iMovie + iPhone = Easy Movie Creation


I know that I am ‘late to the party’ on this one but I still felt it was important to share my thoughts on iMovie and on the iPhone. Each year for Intersession (our school shuts down for three days prior to Spring break for students and teachers to participate in some sort of learning outside of the classroom), I tend to be the one that gathers all of the pictures that were taken from our experiences and put them together in a movie. In past years, I have defaulted to using my iPad as this is what I had always used to make a movie. This time, I pushed myself to actually make the movie on my phone.

Why you might ask?

  • My iPad is going on 4 years old.
  • My iPad’s camera is nothing compared to my iPhone.
  • My iPhone is with me at all times.
  • iMovie is a free app that works on iPhones (as well as iPads).
Link to iMovie App from iTunes
I thought that this would be a great opportunity to push myself to do something that I would not otherwise do. I can tell you that my experience with the app on my phone far exceeded my expectations. I thought that the smaller screen size would cause me more issues and have trouble with navigating/creating the movie. I was wrong. I adapted to the size very quickly. I was able to pull in all of my video clips, images, and music from my phone. When done, I was able to send the movie file to YouTube so that others could watch it.
Now, I am not saying that iMovie is the only tool that one should use when making a movie. In fact, YouTube has a good video editor built into their product that I like to use when creating videos on a laptop or Chromebook. Because our students have Chromebooks at our school, we have been having students record their videos using the chrome extension Screencastify and then sending those video clips to YouTube. This way they can use the YouTube editor to create their movie project. 
For this particular instance of me being on the go all three days, I just found iMovie helpful knowing that while I was on the bus coming back from trips, I was able to put together a movie on my phone. Once I got to a location where I had wifi access, I then sent the final movie file to my School YouTube channel for viewing. 
So, whenever you are find yourself on a school trip, or a personal trip, and you want to share your experience with others, consider using this app. You will find that you can be productive when you don’t have access to wifi and then send the final product to YouTube when you do. You will be amazed at how polished your work will turn out.

Use Google Form Templates for Exit Tickets & Course Evals

Over the past couple of days, I have spent some time looking at templates that Google has created for its products. More specifically, I came across some templates with Google Forms. Two of them that I feel could be very useful for teachers are the Exit Ticket and Course Evaluation templates. They are short sweet and to the point. I also like the fact that you have the ability to make any changes that you want with the templates by adding your own questions and/or deleting ones that you don’t find useful/important.

To see the template options, go to the Google Forms direct link forms.google.com. If you go the route of creating a new Google Form from your Google Drive account, you will not see the option to create a form from a template. But by hitting the back button, Google will bring you to their form’s homepage where you will see the available templates. The video below will quickly explain how to get to the Google Form templates.

When it comes to exit tickets, I know that there are tools out there that do the same thing, such as Socrative, but using the exit ticket template in Google Forms can be great for those instances that you

  • don’t want students to have to log into a different tool/system
  • don’t have a lot of time and want to quickly get the exit ticket to students through Google Classroom
As always, if you have any questions, you know where to find me.

Google Slides – Using Drawing Features

This week, I was invited to attend Sophomore Humanities classes showing students how they can use Google Slides to help create a collaborative children’s digital story book.  Most people are very comfortable with doing the ‘basics’ when it comes to Google Slides – add some text and images. In the Google Slide presentation below, you will find tips on how to change the page height and width of the slide presentation as well as using some of the drawing features in Google Slides.

Check it out for yourself…did you know you could do the following in Google Slides?

NOTE: You might be asking, why not just use Google Drawings for the draw features. You most certainly can do that however the big difference with Google Drawings is the number of pages. You are only allowed one Google Drawing page, while you have the ability to add multiple pages in Google Slides.

Commenting in Google Docs – Notice the Change?

Google has made it easier for you to enter in a comment in a Google Document. I noticed that we actually received the update today in our school domain. Check it out in the gif below:

STEPS:
1. Highlight the text
2. Select the Comment button on the right side of the Google Document
3. Type in your comment
It is that easy.

Flippity: Random Name Picker

There are lots of random name generators out there. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. However, in my mind, there is one that surpasses the others. Flippity.net has created their own random name generator. In four easy steps, you can have a great random generator at your finger tips. I will not replicate the process of how to use the tool as they are provided in clear step by step instructions on the Flippity website. Click HERE to follow the instructions.

I absolutely love this tool. With a click of a mouse or a tap on a track pad, you can immediately change a grouping or ordering of your students. This is a great tool for on the fly decisions as well as planned out activities. Below is a demonstration of my own roster of students and how quickly I can have Flippity change my preferences of groups or ordering my students.

Basically, you make a copy of a Google Sheet template that is provided on the Flippity website. You add the names of your students in class, then you publish the sheet to the web to get the link to your random generator. Then the magic happens and you have a useful tool at your finger tips. You will never have to recreate the process explained above as you just keep using the same Google Sheet for your class all year. (You can change the roster in the Google Sheet if need be – as we all know that your initial roster of students changes over the course of the year)

You will want a different Google Sheet for each of your classes. I would even recommend that you create a folder in your Drive, called Name Generator (or something similar), to place all of the Google Sheets that are connected to the Flippity random name picker. You can also bookmark the link to the random name generator for each of your classes as suggested on the website.

Flippity has some great resources. I have written a previous post on using their template to create a Jeopardy Game using Google Sheets. Click HERE to view that post.

If you have any questions on how to use this tool, you know where to find me. Guaranteed you will fall in love with this tool the moment you first use it.