Common Craft Explains Research Papers to Students

I often use Common Craft videos as an example of creating effective video lessons without having to spend a lot of money on special equipment or software. In fact, I did that in a webinar that I hosted yesterday. The video that I used as an example was Research Papers Explained by Common Craft. 

Research Papers Explained by Common Craft does an excellent job of explaining to students why the research papers they write in school are good practice for life in a working environment. The video does this through the example of trying to convince your boss to give you a raise. 

Common Craft videos can be previewed on their website. To use them in your school you do need a Common Craft membership.

Disclosure: I have a long-standing, in-kind relationship with Common Craft.

Reminder - Two-Factor Authentication Saves Frustration

I've noticed a pattern lately that whenever I don't check my Facebook account for more than a day, I get notifications that someone is trying to access my account via password reset. Fortunately, I use two-factor authentication on all of my accounts. (In the case of Facebook I'm forced to use two-factor because of the size of my following). While it can be annoying to have to use your phone or a second computer to verify your identity when signing into an account, it's a heck of a lot less annoying that dealing with all of the frustration and headaches that come when one of your online accounts is compromised. 

What is two-factor authentication?

Two-factor authentication, sometimes called two-factor verification, is a system in which you have to enter a password and then receive an SMS (text) message or email through which you verify that you actually tried to sign into your account. I use this on every service that offers it including my Google account and all bank accounts. This is great because if someone does try to sign into one of my accounts from a computer or phone other than mine, I immediately get a text message. My friends Lee and Sachi LeFever at Common Craft have a great video that explains two-factor authentication. You can see that video here.

Your Password Isn't Strong Enough!

If you're thinking, "I don't need two-factor authentication, I use a strong password," you're wrong. In How Easy It Is To Crack Your Password Kevin Mitnick explains why your "clever" use of "@" in place of "a" in your password isn't fooling anyone. He demonstrates how quickly hackers can crack passwords and explains why you should use passphrases along with two-factor authentication. 

Beware of Social Engineering

Last year I showed this video, another one featuring Kevin Mitnick, to my networking students and they laughed the gullibility of the people who fell for his social engineering attack. Watch it and don't be the security manager from Motorola. 

Kevin Mitnick was one of the most wanted hackers in the world in the 1980's and 1990's. His autobiography, Ghost in the Wires, is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the world of hacking. He's now a security consultant for a firm called KnowBe4 and he published The Art of Invisibility which is about how to minimize and protect your digital footprints.

Common Craft videos can be reviewed online for evaluation purposes. To use embed them into a blog as I've done requires a membership (which are very reasonably priced).

Disclosure: I have an in-kind relationship with Common Craft.

Boclips for Teachers is Shutting Down

For couple of years Boclips was one of my favorite alternatives to YouTube for teachers and students. Unfortunately, their business model seems to have shifted over the years and appears to be now focused solely on selling pricey subscriptions to schools and other institutions. I surmise that because late last week I received an email from Boclips announcing that they were discontinuing Boclips for Teachers which was the way that individual teachers could use the videos in the Boclips library. 

If you've been using Boclips for Teachers, you probably already know that much of the content that is on Boclips can also be found on YouTube. And if you were using Boclips simply to avoid the distractions associated with YouTube, you should try one of these distraction-free ways to use YouTube in your classroom. 

Best of 2022 So Far - Custom USGS Maps

I'm taking the weekend off. While I'm gone I'll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. 

Earlier this year I highlighted the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. Earlier this week I was back on the USGS site looking in those galleries when I noticed something new to me. That something is the USGS National Map Viewer. 

Don't the name fool you, the USGS National Map Viewer is more than just a place to look at a map. The USGS National Map Viewer lets you choose from a huge library of datasets to display on a map. You can view the source information for each dataset. Additionally, you can choose the base map on which the datasets are displayed. If that's not enough to get you to try the USGS National Map Viewer, I should also tell you that you can draw on the maps, measure on the maps, and print your customized map displays. Watch this short video to get an idea of what is possible with the USGS National Map Viewer. 

Applications for Education
The USGS National Map Viewer could be a great tool for students to use to make visual connections between the information provided in a dataset and the locations referenced in those datasets. For example, in the video above I applied the earthquake faults dataset to the map so that students can see where there is more or less seismic activity in the United States. On a related note, here's a nearly realtime USGS map of the latest seismic activity around the world.

Best of 2022 So Far - Brush Ninja Updates

I'm taking the weekend off. While I'm gone I'll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far. 

Brush Ninja is a tool that I've been using and recommending for a few years now. Brush Ninja makes it incredibly easy to draw a series of images and quickly turn them into animated GIFs. In the fall of 2018 I used Brush Ninja with some middle school students to create animations to illustrate their understanding of forms of energy. You can read more about that activity right here. 

Brush Ninja is still a great tool for making animated GIFs. In fact, it has gotten better since I first started using it. You can now use custom backgrounds including background pictures that you take with your webcam. The animated GIF creator also now lets you change the size of the canvas you're drawing on. And there are now twice as many stickers available in the GIF creator than when I started using it. 

In addition to making animated GIFs, Brush Ninja now has three other tools. Those are an emoji art creator, a collage maker, and a comic book creator. The emoji art creator lets you click on a canvas to place any of hundreds of emojis into a pattern to create digital artwork. The collage maker is exactly what it sounds like, a tool for making photo collages. The comic book creator simply lets you upload a series of images to a comic book template that you can print and fold. 

An overview of all of the Brush Ninja tools is provided in this new video that I recorded on Wednesday. 

Applications for Education

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I've had students use Brush Ninja to make animations to illustrate their understanding of forms of energy. I longer explanation of that instance can be read here. An explanation of my initial introduction to the concepts behind sketching in the classroom is available here. 

One of the reasons that Brush Ninja continues to by one of my go-to tools is that it doesn't require students to register or sign-up for anything in order to use all of the available features.