Primary Access: Projects with Primary Sources

The University of Virginia has established a free site for teachers to use where students can create movies and storyboards with primary sources.  It's called Primary Access. 

One of the reasons I really like this site is the fact that a teacher can create classes and assign students activities to do with the plethora of primary sources available on the site. After students make their assignment, the teacher can view it on the primary access site.  Everything is in one place.  It's so easy to do.

When one creates an account, the directions for adding classes and students are simplified and detailed.  Making assignments are also easy to do.

I can see this being used in a large variety of courses.  Social Studies, Language Arts, Science and Foreign Language definitely, but even some other courses could find value with this site.

I decided that this is going to be one of the tip sheets I share with colleagues this school year because many of them can use this in their classroom.  I think it will be a great PBL tool.

Send your class a video email

Have you gone to a special conference and met someone you wish you could share with your students?  What about a trip that you took somewhere during Spring Break that was a great content related journey you think students need to see?  There is a site you there called eyejot where you can record video and email it directly to your students.

Eyejot has several options for use, the free version lets you send 50 emails of a 5 minute video. That means you can share an experience with 50 students!   You have an unlimited number of messages sent as well.

Due to the limited number of emails you can send, you may have to get creative if you teach a lot of sections of the same class, but, with unlimited messages, you can record different segments of the video to share with students.

There is an app you can use on iOS as well.

FlipSnack: Homemade Learning materials

Have you come across a need to make a small collection of materials for your class, maybe a booklet or a perhaps your students wrote a poetry collection you wish to publish- FlipSnack is a potential way to do that.   FlipSnack is an online flipbook site that users can use to upload materials and publish them for a certain about of uses. And the amount of uses is high.

While FlipSnack has a paid version, there is also a free version with limited access. It isn't something you could use for a long time, but it could be used for short-term.

It's easy too.  Just upload PDFs or JPGs to the site and click publish.   With the free version, you have 1GB of storage, three 15 page books that can be opened 10,000 times a day.  The booklet can be embedded but it does have a watermark, but who cares, it's free. 

I think if someone is doing a unit and has a small collection of materials, this would be a great way to present it.  There is also a paid version that allows for more things to be uploaded to your flipbook. 

What an interesting tool, right?  It is definitely worth checking out.

Vocaroo: Voice Recording quick and easy

I have been looking for some options for presentations because some of my students are very hesitant to talk about things in front of the class. While I require them to do some sort of book talk or presentation, I decided to allow them to do it in a different way so I looked around for some tools online that can be used for that purpose.

Vocaroo is an easy tool to use for just the purpose I wanted, quick oral presentations.  I think because of ease of use and the method of delivery any class could use it.  Social Studies, English and Foreign languages.   I love the fact that it doesn't save everything on a site, you just receive a link with the final product and embed that into your page.

I could see a recording from this site embedded into a blog or a website with some sort of oral description.  A foreign language teacher could very easily use this for an oral prompt for an assignment or a test as well.

I love that the result can be emailed directly so if you are assigning students an oral presentation, they can complete it and email it.  The link can be embedded as well.  It is so easy!  I think it can be a real benefit to reach those students who fear public speaking.