Author Archives: Mark Glynn
Novel ways to present images and video in a powerpoint presentation
I am constantly looking or new ways to “jazz up” my presentations and recently I cam across two methods that i found quite nice; using an iphone image to encase your videos and creating a photocube effect for presenting images. The Youtube clip below ilustrates how to implement these two ideas
Related articles
- How To Embed YouTube Videos In A PowerPoint Presentation (lockergnome.com)
- 12 keys to a great PowerPoint presentation (prdaily.com)
Getting Google calendar working for you
Image via CrunchBase
The interface of Google Calendar is similar to desktop calendar applications such as Microsoft Outlook. Events are stored online; consequently, the calendar can be viewed from any location that has Internet access. The video below gives you an introduction to Google calendar, following by links to some of the more advance features available through Google calendar
Xtranormal for digital storytelling
Xtranormal is a website that hosts text-to-speech based computer animated videoclips, featuring animated three-dimensional characters speaking in monotone computer voices. Users who log into the site may create videos by scripting the dialog and choosing from a menu of camera angles and predesigned characters and scenes. It is free to join but you will have limited access to the variety of characters and scenes available to use. Give it a shot it is worth a try
How Google search works
The mechanics behind the search engine explained in a clear and concise manner, very interesting viewing
What characteristics are essential for effective teaching from the student perspective?
This is a link to some very interesting research conducted at Memorial university of Newfoundland
The word of advice for anybody intending to teach online – responsiveness of the instructor is high on the list for online students so get your communication strategy developed with your students from the onset
Assessing documents from students and providing feedback through technology
There are several posts (linked below) providing information on how to manage your assessments through technology. This post deals specifically with receiving a document from your students e.g. a lab report or an essay and providing feedback on that asssignment.
The YouTube video below shows you how to set up an assignment to receive documents from your students. It will take a bit of time to set up (roughly 5 minutes) but it will save you an incredible amount of administration time connected to the assignment and from a quality assurance point of view will provide a potentially better experience for both the student and teacher.
The challenge that you will face is being able to read the documents that they have submitted. Every student may not have MS office and even if they do, it might not be the same version as yours. This will result in potentially a lot of extra contact with your students asking for appropriate versions of their documents. one way around this is to ask them to submit PDF versions of their submission. There are numerous versions of “PDF creators” allowing anybody to convert a file into PDF format for free. The one I use is CutePDF.
From a lecturers point of view it is now possible to annotate a pdf enabling you to provide individual feedback for your students by using adobe reader
Related articles
- What is Moodle? (enhancingteaching.com)
- How to download Adobe reader (youtube.com)
- student generated content as an assessment (enhancingteaching.com)
- Feedback through technology (enhancingteaching.com)
- how can a student upload their assignment through moodle (youtube.com)
- How do I find the files that students have submitted (youtube.com)
Accessing Youtube videos as a teacher
Image via CrunchBase
Several teachers have asked me numerous times how can I take advantage of Youtube. Here are some examples
As a teacher I would recommend having your safety search activated on your browser to reduce the chance of any objectionable videos appearing on your screen. Although not 100% guaranteed “ever little bit helps” as the saying goes. The video below illustrates how to activate this safety setting
If you are still a little nervous about using YouTube in the classroom (as you are never guaranteed what other videos will appear in the sidebar). you can remove all other videos from your screen by cleaning up your screen using a third party service outside youtube
If you school has blocked YouTube in your classroom you can download videos in advance by using websites like keepvid.com. just remember to be vigilant with regards to copyright – not everybody puts their videos up on YouTube under a creative commons licence.
Another site I found useful for youtube was Splicd. This site allows you to just show a certain segment of a Youtube video. For example the video may be 15 minutes long but you only want to show your students a video from 2 minutes until 4 minutes.
The best use that I got from youtube was when I asked the students to do the work – this post explain how I set surfing YouTube as an assignment for my students
This post just deals with videos that already exist on YouTube. If you want to post some videos of your on YouTube – have a look at my post on screencasting
Related articles
- YouTube launches education-only option for teachers worldwide (zdnet.com)
- 17 FREE YOUTUBE TOOLS EVERY TEACHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT (educatorstechnology.com)
Getting your students to find Youtube videos for their assignment
Coming up with different assignments that will motivate students and enhance their learning experience can be a big challenge. Here is an idea that may help you though.
As a chemistry lecturer I asked the students to find a chemistry related YouTube video and upload it to Moodle, the college learning management system, using the “glossary” function. (If you don’t have a learning management system you can set up an educators account on the free social bookmarking tool – Diigo.)
The one stipulation was that the students had to check that their chosen video was not already uploaded onto Moodle by a colleague. The students then rated each video, in accordance with specified criteria, with the average rating used as the grade for the student for that assignment. With over 80 students in that particular class each student watched over 80 chemistry related videos. Despite the standard of video chosen varying dramatically, the enthusiasm for this chemistry assignment expressed by the student was immense. The only impact personally was to quickly check that each video chosen was appropriate i.e. contained no explicit material. At the end of semester as a lecturer I was then able to keep decent videos that the students had found for future years.
A few tips for Creating a video resource for your classroom
I recently had the pleasure of working with Catherine Cronin (@catherinecronin) on an education project – an experience that I would highly recommend. This project involved creating a video promoting the use of ICT in the classroom by highlighting examples provided by a range of teachers across the country. The video below is the final product with the various stages and tips available below the video
Technology Enhanced Learning 