Last month I had the privilege to fly on an A380. The A380 is the largest commercial jet in the world. As I saw the plane towering over the jetway in Dallas I couldn't help but be amazed at the engineering that makes it possible for something so large to fly across the Pacific in one shot. The explanation can be found in a Minute Physics video that Airbus recently sponsored. How Do Airplanes Fly? explains the roles of wings, propellers, turbines, and wind currents in making a plane fly.
This video could be the basis of a flipped science lesson. In this post I provided an overview of how to use five services to create flipped video lessons.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
How to Create Bookshelves in Google Books
This afternoon I received an email from a reader who had seen my video about conducting research in Google Books and now wanted to build Google Books bookshelves of his own. To demonstrate that process I created the short video that you see embedded below.
Applications for Education
Creating bookshelves in Google Books is a great way to organize a selection of books around a topic that your students are studying. Think of creating Google Books bookshelves as a way of building reading lists for students.
Applications for Education
Creating bookshelves in Google Books is a great way to organize a selection of books around a topic that your students are studying. Think of creating Google Books bookshelves as a way of building reading lists for students.
WhatsDue - Schedule and Send Reminders to Students
WhatsDue is a free service (available for Android and iOS) that enables teachers to create and send due date reminders to their students. Students receive the reminders as push notifications on their iOS and or Android devices.
Here's how WhatsDue works. First, the teacher registers for a free account on the WhatsDue website and creates a class or classes. Each class is assigned its own unique join code. Teachers then invite students and parents to join the class through the join code. Once students have joined the class they will begin receiving due date reminders on their mobile devices.
Teachers can create multiple classes and schedule multiple reminders for each class from one dashboard on the WhatsDue website. Students opening WhatsDue on their iPhones or Android phones will see reminders of approaching due dates and past due dates.
Applications for Education
If you have been leery of using other reminder systems because of privacy concerns with phone numbers or two-way communication, WhatsDue might be for you. It doesn't require phone numbers and it doesn't have two-way communication. It also allows students to be reminded of assignments on a schedule that works for them. For example, they can set the app to remind them of assignments a day before or a couple of hours before an assignment is due.
Here's how WhatsDue works. First, the teacher registers for a free account on the WhatsDue website and creates a class or classes. Each class is assigned its own unique join code. Teachers then invite students and parents to join the class through the join code. Once students have joined the class they will begin receiving due date reminders on their mobile devices.
Teachers can create multiple classes and schedule multiple reminders for each class from one dashboard on the WhatsDue website. Students opening WhatsDue on their iPhones or Android phones will see reminders of approaching due dates and past due dates.
Applications for Education
If you have been leery of using other reminder systems because of privacy concerns with phone numbers or two-way communication, WhatsDue might be for you. It doesn't require phone numbers and it doesn't have two-way communication. It also allows students to be reminded of assignments on a schedule that works for them. For example, they can set the app to remind them of assignments a day before or a couple of hours before an assignment is due.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Dozens Free iPad App Reviews Arranged by Grade
A couple of years ago when I started iPadApps4School.com I did something that I wish I had done when I started FreeTech4Teachers.com. That is I created a structure for categorizing my app reviews according to grade level. I was also smarter about my use of tags. Both of those decisions have made it relatively easy to find things on iPadApps4School.com
If you visit iPadApps4School.com and click on the "free iPad apps" tag in the right-hand column it will pull up all of iPad apps I've reviewed that are free. Below the headline of each review you will see a category tag of "pre-K," "elementary school," "middle school," or "high school." Ten reviews are listed on each page. Below the last review you will see a link to view older posts.
You can subscribe to iPadApps4School.com via email (I post there once or twice a week) or via RSS.
If you visit iPadApps4School.com and click on the "free iPad apps" tag in the right-hand column it will pull up all of iPad apps I've reviewed that are free. Below the headline of each review you will see a category tag of "pre-K," "elementary school," "middle school," or "high school." Ten reviews are listed on each page. Below the last review you will see a link to view older posts.
You can subscribe to iPadApps4School.com via email (I post there once or twice a week) or via RSS.
5 Free Tools for Creating Animations in Your Browser or On Your Tablet
Monday's post about Parapara Animation was quite popular and prompted questions from readers looking for similar tools that either work on tablets or offer more features than Parapara Animation. Here are some other sites and apps for creating animations.
ABCya Animate is a web-based tool from ABCya that allows students to create animated GIFs containing up to 100 frames. On ABCya Animate students build their animation creations by drawing, typing, and inserting images. Students can change the background of each frame, include new pictures in each frame, and change the text in each frame of their animations. The feature that I like best about ABCya Animate is that students can see the previous frames of their animations while working on a current frame. This helps students know where to position items in each frame in order to make their animations as smooth as possible. Students do not need to register on ABCya Animate in order to use the tool or to save their animations. When students click "save" on ABCya Animate their creations are downloaded as GIFs. ABCya Animate is also available as an iPad app, but the iPad app is not free.
Animation Desk is an iPad and Android app (free and premium versions available) for creating short, animated videos. The app allows you to create drawings using just your finger on your iPad's screen. In the free version of the app (the version that I tried) you can create up to 50 scenes in each of your projects. In each scene you can include as little or as much as you want to draw on the canvas. There are a few different brush and pencil effects that you can use in your drawings. The opacity of the colors you choose can be altered too. When you have completed drawing all of your scenes hit the play button to watch your animation unfold. If you're happy with your animation you can export it to YouTube.
Draw Island is a free online tool (tablet-friendly) for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. Draw Island offers you your choice of four canvas sizes on which you can draw. Draw Island offers two canvas sizes for creating simple GIF animations. To use Draw Island just head to the site and select a drawing tool. You can draw free hand (or should I say free mouse?) or select pre-defined shapes to use in your images. When you're done drawing just click the save button to download your drawing or animation.
JellyCam is a free program for creating stopmotion movies. Using JellyCam you can create stop motion movies using images from your computer or images that you capture via your webcam. Once you've selected images you can quickly arrange them into a sequence. After the sequence is set you can specify how many images you want per frame. A soundtrack can be uploaded to your video. JellyCam uses the Adobe Air platform. If you don't have Adobe Air Runtime it takes just a couple of minutes to install. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use JellyCam.
ABCya Animate is a web-based tool from ABCya that allows students to create animated GIFs containing up to 100 frames. On ABCya Animate students build their animation creations by drawing, typing, and inserting images. Students can change the background of each frame, include new pictures in each frame, and change the text in each frame of their animations. The feature that I like best about ABCya Animate is that students can see the previous frames of their animations while working on a current frame. This helps students know where to position items in each frame in order to make their animations as smooth as possible. Students do not need to register on ABCya Animate in order to use the tool or to save their animations. When students click "save" on ABCya Animate their creations are downloaded as GIFs. ABCya Animate is also available as an iPad app, but the iPad app is not free.
Animation Desk is an iPad and Android app (free and premium versions available) for creating short, animated videos. The app allows you to create drawings using just your finger on your iPad's screen. In the free version of the app (the version that I tried) you can create up to 50 scenes in each of your projects. In each scene you can include as little or as much as you want to draw on the canvas. There are a few different brush and pencil effects that you can use in your drawings. The opacity of the colors you choose can be altered too. When you have completed drawing all of your scenes hit the play button to watch your animation unfold. If you're happy with your animation you can export it to YouTube.
Draw Island is a free online tool (tablet-friendly) for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. Draw Island offers you your choice of four canvas sizes on which you can draw. Draw Island offers two canvas sizes for creating simple GIF animations. To use Draw Island just head to the site and select a drawing tool. You can draw free hand (or should I say free mouse?) or select pre-defined shapes to use in your images. When you're done drawing just click the save button to download your drawing or animation.
JellyCam is a free program for creating stopmotion movies. Using JellyCam you can create stop motion movies using images from your computer or images that you capture via your webcam. Once you've selected images you can quickly arrange them into a sequence. After the sequence is set you can specify how many images you want per frame. A soundtrack can be uploaded to your video. JellyCam uses the Adobe Air platform. If you don't have Adobe Air Runtime it takes just a couple of minutes to install. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use JellyCam.
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