Loom is a free screencasting tool that works on Chromebooks, Macs, and Windows computers. Loom is a Chrome extension. With Loom installed you can record your desktop, an individual tab, and or your webcam. That means that you could use Loom to just record a webcam video on a Chromebook. Of course, this also means that you can use Loom to record your webcam while also recording your desktop.
Loom recordings can be up to ten minutes long. A completed recording can be shared via social media and email. You can also download your recordings as MP4 files to upload to YouTube or any other video hosting service.
Applications for Education
This is the time of year when you're likely to be introducing some new tools to your students and or your colleagues. Creating a screencast video that your students or colleagues can watch whenever they need reminders of how to use a tool can save you a lot of time in the long run. Loom makes it easy to quickly record a screencast video on almost any computer.
Over the years I have used videos to recap a lesson, to introduce a new concept, and to spark discussion amongst my students. When sharing videos with students I will often share just a portion of it. Usually, this means that I have them skip the first twenty or thirty seconds that has intro or pre-roll material. And occasionally there are longer videos that I my students to skip to the middle before starting to watch the balance of the video. Here are three good ways to share a portion of a video with your students.
YouTube's sharing menu includes an option to have a video start at a specified time. Take a look at my screenshot below to see where to find that option.
TubeChop is a good tool for clipping and sharing a portion of a YouTube video. Watch my video below to see how it works.
EDPuzzle offers more than just clipping and sharing a portion of a video. It is a complete system for cropping videos and adding quiz questions to them. Watch my videos below to learn how to use EDPuzzle.
Kahoot, the immensely popular review game platform, has launched a new component for teachers. The new component is called Kahoot Studio. Kahoot Studio offers curated collections of pre-made Kahoot quizzes. The collections will contain quiz games created by Kahoot staff and Kahoot's "expert" educators.
As of right now the only curated collection in the new Kahoot Studio is a set of mathematics games. Hopefully, more games will be added soon. In the mean time you can still browse through the publicly shared games created by other teachers. You can make copies of and edit publicly shared games to use in your own Kahoot account. Watch my video that is embedded below to learn how to make a copy and edit a public Kahoot game.
The end of August is here and that means that this New Englander's favorite season is just around the corner. From leaves starting to change color to Dunkin Donuts advertising pumpkin coffee to back-to-school pictures on Facebook, the signs of Fall are all around us.
I'm filling in my 2018 workshop calendar. I would love to add your school to my calendar. Click here to learn more about my keynote and workshop offerings.
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SeeSaw is my favorite digital portfolio tool. Metaverse enables anyone to create amazing things. Kids Discover provides fantastic tools for helping kids discover new information.
Membit is a neat augmented reality app for use on iPhones. The app lets you place view images superimposed over the current backdrop that you see through your phone's camera. For example, you could open the app, point your camera at a building, and then see an image of what the building used to look like. Watch the fifteen second video below to see Membit in action.
Membit offers more than just viewing of imagery. You can create your own simple augmented reality experiences. To do this you need to open the app and take a picture then place it on the map so that others may view it. You can share your Membit images through Twitter and Facebook.
Applications for Education
Membit has potential to be neat app for use in history classes. Students could use the app to place historical imagery on top of current views of a location. For example, I might have students use the app to place historical imagery of Portland, Maine's working waterfront on top of the current view of Portland's waterfront.
I didn't see a way for Membit to be used without an iPhone. So until then I'll give the nod to Metaverse when I want students to create their own augmented reality experiences.
