10 Tips for Using YouTube in the Classroom

 

YouTube has become a hot commodity in the classroom, especially in high school.  Teachers are sharing videos from their classrooms, professors are recording lectures, and then you have videos from the likes of Khan Academy and Periodic Table Videos to really add an educational value.  Below are some tips for using YouTube in the classroom.

1.) The biggest issue that most administrators have with YouTube is not the videos themselves but the extra content that normally accompanies them.  Its the comments, the ads, and the similar videos.  One way to alleviate that problem is to use a site called Safeshare.tv or ViewPure (which has a bookmarklet you can use).  It will remove all the extra stuff and provide you just the video.  So if you are having trouble convincing the administration to allow YouTube, show them this option.

2.) Sometimes, it can also be necessary to download YouTube videos in case you are worried about the Internet being down.  Keepvid is a site that allows you to download a YouTube video in several different formats.  It is simple to use and can make it easy to share videos.  If your school is blocking access, download them from home and then bring into class.

3.) Do you have some students who are visual learners but struggle keeping up with the auditory aspects of videos?  CaptionTube allows you to easily add captions to a YouTube video to help those students who have trouble listening and prefer to read, or hearing impaired students. 

4.) There are some great videos on YouTube, but sometimes, those videos are really long and you only want to show just a section of a video.  You also don't want to have to search through the video in front of class to find the spot you are looking for.  Well you can use a site called YouTubeTime that allows you to specify a time that you would like the video to start playing.  YouTubeTime can really help you narrow down to the important part of a video.

5.) Wallwisher is a popular site among educators.  Combining it with YouTube can make for great implementation.  When you provide a YouTube URL link in Wallwisher it will allow visitors to view the video without having to leave the site.  You could provide the video to students and have them comment on the video in 160 characters or less.  No longer is it just a video to watch, but it is a video to interact with.  If you don't want to use Wallwisher, you can use the Embed feature of YouTube and place the video on a website, wiki, or blog as well.

6.) As much as I am anti-PowerPoint, I do want to provide this option.  It is possible to embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint without downloading the video.  You can learn how to do this simple step here.  Do know that you will have to have a working Internet connection for the video to play and you will want to allow some time for the video to load as well, so have a discussion ready.

7.) YouTube itself can be very daunting.  There are billions...yes billions of videos that you can watch.  So as a teacher how do you find ones that are specifically for education?  Luckily there are a couple of lists.  100 Incredibly Useful YouTube Channels for Educators and 100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers are good lists that are broken down by subject matter.  This would be a great starting point to find videos to use in your classroom.

8.) I encourage your school, departments, or class to create a channel (i.e.: create a user name that is easy to find) for your students to use.  This way you can share videos with the community.  Using a FLIP camera makes it even easier because you can easily upload videos from within the software.  You can customize your channel as well.  Here is a great tutorial for how to do that.

9.) Understanding the benefits of YouTube to Education, they now have an entire section dedicated just to education related videos.  YouTube Education is a great supply for videos specifically for teaching.  The videos are broken down by category so that you can easily find what you are looking for.  You will find that a lot of colleges and universities have their own channels and professors have uploaded their lectures.  Want to give students a taste of the college classroom, have them watch a lecture.  Of course there are some videos that are non-educational that come from the institutions students, but this is still a valuable resource.

10.) A great way to use YouTube would be to start your day with one and have it as your Bell Ringer activity.  Each day you could choose a focus: entertaining, academic, thought provoking, etc.  Students will probably be excited to see what the "video of the day" is in your classroom.  With billions of videos it might be worth while have a different video for each class period so that students can't share with other students what the video is for your classes later in the day.

How have you used YouTube?

10 Tips for Using Google Reader in the Classroom

Google Reader and RSS have been a very beneficial addition to my PLN.  I like how easy it is to stay organized with the latest information available on the web.  It makes reading what is important to me easier, especially since I can use it on the iPhone and iPad.  At the same time, Google Reader can be a valuable tool for teachers in the classroom.

1.) We should all be teaching current events.  News websites are a great way to keep up to date on current events.  Each morning you could check your Google Reader account and share the news with your students.  You could take it one step further and subscribe to the feed for CNN and Fox and then compare how the two news station report the news. 

2.) I love the weather and in science classes, the weather can be a great unit that can be integrated into other units.  The Weather Channel has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to for national and local forecast, as well as a weather blog.  It makes checking the weather forecast much easier and saves me time.

3.) Just mentioned to me by an English teacher is subscribing to a website like The Onion for her unit on teaching satire.  You could then compare these stories to the real news stories that you get from tip #1 and discuss the difference in wording.

4.) With an increase in Web 2.0 sites, it is very beneficial to try your best to stay on top of the updates that these software sites go through.  What is great about these sites is that they all have a blog that provides updates on the changes to their service or additions that might be useful to know about.  Following the Prezi Blog allowed me to learn about the new feature of Prezi Meeting.

5.) There are several free online journals related to the various subject matter and educational technology.  The key is finding them and searching them out and then discovering if they have an RSS feed for updated articles.  This would be a great way to stay on top of what is going on with your curriculum.  Here is a great Directory of Open Access Journals in Education that would be worth starting to look at. THE Journal is a a great educational technology magazine that offers RSS feeds as well.

6.) The most common method of using Google Reader in the classroom is for teachers to follow blogs.  With the ability to create folders you can easily find blogs from teachers who share resources, experiences and ideas for your subject matter.  You can easily organize that information to read certain blog post based on what you are in the mood for.  Here are some great starting points to find some great blogs:
- The Edublog Awards - There is a past awards directory as well.
- Top 100 Education Blogs
- Top 100 Education Advice Blogs
- 100 Best Blogs for Teachers of the Future
- Moving Forward Wiki - Blogs by Subject and General Blogs
- Top 100 High School Teachers Who Blog

7.) Do your student's blog?  If they do, Google reader would be a great way to keep up with all of your students blogs without having to visit each one individually.  Create a folder for these blogs and then easily read them at your convenience.

8.) Google Reader allows you to share what you are reading.  This would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers in your building so that you can see what they are reading and you can see what they are reading.  You can choose a custom style as well as a URL so that it can be easy to find.  If you are wanting to get students to comment on each others blogs, this would be a good way to share the blogs with your classes and create a reading and communication portal.  When you share your Google Reader you follow people similar to following blogs and you can select what you want to share, so it is not a mass share of your entire reader account.  You might share one a week for students to comment on. And for the sake of "sharing", here is My Google Reader.

9.) Google Reader has a neat feature called Notes.  This allows you to drag a bookmarklet into your browser and then when you come across something that you might not be subscribe to but want to keep and read for later you can "Note in Reader" so that you have it available for later and have a note about it so you can remember why you marked it.  This is a great feature for when you find a resource while surfing the Internet, or a post on a blog that you really like, but might not necessarily want to follow the blog and have a way to save it in something you read all the time.

10.) Sometimes it can be difficult to find an RSS feed on a website.  Google Reader has a "Subscribe" bookmarklet that you can insert into your browser and when you visit a site click on that button.  It will then search for the sites feed.  If it cannot find it, it will let you know.  If it finds the feed it will direct you to your Google Reader where it will provide feed stats and then ask if you want to subscribe.  This could be very helpful for those teachers who have trouble understanding copy and paste and how to look for a feed.  It is also an easy way to subscribe to feeds for your favorite sites. 

How have you used Google Reader?

10 Alternatives to PowerPoint

PowerPoint is one of those software that most teachers are willing to jump right in and learn because they see it EVERYWHERE.  I myself am guilty of over-using PowerPoint to the "point" that it was an ineffective teaching tool.  Now that I am out of the classroom, several other options for lecture are available for teachers to use that provide more engaging and effective methods of teaching.

1) Probably the most notable and most widely used is Prezi.  I have written about Prezi several times and you can see those posts here.  Another option is a software called Ahead that uses the similar Zoom features.  I have had little experience using it solely because I have been more impressed with Prezi.  If you are someone who is determined to use slides, Slide Rocket is an option I recommend because it allows you to easily share the presentations over the web with students.  If doing a PowerPoint Presentation is completely necessary, then I would recommend viewing the Do's and Don'ts of PowerPoint.

2.) Digital Story Telling - A picture is worth a thousands words.  We have all heard that saying.  If that is the case, wouldn't this be a great way to lecture?  The great thing is that there are so many Digital Story Telling tools available on the web to use that you could always use a different one to keep the presentation format fresh.  You can read about several digital story telling tools here.  Choose one and try it out.  Use pictures to convey meaning.


3.) Glogster is a great tool and has been one of my favorites for the year.  A lot of teachers view it as a great tool for student presentations.  I also view it as a great tool to use for lectures.  With the ability to embed video, audio, and links, it because a fully interactive presentation tool.  If you can make students use it for presentations, why not use it for lecture?

4.) In college, every professor was a lecture king.  That is the way I was taught.  Rarely was I provided visuals or supplements for a lecture.  I might have been provided an outline, but not much else.  If you are giving a lecture to students, take them to the computer lab and allow them to participate in a lecture using a Back Channel Chat.  This can turn a standard oral lecture into an engaging discussion.  When you mention something and students have more questions about it, they can ask without interrupting.  It makes for a great interactive lecture.  There are several options for Back Channel Chat: Todays Meet, Typewith.me, and TitanPad for starters.  For math teachers, it might be a good idea to use a site like Twiddla so that you can work on math problems collaboratively. 

5.) Use Skype and have a guest lecturer speak to your class.  Use a site like Wallwisher for students to engage in a discussion with each other, you, and the guest following the lecture.  Have students prepare questions ahead of time for the guest.  Bringing an expert into the classroom is a great way to engage students in a new way.

6.) Comic Strips are a growing aspect of education.  More and more sites allow teachers and students to create comic strips for no cost at all.  A good idea might be to turn your normal Power Point into a cartoon lecture.  Provide spaces in the comic for students to fill in the blanks or answer questions.  You could engage students by asking them what they think might happen in the next frame.  You could also expand on the lecture and have students create their own comic strips based on your lecture or create the next lecture for you.  You can find information about comic strip sites here

7.) Another great option that goes right along with comic strips are cartoons.  There are a couple cartoon creating websites available out there, Go Animate and Xtranormal to name a couple.  Something tells me that it would catch your students attention if they walked in class and watched a cartoon for their lecture and had to take notes.  You could stop the cartoon at any point to allow questions or cue students.

8.) Use Twitter with your lecture.  Create a PLN and share your lecture topic a couple days before.  Use a Hashtag and ask questions to other educators that relate to your lecture topic.  Create an interactive lecture with students.  Teach Paperless has a great example of how Twitter enhanced his lecture.

9.) As mentioned above, it might be worth while to create a Wallwisher for your lecture and allow students to comment and share their thoughts and questions about the lecture.  You might provide further discussion based on the student's responses. 

10.) You may have used some of these options.  You may be a teacher who just lectures orally.  Expand on that lecture by copying and pasting your lecture and creating a Word Cloud.  Use a site like Wordle and help students get a better grasp of what was discussed most in your lecture.  Chances are your test will appear similar to what words appear most in the Word Cloud.  If it does not, you might want to compare your lecture with your test again.

10 Tips for Using SMS in the Classroom

There is an increasing use and ease of access to cellular technology in the classroom.  Our students are pros at using text messages to communicate with friends.  Why not turn this into a proactive solution to communicating with students in and out of the classroom.  Remember to get your students information at the beginning of the year.  Do they have an unlimited plan?  Can they accept and send MMS messages?

I understand that not every student has access to text messaging, but chances are they have a friend who does that might let them use their phone.  Always require students to tell you their name and class period in a reply message so you know how to organize the SMS you receive.  If students have an iPod touch, there are several free text messaging apps available to download as well.  If all else fails, provide an alternative for those students.

Some of you might get complaints from parents, and that should be expecting, but share with them this simple statement: "If your kid is going to text, wouldn't you prefer them to text for school?"

1.) The most popular use is Poll Everywhere.  You can create a poll and students use their cell phones to respond to the poll and it updates responses in real time.  The free account keeps it anonymous, so be cautious with the questions you create.

2.) Use a site like Wiffiti and have the student's SMS appear on a screen similar to a bulletin board.  The messages appear real time and you can really enhance your discussion.  This might be a great tool for students who are afraid to speak up.  Be mindful though that students can put in anything and you might not know who it is, so use cautiously and with trustworthy students. 

3.) Create Groups and email students reminders to complete homework assignments, study for test, and work on projects.

4.) Testing is not going anywhere, so it would be a great idea to send your students some messages before testing encouraging them to do their best and eat a good breakfast.  Sometimes it is the little things that make all the difference.

5.) Offer extra credit assignments.  Text students extra credit assignments at night.  Teachers always have those kids that always ask for extra credit.  Let them know that this is the method for extra credit.  You could make it as simple as asking a question and getting the answer in a reply.  You could go above that and create a whole new assignment and share it via SMS.

6.) I like to watch the news every night.  I like to know what is going on around the world.  Our students, not so much.  Encourage students to watch the news and let them know that you will be sending out extra credit questions related to the news: What is the big picture with __________?  How might this impact the United States/your country?  How does this relate to _________________ that we talked about _________?

7.) Share a picture MMS and have students reply with what they think the picture means, or their thoughts on the picture in 160 characters.  Get creative with their "writing."

8.) On the same note, have students quote famous speeches, books, movies, music lyrics, but in SMS text.  It truly is a whole other language, might else well use it to teach concepts that are more important than the usual conversations students are having.

9.) Share a link to an article for students to read.  Have students respond to the article in class the next morning.  You might also have them respond via SMS that night to see who is doing the assignment that night.

10.) Create a contest with your students.  Ask a question and the first student or first 5 students to respond get bonus points on a test.  You could do this multiple times throughout a day or weekend, but always at different times.

What ideas do you have?  There are several out there I am sure.  You can find more general ideas about cell phone implementation by reading the blog by The Innovative Educator who had several post at the end of November about Cell Phones in Education, I highly recommend reading those entries.

It is time to embrace what they use all the time.

Weekly Core Subjects Resources

The first full week of December and only a couple more weeks before the Christmas break.  This weeks edition of Weekly Core Subjects Resources brings some interesting links and resources.

English
Spreeder is a site that allows you to create a bookmarklet and then easily read text by copying and pasting any text from the webs to improve your words per minute.  A simple and user friendly site to increase your reading ability.

Repeat After Us is a site created by a student that is an online library and language lab.  You can search the site by author, title, and genre.  You can also search through the library based on three difficulty levels.

Mathematics
Numdic is a number dictionary.  You put in a number and it will provide you a wealth of information about that number. 

WebMATH is a site that helps you solve your math problems from Discovery Education.  The help is divided into several different levels of math and categories to help students with math problems.

Geogebra is a well known math software available for download to learn algebra and geometry.  I will avoid reinventing the wheel and point you to Free Technology For Teachers who has recently shared some valuable links to resources and video tutorials for Geogebra. 

Mathematical Doodling is an interesting site with some videos where I am guessing a student turns regular doodling into mathematical formulas and functions.  Kind of entertaining.

Another great site for math students and teachers provides interactives for various formulas and functions in mathematics.  There are also some for science as well.

Science - See link above as well.
Chemicool is another site offering an interactive Periodic Table of Elements as well as the history of the Periodic Table. 

Tree of Life Web Project is a site that explores how life is developed.  You start at the trunk of the tree and then expand into the different branches. 

CSI The Experience: Web Adventures is a great site for teachers who have units or even an elective class for Forensic Science.  The shows CSI really has exploded student interest in Science, and this site brings the experience to life. 

The Human Touch of Chemistry is a great site with information and interactives related to the study of Chemistry.  You can learn about famous scientist, everyday chemistry, the history and future of chemistry as well as other neat resources.

51 Science Experiments for Kids - A list of some videos to share with students.

The Science Resource Center is a site with, well, resources for science teachers.  Resources are divided by subject matter.  All resources are open to be reproduced, but at the same time, they provide the ability for users to submit their own materials for other teachers. 

Top 20 Podcast for Science Lovers

Social Studies
Edinformatics is a site for education in the information age.  One of their sites is the Greatest Inventions of All Time.  I always taught a unit on inventions and the impact on society.  This site would have been very useful for that unit.

50 Amazing Museum Exhibits You Can Enjoy Online is a great resource to bring what could be an expensive field trip into the classroom.  The museum exhibits are broken down into 4 different categories. 

Chronicling America is a site by the Library of Congress and it is intended to provide historic American newspapers.  You can view pages from the newspaper from all the way back to 1860-1922 from about 25 states.  You can also information about newspapers from the 1960-present.  Click here for a list of all the newspapers available.

Top 20 Podcast for History Lovers

Here is an extra link in continuation with podcast, the Top 40 Podcast for Teachers,  and the Top 50 Podcast for Learning a Foreign Language

Find something useful?  If not, check out my previous Weekly Core Subjects Resources Posts

You might also be interested in my publications to learn about various Web 2.0 Tools to use in the classroom.

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