Myna – A Web Based Audio Tool

Are you looking for an easy way for your students to begin creating audio files for podcasts?  Than Myna by Aviary may be the tool for you.  Myna allows you to remix audio tracks, apply sound effects, and record your voice which will make creating your next podcast even easier than before.  It is completely web-based so there is no need to download software onto your computer making it easier for students to create podcasts from any computer.

Editing capabilities include:

• trim, loop, stretch and reverse your audio clips
• width editable loop points
• interactive time stretch capabilities
• easily add fade-ins, fade-outs
• pan from left to right
• add non-destructive effects to your audio clips including pitch change, reverb, delay, and parametric EQ

To learn more about Myna visit http://aviary.com/tools/myna.   We would love to hear how you use this tool in your classroom.

FREE WEB-BASED IMAGE EDITING

If you have been looking for a free web-based image editing software program, Sumo Paint may just be the ticket.  This free web-based program provides you with the most advanced set of tools for creating and editing your own images.   It has similar tools to Photoshop including layer support and filters as well as the shape, brush, ink, text, clone stamp, eraser, gradient, transform, symmetry, magic wand, lasso, smudge, blur, and line tools.

The program can edit images you already have including photos or you can start from scratch and create your own.  You can save them to your Sumo Account online or to your own computer.  You can open images from your Sumo Account, your computer, or from a URL.  One major drawback is that you can only save files as jpg or png.

Sumo Paint is flash-based and should work with any browser and operating system that supports Flash.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

To educators, technology is both an opportunity and a challenge. They don’t have time to scour the millions of resources available online to find content that is credible, appropriate and standards-based. Yet, to engage today’s students – of all ages – technology is a must.

That’s exactly where Thinkfinity.org comes in. This comprehensive Web site delivers free online resources to advance student achievement, including: top-quality, standards-based, K-12 lesson plans; student materials; interactive tools; connections to educational Web sites; research-based models and courses; and metrics for literacy instruction. From the classroom to literacy programs, after school or home environments, Thinkfinity.org gives teachers, instructors and parents the tools they need to increase student performance today and create the lifelong learners of tomorrow.

What is Thinkfinity?

Thinkfinity.org is a Web site that contains thousands of free lesson plans and student materials in every core subject, designed by the leading educational and literacy organizations in the United States.  Thinkfinity is designed to improve learning in traditional settings and beyond the classroom by providing high-caliber content and professional development needed to improve student achievement anytime, anywhere, at no cost.

In a nutshell, here’s what clicks with teachers who use Thinkfinity.org:

• Content is free and meets national education standards and the educational standards adopted by each of the states.
• Finding information is simple and fast.
• Content providers are knowledgeable and trustworthy.
• Lessons are exciting, fun and cover a depth and breadth of topics.
• Resources can be readily used by an individual student, small group or whole class.
• Literacy materials are targeted to early childhood, K-12, family, adult and English language learners.

The Thinkfinity homepage, located at www.thinkfinity.org, is the access point for all Thinkfinity resources. On the right hand side of the homepage, you will find the Search Engine, where you can quickly search for lessons, interactives, worksheets, media and much more! In the center of the homepage, you will find links to the Content Partner sites and four main menu items: Educator, Student, Parent and Afterschool. Each of these sections will allow access to additional resources.

The Educator portal contains a search tool for lessons and interactives and a calendar that highlights events that have occurred on specific dates with accompanying lessons and activities. It also provides links to monthly highlights and the newest resources.

Thinkfinity Professional Development

A comprehensive professional development program prepares educators to incorporate Thinkfinity’s rich resources into their instructional settings for maximum impact. A rollout network of select state and national education and literacy organizations ensures the broadest possible reach for these valuable resources and services. The Professional Development menu is also found within the Educator portal.  The Professional Development section links to training opportunities and resources. Currently Thinkfinity offers one-hour Webinars (a combination of online and voice phone seminars) and a Flash-based self-guided training presentation online for free.  Additional training opportunities are available in Michigan through our Field Trainer Network.  Please contact Karen Hariston (hairstonk@michigan.gov) for more information.

In a past issue we highlighted how to use Microsoft’s Photostory for digital storytelling in the classroom.  It is a great and easy to use program that can bring digital photos to life.  I recently came across another such online program called Animoto.

Animoto is a web-based application that allows you to make videos from digital pictures set to music.  In three simple steps you can have a video that you can embed on a website, upload to YouTube, or email to those with whom you want to share.

First you upload all of the images that you would like to include in the video.  You can also include any text that you would like to add to the video.  You arrange the images and the text in the order that you want them to appear.

The second step allows you to either upload music for the video or choose from royalty free music that Animoto has available for your use.

In the last step you choose the speed that you want the images to move from one to the other and then have the program create the video.  Animoto’s website describes the process of making the video,

Animoto uses patent-pending technology to analyze your images and everything about the selected music — its structure, genre, energy, build, rhythm — before developing a blueprint for the motion design of your video.

If you don’t like how the images are being displayed you can just choose to remix the video and the program will create a brand new video.

There is a education version for this web-based application that can be found at http://education.animoto.com/. The education version provides you and your students with full access to the program. You can check out a video that I created for the Educational Technology program at Michigan State University.

To learn more about Animoto you can watch this video:

Using Quia in the Classroom

Two of our current Educational Technology students highlighted Quia, a company providing many different web-based tools for educators, in their Sharing Tips and Tricks section of their classes. Charles Kubolz, a Certificate student this past summer, highlighted Quia in the Sharing Tips and Tricks discussion in MACUL Space. To read Charles’ summary please visit the second page of the Sharing Tips and Tricks discussion for the EduTech Group on MACUL Space. (http://maculspace.ning.com/group/msuedutech).

In addition, Rehab Rajab, a MAET Plymouth student, demonstrated how it worked in her class this summer and has provided a brief write up for this newsletter.

I use Quia to create quizzes, games, activities, surveys, class WebPages and online calendars for my classes. I create a class roster at the beginning of the year which automatically creates a user name and a password for each student; those are usually e-mailed to the students or printed off and given to them by the teacher. By creating an account for each student in my class, I can track their work as they log on every time they do one of my activities. Students also like to see their scores which are easily seen when they log into their accounts even from home where they can share it with their parents.

There are sixteen activity templates to choose from when creating a new activity such as Battleship, Cloze, Challenge Board, Concentration, Flashcards and many others. When an activity is created, the teacher has the option to share it with others or keep it private which creates a bank of activities that teachers can search and copy into their accounts.

I use the Quizzes feature the most. Quizzes that are created by Quia can be taken online or printed off. Teachers can choose from 16 types of questions where inserting images and audio files are possible. When a quiz is created, all the questions in this quiz are saved in the teacher’s bank of questions. So the questions are saved even if the quiz is deleted later on. Quizzes can be automatically graded and students see their scores immediately. Open ended questions can be graded by the teacher online. The great thing about this feature is that it keeps the whole process electronic and thus no paper is wasted. The same quiz can be copied for different classes with different passwords, time limits and number of attempts.

I create a customized Webpage for each class where I can post messages, recommend activities and websites, and assign homework with downloadable files for my students. I also use it as an electronic bulletin board where I announce scores and award some students. The calendar option makes it possible to post deadlines and quiz dates online as well. It helps the students become independent by following up what’s happening on the class webpage themselves.

Quia saved me a lot of time and effort.

-Rehab Rajab, MSU MAET Plymouth Student

This summer I had the opportunity to spend 4 weeks in Plymouth, England teaching the first three courses of the Educational Technology program.  You can read more about the Plymouth, England program under the Certificate News category.  As part of my experience teaching this summer I had the opportunity to meet 15 incredible educators that are teaching in schools all across the world.  This interaction provided me with so many great new ideas and technologies that are available for teachers to use.  One of those ideas, Cameras Interactive, was presented to the class in one of our Sharing Tech Tips, News and How To’s session by Jon Bennett.

According to the website,

“Cameras Interactive aims to help novice photographers grasp the main concepts of SLR photography.

The Flash-based Virtual Camera gives users hands-on experience operating a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. Four tutorials explain focusing, aperture, shutter speed and exposure.”

When you go to www.camerasinteractive.com you will click on the Virtual Camera link. This will pop up a new window that has a camera lens and shutter speed dial.  You can walk through each of the four tutorials and test out what you have learned through the demos.  At the end of the four tutorials you can try out all of the skills you have learned on sample photos.  You will learn about focus, aperture, shutter speed, and exposure.

This is a great tool to teach students (as well as yourself) how to take great photos.  Best of all you don’t need a camera for every student.  They can try out taking photos virtually instead.

-Carrie Albin, Outreach Coordinator and Editor

Have you wanted to find a way to share PowerPoint presentations with others and have them comment on them? Perhaps you would like students in your class to be able to upload their presentations to receive feedback from others in their class or outside of the classroom.

Well VoiceThread can help you do that. According to the VoiceThread site, “A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.”

If you are concerned about privacy and only want your VoiceThreads available to the students in your class you can make your VoiceThreads private. Only those that you invite to view your VoiceThread will be able to see it and comment on it.

VoiceThread offers free accounts for K-12 educators. You just need to register by clicking on the Sign In or Register link in the upper right hand corner. After signing up for a new account you then need to click on the Go Pro! button at the upper right hand side of the screen. In the next window click on the link at the bottom that says K-12 classroom educators. You will then need to provide more information regarding your classroom and you will need to register your school email address. (This is the email address you have been given by your school). They will send you a verification email to this address so you will need to be able to access it.

VoiceThread has a special edition of their web-based application for educators called Ed.VoiceThread. Unfortunately this version is not free and will set you back $60/year to register your classroom. There is also a school version that costs $300 plus $1 per user per year.

To learn more about how VoiceThread works you can view this VoiceThread.

To learn more about how VoiceThread may be used in education you can visit http://voicethread.com/#q.b3352.i28616 and see VoiceThread at work.

Edit Images on the Fly using Photo Gadget freeware

As part of our Certificate courses, students share their favorite tips and tricks using technology in their classroom. Often when students select websites that they find useful we will highlight them in our Web Sightings section of our newsletter.Starting in May our students will be selecting their favorite tip and trick from those submitted in their class and post it to our MACUL Space EduTech Group so that anyone can benefit from these great suggestions.

One of our students, Kelly Royer, recently submitted a tip regarding a free software program that you can download to your computer that adds image editing options to your right click menu. She found this program to be very useful for her students by allowing them to edit and save images from the Internet on the fly rather than having to open up a photo editing program.

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With the development of Web 2.0 has come a host of free online office suites that are great for the classroom. Google Docs, Zoho Office and ThinkFree Office are just three options that are available. All three offer comparable programs to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Although they may not have all the features that you get with Microsoft Office they offer most of what a user needs and provide a great way of being able to collaborate on a file.

The ability to do group collaboration using these office suites makes them very useful for the classroom. Google has created a great video that explains how this collaboration piece works in Google Docs but the same idea applies to Zoho and ThinkFree. Students can work in groups on one project and only have one file to update or to change. You can also have your students conduct peer editing using any of these applications as well as use them to submit documents to you electronically so you can edit them. The best part is that there is no software required. So students can work on a project at school and then access the same project at home. No saving, no worrying about file extensions or having the right software to open it up. All students need is an Internet connection to be able to access the file. (more…)

The Stock Market Game is an online education program used in thousands of classrooms nationwide to help teach math, social studies, business, economics, & language arts while focusing on the importance of long-term savings and investment.  Students in grades 4 through 12 participate in teams and manage a simulated investment portfolio during the school year. 

There are two game periods that last 10-weeks each.  The first session starts October 8, 2007.  The second session begins February 25, 2008.  Grade and subject-specific curriculum guides, lesson plans, and newsletters are provided for classroom instruction.  Lessons topics include:

• What is a Company?
• What is a Stock?
• Identifying Ticker Symbols and Interpreting Stock Quotes
• What is Risk?
• How Does Money Grow Over Time?
• Dividends & Earnings
• What is an Exchange/Markets?
• What is Diversification?
• What is a Mutual Fund?
• What Causes Stock Prices to Change?
• Buy, Sell or Hold?
• How Successful Was My Investment Strategy?

For more information please contact Christopher Anderson at (810) 252-4474 or chris.smgmi@yahoo.com.

Creating a Blog in Edublogs

Blogs have become a great way for teachers to share information about their classes to students, parents, and other educators. They are also a great way of having students produce work to be seen by a wider audience. Students can post their writings and get feedback from other students, experts, even from the authors of the works they are studying.

This new way of sharing information doesn’t come without some issues that need to be addressed. Protecting students and their privacy is required by every school as part of the Children’s Internet Protection Act. It is important for educators to learn not only about how to create and use new Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs in their classroom, but how to use them safely in order to protect their students.

In our Educational Technology Certificate Program we show educators how to create a blog using Edublogs. Edublogs uses the free open source software called Wordpress and allows teachers to create a blog for their classroom for free. Our tutorials not only cover how to create a blog but also how to moderate it in order to better protect the students that will be using the blogs.

You can check out Edublogs: Part 1 to learn more about creating your own blog in Edublogs. You also get a free Wiki at Wikispaces.com by signing up with Edublogs.

Some other resources that may be helpful are:

How To’s

http://edublogs.org/videos/ (Great video tutorials)

http://maetshowcase.educ.msu.edu/year2/EdublogTraining/bridge.htm

http://freidhof.fts.educ.msu.edu/Tech_Handouts/tech_handouts.htm

Article on Blogging Guidelines

http://www.edtechmag.com/k12/issues/november-december-2006/blog-rules.html

–Carrie Albin, Outreach Coordinator and Co-Editor

Using Photostory to Create a Video Presentation

Are you tired of creating presentations in PowerPoint? Would you like to create movies with still photos to add to your website? Perhaps you would like to have background music or audio narration on your movie. Then you should try out the free Microsoft Photostory program.

You will need to download the program to your computer and then begin creating your masterpiece. The progam walks you step by step through the process from importing photos to adding music and audio narration. In case you need more direction on using the program you can visit the Microsoft Photostory tutorial or read Using Microsoft Photostory 3 created by David Jakes an Instructional Technology Coordinator in Illinois.

When you are finished with the project you can save your work to be viewed on a computer using Windows Media Player, sent in an email message (will compress the file to 1MB or less if possible), or for playback on a Pocket PC or SmartPhone.

Students can use Photostory to create video presentations of research they have conducted on a selected subject. Their presentation can combine images, text, music, and audio narration. Teachers can create presentations that showcase what goes on in their classroom which they can use during Parent-Teacher conferences.

To see an examples of Photostory being used in the classroom visit the following websites:

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/task/photostory/ps3demos.htm
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/oly/library/teachers/gianotti/APllinkpage_06.htm

–Carrie Albin, Outreach Coordinator and Co-Editor

Sample Lesson in our CEP 810 Course
“Using the Internet to Bring Professional Development to You!”

The Educational Technology Certificate program is now offered face-to-face or online and is part of the new Educational Technology (NP) endorsement. So what is stopping you from signing up today? Perhaps we need to show you a sample of what is covered in one of our courses. Below you will find a lesson on creating a Netvibes page for professional development that is presented in our CEP 810 course.

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An important aspect of professional development is connecting with other educators and professionals. Unfortunately, all too often educators feel isolated and find it difficult to connect with educators outside of their building. Distance isn’t the only issue. Educators often have multiple demands on their time. Recent advances on the web now make it possible to bring other educators and professional development resources to you.

Think about your favorite magazine or journal. For those really good journals that you want to read every week you subscribe to them so that they are delivered to your door every month. You don’t have to go out and get them. Applications known as RSS Readers or Aggregators do the same thing. They allow you to subscribe to a page such as a blog that generates an RSS feed. The aggregator remembers all of your subscriptions and gathers new content that has been added. It then aggregates the information (compiles it) for you. It is like taking the headlines and abstracts from all of your favorite newspapers or journals and bringing them into one place for you to skim. If you want to follow up on any of the stories they are usually just one click away.

As part of our CEP 810 course we show you how to use an aggregator called Netvibes. Netvibes is web-based and sometimes referred to as a start page. Think of your Netvibes page as your one-stop-shopping area for professional development. Instead of scouring the Internet everyday new information will be brought to you.

We are going to show you how to add RSS Feeds from the following sources:

• Technology and Learning (journal)
• NPR Topics: Education (a compilation of radio shows dealing with issues related to education)
• Webblogg-ed ( Blog)
• Literacy Education Updates (Professional Organization Blog)

Go to the Netvibes Tutorial.

–Kathryn Dirkin, Virtual Endorsement Developer and Year Two Instructor