Student-produced tech tip videos

This year, students on the Academic Leadership Council are producing short tech tips to help the CVU community.

The first two are from Olivia Mead.  Look for more coming soon.  Consider subscribing to the channel so you get the updates.

Here's the latest:

WeVideo help videos

Gary and I were just working with a class using WeVideo.  They asked about getting tutorial videos.  As much as I enjoy creating those myself, in this case the help videos produced by WeVideo are so good that it's not worth reinventing that particular wheel.

The videos are short and to the point. 

Learn how to:

• Trim and Split Clips
• Add Text and Annotations
• Use the Green Screen Effect
• Adjust Audio Levels

and more.

A reminder that in order to use some of these techniques, you need to get the code from Gary or me, as they are not available to free accounts.  We're happy to assist you with any of this!

https://www.wevideo.com/academy

Vermont AOE adopts ISTE standards for students

The state of Vermont Agency of Ed has chosen to adopt the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) standards for students.  These are the standards that we have been using to created learning targets at CVSD for technology integration.

The standards align well with our Graduation Standards and can be found here.  I like how the site is arranged, in that you can expand each standard to view indicators.  

A press release from the AOE is here.

Hour of Code

Next week is the annual Hour of Code.  The idea is to get as many people as possible to experience programming for one hour during the week.  If you've never participated before, why not give a try? There are lots of fun tutorials available here, which can be sorted by grade level, platform, etc.

Teachers, I can help you plan an activity for your class.  You could even assign one of the tutorials in place of homework.  And you may want to try a tutorial out yourself.

Students, whether or not you do this during class next week, why not take a look at some of the high school tutorials.  You may find out that it's something you're interested in!

Recording & transcribing voice (and other audio)

Anyone remember Dictaphones?  They were small voice recorders that people used to record/dictate their thoughts and conversations for later transcription or playback.  They're yet another device made obsolete by smartphones. 

A teacher recently asked what students can use on their Chromebooks for dictation. 

Here are two tools that work well for audio recording

TwistedWave is a very simple audio recording tool.  You may need to enable Flash to get it working the first time.  You'll also need to allow access to your computer microphone.

SoundTrap is more like an online Audacity or GarageBand. It allows you to record multiple tracks and has lots of other features (such as musical loops and effects).

There are also tools that convert your speech into text on the fly

Google Voice Typing is built into Google Docs.  Find it under the Tools menu.  Just click the microphone icon and start talking.  When finished, click the icon again, then go in and clean up any errors.

Read and Write for Google is a tool that is available to all CVSD students.  Teachers can also use it for free (see me to get it set up).  It has a text to speech tool among other helpful reading and writing assistants.