Last week we had the opportunity to sit down with Tony Vincent, an educator, speaker and Ed Tech enthusiast, about some of the powerful tools available to teachers for use in the classroom and at home. Tony showed us some tools we had never seen before and we wanted to share a couple of them with you. Of course we love ScreenFlow and Wirecast, but there are some tools that, when combined with the power of Telestream products, can really take your classrooms to the next level.
We are going to highlight 3 tools, but Tony also made an entire list of his favorites that you can see here.
Tech Tools
First off…Flipgrid.
Introducing video into classrooms can be met with quite a few obstacles…shyness, lack of equipment, not to mention the time it takes to create a video. Flipgrid helps to relieve teachers and students of many of these potential hiccups in video production.
Flipgrid offers a pretty cool service where students can spend 90 seconds talking to a camera during class to record their thoughts, answers to class questions…pretty much anything the teachers would like. A quick moment in front of a camera helps the kids to open up about what they have been learning in class in a not-so-public way. Tony likes Flipgrid as a sort of “ticket” to leave for the day. Spending a few moments putting your thoughts into words can help keep the material fresh, and allows kids to give their own views on the learning material.
Youtube can be a wonderful resource, but is often distracting and full of questionable material for a classroom setting. Open Youtube and start any video, and a list of recommended videos will pop up to the side. While good for monetizing video content and making Youtube the big bucks, it can be difficult for classrooms due to the unexpected content that might be offered up.
Safeshare.TV allows you to use Youtube and Vimeo videos in classrooms without all the distracting ads and thumbnails. Just copy/paste your video’s URL into Safeshare’s convertor and it will offer up a distraction free site to watch your video!
Finding background music can be a hassle, and is generally expensive as well. Luckily Youtube has a large collection of free music to use in your videos without fear of legal repercussion. Sound effects are included as well to give your videos some more character!
Webinar
In case you missed the webinar last week, you can see a recorded version here. We had a ton of fun with Tony and hope his information is useful to you all.
