I Don't Know What to Create

 Time after time, I hear teachers who want to do something with students using technology but are unsure what to create. Here is a list of products students can make that show off their knowledge. 

1. Audio Recording
2. Advertisement
3. Analogy
4. Animation
5. Avatar
6. Blog
7. Book Jacket
8. Brochure
9. Bulletin Board
10. Cards (Playing/Task)
11. Character Conversations
12. Class Book
13. Creative Nonfiction
14. Collage
15. Comedy Skit
16. Comic Strip
17. Commercial
18. Concept Map
19. Conversation
20. Dance
21. Data/Analytics Visualization
22. Debate
23. Demonstration
24. Diary Entry
25. Digitally-Documented Discussion
26. Diorama
27. Doodle
28. Drawing
29. eBook
30. Essay
31. Experiment
32. Fake Social Media Account
33. Film
34. Freestyle (hip-hop)
35. Flow Chart
36. Game
37. Gif Animation
38. Glossary
39. Google Earth Tour
40. Graph
41. Graphic Organizer
42. Infomercial
43. Interview
44. Kahoot!
45. Learning Log
46. Literature Circle
47. Live Stream
48. Magazine
49. Map
50. Mock-Up/Wireframe
51. Mock Product-Pitch
52. Model
53. Monologue
54. Movie Poster
55. Mural
56. Mash-Up
57. News Report
58. Newsletter/ Newspaper
59. Panel Discussion
60. Paper Slides Video
61. Photo
62. Podcast
63. Poem
64. Portfolio
65. Poster
66. Presentation (Google Slides)
67. Product
68. Puppet Show
69. Reenactment
70. Relevant Visualization
71. Review
72. Role-Play
73. Rules/Framework
74. Scavenger Hunt
75. Scrapbook
76. Sculpture
77. Survey
78. Self-Directed Project
79. Self-Directed Short Video
80. Show & Tell
81. Simulation
82. Six Word Story
83. Social Media Branding
84. Socratic Discussion
85. Song
86. Stop Motion Animation
87. Speech
88. Tag Cloud
89. Team-Building Game
90. Time Capsule
91. Theatrical Play
92. Timeline
93. Tutorial
94. Video Game
95. Website
96. Whiteboard Animation
97. Word Splash
98. Word Wall
99. Wiki
100. YouTube Channel

Creativity Apps for iPads

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2017. Time to start using that technology in your classroom to allow students to be creators of knowledge instead of consumers of knowledge. For those with iPads, I have a blog post from Jonathan Wylie titled Getting Creative with iPads in K-12 Classrooms. This is a wonderful list. I have used or heard of most of these apps. Some of my favorites from the list:

• Green Screen by Doink
• IPEVO Whiteboard
• ChatterPix
• All of the Adobe Spark apps
• Snapseed
• Canva
• Sock Puppets

Check out Jonathan's blog post and see if you can find a few favorites of your own.


https://jonathanwylie.com/2016/12/16/creative-ipads-apps-k-12-classrooms/

Slideshows created in YouTube

Somehow I totally missed this feature in YouTube or didn't know enough what I was doing to share it. You can create photo slideshows on YouTube. This is similar to the Microsoft Photostory software that was all the rage several years ago in the Digital Storytelling world. Basically, you log in to your Google account, go to YouTube, click the upload button, add your photos, texts, transitions, and music, and click the create video button. Looks like you would have to create separate speech files and use those for the audio if you wanted to hear student voice, but I am not sure. Something to play with and figure out.

Kelly Fitzgerald has a great tutorial on how to create slideshows in YouTube, so I bow to her expertise. Make sure to watch her video and visit her blog on creating and editing video. You will be glad you did.

Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks

I have really been enjoying the blog from Eric Curts, Control Alt Achieve, lately. I first attended one of his webinars and immediately signed up for his newsletter (which you can do on his website).

One of his latest posts talks about using Google Slides for student created storybooks. So many great resources available on that post.  http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2016/03/google-slides-storybooks.html

There are example resources, how to use Slides resources, examples he wrote, and his 1 hr. Webinar training.

I truly believe this will be worth your while to watch if you are looking to increase the level of SAMR  and higher order thinking in your classroom. 

https://d1pmarobgdhgjx.cloudfront.net/education/SAMR_Rebrand_2014.mp4

Ribbet

In 2005, a tremendous photo editor, Picnik, came out and helped transform free, online photo editing. This site was a great tool for teachers and students alike as the ability to edit photos from any web enabled computer was now available, free. Then around 2012, Google purchased Picnik with the hopes of bringing the photo editing experience to their products. However, this unfortunately meant the closure of Picnik. There was much sadness and disappointment in the education world, myself included, as this tool was perfect for photo editing.

We tried to fill the void with other good online tools like PicMonkey and Pixlr, but there always seemed to be that hole that something wasn't quite right.

Today, as I was looking at some other Chrome tools in the Web store, one of the "suggested for you" links was Ribbet. And I noticed a curious little tree frog looking back at me. So I went to the link and discovered Ribbet is Picnik! Well, not the same company, but basically the same product taken on by a team of programmers and designers who saw the public outcry for Picnik. They even got permission to use the tree frog image.

I don't know how long this has been out there, but I am pretty excited about using Ribbet. Great for online photo editing and collage creation. Just like Picnik, the majority of the site is free, but there are some Premium edits only available to those that upgrade and pay the $29.95/year fee (that is the best price; there is also a $4.95 monthly, and $19.95 six monthly).

So visit www.ribbet.com and get to creating!

Animoto Plus for Educators

Looking for an easy way to create presentations that incorporate video, images, music, and text. Then look no further than Animoto. A very easy tool to use to create videos to use in your classroom. Now educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account. Just visit https://animoto.com/education/classroom?utm_source=retention, fill out the information, and receive a 6 month Plus account.  

Molview.org

So have you ever been asleep and woke up wondering what the 6-chloro-2,3,4,9-tetrahydro-1H-carbazole-1-carboxamide compound looks like*? Well wonder no more. You can now view and build 2d and 3d models of molecules. Molview is an open-source web app to help build those chemistry and biology models. http://molview.org/

There is a pdf manual you can download to help get started. Since this is HTML5 based it should work pretty much on any device.


By the way 6-chloro-2,3,4,9-tetrahydro-1H-carbazole-1-carboxamide compound looks like this.

(* In a spirit of openness, I have no idea what 6-chloro-2,3,4,9-tetrahydro-1H-carbazole-1-carboxamide is. It came up when I started typing in the search box and I though it looked cool.

Another Word Cloud Generator

I love word clouds and have talked about Wordle previously.
 http://scottfirenza.blogspot.com/search/label/word%20clouds

Another one recently brought to my attention that I had forgotten about is Tagul. https://tagul.com

Tagul requires a free account to be created which can be created your Google, Facebook, or Twitter account or just an email address.

Teachers or students can create their own word cloud by typing in words to be added or importing a list of word. In Wordle to get the words to show up larger you would just type them in multiple times, which is great with importing text like a speech. However, if you are just wanting some of your words bigger Tagul allows you to designate the size of the word. Users can also set the color of each word, the angle, and the font. Tagul also allows users to create their word cloud as a certain shape.

Tagul also allows for a variety of ways to share your word cloud, including email, links, downloads, and embed codes.

Created with Tagul.com

Teacher can enter all of the student's names into the word cloud for graphics to use during the school year or a class shirt. Teachers can enter text, like to the Gettysburg address above, and have students guess the speech or event or speaker. Students can enter their paragraph they have written to see which words stand out the most in their summary or story.

Stop Animation Creation

From Mozilla comes a fun little website for younger students to learn the basics of stop animation.

http://parapara-editor.mozlabs.jp/sandbox

On the site students can select their colored crayon and size of the tip to use. Students draw their image on the screen. Then students click the frame at the top with the plus sign. A new frame will appear with a shaded image of their first frame to be used for reference. Students then draw their image on the second frame. Continue this process until the stop animation is complete. Press the orange play button to see the images come to life. If animation is to the students liking, they click the OK button at the bottom right corner. They can add a Title to their animation and their name (take care with student information!) and click the send button. This apparently uploads the animation to Mozilla's website.

Students can then email the link to a person of their choosing, scan or save the QR code linked to the video, or just copy and paste the link into a browser to see their animation play out. 

While not the most feature rich program, this does give a good introduction to how stop motion videos are made. Give it a try. 

From the iMore blog comes a great tutorial on:

How to record, trim, edit, and share videos on an iPhone or iPad.

http://www.imore.com/record-trim-videos-ipad#share-video

Taking video is pretty easy with your device, but what to do with it when you finished recording.  Follow their post to find out what you can do with just the iPhone or iPad with no other apps required.

Adobe Voice for the iPad

Adobe, the makers of Reader and Flash, have come out with a great iPad app called Adobe Voice.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-voice-show-your-story/id852555131

I have just downloaded this and and starting to tinker around with the app. Here is what I have learned so far.

Adobe Voice allows users to create videos right on the iPad using their own voice, free music, free creative commons photos, and text.
Did I mention this app is FREE!

Pros:
It is Free
Easy to use
Free use of creative commons icons, photos, and Music (no copyright issues)
Can use own photos and music (possible copyright issues)
Puts the credits at the end of the video
Easy to share the video on Facebook, Twitter, by email, or message
Can mark videos Private so they cannot be search out online. Only those with the link can view.

Cons:
No option at this time to save to the Camera Roll
Have to login to free Adobe account
There is a public gallery. Even though the TOS covers inappropriate material, there is the off chance someone in the world could upload something before Adobe has the chance to take it down.
For iPad only


Make sure to check out David Pogue's review of the free Adobe Voice app.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/you-know-adobe-right-this-is-the-company-that-85081015729.html


EDIT:
After your video is uploaded and you share the link, you are also given the option to share to Facebook, Twitter, or use an embed code.

So look like you can mark the video Private, upload it, go to the website from the link it generates, grab the Embed code and put it on your own website.

75 Creative and Useful Imaging Websites

I found a great site that compiled a list of image creators and editors. I have posted on some of these in the past  (Online Photo Editors) and most are in this list.

The list comes from a 2012 TCEA presentation by Bridget Robinson from Clear Creek ISD. Some of the links may be broken but there are many links that teachers and students will like to help create images for their projects. It also looks like it may get added to as the real count is 136 websites.

Take a look.

https://sites.google.com/site/technologystuffinfo/