Dipity – Create innovative timelines.

Dipity
www.dipity.com

A few months ago, I came across Dipity as a way for my students to create online timelines of significant events in the history of Environmental Science.  While my students found it easy to manually add descriptions, pictures, and links, I discovered that Dipity has much more to offer.  

Steve Job's Life and Career on Dipity.

In addition to manual timeline creation, Dipity allows users to enter the URL or RSS feed of a site or blog and turn it into a timeline.

Nick's Picks for Educational Technology on Dipity.

Users can also connect numerous social media feeds (Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr) to create aesthetically pleasing timelines that will continue to update as new content is added to the feed.  Dipity allows you to display events as a traditional timeline (above), a flipbook (below), a list, or a map.  Embed codes are provided in addition to options for comments on timelines or individual posts.  

Nick's Picks for Educational Technology on Dipity.

If you’re looking for a simple way to create engaging timelines or want advanced timeline functionality, give Dipity a try.

Don’t miss a pick:

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TED – Five TED Talks that have changed my classroom.

TED
www.ted.com 

I’ve long been a big fan of TED talks, and stumbled on a blog post with the idea to “Give TED” for the holidays (#GiveTED).  I previously posted about TED Ed, but this post is focused on the TED Talks as both an inspiration and teaching tool.  TED Talks started out as a distraction to me while on the treadmill, but have since spurred some of the most creative projects and fundamental changes to my classroom.  I even use some as content in my flipped classroom approach.  So this holiday season, I’m sharing five TED Talks that have made positive impacts in my classroom.

Image Source: TED Blog

Candy Chang: Before I die I want to... 
This talk led to the building of a “Before I Die…” wall in my classroom.

From TED: “In her New Orleans neighborhood, artist and TED Fellow Candy Chang turned an abandoned house into a giant chalkboard asking a fill-in-the-blank question: “Before I die I want to ___.” Her neighbors' answers -- surprising, poignant, funny -- became an unexpected mirror for the community. (What's your answer?)”

Cesar Kuriyama: One second every day

I’ve been doing this personally since last spring, and I’m planning a classroom one-second project for the spring.

From TED: “There are so many tiny, beautiful, funny, tragic moments in your life -- how are you going to remember them all? Director Cesar Kuriyama shoots one second of video every day as part of an ongoing project to collect all the special bits of his life.”

Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity

A must-watch for any educator.

From TED: “Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.”

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

Ed Tech food for thought!

 From TED: “Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.”

Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA

Inspiration for my Environmental Science students’ upcoming sustainable agriculture service project.

From TED: “Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where ‘the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.’ ”

Happy Holidays!

Image Source: blog.tedx.com

Piktochart - Create Professional Looking Inforgraphics.

Piktochart

www.piktochart.com

Infographics seem to be increasing in popularity at an accelerating rate.  This succinct way of conveying ideas in a visually appealing way has limitless uses in the classroom.  Piktochart makes it really easy to convey ideas in a visually appealing way.  Whether you see infographics as a creative way for students to visualize data, or a new twist on project posters, infographics have virtually limitless uses in the classroom that your students will love.

Made by one of my AP Environmental Science Students

After choosing from one of 7 Free Templates (120 available with account upgrades) you will work in one of three sections of a well-organized editor: 

1. Add – icons, graphics, text, charts (works with Google spreadsheets), video (YouTube or Vimeo), and maps. 
2. Style – to change the look of your template. 
3. Publish – save as a jpeg, png, or pdf in a variety of resolutions.  A “Publish Online Now” option for saving as HTML and obtaining an embed code for your blog or website.  Post directly to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Piktochart requires no design experience, but if you do need help they have you covered with a series of one-minute video tutorials.

Scratch - Create your own video game and learn to code.

Scratch
http://scratch.mit.edu/
http://scratched.media.mit.edu/

Looking for a way to celebrate Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 9-15)?  Why not check out the "Hour of Code."  It's an effort to encourage teachers and students to spend an hour learning computer science. 

Intro to Scratch 2.0 from ScratchEd on Vimeo.

My Food Web Game (in progress)

My students and I took part in Hour of Code by trying out Scratch.  Scratch allows you to snap blocks of code together to create games, animations, simulations, etc. It was easy to learn, and a lot of fun.  We also quickly learned that coding takes a lot of planning, and quality products definitely take longer than an hour. This introduction did however generate some interest and resulted in the creation of an extra-credit assignment.

Why teach coding?   I learned about Scratch from a TED Talk by MIT's Mitch Resnick who describes today's students as "it's almost as if they can read but not write with new technologies."  He points to the importance of becoming fluent in new technologies. 

Try it out with a step-by-step intro here, or try the Hour of Code holiday card tutorial here.
Here is a lesson page, complete with a tutorial handout.

Skitch - Take screenshots and make tutorials.

Skitch
http://evernote.com/skitch/

Skitch is much more than a way to capture screenshots, but it has become my go-to program for just that purpose (much like Jing has become my go-to for screencasting).  It allows you to take a picture of your whole screen, part of your screen, or a screenshot after 5 seconds (just enough time to select a drop-down menu for the pic.).  What sets Skitch apart is the quick, easy editing features.  You can turn a simple screenshot into a professional looking tutorial in seconds.

A screenshot illustrating the many ways to follow this blog (hint, hint).

You don't need an account to use Skitch, but an Evernote account improves functionality and allows you to save each screenshot to your Evernote notebooks.  Skitch is now owned by Evernote, so the two work together seamlessly.  Check out Evernote's blog post about using skitch as a teaching tool.

The many annotation features of Skitch.

I took a screenshot of the results of a recent Google form and used the many stamps (?, !, X, etc.) to show the many ways you can annotate a picture.  While the arrows and free-hand marker and highlighting are cool, the ability to pixilate (blur out) images is rarely found in comparable programs and has many uses.  In the image above I used pixilate to blur out student names for privacy.

Skitch is available for Windows, Mac, Windows 8 (Touch), iOS, and Android.