Edit video on Chromebooks with WeVideo

Chromebooks are becoming a popular choice for schools around the US. Some teachers, though have expressed concern over what seems to be limited functionality. After all, if you can only produce content online, how are teachers supposed to do things like video creation?

WeVideo is the best tool I've found to give kids the tools to create, store and share video projects. This is primarily because it's free and it publishes videos directly to Google Drive. Note the use of the word "publish" instead of "save". Here is how it works: You create videos on their servers and are then given the option to publicly publish your video to the internet. In the free version, all videos are public by default. Once you publish the video to your Google Drive account however, making it private is simple. Just adjust the Sharing settings as you would with any other file. Keep in mind that if you have any privacy concerns, you'll have to be careful to adjust the sharing settings to every video you produce.

This option to save to Google Drive is important. First, it gives you immediate control over who may see your students' videos. For example, share the videos with parents, but prevent anyone else for seeing them. You'll also have a simple way of managing all those video files that come in. Put them into folders and organize them in a way that makes sense for you. The Google Drive app provides even more power. With it, those videos can be streamed (without being saved) to mobile devices. If you have the app yourself, you'll be able to take video with a smartphone and simply upload them to your Drive account. From there, you'll be able to edit them with WeVideo.

There are other video editors out there that are both free and produce a decent final video. Thus far, all of them have fatal flaws. Consider Youtube editor. The final result is in Youtube's proprietary format which means you have to use a third party application to download the video. Possibly more problematic is that Youtube is blocked in many school districts, so this wouldn't even be an option. Other video editors store your finished product on their own servers which may be fine. However, they just might reserve the right to use your video as part of their promotional material. "Free" accounts often come with some strings attached. So give this a try and let me know what you think.

Twitter, teaching and what is learned

Twitter is a funny animal. Many school districts block its use due to the serious risks that it poses. However, if your district is willing to give it a try, Twitter is really worth using. There are important skills students can learn from using Twitter in the classroom. I got most of these ideas from Matt Levinson's excellent post on ways in which parents can teach kids about the internet.   

1. Digital media is social. Students really need to understand that they are interacting with others every time they get online. It’s also vital for them to deeply believe the phrase “If you don’t want it on the internet, don’t put it on the internet”. That is, everything that goes online, even for an hour or two, will likely stay online for years to come.
2. Appropriate language and sharing apply to the online world. Most students know when and how to speak in public. They don’t reveal personal information and they try not to look foolish by using incorrect english.  The same must apply online.
3. The internet is a PUBLIC space. When you are using Twitter with your students, there are no private notes. The whole world can see what they write including principals, other teachers and yes, perfect strangers. But this is true of the internet as a whole. The sooner students internalize this fact the better.
4. Mistakes are great learning opportunities. Everyone will see when a student makes a mistake. They’ll also see when YOU make a mistake. This is a great opportunity to explain how mistakes lead to better learning.  

Some teachers won’t want to use class time to teach digital citizenship and that’s fine. Even if you really just want the students to learn the course content, there are good reasons to start using Twitter. For one, you’ll increase engagement. Twitter is easy to use and students get almost instant recognition for what they have to say. You’ll also have a chance to use social learning in the classroom. For a great list of ideas on how to use Twitter to teach a variety of topics check out this post.

Once you’ve decided that this platform works well for you and your class, you can start getting a bit more sophisticated with the technology. First, you could add a custom background to your page, personalizing it for your class. You can regularly update it based on the unit you’re studying. If you’d like you can even add unit goals and objectives which often look great to administrators. Don’t forget about your profile, either. With 160 characters, you can provide a solid course description or list some simple classroom rules. Finally, try to get parents involved. Let them know what students are saying (or failing to say) online. Remember that this is a public space and you’re letting students use their public voice. The more you can involve parents in this process, the more your students will get out of it.

Now, those of you out there already using Twitter on a regular basis may want to correct me on some of my claims or ideas. Some of you still think that Twitter (and other social media) is so inherently dangerous that it should be kept out of students hands all together. Please leave a comment.

Tech provides more usable time.

One of the reasons teachers use technology is that it saves time and effort. Of course many tools are designed to reduce the time and effort it takes for instructors to produce material. Examples of this include test generators and word processors. Today, though, I want to focus on our students during class time. Unfortunately, students can be left to stare into space as we take time to draw something out on the over head or sketch an equation on the whiteboard.

One of the greatest tools I have found for math teachers is the Desmos online calculator. The power of this application lies in the fact that a teacher can manipulate equations and the students can instantly see how the graph of that equation changes in response. A teacher told me recently how excited he is that he no longer has to sketch graphs out by hand while teaching. "And you know that half the kids start day dreaming when we do that", he added. With Desmos, he can use his time to explain concepts and cut down on the wandering minds.

There are also several interactive science sites that are very good. The Dynamic Periodic Table is excellent, for example. During a lesson, you need only hover over sections of the table to bring up important information. It's great for answering student questions or covering material clearly and quickly. Biology teachers love the Cells Alive online cellular models for the same reason.

For language arts, Google docs is a great time saver. This online suite of programs allows users to create presentations, documents and spreadsheets for free. It also allows users to collaborate on any of those files in real time.  The reason this cuts down on dead air is that no one has to wait around for group members to read over material and make comments. Everything in the document is written simultaneously, so everyone in the group can read everything while it is being typed. You as an instructor can also comment on student writing in real time. This means that an entire class can be writing while you make encouraging comments on each paper. All of this is done simultaneously and all without interrupting anyone's train of thought.

Class time should really be used for learning, not waiting for us to draw or read over material. The technology I've discussed is a great start, but there's so much more. What sorts of tools have you found to get more learning out of the limited time you have in class?

Contributing to digital literacy

Most teachers think about digital literacy on a daily basis even if they don't use those exact words. Instead,  conversations center around the "junk" kids find on the internet. Or maybe they complain about students believing that a human can also be part tree because of what they saw online. The solution is typically to chat with the kids about taking ideas with a grain of salt. We teach critical reading, listening and thinking. As always, we are hard at work teaching our charges to be literate about their world.

There is a part of digital literacy we don't always think about, however. That is, we are often responsible for putting content online. Is the content we add valuable? Is it authoritative? If you are on Twitter, consider the things you post. Every time you link one of your posts to a blog, you increase it's rank in Google search. If you comment on blogs, those comments add context to the original post. Your online footprint adds to what is online.

Since we want our students to be able to evaluate internet material for bias, authority, timeliness and relevance, we have to do more than just talk a good talk. We need to do what we can to add to the quality of the internet. In many ways this is a classic dilemma for every teacher. Our calling is to teach kids how to be upstanding adults. Our actions in public teach students more about how to be grown up than anything we say in class. In the same way, we teach kids to be good digital citizens. We must therefore be careful about what goes into our online footprint.