them and would love to hear of any others you might know.