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"Earlier in the school year my students created whole-class videos using our large green screen studio. While I assigned students a variety of tasks (director, camera operator, acting coach), my students spent the majority of their time on the carpet as an audience member. At the end of these units I wondered how we could increase student ownership of the production. Could I have my students create a green screen movie without having to play the audience member for large portions of the time? Could they be empowered to create a movie independently of the teacher? Could this be done by kindergartners and first graders? For most of the school year I struggled with these questions. That was until I met Brenda Windsor and Mary O'Neil of Trumbull, CT at the Fairfield University "Education Technology Collaboration Day" in March.  Brenda and Mary presented on how they have incorporated green screens in the classroom, and shared the idea of using a pizza box to make a miniature portable studio. Here is a link to the video they created.  From that moment, I was on a mission to have my K-2 students write, direct, film & star in their own collaborative group mini green screen movies. "

"I am beyond elated - our PreK-6 elementary school received monies, through our district's Computer Science Resolution 2025, to create a STEAM (science, technology, arts, math) makerspace. I never thought our Title 1 school would get the opportunity to create such a space. I never thought I would get the opportunity to help create a fully equipped makerspace. A few of use spent the past few weeks rearranging our library so that one side contains our books and the other our STEAM materials."

"Generative art-art produced by AI-means you no longer need to be an accomplished artist to produce fantastic images in whatever style you choose. To create AI art, you would typically create an account with a third-party company and have generated images served to you over the web. But did you know you can create unlimited AI images on your own PC?"

"A couple of days ago Educational Technology and Mobile Learning published a post featuring two awesome web tools for teachers to create stop motion videos and following this article I received some requests to feature iPad apps for creating motion videos. I have curated the list below containing some of the best and most popular apps for this purpose. Check them out and if you have other suggestions , please share them with us in the comment form below. "

"One area that I don't have time to explore very often during the school year is creating music on my iPad. It seems with all the day to day activities of teaching that I totally loose touch with musical explorations and composing. I've been taking more time lately to do this and I am floored at what I can do with an iPad and a few apps. I am not going to give you a history lesson here but I will say that at one time in my career I dreamed of creating a wonderful MIDI lab outfitted with computers, keyboards, speakers and mixers for my students to use. That dream never happened because of the crazy cost involved. My dream has been reshaped. Here is what I've found…."

"Google Plus has recently introduced an interesting new feature called Collections which is basically a curating tool that resembles Pinterest. You can easily create collections where you can organize and group posts by topic. 'Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a custom set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections.' "

"About a week ago I was asked if I could write a post about tools for making infographics with students. A well constructed infographic can convey a lot of information in a compact, visually-pleasing manner. The process of creating a good infographic requires students to analyze and succinctly summarize data and facts that they've gathered through research. Here are some good tools that students can use to create infographics."

"One of the things that I always do in my Google Apps workshops and webinars is teach people how to create self-grading quizzes through Google Forms and Spreadsheets. Depending upon the pace of the group we'll often look at creating image-based and multiple page quizzes too. I've recently put all of the screenshots of those processes into one PDF. You can view the PDF below. (If you are viewing this on an iPad, you might not be able to see the guide)."

"goREACT is a new iPad app from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. This free iPad app allows students to virtually create chemical reactions. To create the reactions students simply drag elements from the periodic table to the "reaction area." The app includes suggested reactions to help students get started. In all there are nearly 300 chemical reactions supported on the app. The app includes pictures and videos related to the reactions that students can virtually create on goREACT."

"Many have noticed that iOS 7′s overall appearance is largely dependent on the devices wallpaper, and a good or bad wallpaper can make or break the look of things along with general usability, particularly for the home screen. It turns out that some of the best looking wallpapers on iOS 7 are very abstract, multicolored, blurry images, and that's what we're going to focus on making here. I've sort of perfected a quick formula for creating nice wallpapers in iOS 7 directly on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, using an excellent free photo editing app called Snapseed. Snapseed is really great at making very nice professional looking photo adjustments on the go, but we're going to use it to go the other direction; make a bad photo look even worse, thus creating an abstract blurred image that actually makes an excellent wallpaper."

"Canva is another web tool you can use with your students to create mini-posters for your class. Canva is easy to use and has user friendly interface. The process of creating a visual through Canva is as simple as drag and drop. Canva provides you with a wide variety of images and clip arts that you can modify to suit your purposes. You can even upload your own images to use as background in your graphics."

"Tiki-Toki is an excellent web tool for creating beautiful timelines to use in your class. We have already featured this tool in several posts in the past but today we are revisiting it again as it has a very good feature added to it which allow you to view your timelines in 3D. With this new update, teachers will be able to create timelines that can be viewed in 3D format."

"Many times I post articles on creation-based tasks for teachers and students. This morning I would like to share a story about a Westlake High School student that saw an educational need and began creating content FOR the iPad. And this is where our story begins…."

"We want to draw your attention in today's post to this excellent iPad app that is free now for a limited time. Halftone 2 is a very good comic book creator app that you can use with students to create comic and scrap books using photos and sound effects. The process of creating a comic book using Halftone 2 is  simple and easy: Choose a page layout from the selection provided there, then import your photos from your photo library, Facebook or Flickr. Customize the look of your images using Aviary's photo editing tools that include things such as automatic enhancements, filter effects, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, redeye, whiten, blemish, and selective focus. You can also add captions and speech bubbles to your photos or choose from over 80 professionally-designed graphical shapes. Next, mix in some sound effects then share your creation as an image, multi-page document, or high-definition video."

"So many of us are trying to create passionate reading environments, we are doing all the things the experts tell us to do, and yet, something just isn't clicking. Some kids are reading sure, but they would probably be reading any way, others though, not so much. Our passionate reading environments are just not working for all of our kids. When I moved from 5th to 7th I knew I would be up against a challenge, after all, I had seen the slow decline of reading in my 5th graders and was pretty sure it would continue as they got older. And I was right, by 7th graders some of my students are not just disliking books, some really hate reading. And they are vocal about it! So what have I done to continue to create passionate reading environments? Here are a few ideas…"

"Google Forms is a powerful tool with huge educational potential for teachers and educators. Besides being free and easy to use, Forms works across different devices and is seamlessly integrated with other Drive services such as Docs and Spreadsheets. As a teacher, you can use Forms for a variety of purposes including: planning an event, making surveys and polls, creating quizzes, collecting feedback and other information from students and many more. We have already posted a step by step guide on how to create a form from scratch but since then Google Forms has witnessed some major updates with the addition of some amazing features most important of which is the last update a few days ago. Therefore, we deemed it important to revisit this guide and update you on the different features you can use to create a form in the Google Forms."

"A screencast, also known as video screen capture, is a great way for teachers to create and share instructional videos and explanatory step by step tutorials with students. regardless of the purposes for which you are creating a screencast, the quality of your video screen captures can sometimes impede the communicative intent of your message. Therefore, knowing what tools to use to create educational screencasts is as important as the content of the screencasts themselves. To this end, we have curated for you this collection of some of the best screen casting tools out there. We have divided them into four major categories: Mac apps, web tools, Chromebook apps, iPad apps, and Android apps."

"As tomorrow's global citizens enter higher education with words like "make," "hack," and "prototype" embedded in their vocabulary, they are fueling a powerful movement toward "learning by creating." Faced with the shifting ambitions of students and changes in institutional funding streams, colleges and universities are embracing "learning by creating," allowing them to leverage the traditional spirit of an educational community with students' growing entrepreneurial focus. In response, these institutions are adopting powerful new models to erode the boundaries of historically siloed disciplinary thinking and empower new levels of discovery. A number of colleges and universities around the world are leading the way as they introduce learning facilities billed as "innovation + incubator + maker centers." These centers focus on multi-disciplinary inquiry that can foster partnerships with industry and fully leverage available grants and funding for research. Advancing these new models can help universities recruit fresh talent, establish new partnerships for success and promote an environment where emerging leaders can explore the complex social challenges of our time."

"Venn Diagram is an excellent free interactive tool  from the popular Read Write Think that students can use to create Venn diagrams that contain two or three overlapping circles. This tool is also available for both iOS and Android. The iPad app is particularly designed for use in the school setting providing students with a simple profile system where multiple users can create their own Venn diagrams on the same device. "

"Looking for some good web tools to use to create educational video collages? The collection below has you covered. It features a number of popular tools and mobile apps to utilize with students to create, edit and share video collages. The common thing among all of these video editors is that they are easy and simple to use with no advanced video editing knowledge required. Some of these tools work on Chromebooks as well."