Bring Famous People Alive in your classroom!

The Morfo app allows you to create talking pictures. All that is needed is the app (free), a face shot of the person you want to make talk, and a recording of the message. Morfo is a quick, easy way to be creative, make announcements, share a thought, or give information. With Morfo, you can bring any famous person to life and have them speak with the message you want them to have. You can also make yourself speak or any student. With app does a really good job making it look realistic when the "person" is talking. 

Applications for Education: In my class, during the ancient Greece Unit, I would have Zeus "stop by" with a message every so often. It would either be an announcement  some words of encouragement, or a piece of valuable information. This app works even better in school now that Youtube is open. Once you make your creation, you can easily upload it to Youtube and share on you website. Kids can then watch it in school. Morfo could be a great tool in any class. In history, there are obviously tons of historical people you could use. Maybe an author of a book the kids are reading in class. Or a famous scientist, mathamatician, or athlete. If you have an iPhone, down the app and give it a try.  See example below.  

Search Google Images with IMAGES

You probably use Google a lot. You probably search for information, websites, pictures, and maybe even videos. Google is a powerful tool and it can be even more powerful/useful for you. For me, I am constantly using Google Images for various things. With Google images, you can enter the words you are searching for or you can actually use a picture. That is right. You can drag and drop a picture file right into the Google Image search box and it will look up/search for the picture. This video gives a great visual of this process. I have been using this and it is as simple as dragging a picture into the search box. Make your internet browser a little smaller so you can grab the picture file off your desktop, then simply drag it over. Give it a try!

Applications for Education:  I think a cool way to use this in education would be to give the students a picture without any caption/headline/explanation and have them use this google image search to find information out about the picture. For instance, give them a picture of Stonewall Jackson but don't tell them who it is. They can then drag and drop the picture into google images and find out who he is, why he's famous, etc. This could also be a fun activity for the lesser known presidents, important objects from a book, or anything with science like insects, clouds, animal species, etc. 

Choose your own adventure

Get kids involved with a "choose your own adventure" challenge. Kids love playing video games because they get to control things, make choices, and interact with what's on the screen. Create that same type of atmosphere in school and you will see engagement rise and behavior problems sink. A "Choose your own Adventure" is nothing new. Books have been around for many, many years that allow the students to make a choice, then turn to a certain page to see what happened. If we make these on the computer, we will save paper, can share the link, and create a more dynamic activity. Create a "choose your own adventure" activity to put the students IN the activity and give them to power to make decisions. The decisions they make will determine the outcome of their game, just like in video games. 
Application for Education: Creating a "choose your own adventure" activity is time consuming, but once it's made, you always have it and can modify/adjust as the years melt away. Or, you could have your students make a simplified version of this activity and have them share with each other. This would really put the learning in high gear. I use these to introduce the ancient worlds that we study. Going into this game with little or no knowledge of the ancient world really makes them think about what they should do. They are eager to see if they made a good choice or not. They learn a lot from these games because they are engaged. It is a challenge. They want to score points. They want to survive. I have used Frontpage in the past to make these.  Interested in getting one started? Let me know and I would be happy to help. 

Here is an example of one I created for ancient Rome. 

Does the Public know anything about our Government?

In my ancient world class, we studied Democracy during our ancient Greece Unit. Athens, along with their leader Pericles, invented Democracy as a way to rule their people. However, saying "Democracy ruled the people" isn't quite right. In a Democracy, the people rule themselves. The basic form of Democracy is when the people/citizens rule. They can vote, elect leaders, and have freedom. Since we live in a country with Democracy, I thought it would be interesting to have my students go out into the public and see what people actually know about our own form of government, democracy. They had to interview five adults, age 25 and older. I sent them out with a basic questionnaire. The results came flying in and when we analyzed them last week, we got a good picture what the public knows (or perhaps a better way to say it is 'doesn't know"). Click the link to see the results of our Ask the Public interviews. Here's a little preview: only 14% of the people interviewed got a 100% on the entire sheet. Also, for the question of "Who is President?" The results were NOT 100%...

View Results of "Ask the Public" Interviews

Know anything about Democracy? Click here to fill out the survey.

Ask questions with Kwik Survey

I wanted to give my students a survey so I set one up with surveymonkey.com.  Unfortunately, the free version of surveymnonkey limits you to 100 submissions. This wasn't going to cut it for me because I have 127 students. As a result, I went searching for another survey option. Kwik Survey allows you to customize the survey and record as many entries as you want. Your survey is easy to share as it gives you the option to share the link or actually embed it into your website. It gives you options on when the survey closes, how many responses can be selected, and customize the look of it. You can also add pictures to your survey instead of just words. 
Application for Education: Any type of voting or opinion activity would work well with Kwiksurvey Easy way to compare the thoughts/attitudes/opinions between your classes. Survey students or use it as a pre-test. Use pictures for students to vote on which picture best represents something (democracy, theme of story, math something??) I used it to have my students vote on what things from the ancient world should be in our Ancient World Hall of Fame. 

Example of Kwik Survey
(this poll is closed so only results are visible)

Using the Cloud- DropBox

Have you ever heard people talk about the "Cloud" and wonder what in the world they were talking about? Well, the cloud is basically the internet. The "cloud" concept is that you save all your "stuff" in this "cloud" which follows you wherever you go, which means your files are always with you when you need them. It is a great concept and a great tool to use. With the cloud, you don't have to worry about emailing things back and forth, remembering what flash drive you used, or finding yourself out of luck because what you need is at your home computer. The Cloud stores everything for you on the internet. There are multiple "cloud" tools. Google Docs is definitely a cloud because you can store documents, PowerPoint, spread sheets, forms, etc. in your Google docs account and access them wherever you are, as long as you have the internet. Another cloud tool that I love and use all the time is called "DropBox." Dropbox can be downloaded onto your computer or you can use dropbox.com and simply log in. Whenever you save something to Dropbox, it is stored in your "cloud" and you have it wherever/whenever you need it or want to work on it. Dropbox is free, but the free version comes with limited space. However, there are some easy things to do to increase the free storage space, which is explained at dropbox.com. Sign up for Dropbox.com and check it out! I think you will find it very convenient.
Application for Education: This is a good tool to use to work on your school work, but you can also use Dropbox with your students, especially if you are using the iPads. Saving has been an issue so far with the iPads. How do students save their work? Well, the answer is Dropbox. When students create a project on the iPads, they can log into your dropbox account with the dropbox app and save it into your dropbox account, so you will have all projects in one place and can look at them at home, school, on your phone, etc.  When doing this, you will want to change your dropbox password to something easy for the kids to enter, then change it back once the school day is done. 

Creating a Youtube Interactive Review

Looking for a unique/different way to review? Try making a Silent Video. I started making these last year and the kids have really liked both making them and watching them. With YouTube now open, the Silent Video is even better because students can watch them during the school day! 
How to make a Silent Video: After studying a unit or topic, compile a list of questions. You need to have at least one different question for each student. Pass out the list of questions and have your students each pick one question. Give them a piece of cardstock. Have the student write the question on the front of the cardstock and the answer on the back. I tell my students to use block/bubble lettering so it stands out more for the video. After each student has made their card, tell them to find a spot in the room to hide their card, but stay by it. Walk around the room with the video camera, going from student to student, video taping them showing the card, then flipping it to reveal the answer. Really emphasize with your students to think of a creative way to hide the card before showing the camera. Add a cool song for the students to listen to as they watch. Publish the video on YouTube and share! 
A Silent Review video becomes an interactive reviewing experience. As the students watch their video, along with the videos from the other classes, they can look at a question, think about the answer, then see if they are right when the card is flipped. This is more interesting/engaging then basic flash cards so the students are more likely to use this review tool. With YouTube open in school, they are now capable of watching it during study hall.

Tell Me What to Do

Techno.ED isn't meant to be a one-way street. For the most part, the first year of Techno.ED has been me posting tech tools/ideas for you to either use or not. I do try to offer up ideas and options to implement more technology into your room but I want to do more than that. I don't want to just give ideas/tools. I want to help you with what YOU want. I want to provide help or ideas for things YOU want to do or try. I am here to help. One thing I really enjoy is trying to solve problems or issues relating to technology in education. I like trying to figure out how to do something better, easier, faster, more efficient. I may not always be successful but I love the challenge.So if you have something you need help with, or something you are trying to do and need an idea/way to do it, please let me know. Email me with questions, stop down to my room, or fill out the "Help Center" form below.
Email: Daniel.Klumper@k12.sd.us 

Fill out this "Help Center" form

Inserting YouTube videos into PowerPoint and Prezi

Now that YouTube is open, let's start using it! The two most popular presentation tools for students to use are PowerPoint and Prezi. With YouTube opening, this adds a whole new dynamic to student presentations. It gives the student more creativity and possibilities in making a quality product. Let's take a look at how to insert YouTube videos into PPT and Prezi. 

1. PowerPoint: In order to insert a video into powerpoint, it needs to be in the .wmv file format. To convert a youtube video into a wmv file is not smooth. Therefore, we are going to avoid any type of conversion and instead add a "plug-in" right to our powerpoint software. With this plug-in, all you need is the youtube url (the www.youtube.com/slkdoielskjlkfjlkjd  part) and it will be inserted. 
**Use this link to get the plug-in: http://skp.mvps.org/youtube.htm 
**You want to select the "For PowerPoint 2007/2010" click the "click here"  This will download a zip file. Simply open the zip file and double click on the icon "youtubevideo2k7" This will open and start installing the plug-in. You must select "Enable macros." You do not need Curt to download anything for this step. Once it finishes, go to your powerpoint project and in the "insert" tab, there should be a "youtube video" option at the end of the row. 
**Once you have the youtube plug in, simply click it and it will walk you through the insertion process. Again, all you need is the YouTube URL and it will be inserted directly into your slide. 
*The plug-in does go away if you close powerpoint, so until this issue is resolved, put the zip file somewhere easy to find. 

2. Prezi: Prezi is much easier than powerpoint. When you are working on your prezi project, simply click the "insert" option at the top, middle. One of the options is "youtube video" so select that and then simply copy and paste the YouTube URL that you want to use. That's it!

Any questions, let me know!

YouTube is open, now what?

(Here is an example of using YouTube. I post these quick animations to relay a message, announement, or piece of information.)

YouTube is open. So now what do we do? The question is one that we must now ask and answer since the school board ordered YouTube and other streaming sites to be open. I was surprised, a little shocked, and very happy to hear about this new development. The school board is scoring some major points in my book lately with the building copy limit raised to 1,500 copies per month, and now opening YouTube. I don't know who to thank for this, surely it's not me because I'm simply a lowly teacher and what do I know? When I do find out who is responsible for opening YouTube, I shall give them a big hug. I have always thought YouTube should be open. So now that it is, what do we do? Here is a list of things to think about with the opening of YouTube: 

1. It's open, use it! It's a great resource for teaching. It is loaded with interesting, engaging, thought-provoking, meaningful videos. Remember when we had discovery education? For the most part, that was a real bore-fest. With Youtube, you can find all sorts of interesting, helpful video clips to help your kids learn. (Afterall, isn't that the point?) Type in your subject matter, content, or topic and see what you can find.

2. Strengthening the case for teacher websites. Now that Youtube is open, it is even more important to have your own website for school that is used for more than just lesson plans. With Youtube, find some good videos for what you are teaching about and post them on your website. This can be done with any website. Most of the teachers at BVMS use frontpage or blogger. With any website host, you can either provide a link or embed the video player right on the page. Students could watch these videos in school, study hall, etc. 

3. Significant increase in monitoring your students. We all know students are sneaky and clever. Whether its bullying when there's no teacher around or texting in their pocket, students are good at getting away with stuff. You must not let your students be roaming the internet freely. You must be walking around watching what they are doing. Check to see how many browsers they have open at the bottom of the screen. Check to see what tabs they have open. Constantly be watching, especially early on as the students will no doubt be excited Youtube is open and wanting to use it. In my class, whenever my students are using my netbooks, I have them turn their desk around so I can see the screens from my podium. 

4. YouTube video settings. When you find a video you like and want to use/post to your website, customize the settings to your liking. I would recommend NOT clicking the "show suggested videos when the video finishes."  When a YouTube video finishes, it always gives suggested videos related to what you just finished watching. Sometimes, this produces some videos that you wouldn't want your students to watch. Not checking the box will NOT provide the suggested videos, thus keeping the video player to only the video you want viewed. 

5. Internet Citizenship. Talk to the students about using the Internet in a safe way, appropriate way. Explain to them the risks of inappropriate use and consequences they might face. Talk to them about not taking advantage of the privilege we now all have. We wouldn't want to lose it. Make sure your students log in with their profile so if something bad is used, we can track it. Do not allow them to use "media" for the username and password. 

6. Video Projects. Are your students making a video? Are they doing a presentation you want to record? Student projects are a great thing to put on YouTube because it allows you to watch and share them easily. However, when doing this, I would recommend listing the video as "private to only those with the link." This keeps them off the public search, which I feel more comfortable with. Check to make sure students are not listed on the "no media" list and/or get permission. More about uploading and settings could be discussed at a later time. 

7. Flipped Classroom. Perhaps this is a good time to try "flipping" your classroom. Flipping the Classroom is a big undertaking but you can start small and just give a basic flip a try. Record yourself explaining a concept or teaching about a topic and post it to your website for students to view on their own. That way, they are ready to do the work when they get to your classroom. Flip: School work at home, homework at school. (It's flipped.) Having YouTube open would help this be a easy process because once again your students can now watch it at school with ease.

Final Thoughts: Enjoy having YouTube open. Think creatively and come up with ways to use it to help your students learn. It's got a lot out there, start sifting through the videos and find some stuff to help your curriculum.