Tech Thursday May 16 - Learning with YouTube

Big Idea:

YouTube is a great resource for consuming, creating, sharing and publishing media. All MS students and staff already have a YouTube account through the AISB Google system.

YouTube is a great place for students to upload their own video footage for several reasons: reliability, web access, easy sharing and publishing of videos, unlimited storage of media (which can be private); the ability to share videos without having to make them public (unlisted links). YouTube also has a basic but usable video editor: http://www.youtube.com/editor  Advantages of this editor: Web-based, no special software required; students can work on a video project from any web-connected computer (or several); any footage that has been uploaded to a YouTube channel is available for any video project within the YT editor. CC licensed video is directly available to insert into videos as well.

YouTube videos are easily sharable. There are three privacy settings: private, unlisted and public. Once in YouTube, videos are easily embeddable in a variety of web resources like blogs, sites, Prezis, Google Presentations, etc.

Video is a fantastic teaching tool, as I'm sure you all know. The trick is finding the best content available. Developing and growing your PLN is one of the best ways to come into contact with great content (e.g. Twitter, Diigo, blogs, YT channels, etc.)  You might want to subscribe to YouTube channels that seem to produce the kind of content your students might benefit from. Below are some examples of channels I subscribe to:

PBS Off Book
VSauce
PBS Digital Studios It's OK to Be Smart
TED ed
DubSpot
YouTube EDU  - Curated videos by category

Vimeo Video School: Great resources to help you learn to produce better videos.

Demos:
Uploading video to YT
Publishing settings
How to embed YouTube video
Basic overview of the YouTube editor
Discuss: Embedding video into blog or site for more private commenting away from YouTube.com comments

Tech Thursday May 9 - Google Drive Basics and Backups

Big idea: Google Drive is a couple things:

1. It's an online (cloud) based storage solution that integrates with your Google Docs as well as allowing storage and sharing of non-Google files. It can be accessed via a web browser and dedicated apps for Android and iOS. This solution allows you to access, share and collaborate on documents easily. By contrast, a Word file on your computer does not allow for easy access of file (e.g. from home) nor is it easily sharable. Collaboration on this file is very difficult. Version control becomes necessary as copies get created in attachments, etc.
2. It's a desktop application that lives on your computer, allowing you to work from your computer's hard drive instead of Google's cloud. These files are then synced automatically (if desired) to the Drive's cloud storage area where they can be accessed through a browser or Drive app on portable device. This solution does not require any version control of files as would be the case with the Word file example above.

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Times:  (8:00-8:20 a.m., 12:05-12:25 p.m., 3:40-4:00 p.m.)

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Details:

Finding Docs
Sharing Docs

Uploading / Storing different file types

Sharing Folders

Linking to Shared Folders

How to efficiently manage the collection of student work created in Google Docs

Using Forms

Using Discussions in Veracross

What is Google Drive the desktop application you can install on your computer all about?

Help Link from Google - How to Install Google Desktop Application, backups

Using Google Takeout as a backup