Adobe Spark

March 25, 2019March 25, 2019 Tim Leister

Adobe Spark is a free online creation tool that allows students to create online posts, web pages, or videos. “Previously, users under the age of 13 could not create their own Spark logins. However, with Adobe Spark for Education, students can now log in with their (Elanco) user ID and password. Adobe Spark for Education is consistent with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) and in an environment that keeps students and their privacy safe and secure. With Adobe Spark for Education, we’ve identified the image partners that can reliably return safe content and set global settings that opt students in to only those sites.” – Spark-Tools.com

The Adobe Spark tool is very easy to use and creates a professional looking finished product. Adobe Posts allow for the creation of an online graphic from text and a photo. In Adobe Spark Pages, students can design and create one-page websites from a variety of themes that include text, copyright-friendly images, and embedded videos from YouTube. In Adobe Spark Video, students can insert images, and then record an audio narration while selecting from a list of background music options.

Meet Adobe Spark

Learn to use Adobe Spark

Spark Video Example:

Below is an example of an Adobe Spark Video created by Mrs. Soper as an example of assignment that she created for students. Mrs. Soper asked students to “create a public service announcement about a theme from the novels they are reading now, instead of just making a theme college.”

Gimkit

January 9, 2019January 10, 2019 Tim Leister

Looking for a review game alternative to Kahoot, Quizlet Live, etc.? Take a look at Gimkit. This game site was actually developed by a high school student who wanted to add some fun to the ‘traditional’ classroom review games.

Just like many of the online review game sites, Gimkit can be played individually or in groups. What makes Gimkit different is the strategy involved within the game. As questions are answered correctly or incorrectly, students or groups gain or lose dollar amounts. As teams or individuals accumulate money, they have the ability to decide how to utilize that money by changing the dollar per question value, by removing money from other teams, by getting insurance for incorrect answers, or some other fun ideas.

A real-time class scoreboard can be projected onto a classroom screen and games can be played to finish in a few minutes or when a certain dollar amount is reached. The Gimkit games can be built quickly by making your own review questions or by importing study sets from Quizlet.

Video Tutorial on how to setup and run a Gimkit game

Windows Take a Test App

December 20, 2018January 10, 2019 Tim Leister

“Teachers want to feel confident that students can focus on the tests they’re given, free of distractions, whether it’s an important standardized test, unit exam, or a quick formative assessment. With the Take a Test app, teachers can create a link that takes the students directly to the test’s page where they are restricted from accessing their computer.” The link below provides a space for teachers to insert their online test link and have a custom link created that places students into a secure test environment.

Windows 10 – Create a Take a Test link

“When a student clicks the new link to the ‘Take a Test’ assessment, an application opens and shows just the test and nothing else. The computer’s clipboard is cleared, and students can’t:

Go to other websites.
Open or access other applications.
Share, print, or record their screens.
Change settings, extend their display, see notifications, get updates, or use auto-fill features.

When students are finished and need to stop taking a test, they press the Ctrl+Alt+Delete keys. Be careful—if students do this before finishing and submitting the test, they won’t be able to go back to where they left off in the test.” This application only works when accessing the custom test links on Windows 10 computers.

— Directions are modified from Microsoft Education

Video Tutorial: How to use Microsoft Take a Test

Google Tour Creator

December 11, 2018December 13, 2018 Tim Leister

The new Google VR Tour Creator website allows anyone to create virtual reality tours using their own 360 degree images or 360 degree images already available on Google Street View. This easy-to-use website, allows for the creation of 360 degree scenes with several points of interest where text, still images, and narrations can be included. When completed, these tours can be published for anyone to view on the Google Poly website. The Google Poly site allows for anyone to publish their own vr tours, while the Google Expeditions mobile app is for those vr and ar (augmented reality) tours that have been submitted to Google, reviewed, vetted, and then approved to be made available to the public. The video tutorial at the bottom of this post explains how to create, edit and publish a vr tour of your own.

Here at GS, we have recently purchased several Ricoh 360 cameras for students and teachers to use to capture their own 360 degree images that can be uploaded to the Google VR Tour Creator website. The cameras also record 360 degree videos with sound that will eventually be able to be viewed using the Google VR Goggles once our devices are Internet enabled at the start of the 2nd semester. You’ll notice in the image below that the cameras have lenses on both sides which allow for the capturing of 360 degree digital images.

Google VR Tours created at GS

In Jill Hackman’s Pathways Co-Op course, students were assigned the task of creating a vr tour of their co-op job placement during this fall semester. Take a quick interactive tour of GSHS seniors Jacob Good’s work place, New Holland Custom Wood, and job sites from Joe Royle’s family Royle Plumbing business. Below is a 16-scene interactive tour created by Bob Schneider and I on the recent Civics & Government field trip to Philadelphia. The first scene of the tour is from Google Street View, but the other 15 images were taken by us using our 360 degree cameras.

Click and drag on the image below. On the bottom of the image, click on the arrows to view other tour scenes. Some scenes contain points of interest targets to click on.

How to Use Google VR Tour Creator

Below is a video tutorial from Richard Byrne’s Free Tech for Teachers Blog on how to create, edit and publish a tour using the Google VR Tour Creator. Currently, the tours that are published to the Google Poly website are only visible in full, immersive virtual reality using Android devices, such as the ones we have here at GS.

Canvas Updates – December 2018

December 10, 2018December 11, 2018 Tim Leister

There are two new features in the December 2018 new feature Canvas release that I think Garden Spot Teachers will enjoy: 1) manually ordering Canvas course cards on the dashboard and 2) a new, more user-friendly media recorder.

Card View Course Ordering on the Dashboard

“Course cards can be manually ordered in the Card View Dashboard. This change allows you to place course cards in a specific order. For a course card, you can select the Options menu and move the card to another location in the Dashboard. Depending on the placement of the existing card, cards may be moved to the top of the Dashboard, ahead or behind a specific card, or to the bottom of the Dashboard. Cards can also be manually dragged and dropped to another location in the Dashboard. Once a dashboard card has been reordered, new courses added to the dashboard always display at the end of all existing courses.” – From Canvas Release Notes.

Watch the very short demonstration video below.

New Media Recorder

“HTML5 is used instead of flash within the Rich Content Editor in Firefox and Chrome browsers. This change allows recorded media without requiring flash within the Firefox and Chrome browsers. When in the Rich Content Editor, the Media window displays an improved interface. You can confirm your microphone and webcam, and if more than one device is supported, select which device should be used. If you do not have a webcam, the audio option will be selected automatically.” – From Canvas Release Notes.

By no longer using Flash, the recording of teacher and student videos on Canvas content pages, discussions, media submission assignments, etc. will be much more user-friendly and work with more devices.

Leister media window — Leister approved!!!

Undelete in Canvas

December 3, 2018November 29, 2018 Tim Leister

When developing the content of a course, you are likely to be deleting as well as adding pieces of content. So what do you do when the Page (or File, Announcement, Assignment, etc.) you need has been accidentally deleted from the course? Rather than try to rebuild from scratch, consider using Undelete. – David Gray’s Canvas Blog Post

Apparently, Undelete has been around since Canvas first started, though it is not officially supported so they don’t advertise the feature. This Undelete-in-Canvas Guide.pdf guide demonstrates how to navigate to, and use, the Undelete tool within Canvas. Also, it describes some of the feature’s limitations.

Video demonstrating how to use the Undelete feature in Canvas

Microsoft Photos App for Creating and Editing Video

November 27, 2018 Tim Leister

Unfortunately, Microsoft has made the decision to discontinue their support of Windows Movie Maker in the latest upgrade to their Windows 10 operating system. Therefore, the application is no longer an option for our students on their school-issued laptops. For many years, Windows Movie Maker has always been the best option for editing and creating student videos.

Now, the best option is for students to use the Windows 10 Photos app that is already installed on their computers to create a video from photos and other video clips. The program is a bit limited and does not have all of the same functionality of Movie Maker. However, it does allow for the easy creation of videos by combining video clips with still photos while also adding titles, captions, music and narration.

Also, the addition of 3D video effects is something that many students will enjoy. If students need to record video using their computer’s webcam, they’ll now use the Camera app in Windows 10.

Take some time to watch the five short tutorial videos below to quickly learn how you and your students can utilize Microsoft Photos for simple video editing.

Video Tutorials on How to Create and Edit Video in Microsoft Photos

Importing Footage and Starting a New Project

Sequencing and Trimming the Video

Adding Titles, Captions and Text

Adding 3D Objects and Effects

Adding Narration and Music

Canvas Google Cloud Assignment

November 14, 2018November 28, 2018 Tim Leister

The new feature called the Canvas Google Cloud Assignment is a great method to link your, and your student’s Google Drive, directly into Canvas assignments where a copy of the document is automatically created for your students. Also, if you, as a teacher, need to make a change to the file, you don’t need to re-upload the file. Just make the change on your original Google Document and the change will be visible to the students.

This feature works in a similar manner to how Google Classroom shares assignment with students. Below are some details from the Canvas Guides about the Canvas Google Cloud Assignments along with an explanation on how to create a cloud assignment using a Google Drive file:

“You can create an online assignment that embeds a document directly from your Google Drive folder. Accepted assignment types are Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Slides.

When students open the assignment, Google Drive will create a copy of the file as the student’s submission. Students can make changes per the assignment instructions directly from the Canvas assignment page. When they are ready to submit the assignment, they can submit the assignment. The copied document is also added to the student’s Google Drive folder for the course.

You can also view each student’s document copy in SpeedGrader for grading. Submitted assignments are converted to a PDF to show the assignment at the time of submission. If students made any changes to their assignment, they will have to resubmit it for the changes to be visible in SpeedGrader.” – From Canvas Guides

Here is the step-by-step Canvas Guide on “How to create a cloud assignment with a Google Drive file” or you can watch the videos below. The first video shows how to create the assignment in Canvas as a teacher. The second video shows what the assignment looks like from the student perspective and how they submit it to the teacher.

How to Create a Google Cloud Assignment in Canvas

How Students Submit a Google Cloud Assignment in Canvas

Virtual Reality has come to Garden Spot

October 16, 2018October 16, 2018 Tim Leister

The district has recently purchased two sets of Google Expedition Virtual Reality kits – one for the High School and one for the Middle School. Google Expeditions allow teachers to lead students on over 700 virtual field trips with 360 degree views that immerse students in a virtual setting. Each kit contains 30 viewers, with an Android device inside and a Teacher console Acer tablet that are connected via a wireless router. Also included are all of the necessary charging plugs and cables. In the future, we hope to expand the use of the devices to include more 360 degree audio and video via other online VR sources. However, currently, the devices are our classroom kits are only set up specifically for Google Expeditions.

The district has had a set of the VR viewers in our elementary schools for the past school year. However, several Garden Spot Teachers have already started to experiment with the Google Expedition Tours into their classrooms. Below is an example of Mrs. Jennifer Harris’ World Religions class being directed on a virtual tour of the sites surrounding the city of Jerusalem.

Introduction to Google Expeditions

Below is a short video that provides an Introduction of Google Expeditions in the Classroom.

How do I get started with VR?

In order to take full advantage of the power of virtual reality as an educational tool, we have created a website – http://blog.elanco.org/vr – that contains all of the information for you to get started with virtual reality. The website contains some getting started resources, the online sign out spreadsheets for the middle and high school kits, and a showcase of some examples of VR in our district classrooms. Also are the website are some resources about the Google Tour Creator that allows students and teachers to build their own VR Tours. More information on that will coming in a future post.

Use of the Google Expedition Kits does require some initial training before implementing it into your classroom. Tim Leister will be presenting different uses of VR in upcoming PLC meetings at the middle and high school. The kits will be stored in Tim Leister’s office (across from 515) and will be delivered to your classroom on the day(s) of use.

However, before leading your students through a Google Expedition Tour, teachers will need to participate in a training session or meet with Tim Leister or Adam Geiman to learn the skills of leading a lesson, as well as the proper maintenance of the devices.

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