A Short Explanation of Book Creator in the Classroom

Just in time for the annual ISTE conference the folks at Book Creator have released a new video highlighting how their multimedia ebook tool can be used in classrooms. If you're a regular user of Book Creator, the video won't reveal to you anything you don't already know (I think some new things will be revealed next week). But if you're not familiar with Book Creator or you're responsible for introducing it to teachers in your school, the video provides a succinct overview of Book Creator's key features. 

Watch the video to see short demos of the following Book Creator features:

• Shapes, fonts, images, and media embeds.
• Audio recording. 
• Read aloud. 
• Magic pen.
• Teacher dashboard and analytics.
• Creation collaboration.

Two Ways to Make Your Own Wordle-style Games

Last week I wrote about Strive Math's new Custom Wordle game creator. That little tool can be used to create Wordle-style games based on words of any length. Flippity.net also offers a free template for making your own Wordle-style games for students to play online. Both are easy to use and don't require registration in order to use them or to play the games created with them.

In this short video I demonstrate how to create your own Wordle-style games with Strive Math's free tool and with Flippity's template. 

Five Ways to Work With PDFs in Google Drive

Some of the questions that receive more than frequently than others revolve around working with PDFs. The answers that people are looking for are often "hidden" in plain sight. Case in point, just uploading a PDF to Google Drive gives you a handful of ways that you can work with it. 

In this new video I demonstrate five things that you can do with PDFs in Google Drive. Watch the video to learn:

• How to comment on PDFs in Google Drive.
• How to share PDFs in Google Drive.
• How to convert PDFs to Google Docs.
• How to search within PDFs in Google Drive. 
• How to annotate PDFs. 

How to Record a Video Lesson in PowerPoint

A few years ago I published a video about how to create a video by using the recording tool built into PowerPoint. Since then Microsoft has added more features to the recording tools in PowerPoint. So last week I recorded a new tutorial on how to record a video lesson in PowerPoint. 

In this short video I demonstrate how to record yourself talking while drawing on your PowerPoint slides. The best feature of the recording tool is the teleprompter mode that allows you to see your speaker notes displayed above your slides while recording. The final video doesn't display the speaker notes so your viewers won't even know that you were reading your notes. 

Watch my new video to learn how to record a video lesson in the desktop (Windows) version of PowerPoint. 

Applications for Education
If you have been teaching for a while, you probably have some slideshows that you've made and really like. With the built-in recorder you can quickly turn those slideshows into short video lessons.

If you like the idea of turning your PowerPoint slides into videos, but you don't want to appear on camera then you might be interested in trying Narakeet which turns your PowerPoint slides into narrated videos for you.

Quizdini is Shutting Down

Quizdini is shutting down after a decade of offering a good platform for teachers to create and give online quizzes. Its last day will be Thursday, June 23, 2022. 

In an email sent to users this morning, the founder of Quizdini said "All good things--even aging edtech platforms--must come to an end and it's time to put Quizdini out to pasture." 

While it was never a super popular tool, the closure of Quizdini is noteworthy because it was ahead of its time in some ways. It offered automated grading with student feedback before Google Forms or Microsoft Forms did. Unfortunately, as Google Forms and Microsoft Forms it becomes harder for small developers to compete in that area.