EM-S ISD Tech Integration Conference

We are so super excited to be having our first Technology Integration Conference here in EM-S ISD on August 3rd & 4th! Need more info...check out the video below =)

GoAnimate.com: Summer Technology Conference 2011 by Becky501

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

YouTube for Students through the Educational Video Library

I just found this site with great information from Lightspeed. Thanks to Mr. Houser for the info (and visit his site for info on creating your own YouTube channel). You may not realize that you can have students safely navigate to view YouTube videos within the district, but to do so, you need to take advantage of the Educational Video Library. To learn how to submit YouTube videos through this site within EM-S ISD click here. Visit the Lightspeed wiki (below) for detailed directions on submitting videos to the Educational Video Library.

End-User 'Safe Video' Instructions - Public Info - Lightspeed's Support Wiki

Organizing Email in Live.com (Part 2)

This is the 2nd post of a series for Organizing Email in Live.com.

There are a variety of options for organizing emails in Live.com. Last week I posted about using categories to organize your email. This week we will be looking at how to create folders and add emails to the folders in Live Mail.

1. Log into live.com
2. Right-click on your name from the left-pane
3. Select Create New Folder
4. Type in the name of your folder and press Enter
5. From this point it's easy to move emails into folders
1. Select one or multiple emails and either drag and drop them into the desired folder, OR 
2. Once emails are selected, click Move and choose Move to Folder, then select the folder you would like to move emails to.

Organizing Email in Live.com (Part 1)

So this week has marked the beginning of using Windows Live (specifically live@edu) as our primary email service in our school district. In light of that, I thought I'd do a cross-post series for organizing emails in live.com. You have multiple options for organizing emails. You can assign categories, make an email a task, and/or put your emails in folders. For this post I'm going to go over sorting your emails into categories.


To use categories in your email...

• Hover your mouse on an email.
• On the right side of the email bar you will see a grayed out rectangle, click it.
• If you don't care about the names of the categories and just want to apply a color, then select a color to apply it to an email. If you wish to change the names/colors of your categories, click on Manage Categories and follow the steps below.
• Delete the current categories by selecting them, then clicking Delete Category. Do this for all existing categories.
• Click Create New Category and assign a color and name for the categories you want to have.
• When you are finished, click OK and assign categories as described above.

Note - You can apply more than one category to an email =)
Another Note - You can filter by categories! At the top of your email just select Filter, then Category, and select your category.

Scribble on any website with Markup

Markup.io is fast way to make marks on any website. From markup.io's homepage you can practice some of the basics shapes that you can draw. Just use your mouse, or if you have an interactive whiteboard or projector this would be a great time to use that too. Practice drawing a scribble (that's my term for it), a circle and an arrow from here.

To start using markup.io, click and drag from the "Get Markup" button to your bookmarks bar on your browser. If your bookmarks bar is not visible then there should be an option in your browsers View menu to make it visible. You could also just right-click in the portion of your browser next to your tabs and click to add a checkmark next to "Bookmarks Toolbar" or "Favorites Bar" for Internet Explorer. Once you've got a bookmark for "Markup", then from ANY website click the "Markup" button on your browser and start doodling =) When you click the "Markup" button from your Bookmarks bar you will see a tool bar display in the upper-right of the website where you can change your color, add text, or change the tool type.

I think this could be very useful in the classroom, particularly on map sites or images. See an example of a page I marked up below =)

Take out the clutter with Quietube

YouTube is a great resource for educational videos. I've spoken to teachers that are concerned about showing videos from YouTube in their classroom because of all the extra "stuff" that's on a YouTube page. This is a very valid concern. A great solution to show YouTube videos in an educational setting is Quietube.

What is Quietube? It takes the YouTube video you're currently viewing and puts it on a blank screen, with no suggested videos or comments.

How does QuietTube work? 

1. Go to quietube.com 
2. From this site drag the button that says "quietube" into your bookmarks bar of your browser (If you don't have a bookmarks bar visible in you browser go to View>Bookmarks Bar). It super easy from here. 
3. Find the YouTube video you'd like to use, and then from that video's YouTube page click the quietube button from your bookmarks bar. 
4. That's it! Your video is viewable in this format and you can save the url or even click the button below the video to get a short url. Use this link to show the video to your students. Click the pic below for an example.

For emsisd teachers...want more info on Visual Thesaurus? Check out www.emsisd.com/vt.

Create randomized bingo cards with print-bingo.com

In looking for a bingo card builder this past week I came across this site. I've used others in the past, but this one gave the ability of choosing whether to have a free space (you choose the text), whether words are column specific or can be randomized, text size, and card size.

1. To get started just go to Print-Bingo 
2. From the homepage you can click "I've read enough..."
3. Select the type of card you'd like to create, to input your own words/phrases, choose "Custom bingo cards with your own word or phrase lists". (Also checkout blank cards, and the template word list cards)
4. Just one more link to start creating, click "Create custom bingo cards"
5. Make your selections for the cards. 

• Pay special attention to the center square, and if you make it free, enter the text for that space.
• If you do not care if the words vary with the columns they are placed in from card to card, then make sure and choose "A word can appear in any column" (makes for easier entering). 
• Change the text and card size if you so desire.
6. Enter your words/phrases. If you selected "A word can appear in any column" in your options then just enter all of your words/phrases in one column. 
• Make sure and enter (at minimum) 24 words/phrases.
• Separate each word/phrase on a line by pressing enter after each.
• Make sure that there are not any blank spaces in any of the bingo columns. If there are, then blank squares will be on your cards.
7. The last option allows you to choose if you want to share your word list with their company or not.
8. Click "Submit"
9. Click "Click here to get your first set of custom bingo cards"
10. If you like what you see, click the Print or Save button!

Important Tip!! Need more cards?? or did you have an error on your current cards?? easy fix, just click the "Go Back" link that is displayed to the left of the cards. You will be returned to the screen where you entered your data. Make any changes you need, or if you just need more cards, click "Submit" again (you may want to change your share setting if you had previously set to private as this will revert).