Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Augmented reality (AR) in the classroom

This blog post originally appeared on the Discovery Education site in my blog, Kathy Schrock's Katch of the Month in August of 2017. It is reprinted here with permission.

I have much more information and updated AR apps on my Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything AR page.

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Last year, I wrote a blog post dealing with the use of virtual reality resources to support the instructional process. I started the article with an explanation of the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality, which I feel is important to include again since, this time, the post will be about the use of augmented reality technology to support teaching and learning. The Augment site includes a well-stated overview of the two technologies.

Augmented reality is a technology that layers computer-generated enhancements on top of an existing reality in order to make it more meaningful through the ability to interact with it.

Virtual reality is an artificial, computer-generated simulation or re-creation of a real life environment…It immerses the users by making them feel like they are experiencing the simulated reality firsthand, primarily by stimulating their vision and hearing.

WHY AUGMENTED REALITY?

Touchstone Research presents an infographic that showcases how various professions use AR to support learning, access important information in real-time, and for marketing purposes. With the wide-spread use of AR, our students should be provided with the opportunity to become familiar with the the technology and use it in the classroom.

HOW DOES AR WORK?

The basic use of AR requires a few things– a smartphone or tablet with a back facing camera, an augmented reality app, and a trigger image. An Internet connection is needed for real-time overlaying of information. The triggers can be something as simple as a QR code, which launches an AR event on the smartphone or tablet, or can be a special printout or photographic images that is viewed through a specialized app. The continued development of great new apps seems to indicate that the use of the app to view a specialized trigger image may be the way things are moving in the AR arena.

One fun app that is popular in schools is Quiver (formerly ColAR Mix) which uses a printed-out and colored-in page to present the student with an interactive experience when viewed through the app. The Quiver Education app (US iOS app store: $7.99 and available on the VPP), includes coloring pages specifically designed for the education market including those for cells, organs of the body, and a specialized set for celebrating “International Dot Day“.

Here is a video demonstrating how this app works.

The EON Experience VR app (iOS and Android), uses a target to bring the hundreds of simulations included in the app to life. Many simulations can be viewed using both AR and VR. The users simply download the data for the simulation and, through the app, point their smartphone at the target. The great thing about this is the target can be used even from the computer screen!

EON Experience VR app

Marketing agencies have taken to AR to the next level to allow the user to layer furniture, paint, and much more over a live image of a room. IKEA, Houzz, and Home Depot are only some of the many companies using augmented reality to support consumers. Project Color, from Home Depot allows you pick a paint or stain color and virtually paint your home’s walls, as demonstrated in the video below.

[Commercial] The Home Depot – Project Color App ‘Virtual Test Drive’

AR is even used in real-time at this kiosk in a Lego store which shows the customer the completed Lego project by simply holding up the box of Legos to the mirror.

WHY USE AR IN THE CLASSOOM?

Adding interactivity to a classroom learning experience always enhances student engagement. To be able to view and manipulate a object being learned about can lead to deeper understanding and further exploration and questions. Drew Minock, in an Edutopia article, outlines some ways augmented reality can support instruction. Here are a few of them.

Book Reviews: Students record themselves giving a brief review of a novel that they just finished, and then attach that “aura” (assigned digital information) to a book. Afterward, anyone can scan the cover of the book and instantly access the review.
Word Walls: Students can record themselves providing the definitions to different vocabulary words on a word wall. Afterward, anyone can use the Aurasma app to make a peer pop up on screen, telling them the definition and using the word in a sentence.
Lab Safety: Put triggers…all around a science laboratory so, when students scan them, they can quickly learn the different safety procedures and protocols for the lab equipment.

There are some great educational AR apps to support teaching and learning available.

DAQRI Anatomy 4D showcases the human anatomy in augmented reality. (iOS | Android)
Science AR has the teacher printing out the trigger Science AR posters which come alive with animation as students use the app to view the posters.
Amazing Space Journey allows students to take a trip through the solar system. Available for iOS and Android.
Star Chart projects the night sky with all the constellations, planets, and other facts while viewing the sky through a smartphone or tablet. (iOS | Android | Windows)

There are also some fun AR apps that allow the creation of place-based AR pop-ups. Two that are easy to use for teachers and students are Metaverse and Traces. Users can create quests, descriptors for places, and much more. Imagine the incoming freshman walking around the school and learning all about the building, or a student creating an AR overview of the local businesses as a service learning project. If you are familiar with PokémonGo, you will realize how engaging these pop-ups would be for students to create and share! Below is a what a place-based locator looks like when found in the program.

INTERESTING IDEAS

There are many other ways teachers and students are using augmented reality in schools. Here are two creative examples that I discovered.

Northwest High School made the use of Aurasma (no longer in use) an integral part of their school culture when it first was released.

This educator provided a unique way to use Aurasma and Powerpoint to create interactive experiences.

There is also a new type of reality called “Mixed Reality” or simply MR, which combines some of the aspects of both VR and AR. Dr. Simon Taylor, the Co-founder of Zappar which has created ZapBox, an MR solution, states “in MR, virtual objects or environments are anchored to things in the real world providing a new and intuitive way for users to interact with virtual content”. This started as a Kickstarter project and is now available for a very low cost. Watch the video below to get a feel for the exciting new projects that are coming to schools soon!

Do you currently use AR apps in your classroom? Which ones are your favorites and why? Are you having students create auras to share their work? And what are your suggestions for developers for mixed reality projects which would be useful for the classroom? Share your thoughts on X or Threads! #kathyskatch

Thursday, February 01, 2018

Finding and citing online images

I am passionate about students using online tools and standalone apps to create. I truly believe creation allows students to showcase how they have turned the content into their own knowledge. Many of these tools require the use of images for creation of the product. These images can be photos taken by the student, drawings done by the student, or images found in online collections.

It is important for students to realize which online images they have permission to use and how to give credit to the creator. Here are some links, tips, and tricks to help make this easy for them!

SITES WITH FREE IMAGES

There are many sites that have free images and allow users to download, edit, and use the images without any attribution to the creator.

Pixabay, which includes photos, illustrations, and vector graphics, allows users to “copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the artist.”

Flickr: The Commons is made of images shared by member institutions that have “no known copyright restriction.” The items may be in the public domain or owned by the institution itself, which is not claiming the copyright on the images. One tip: don’t have students search in the Flickr search box at the top of the page. Look down the page for “The Commons” search box.

The Flickr group, Internet Archive Book Images, is a collection of over 5.2 million historical photos and images from the books in the Internet Archive. Each image carries a “no known copyright restriction” license, so can be used for any purpose and edited. There is no requirement to cite the images, but enough information is included in the description to do so.

SITES WITH FREE IMAGES THAT REQUIRE ATTRIBUTION

Pics4Learning is targeted to student and teacher use of images and includes curriculum-related items that can be used for projects, on the Web, and in portfolios. The collection is comprised of user-contributed images. Images all include this usage information- “This image may be used by teachers and students in school and classroom activities for the express purpose of improving student educational opportunities. The photographer retains the copyright to this image.” Each image includes the full text citation for the image. I could not find this expressly stated on the site, but I am assuming, if the photographer holds the copyright to the image, the images should not be edited without the permission of the creator.

OpenPhoto is a collection of images primarily for artists, developers, students and teachers. The photographers freely license the images and the attribution code is included.

Wikimedia Commons includes millions of free images, sounds, and videos to use. The usage page states: “Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as they follow the terms specified by the author; this often means crediting the source and author(s) appropriately and releasing copies/improvements under the same freedom to others.” What is great about this collection is that it can be searched in many different languages, making it a tool that can be used effectively by all learners.

FINDING FREE 360° IMAGES

With the growth of the use of VR to support teaching and learning, here are some online places to find 360° images to use with a simple head-mounted display. Again, students would have to search for images they are allowed to use by checking the licensing and usage rights.

The Flickr 360°group includes almost 30,000 images with many students can download and use with a headset or a 360° viewer app.

The Flickr Equirectangular group includes images that are taken or created in the 2:1 format that make them usable with a VR headset.

I have created a Flickr group, 360° Images for Schools, to collect Creative Commons-licensed 360° images from teachers and students around the world. The collection is growing to be a depository of images that can be downloaded and used in schools.

CREATIVE COMMONS

In March of 2015, my h blog post dealt with information literacy. One section of the post included information about the Creative Commons project, and it is worth reposting here!

The Creative Commons project has helped immensely with the ease of finding images that can be used in a research report or project. The Creative Commons project allows content producers to explicitly state how their content may be used. These creators make a determination of whether their asset may be used commercially or just non-commercially, can be transformed into a new product by someone else, and, if they allow transforming of their work, the creators can also require the person who made the changes to apply the same Creative Commons license to their new creation and allow others to edit the new work.

When creators upload images to Flickr or a video to YouTube, they can pick the combination of permissions they want to allow for the use of their creation, and the Creative Commons license is published.

The Creative Commons site has a search engine that allows students to search by license terms, but the three places that students usually search for information and images — Google, Flickr, and Bing — also have Creative Commons-licensed image searching built right in. It works pretty much the same way in each of these tools.

CITING IMAGES

It goes without saying that students should include citations for images they use in a project on a works-cited page. Another idea is to place the citation directly on the image, so it stays with the image if it is used again. This can easily be done in any of the meme apps or tools that allow text to be put on top of an image or in any traditional image-editing software. Another easy way to do this is for students to locate their images and save them on separate slides in Keynote, PowerPoint, or Google Slides. Then they can use the text tool to add the citation to the picture on the slide. When done collecting and adding citations to the images, students can simply export/save the slideshow out as JPEGS and the images are all set to use!

It is rare, on most image collections sites, to be able to identify all of these components in an attribution. The student should include as much information as possible and always include the URL of the image. In Flickr, when looking at an image in a collection, the student should go back to the original image and use that URL. For instance, an image in the 360° Images for Schools group will have a URL that looks like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/141855263@N03/27492650579/in/pool-360images4schools/

If I simply remove everything before the reference to the group, shown above in red, I am led to the creator’s Flickr account and the actual URL of the image which is https://www.flickr.com/photos/141855263@N03/2749265057 which is the URL that should be used in the image citation.

In addition, in Flickr, when looking at all sizes of the photo in order to download one that is the needed size, the URL changes, too. When picking the 1600×800 version of the image, as shown below, the URL changed to https://www.flickr.com/photos/141855263@N03/27492650579/sizes/h/

Again, simply delete the information after the photograph’s number, as indicated in red above, and use the URL of https://www.flickr.com/photos/141855263@N03/27492650579 in the citation.

There is one interesting Creative Commons image search engine designed for schools called Photos for Class. When a student does a search, and finds an image to download, the image downloads with the citation attached in a black bar at the bottom of the image (shown below). The citation includes the name of the creator, the title of the photo, and a clickable URL to the original image, and the Creative Commons license.

I think the site makes it easy for students to find images they have permission to use (even commercially) and have permission to edit. However, since the search engine only searches images that have this same license (CC BY 2.0), students are missing out on images that don’t allow editing, don’t permit commercial use, or those requiring students to share their new work with the same license.

Do you have any favorite image sites to share or ways in which you teach students to search for and cite images? Please share on Twitter! #kathyschrock

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Unplugged!

With cable television and Internet at two homes, I was paying a total of $378 per month to the cable providers. I knew there had to be a way to trim that cost.

I spent the last week investigating some options that would meet my needs. I wanted to share what I found out, in case you are considering doing something similar. One caveat: all of the options are updated quite frequently and some options are locale-specific, so your experience may differ!

I did not have a list of questions I wanted answers to before I started the process, but now that I have settled on a option, I realize the questions to ask may help you out!

Can the service be cancelled at any time?
Can the service be used in more than one location?
What networks does the service offer?
Are local network channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC) available through the service?
Do I need any hardware to use the service?
Can I share the service with another family member outside of the house?
Is there a DVR option available with the service?
Are there add-on packages for specific wants?
What is the cost of the service?
What is the cost of the add-ons?
Is there a free trial of the service?
What devices can be used to access the service?
How many family members can use the service at one time?

My goal was to no longer use Comcast (in MA) and Charter Spectrum (in CT) for my television providers. There were many channels I never used, and I felt the cost was too high.

LATEST UPDATES FROM 1/12/18, 1/19/18, 1/22/18, AND 2/218 ARE IN RED

SlingTV

I have used a Slingbox for many years to watch my home TV while I was traveling, so I had trust in Sling. Their service is interesting. There are two choices, Orange ($20) and Blue ($25). There are some channels that are in both choices, but the main difference is that Blue allows three streams of channels at once (for example, for a house that has three TV's or mobile devices) and the Orange option only allows a single stream. You can use a mobile device while on the road to use the service, and, Airplay with a TV-connected Apple TV. Some smart TV's also have the SlingTV app included.

The channel lineup, when purchasing both Orange and Blue ($40) and the DVR ($5) met most of my needs, but there were no local versions of the big three network channels (at least in my area). Matter of fact, there was no ABC or CBS at all, and NBC was only "on demand".

There is a cloud DVR available for $5 more per month. I tried the service for a few days of the free trial, and I liked the interface, which includes a grid as well as a search and a browse function.

There are also add-on packs that are available for SlingTV for specific wants such as sports, news, comedy and kids. However, because I really wanted to be able to watch local news, and did not want to keep the basic channel package from the cable company, I looked for another option.

Hulu Live TV

Hulu has been an established provider of archived TV shows and movies for a few years. A Hulu Live TV subscription ($40) includes all of that archived streaming service (with limited commercials) as well as live TV on many of the same channels offered by the Blue and Orange package from SlingTV. (The only channel I wanted that was missing from Hulu Live TV was ESPN3. However, I have found out I can authenticate the WatchESPN iOS app with a Hulu login.)

There is a DVR included, but there is an extra cost for a larger one with the ability to fast forward, pause, and rewind a recorded programs. ($15)

I decided to go with Hulu Live TV because it did include all the major networks and the local versions of these channels when I was in either house -- Boston channels and Hartford Channels. I was able to cancel both the Comcast cable service and the Charter Spectrum cable service.

After a week with Hulu TV, I cannot ignore my loathing of the interface. Maybe because I like a grid, but I find the Hulu apps really hard to both navigate and find things. There are WAY too many clicks. However, it still is the service that best meets my needs.
Update 1/22/18: Hulu announced at CES that they WILL be putting in a grid screen in spring of 2008! Yay!

However, Hulu Live TV is tied to your zip code as your "home". The company gives you the ability to change your "home" location four times per year. This is for great for people who move, but can also be useful for those that spend extended time in another locale.
The home location means you can use Hulu Live TV on the app of one smart TV or via the Hulu app on an Apple TV. You can use any device in your home to watch TV, but only one one person can stream Hulu content at a time.

When I am away from my "home" base for Hulu Live TV, I can stream from a single mobile device through a Google Chromecast attached to a television, or simply just watch content on the mobile device (while a person at home can still use the "home" stream). Apparently Hulu is working on the ability to use an Apple TV and Airplay from a mobile device, but it is not available yet.

There is also a beta version of Hulu Live TV service which allows you to watch live television and the DVR recordings within the Web browser on a computer. Once it is in the Web browser, you can Airplay it to the television screen via the Apple TV.

PlayStation VUE

I did not investigate PlayStation VUE last week since I read online that, unless you were using the VUE service on a PS3 or PS4 gaming machine, the interface was not very good. One of my friends wrote to tell me the interface had been updated, so I thought I would give it a try.

The Playstation VUE service does include, at least here in Boston, the local news affiliates. (You can get a 5-day trial to test it out in your area.) In addition, in the Boston area, we also get NESN, the New England Sports Network.

PlayStation VUE has four different plans to pick from--

Access: popular live tv ($39.99)
Core: sports and popular live TV ($44.99)
Elite: movies, sports, and popular live TV ($54.99)
Ultra: movies, sports, popular TV and premium channels ($74.99)

I signed up for the trial of the Core service, since I already have Netflix and Amazon Prime for movie-watching. (It had all the channels that I wanted except the CW, and I probably should not waste any more time watching Riverdale, anyway, so it was no loss.)

I can log into WatchESPN with my credentials, so I would be fine getting the games I want to watch on ESPN3. And PlayStation VUE allows you to authenticate with your credentials in many mobile TV apps.

There are a few weird things about PlayStation VUE. If you want to use a mobile device to use PS VUE while you are away from home, you first have to open the app while on your home network and it will authenticate with a PS3, PS4, Roku, or FireTV. So you would have to have one of these set-top boxes/sticks in your home. There is a Playstation VUE app you can use on Apple TV, but the Apple TV cannot be used for authenticating a mobile device.

Differing from Hulu, if you log-on to the app when you are away from home, you cannot get CBS, NBS, ABC, or FOX in the PS VUE app. You can authenticate to the network mobile apps with your PS VUE login,, but cannot watch live TV. For my purposes of watching live TV while I am at the condo in CT, this does not work.

The Playstation VUE service allows 5 local streams. However, if you need to have more streams while at home, you have to log-out of a set-top box and wait 3 hours to use the other device. Sounds like a "first world problem", and re-authenticating is not hard, but waiting three hours could be a problem if you want to watch a specific television set in your home. There are three mobile streams available and I am unsure if they count as part of the 5 when in the home. I am a little weary of testing at this time!

YouTube TV

YouTube TV is another cutting-the-cord option. (Initial channels here. There is an app for Roku, Apple TV, newer Samsung TVs, and other devices. You can also use your Chromecast to cast from your phone or computer. It is $35/month with unlimited DVR storage (programs available for 9 months) and includes local news channels in some geographic areas.

The service can be shared with six family members, who have to authenticate their device once every three months, and can streamed by three members at a time. Some channels are not included, such as HGTV, CNN, TBS, TNT, History, AMC, A&E, and Comedy Central.

Thoughts

When eliminating the cable box on both Comcast and Charter Spectrum, each company charged more for the "Internet alone" option since the Internet was no longer a part of a bundle. However, on Comcast, my costs dropped from $277 to $102 per month. On Charter Spectrum, the costs went from $101 to $65 per month. So, the savings from cutting the cable company "cord" was $211 per month. Not too shabby!

The cost for the Hulu Live TV service with the expanded size cloud DVR is $55 per month. So, my net yearly savings from all of these changes is $1872 per year!

For a family, I would probably recommend the SlingTV Blue and Orange services and the shared DVR, which would allow several family members to watch television at a time. However, most families may want to keep the "basic cable" package to have access to their local big three networks and PBS.

Some of my friends have suggested other options, too, like DirectTV Now, and the use of an HD over-the-air antenna for the local channels (if that is available in your area) and adding on a streaming service.

It is like comparing apples and oranges since it depends on where you live, if you have decent Internet bandwidth, and the type of networks you are interested in.

One other thing to be aware of. Some cable providers have a monthly cap on streaming usage. Xfinity does in some states. You can find out more about the 1 TB cap from Xfinity here. If you want to see your current data usage on Xfinity, log-in to your account, pick the SERVICES tab, the INTERNET choice, and you will see VIEW DATA usage on the right.

Friday, December 01, 2017

Twitter for educators

I am a big social media user. I have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. However, the social media account I use most is Twitter, the microblogging tool. In Twitter, I share my own discoveries and learn from others every day. It is a huge source of professional development for me. Twitter is a great place to learn about new resources, trends in education, tools, and to ask questions of very smart people!

Until last month, the limit of characters that could be typed in a Twitter message was 140. It was doable, but often took some finagling to make the content I wanted to share fit in that amount of characters.

I liked the fact that the character limit was 140 characters when I was reading my Twitter feed, because I could read through the stream of messages quickly. The 280-character tweets will definitely take more time to read.

However, for those of us that are long-time Twitter users, I assume we will will continue to be succinct with the information we share. Having the additional characters will allow us to not abbreviate words, use leet-speak, emoticons, or leave off a hashtag we want to include, so these longer tweets will become much easier to “decipher”. When Twitter conducted its beta testing of the 280-character limit, the company found only 5% of the users with the larger limit went over the previous 140 character limit.

BEGINNERS GUIDE

For those of you not yet using Twitter, the first thing to learn is the vocabulary that is used with this tool.

Handle: A Twitter handle is your username. You most often see others sharing their handles looking like this “@kathyschrock”.

Tweet: A tweet is simple a single Twitter message you read or send.

Feed: The feed is the list of tweets you read from others.

Follow: When you click on someone and pick to “follow” them, their tweets show up in your Twitter feed.

Retweet: When anyone on Twitter re-sends a tweet they have received to their followers, that is called a “retweet”. Depending on which tool you are using to read Twitter, you may also be able to add additional text to the item you are retweeting.

Mention: In your Twitter account, you receive a notification when anyone puts your Twitter handle in a tweet (mention). In addition, if you are reading Tweets in your feed, you can click on a username mentioned in a Tweet and see that person’s Twitter postings.

Direct message: The ability to send a Tweet to just one person is called “direct messaging”. There is a setting in Twitter that allows you to limit the Twitter users who can direct message you to just the people you follow in Twitter.

Lists: In Twitter, you can create lists to categorize those that you follow and/or those you do not follow. For instance, if you create a list called “Administrators” and add those that are principals and superintendents to the list, you can simply click on the list title and see the information being posted by all users on that list

Hashtag: A hashtag is most commonly an agreed-upon phrase or word that is added in a tweet. For instance, a edtech conference in Massachusetts might decide that #MAssCUE17 will be the hashtag for their conference. If everyone who tweets from the conference includes that hashtag as part of their tweets, anyone can do a search on that hashtag in the Twitter search tool and all of the tweets from the conference will show up together.

Twitter chat: Educators love to share their thoughts and ideas. An educational Twitter chat is a scheduled time for an online discussion. There is usually a moderator who asks questions, preceding the question with Q1, Q2, etc., and including the hashtag for the Twitter chat. Those attending are looking for that hashtag, and responding to the questions with A1, A2, etc., and also including the agreed-upon hashtag. You can find list of scheduled educational Twitter chats here and here. The Teacher Challenges blog provides a great overview on how to attend a Twitter chat session.

TWITTER TIPS

Teachers often ask me how they find people to follow on Twitter. My suggestion is to find one trusted source to follow, and look at the list of people that person follows. You can click on any person on that list, and read some of the tweets, and, if the tweets look useful, you can follow that person, too. This is the social media component of Twitter– you can see everyone else’s lists of people they follow and make them your own!

It is not just people that have Twitter accounts, but also companies and organizations. Discovery Communications has multiple Twitter accounts you may want to follow.

@DiscoveryComm: the account for the parent company, Discovery Communications which includes overviews of new and upcoming offerings

@DiscoveryEd: the Twitter handle for Discovery Education, which targets all things Discovery and education including tips and tricks for Discovery Education Streaming.

TWITTER ETIQUETTE

I have some personal thoughts on the usage of Twitter.

If you want to ask another Twitter user a question that will require a answer of more than 280 characters, use email to ask the question. This way, you can receive a more detailed answer.
When you sign up for Twitter, there is an area for a short biography. I suggest you put the fact you are an educator in that bio so others know that about you.
Remember the goal is not to gather the most followers. The goal is to hone your PLN online and collaborate with those you follow and who follow you.
Do not be offended if you follow someone on Twitter and they do not follow you back. Perhaps they are keeping those that the follow to a small, manageable number.
Sometimes you find someone you follow has blocked you, which means you can no longer see their tweets in your feed. Don’t take offense at that. Sometimes Twitter users want to hone their followers so they know exactly who they are tweeting to.

TOOLS

There are many different tools and apps you can use to read and post tweets. Some have single columns, some are specifically for mobile devices, some are Web-based, and some have configurable columns so you can follow your feed, other users, and hashtags all on a single screen! I have links to many of these on my “Twitter for Teachers” page. This page also includes links to how you might use Twitter to support teaching and learning.

Do you have any Twitter tips and tricks to share? Please add your thoughts to Twitter! #kathyschrock

Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Web-ulous tools, part 2

This article originally appeared in the Discovery Education blog "Kathy Schrock's Katch of the Month" in November 2017 and is re-posted here with permission.

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Back in March of 2014, my blog post highlighted some of my favorite online tools– Google Docs Story Builder, Magisto, Pixiclip, Thinglink, and Narrable. Story Builder and Narrable are gone. Thinglink has expanded into the VR arena. Magisto is now a paid service. Pixiclip has stayed the same. Apps and online tools come and go each day, so it is important to have an array of choices for the type of tool you want students to use.

There are online tool sites that include access to multiple tools. However, I suggest finding online tools that do one thing very well. And investigate multiple tools of the same type. Following is a list of my current favorite online tools. Every tool is free, although some limit the components for the no-cost version. Many of these tools have mobile apps, too, so be sure to check the tool’s site!

ONLINE VIDEO CREATORS/EDITORS

Videos are a great assessment choice for students. This research study provides some useful insight into the use of video as a formative assessment. And EdTechTeacher provides a good overview of the planning and process of having students create videos.

These tools both allow students to upload images and and add narration/audio or edit already created video.

ONLINE AUDIO CREATORS

Oftentimes, students need to record their voice to upload into another tool or use it for reflection on their work. Marissa King penned a great article for Edutopia which explains how powerful the use of audio recording can be to support learning.

These sites allow that plus the creation of background music or unique songs.

ONLINE IMAGE EDITORS

Having students create images or edit existing images can lead to some innovative projects. The Teaching Ideas site from the UK provides curriculum-related ideas for having students create images.

These online tools are full-featured and allow easy creation of new images or editing of existing ones.

ONLINE COLLAGE MAKERS

Although this article is about using the mobile app PicCollage (available for iOS, Android, Windows Mobile,and Amazon Fire), it includes many great ideas for the use of collages to support teaching and learning.

These online tools are easy-to-use collage makers.

ONLINE DRAWING TOOLS

Having students create original illustrations for book reports, lab reports, title slides for videos or presentations, or even for sketchnoting a lecture. can support learning. Misty Adoniou provides some research in this area here.

Each of these tools can be used for drawing illustrations and saving or screenshotting them to move into another document.

ONLINE ANIMATION MAKERS

Students love stop-motion animations! These three online tools allow students to create their own animations to tell a story, demonstrate a process, summarize a lesson, and more!

ONLINE COMIC CREATORS

Creating a comic can be one method to tell a story, summarize a lesson, or simply showcase a point of view.

Each of these online comic tools includes assets for student to use in creating their comic.

ONLINE WEB PAGE CREATORS

Online Web page creators can be a great tool to use for student portfolios. Matt Renwick writes about the “power of digital portfolios” in this post.

Each of these tools can be used to create an online Web site or help students house their work as a digital portfolio.

ONLINE GRAPHIC DESIGN TOOLS

Creating a thank you card, poster, Facebook header and more can now be done with these very accessible and powerful graphical design tools.

ONLINE PODCAST CREATORS

Having students create podcasts can be beneficial for teaching and learning. These online podcasting tools host the podcasts and also supply the student with the “feed” so they can have others subscribe to their podcasts through an aggregator such as Apple Podcasts.

ONLINE MEDIA CONVERTERS

There are times when a student needs to convert a file to another format for use in an editing tool or for importing into another app or tool.

These three online tools allow uploading of one file format and downloading in the preferred converted file format.

ONLINE WORD CLOUD CREATORS

Michael Gorman provides teachers with over 108 ways to use word clouds in the classroom. He includes general uses and content-specific ideas, too.

The following word cloud tools are some of my favorites.

ONLINE CLIPPING/CURATION TOOLS

I wrote about curation tools in Kathy’s Katch in 2014 . Monica Fuglei also provides the rationale for teaching students to thoughtfully curate online information in this great article.

There are tons of online curation tools available, but these are ones I often recommend.

ONLINE SURVEY/FEEDBACK TOOLS

Students sometimes need to collect information from their classmates, students in the school, the community, or a global audience. There are very powerful online tools for soliciting feedback from others.

Here are a few of my favorite online survey tools.

ONLINE MIND MAPPING TOOLS

One of my pages on Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything covers the aspects of mind and concept mapping. There are so many ways these tools can be used for student organization, brainstorming, or as a formative or summative assessment.

Following are some of my favorite online mind mapping tools. Some host the maps while others allow downloading of the completed map as an image.

ONLINE TIMELINE MAKERS

Timelines are customarily used in social studies to illustrate a timeline of an event or a famous person’s life. However, with the new online timeline makers, students can also create timelines to tell a story or illustrate a process across the content areas.

Each of these tools creates timelines in a different way, but all are fun to use!

ONLINE CITATION TOOLS

There is no excuse for students to forget to cite their sources. As they gather their information, they can simply use a online citation tool to create the citation and cut-and-paste it into their curation tool so they have it.

Here are my top three online citation tools.

ONLINE IMAGE/QUOTE CREATORS

Placing text on a meaningful image can result in a very powerful product. There are many online tools that allow students to do this.

Here are my favorite tools for this purpose.

ONLINE INFOGRAPHIC CREATION TOOLS

I am passionate about students creating infographics in the classroom as an assessment. The information literacy skills used in researching, the data literacy skills used in manipulating the numeric portions, and the visual literacy skills used to make the infographic meaningful for the audience are all targeted when creating an infographic. In addition, the creation of an infographic to advocate for a cause can be important for students, too!

Here are some of the online infographic creation tools I recommend.

ONLINE COLLABORATION TOOLS

Having access to a real-time online collaboration tool can make any lesson engaging and provide you with the ability to see what the students know, think they know, and want to learn!

Here are my top three in this category!

ONLINE URL SHORTENERS

I believe all Web users need to have access to a URL shortener. In addition to making the URLs shorter and sometimes being able to personalize them, most tools provide information on how many times the shortened URL was clicked on. Tracking their links is often very interesting to students!

Here are some online URL shorteners.

Do you use other online tools in these categories and want to recommend them? Please add your link(s) to Twitter! #kathyschrock

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