How to Create an Online Yearbook

Earlier this week a reader sent me an email asking for suggestions for free tools that she can use to create an online yearbook. I had two suggestions for her. The first was to use Book Creator. The second was to use one of Canva's yearbook templates then export the finished product to Heyzine to add page turning effects. 

In this short video I demonstrate how you can use Canva to create a yearbook and then import it into Heyzine to add page turning effects to the online display of your yearbook. 

Reasonable Colors - Get Help Picking Accessible Color Schemes

Reasonable Colors is a new open-source project developed by Matthew Howell. The purpose of the project is to help developers and others choose high-contrast, accessible color schemes for their projects. 

Reasonable Colors is easy to use to find an accessible color scheme. To use Reasonable Colors all you need to do is select the main color (red, blue, green, etc.) for your project and then a list of complementary and contrasting colors is provided. The hex codes for those colors is provided by Reasonable Colors. 

If you're not sure what hex codes are or why you should care about them, here's what you should know. Hex codes are hexadecimal codes that indicate the specific color that should appear on a page. Entering a hex code into color selector tool like that in Canva's design tools is a more accurate way to choose a color than clicking on a sliding color selector. See my screenshot below to see where the hex code appears in Canva's color selection tool. 

Applications for Education
Reasonable Colors could be a good resource to keep bookmarked for reference whenever you're trying to select a color scheme for any resources that you plan to share with your students. Using Reasonable Colors could help you find the best color scheme to ensure that all of your students can access the resources that you create.

H/T to Product Hunt. 

The Best Adobe Spark Alternative

In the last two weeks I've had a handful of people email me to ask for alternatives to Adobe Spark for creating videos. I'm taking that as a sign that Adobe didn't go a great job communicating that they simply rebranded Adobe Spark as Adobe Creative Cloud Express. It has all of the same tools that you used for creating videos in Adobe Spark. You can even use the same log-in credentials for it. 

If you haven't tried Adobe Creative Cloud Express to create a video, watch this tutorial video to see how easy it is to use it. 

Applications for Education
Some of the things that make Adobe Creative Cloud Express a good video creation tool for students are the built-in image search tools, the ease with which you can change color schemes, and the ability for students to remotely collaborate on the creation of a video.

How to Mirror an Android Phone to a PC or Mac

In this week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I included a video in which I simultaneously displayed my Android phone's screen and iPad's screen on my Windows desktop. A few folks have emailed me to ask how I did that. If you're curious about the process I used, here it is. 

The Problem

My usual method of mirroring my phone screen to my computer is to use Airserver. However, I can only mirror one device at a time through Airserver. To make a video in which the screens of two devices were shown simultaneously, I needed to either do some laborious editing or figure out a way to mirror two devices that the same time. 

The Solution

In order to show the screens of two devices at the same time, I had to install a second screen mirroring program that could run at the same time as Airserver without causing a conflict. The solution was to use Vysor. 

Vysor is a program that I've used in the past to use an Android phone as a document camera. With Vysor lets you mirror a phone to a PC or Mac via USB cable. That means that it can run at the same time as Airserver and it doesn't conflict with it. 

Making the Video

To make the video I then mirrored my iPad's screen to my PC via Airserver and mirrored my Android phone's screen to my PC via Vysor. Then I recorded both screens in the same frame by using Screencast-o-matic on my desktop. 

Here's what the final video looked like. 

How to Create a Custom Map on an iPad

Yesterday morning I answered an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible to create Google Earth projects on an iPad. Unfortunately, the iPad version of Google Earth allows you to view existing projects, but doesn't allow you to create new projects. Fortunately, there are other ways to create custom maps on an iPad. One of those ways to is to use Google's My Maps tool in the Chrome web browser on an iPad. 

In this new video I demonstrate how you can create a custom map on an iPad by using Google's My Maps. 

Applications for Education
There are lots of possible uses for Google's My Maps in geography, history, and literature classes. In fact, I recently published ten fun things for students to map. You could also use My Maps in place of Google Earth to complete an Around the World With Google Earth activity.