Tech Tips
January 2017: Volume 4- Number 33
Happy New Year and Where Did January Go?!
You'll find a wide variety of apps, articles, and websites in this issue.
Video2me GIF Maker
"Video2me is all in one Music, Picture, Video, Gif Maker, Editor, Creator, Video to Gif Converter , Gif to Video Converter, SlowMotion & share on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM,WHATSAPP, YOUTUBE, GIPHY, GFYCAT, IMGUR, TELEGRAM,SNAPCHAT and more"
Giphy
"GIPHY is your top source for the best & newest GIFs & Animated Stickers online. Find everything from funny GIFs, reaction GIFs, unique GIFs and more."
Toontastic 3D
With Toontastic 3D you can draw, animate, and narrate your own cartoons. It’s as easy as play. Just move your characters around onscreen, tell your story, and Toontastic records your voice and animations and stores it on your device as a 3D video. Toontastic is a powerful and playful way to create interstellar adventures, breaking news reports, video game designs, family photo albums, or anything else you might imagine!
A Nobel prize-winning physicist identified three simple steps to mastering any subject...
(excerpt)
It’s called the Feynman Technique and it will help you learn anything deeper, and faster. The topic, subject, or concept you want to learn doesn’t matter. Pick anything. The Feynman Technique works for everything. Best of all, it’s incredibly simple to implement.
The catch: It’s ridiculously humbling.
Not only is this a wonderful method of learning, but it’s also a window into a different way of thinking. Let me explain:
There are three steps to the Feynman Technique.
Step 1: Teach it to a child
Take out a blank sheet of paper and write the subject you want to learn at the top. Write out what you know about the subject as if you were teaching it to a child. Not your smart adult friend but rather an eight-year-old who has just enough vocabulary and attention span to understand basic concepts and relationships.
A lot of people tend to use complicated vocabulary and jargon to mask when they don’t understand something. The problem is we only fool ourselves because we don’t know that we don’t understand. In addition, using jargon conceals our misunderstanding from those around us.
When you write out an idea from start to finish in simple language that a child can understand (tip: use only the most common words), you force yourself to understand the concept at a deeper level and simplify relationships and connections between ideas. If you struggle, you have a clear understanding of where you have some gaps. That tension is good—it heralds an opportunity to learn.
New Google Classroom Features: Differentiated Assignments, Notifications
For students: individualized work for differentiated learning
We know that one-size-fits-all teaching doesn’t always meet students’ needs, and we’ve been impressed with the workarounds Classroom teachers have found to differentiate their instruction. Starting today, Classroom makes it a lot easier for teachers to assign work to individual students and groups based on their unique needs. As they’re creating an assignment, post or question, teachers can choose whether to share it with the entire class or just with a subset of students.
Juli Dalzell, a seventh-grade teacher at Thomas A. Blake Middle School in Medfield, MA, says she likes how the new feature lets her teach students who may grasp concepts at different paces. “I can assign different levels of questions or quantities of assignments,” says Dalzell. “Also, I can push out documents, such as answer keys, as students complete their assignments.”
With this feature, students can also discreetly receive extra practice if they’re struggling with a new subject. Sara Enberg, a library media specialist at Willow River Elementary School in Hudson, WI, says that the new update creates “an easy way to assign a reteaching or extension activity for students who are struggling... Just a quick simple video for a couple of students and they were back on track.”
SCS Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: vturner@scsmustangs.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067
Twitter: @vturner8