4 Audio Editing Tools for Chromebooks - A Comparison Chart

Yesterday's post about Twisted Wave sparked quite a few comments on Facebook, Twitter, and in my email. People wrote to ask about and or suggest other audio editing tools to use on Chromebooks. So I decided to create the following chart to compare four tools for creating and editing audio file on Chromebooks. You can view the chart here as a Google Doc or as embedded below via Box.com.


Soundtrap is a fantastic tool for creating music online. The cool thing about Soundtrap is that students can use virtual instruments to create music or they can record themselves playing music on an instrument and then use that recording in conjunction with the virtual instruments in the Soundtrap environment. What makes Soundtrap stand-out from the crowd is its collaboration options. Click the "collaborate" tab in the Soundtrap editor to invite others to create music with you. Soundtrap will work in the Chrome web browser on a laptop, iPad, Chromebook, and Android tablet. In my workshops I often describe Soundtrap as Google Docs for music.

BandLab is a free service that enables you to create music in your web browser or through free Android and iOS apps. In BandLab's you can create soundtracks using any of the virtual instruments that are provided. You can also speak or sing to record a track. Within the BandLab editor you can mix your tracks together to create a song. If you have existing audio files on your computer, you can upload those to incorporate into your BandLab creations.

Flat.io is a little different from all the other tools on this list. Flat.io is designed as a music composition tool on which students write music on ledger lines then hear it played back to them. Students can choose to hear their music played back to them after they compose it.

Topics like this one and many others will be covered in detail during the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp. Discounted early registration is available now. 

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The Week in Review - California, Here I Come

Good morning from Logan International Airport where I'm waiting for a flight to San Francisco. Tomorrow, I will be giving the closing keynote at the California School Library Association's annual conference. I always enjoy school library association conferences and I've heard great things about this one. If you're going to be there tomorrow, please say hello. And if you're interested in having me speak at your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Three Alternatives to Google Classroom
2. Quick Key + Google Classroom = Great Way to Conduct Formative Assessments
3. How Not To...
4. Know Recorder - Create Whiteboard Videos on iPads and Android Tablets
5. Three Options for Adding Q&A to Your Slide Presentations
6. Three Good Tools for Collaboratively Creating Multimedia Books
7. Change the Dialect to Change Your Search Results

Flash Sale!

This summer I am hosting the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp and the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp. Be one of the first ten people to register online and you can register for $100 off!

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.

Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.

Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards.

QuickKey saves teachers tons of time when scoring formative assessments.

WriteReader is a fantastic multimedia writing tool for elementary school students.

Math Playground offers hundreds of math games and tutorial videos. 

Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.

PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.

Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.

EdTechTeacher is hosts workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explanatory videos.

Twisted Wave - Your Chromebook Alternative to GarageBand

Yesterday, I was asked on Twitter for an alternative to GarageBand that will work on a Chromebook. Twisted Wave was the first tool to come to mind. Twisted Wave is a browser-based audio recording and editing tool that functions in a manner similar to GarageBand.

Through TwistedWave you can create and edit spoken audio recordings from scratch. Your completed tracks can be exported to Google Drive and SoundCloud.If you have existing audio tracks in your SoundCloud or Google Drive account you can also import it into TwistedWave to edit those audio tracks. TwistedWave's audio editing tools include options for fade-in, fade-out, looping, sound normalization, and pitch adjustments. The editor also includes the typical track clipping tools that you would expect to see in an audio editing tool.

Applications for Education
TwistedWave could be a good audio track creation and editing tool for students and teachers that are using Chromebooks. The integration with Google Drive makes it easy for students to save their works and share their recordings with their teachers.

This summer's Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp will include a session on how to create and edit audio tracks on a Chromebook. Discounted, early registration is available now. 

7 Blogging Tools for Teachers Compared and Ranked - Updated for 2017

One of last year's most popular posts featured my chart comparing seven popular blogging tools for teachers and students. Given the recent update to Edublogs I thought it was time to update my chart and rankings of blogging tools for teachers and students. You can view the chart here as a Google Doc or as embedded below through Box.com. Below the embed you will find my ranking of the seven tools.


1. Blogger - It’s free and easy to set-up. It can be integrated into your Google Apps for Education account which means that you and your students can use the same usernames and passwords that they use in all other Google tools. You can make your blog private (up to 100 members invited by email). The drawback to it is that a lot of school filters flag it as “social media” and block it on those grounds.

1a. Edublogs - Probably the best option for elementary school and middle school use. Blogs and individual blog posts can be made private, password-protected, or public. You can create and manage your students’ accounts. The latest version of Edublogs allows all users to include videos in blog posts. Outstanding customer support.

2. Weebly for Education - It’s free to have up to 40 students in your account. You can manage your students’ accounts. You can have students contribute to a group blog and or let them manage their own individual blogs.

3. SeeSaw.me - SeeSaw was originally launched as a digital portfolio tool. The addition of a blogging component was made in January 2016. The blogging component of SeeSaw allows you to import and display your students’ digital artifacts publicly or privately. There is not much you can do with SeeSaw in terms of customization of layout and color scheme.

4. WordPress.org - If you have the technical accumen or the time to learn it (it’s not that hard), self-hosting a blog that runs on WordPress software will give you the ultimate in control and flexibility. You will be able to create and manage student accounts, have a nearly infinite variety of customizations, and you’ll be able to move your blog from server to server whenever you want to. That said, you will have to pay for hosting (or convince your school to give you server space) and you will be responsible for maintaining security updates and backing-up your blog regularly.

5. Kidblog - Allows you to manage your students’ accounts. Requires you to pay for a subscription in order to get the features that you really want. Those features include embedding videos and other media from third party sites. Powered by WordPress software.

6. WordPress.com - It’s easy to use and is free, but with some serious limitations at the free level. The free version displays advertising on your blog which you cannot control. The free version also doesn’t allow embedding content from many third-party sites.

To learn how make blogging a successful classroom activity, take a look at Winning Blog Strategies.

Creating and Telling Stories With Maps

For as long as I can remember I have loved to look at maps. I distinctly remember looking at the maps in my third grade social studies book and wondering what people in the middle of the Soviet Union were like. And as I got older I would look at maps of northern Canada and dream about fishing on the massive lakes and rivers whose names I often had difficulty pronouncing. The point is that looking at the maps sparked my imagination. I crafted stories around what I saw on the maps and in my imagination.

Today, students have access to digital maps that will provide them with more information than I ever had in paper map. Similarly, students today have access to digital mapping tools on which they can tell their own stories. Here are some of the stories that students can tell with digital maps.

Biography
A map is a great backdrop for telling the life story of a famous person living or dead. Students can create map placemarks for the important events in a person's life. For example, they could map the life of Theodore Roosevelt and include in their placemarks the places he visited before, during, and after his presidency. Ask students to include explanations of why the events they mapped were important.

Changes in landscapes/ cityscapes
Google's My Maps and Google Earth allow users to create maps containing multiple layers. Have students create one layer using imagery of a place captured 30-100 years ago. Then ask them to create a layer using current imagery. This is a great way for students to see the effects of erosion on a landscape. It's also a great way to see how a cityscape has changed over time.

"I spy"
Google Maps allows you to quickly switch between road maps, satellite maps, and Street View. Have your students use all three of these views to record observations about places that are interesting to them or that you assign to them. Ask them to write a short story based on their observations. They could write their stories in a document or within placemarkers in Google's My Maps tool.

Join To Geography and Beyond With Google Maps to learn more about how to use Google Maps in your classroom.