Google Maps in the Classroom

Unless you refuse to get every penny out of your AAA membership, you’ve probably used Google Maps to help you find something.  However, did you know that these same maps can be used to share information with students in a format that can be easily explored on a computer or tablet?  Because of its relatively simple learning curve, you can also have students create and share their own maps rather than view those created by you.

Creating a map: Research

Using Google Maps to create a map for your students to access is incredibly simple.  The majority of your time will be spent in the preparation stage, gathering the individual points of interest that will go on your map.  Whether your map is a showcase of the various battles in a war or the points of interest in your town, you’ll want to place your markers as close to the actual locations as possible as Google will allow your students to zoom in very tightly.

Creating a map: Google (Screenr video: http://screenr.com/n3p7)

1. Log in to Google using your gmail or other Google credentials.
2. Click the Maps link at the top of the page (or go to maps.google.com).
3. On the left side, click the My Places button.
4. Click the orange, Create Map button.
5. Enter a title and description.  Assuming the information is public knowledge, keep the map set to Public – either way, you can send a URL to your map to your students.
6. Use search (as you normally would) on the map to locate a particular place.
7. In the upper left corner of the map, click the Add a Placemark blue marker to add a point of interest.
8. Enter a title and description for your point.  The more interesting you make the description, the more enticing it will be for your students.  You can give them information or the beginnings of clues to have them further explore the map for points you didn’t indicate with a placemark.
9. Click OK to save your placemark.
10. Repeat for all of your placemarks.
11. Click the Save button on the left box (it also auto-saves)
12. Above the Save button, you’ll see a link button.  Click that button to view (and copy) the URL to your map.  You can click the checkmark to generate a short URL that can be more easily shared (or written on the board).  Example URL: http://goo.gl/maps/IHxB7
13. You can log back in at any time to add or delete points on your map as well as the entire map.

Viewing Maps

Your students can view maps through a laptop, mobile device, or tablet.  Even without a Google Maps (or Google Earth) app on the phone, the map will open in the default browser and be very easy to work with.  This will provide a simple, intuitive interface for non-linear exploration that can engage your students with its interactivity while conveying the information you deem most relevant to them.

Happy Mapping!

iOS Guided Access Focuses Your Audience

One of the new features of Apple’s upgraded iOS is an Accessibility option that allows you to lock a device on a single app.  This can be advantageous when dealing with students who need to remain focused, letting your kids play with a device, or in a situation where you want to prevent people from wandering about your device.

To lock your device, you must first enable Guided Access through your settings.  To enable the feature go to: Settings >> General >> Accessibility >> Guided Access.  When you enable Guided Access, you will also set a password (similar to locking your device).

Once you have entered the application in which you would like to lock the device, simply triple click the home button.  This brings up the interface to lock into the app as well as the ability to lock certain portions of the screen.  Locking portions of the screen can be helpful if you want to disable certain options.  For example, if you want to lock someone in Safari on a web form and want to prevent them from accessing the URL, you can disable the upper portion of the screen.  In the image to the right, the lower portion of Sound Touch is blocked to prevent a child from viewing the other types of sounds.

Although it is a simple feature, you can leverage it to keep a child locked into a single application and away from the others on your device.  It can also be used if you are using a few iPads as part of a station during work in your classroom to help keep students on task while you are focused on other students in the class.  It certainly beats having to use physical blocks such as binder clips or credit cards in a case to prevent the use of the home button.

If you happen to lock yourself in Guided Access mode, you can hold power and the home button for 15 seconds to force reset your device.  This will enable you to go back into the settings and disable the feature or reset the password to something you’ll remember.

Screenr As Your Spotter

You have probably heard a great deal about the flipped classroom, where instruction on new material occurs as homework and the in-class time is spent with the teacher acting as a mentor, ensuring students understand the material and can apply it.  Screenr is a fantastic web-based application that can help make this a reality for your classroom.  Even if you aren’t a teacher, you can easily create and distribute short (maximum recording time of five minutes) instructional videos.

Requirements

Screenr requires you to have Java installed on your computer and you need a free account.  Other than that, there is nothing to install.  It all runs off of the www.screenr.com website.

To play Screenr files on a computer, you need the Flash player.  However, you can also play Screenr videos on iPhones and iPads, even though Flash isn’t an option there, with nothing to install.  When you are finished creating a video, you will get a link to that screencast that looks similar to this: http://www.screenr.com/1234, where 1234 is the code representing your video.

How to use Screenr

Once you have installed Java (it will prompt you if you don’t have it) and created an account, you click the large ‘Launch screen recorder now!’ button on the website.  You will then be prompted with the following dashed line rectangle representing the recording size. 

You can test your microphone levels or select an alternate recording method with the mic link and bars at the bottom.  You can adjust your capture size by dragging the handles or selecting the ‘Capture Size’ button at the bottom.  Clicking on that button, you can also select Full Screen to capture the entire monitor.  You can move your recording window by dragging the instructions in the middle of the window.  Once you have everything set up, you click the red record button.

Tips and Tricks

Screenr is simple to use.  Its power and speed are in that simplicity.  Do you want to include transitions, text, background music?  You can’t.  Well, actually you could turn on the boom box in the room where you are doing recording, but that would just be annoying.  The simplicity of not having the ability to do these things makes Screenr as quick to record as it is to watch. 

Here are a few tricks that might help you along the way:

• Plan and practice what you want to do and say.  While you don’t need to get everything perfect, a little practice and organization will go a long way.
• If you are capturing full screen, you can’t see the timer.  As such, it is important to use another timer to keep track of how much time you have left.  You can cram a lot of information in five minutes, but you don’t want it to cut you off with one sentence to go.
• Your laptop has a microphone built in, but you should use an external one for better quality. However, you don’t need to purchase an expensive microphone.  If you have a pair of iPhone headphones with a built in mic, and you are recording in a reasonably quiet room, that should suffice. 
• If you are using a Mac, Screenr has difficulties running out of Safari when the browser is run in full screen mode.  The simple fix here is to click the arrow in the upper right corner to exit full screen mode while working with Screenr.
• If you need a moment to think about what to say next, or you don’t want to waste time with a screen load, you can press Alt-D or Option-D to pause the recording.  This will allow you time to get ready and continue the recording. 
• While the simplicity of a web-based tool is wonderful, you might be in an environment where Java is out of the question.  If that is the case, you might also want to take a look at Jing.  Jing is a downloadable software application that is very similar to Screenr.  From TechSmith (as opposed to Screenr from Articulate), if you are looking to break the 5 minute barrier and add additional complex features, you can also take a look at SnagIt (not free).

Free iPad Video Editing with Vimeo

With schools implementing 1:1 programs, class sets of iPads, or BYOD (bring your own device) programs, teachers are looking for effective ways to implement this technology into the classroom.  Rather than providing administrators’ worst fear and using apps as a reward or just playing games, integrating technology into the classroom in a way that provides an engaging environment for students while helping to fulfill academic goals is the ideal situation.

While there are many apps available to teach SAT words or learn your colors in Spanish, these aren’t the apps that students are excited to use.  While there are highly addictive apps like Angry Birds or Tiny Wings, these aren’t the apps that educators find valuable to convey content.  Instead, focusing on apps that help students create something to demonstrate what they have learned is the ideal marriage of engaging and valuable.

If you have a lesson that has students a poster, perform a scene, write a story, or any other form of creative expression, it can easily be modified to incorporate iPads or iPhones in the classroom by having students create a multi-scene video as an output.  While there are apps such as iMovie that can provide students this capability, cost can become an issue.  Instead, the Vimeo app is one that meets the creative need and is the right price: free.  Free has several advantages including it’s easier to convince your IT department to install it and you don’t have to spend your own money, but even more important, if you are teaching in an environment with students who have iOS devices, it provides them the opportunity to download the app on their own device to try it out before class or to use their own device in class.

Creating videos with the Vimeo app is simple.  There aren’t a ton of bells and whistles, but there is everything needed to create a high-quality product and leverage student creativity. 

Storyboarding

Much like creating professional videos (or writing papers), it is important to storyboard what will happen.  Storyboarding allows students to put pen to paper and detail the scenes they want to record.  This will help them think through the finished product before getting lost in the process of using the device.  This also allows for multiple students to get involved if it is a group project rather than limiting usage to a single individual as typically happens when using the device.

When storyboarding, it is important to also include portions for title screens (with still image or video backgrounds) and audio narration.  These elements will help the students create a video that includes a bit more polish than a typical iPhone movie.

Recording Video

While you can use the Vimeo app itself to record video, it is simpler to use the native Camera app.  Students are most likely already familiar with it.  They have the ability to record a video, trim the beginning and ending, or delete the entire clip.  Students can create several clips until they get a version they like before moving into the Vimeo app.  Leveraging their storyboard, they can ensure they have all of the clips they will need for their finished product.

Editing the Video

Editing in Vimeo is simple.  You click the giant + icon to add a new clip.  To reorder clips, you simply hold the clip and drag it to a new location.  You also have the ability to add transitions between the clips.  The transitions include slightly obnoxious pans and a good fade, but students may enjoy incorporating them between their clips and still images. 

Simple titles can also be added.  The one negative of the software is that there isn’t the ability to include titles in the same timeline as video clips.  This causes an issue if you are attempting to have a simple title on black then begin the movie.  This effect can be achieved simply enough, though.  Instead of using a solid color background, students can take a photo (of a color, drawing they’ve done, or other background) and use that as the background to their title, running it in the video row for the same duration as the title in the title row.

The final feature is the ability to add narration or background music.  While the music might help with home movies, the narration is a potential benefit for classroom-based works.  The pitfall of the narration is that it only allows 10 second clips.  You can have as many clips as you desire, but each is limited to 10 seconds, which can take some planning in the storyboard and scripting portions of the video planning.

Exporting

Videos can be saved back to the device’s Camera Roll (where they can be uploaded to YouTube) or uploaded to Vimeo.  Vimeo uploading, while simpler, can cause some issues as a free Vimeo license allows only 10 uploads per day – no big deal for an individual, but if everyone in the class was using the same account, it won’t work.  Instead, videos may be graded on the device or on YouTube if many multiples are required.

Conclusion

Two primary issues were encountered with the app.  When using the app was that it would sometimes close automatically without saving the project.  While this wouldn’t set the students too far back because of the utilization of their storyboard, it is helpful to periodically close the project to save it and return to it to ensure progress has been saved.  More important than the timesavings, this will help minimize student frustration with the assignment.  The other issue experienced was that students would record video with the device vertical instead of horizontal.  The app doesn’t have the capability of rotating video clips, and rotating the clips in other apps doesn’t impact their rotation in Vimeo.

Leveraging creative apps like Vimeo will allow you to incorporate the technology in an effective and enjoyable way.  Students will be able to creative complete assignments utilizing iPads for content creation rather than simply playing games.  The assignments have the potential to be engaging and enjoyable enough that students won’t even be tempted to switch over to playing Angry Birds on the device.


PS: Currently (September 2012), Pinnacle Studio for the iPad is free.  This appears to be a much more fully featured application that may be worth a look.  As it moves into the pay category, you may want to compare Vimeo, Pinnacle Studio and iMovie to determine the application that best meets your needs (and budget).