Create Great Visual Stories on Adobe Slate

Earlier this year Adobe released a free iPad app called Adobe Slate. Adobe Slate is a free app that you can use to create image-based stories. This week, Adobe launched a browser-based version of Adobe Slate.

The browser-based version of Adobe Slate is designed to help you create a visual story from the pictures on your desktop, from the web through a built-in Creative Commons search tool, from an Adobe online account, or from a Dropbox account. You start your story by importing a cover picture and writing story title. You then add pictures one-by-one and write captions for each. You can also write headlines for each image. One convenient feature of Adobe Slate is that the integrated image search tool will import Creative Commons attributions with the images you select. Adobe Slate has a dozen or so filters or themes that you can apply to your story. Completed stories can be published online through a variety of channels including Adobe’s platform, Facebook, or Twitter. Stories can also be embedded into a blog post as I've done below.



Applications for Education
Adobe Slate is a nice tool, but it doesn’t stand out as being any better than Storehouse, Tackk, Haiku Deck or any number of similar options. All of those tools and Adobe Slate provide a nice way for students to share the highlights of a personal story or share the highlights of an online research activity.

Episode 2 of the Rod & Richard Show - We Answer Your Ed Tech Questions

Last week I published the debut episode of the new Rod & Richard Show in which Dr. Rod Berger and I discuss trends in ed tech and answer your ed tech questions. We plan to release one new episode per week. Episode 2 is embedded below.


R&Repisode2 from MindRocket Media Group on Vimeo.

If you have an ed tech question that you would like me or Rod to answer, please Tweet with the hashtag #askrichardbyrne, post a message on EdCircuit, or send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com

5 Ways to Reduce Test Stress #TeacherNinja

Keith Hughes is best known for his fantastic history lesson videos for students. There is more than just history lessons on his YouTube channel. He has a playlist of 27 videos containing practical tips and advice for new teachers. My favorite of those videos is 5 Ways for Teachers to Chillax Students on Test Day. Even experienced teachers will find something helpful in Keith's Teaching Stuff playlist.

Padlet Adds Helpful New Features

Padlet is one of my all-time favorite tech tools. Over the years I've used it for everything from to-do lists, to mind mapping, to KWL charts, to collaborative bookmarking. Here's an outline of the ways I've used Padlet.  Recently, Padlet added some new features of note.

The Padlet iPad app will now work in landscape and portrait mode as well as any other way you can hold your iPad. Of course, all of the other handy features like scanning a QR code to join a Padlet wall are still in place.

Content filtering has been improved in Padlet. As a Padlet wall owner and or moderator you've always been able to remove inappropriate content. Without owner or moderator rights, you couldn't do anything to indicate that inappropriate content was posted. To remedy that situation Padlet has added a "flagging" option. Now anyone can flag inappropriate content for review.

To learn more about Padlet, check out my playlist of tutorials embedded below.

Use Storyboard to Highlight the Wonderful Things Happening in Your Classroom

This is a guest post from Sabba Quidwai (@AskMsQ) of EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site.

One of the greatest tools that educators have to act as advocates, models, and sources of inspiration for others is social media. Social media has allowed administrators, teachers, and students to take back the narrative of education and tell the story of what learning looks like in their community. From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to Pinterest, there’s no shortage of tools that allow you to share your story. Oftentimes however, we find ourselves so wrapped up in the moment, not sure of the perfect caption, or perhaps unable to post because of network restrictions, that while we take lots of pictures and videos, we are not always immediately able to post them. We tell ourselves we will post them later, only to have a few days go by, and they are left in the camera roll for only your eyes to see.

Welcome Storyboard onto the scene. Storyboard allows you to organize your best moments, both photos and videos, and share them on your social media channels or website in a single post. This could be done at the end of they day, end of the week, or even end of the month to highlight the wonderful things that are happening in your learning community both inside and outside the classroom.



No story is complete without the voices of everyone in your community. Allow multiple students to share their best moments as you travel on this exciting learning journey together. Create a shared folder where students and parents can join in and share their pictures and videos. When you are ready, organize the best moments and share your story! Want to go back and make an edit, you can add and delete posts anytime.

While Storyboard acts as its own social media feed, the feature that I love most is being able to take your post with all of your best moments and share it on other feeds.  There’s lots of great adventures happening in classrooms across the globe, take a few moments and share your story with the world.

P.S. Storyboard isn’t only for the classroom, you can use it while on your next vacation too!

Looking for some great events to share with Storyboard? EdTechTeacher will host it's 4th annual iPad Summit in Boston later this month, and its 2nd Google Jamboree in December where I will be a featured speaker.