Blog Posts

Autodraw: Perfect for classroom creators

8/4/2017

On July 24th, we went into panic mode about the possibility of MS Paint being discontinued. Evidently, so did the whole MS Paint community.

See, we have a special love for MS Paint as most of our images at first were made using it! (See our About Us page). Over time, we have used a growth mindset to continue to improve and we use different tools now in trying new projects. Still, Paint---with all its simplicity---is a great tool and also works well for creating in the classroom.

While it turns out now that MS Paint is here to stay, we had been doing some exploring of alternatives that would work well in a classroom setting for creating back when we thought it might disappear. We LOVE AutoDraw, a Google project.

Other than being able to use A.I. technology to guess what someone is drawing (especially helpful for Pinky as you see the suggestions for the bird in the screenshot below), this program also requires NO downloading and works on all device types.

While we never want to focus just on a technology tool as tools come and go (with good pedagogy remaining), you will find that AutoDraw has the potential to be an awesome classroom tool for all kinds of creating. Vocab comics on a virtual word wall? Frames for a GIF? Yes, AutoDraw is fabulous for student classroom creators.

You can learn more about AutoDraw here: https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw

tips for our youtube viewers

7/1/2017

For the most part, we love YouTube as a platform for our videos. YouTube allows us to host our videos and build a community. We thought we'd share some YouTube tips for our viewers that we've learned along the way.

Before we start, however, we want to mention the role of educational videos on YouTube. Just like most educational strategies or resources, our educational videos are a tool---and like all tools---it is how they are used that determines their effectiveness. We have a video with 3 creative ways to use our videos that you may find useful! And now for some tips...

1. Restricted Mode in YouTube
Are you an educator or parent concerned about inappropriate videos or comments in YouTube? Did you know there is a restricted mode that you can easily turn on so that these will not appear? In fact, an institution's network administrator can turn this on for an entire institution (like a school district). More info here: support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

For young children, there is an app called "YouTube Kids" for Apple and Android which limits what is shown. But hooray--- you can find us on there!

2. Turn off the Pop-Up Annotations
Annotations are the pop-up messages that YouTube creators can put in their videos. Note: Annotations are not the same thing as advertisements. Sometimes annotations are helpful pieces of information or links that the creator has added, but in some videos you watch, they may be distracting in the classroom. In May 2017, YouTube stopped the ability for creators to make new annotations, but all the annotations already present will remain. You can turn off pop up annotations using the sequence in the screenshot below!

3. Captions
Many educational YouTube videos have captions. We do, too, for all of our videos! If you click the CC button at the bottom right of the video, you can see the captions in English. Captions are important to us for accessibility. Find any typos? On our contact us page, we have a form you can fill out for any corrections.

4. Free Music from YouTube to Download and Use in Your Creations
It can be tough to find royalty free music when you or your students are creating that you can place directly into your video creations. Awesome music for video projects is offered by the YouTube Audio library. You can preview them all directly on the website before downloading! www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

5. View a YouTube Video Transcript
Want to see the entire YouTube transcript? By clicking the three dots at the bottom right of the YouTube video (see screenshot below), you can click "open transcript." The entire video transcript will open at the right. Once the transcript appears at the right, you will even have the option to allow it to show with the timestamps (default) or not show timestamps. Typo with our transcript? On our contact us page, we have a form you can fill out for any corrections.

6. Start a YouTube Video from a Specific Time

Click "Share" underneath the YouTube video, and you will have the option to type in the time that you want the video to start. This is really helpful if you are an educator and only want to show your class a quick segment of a video that is midway in the video. After selecting and typing in the time, you will notice the link changes to include that start time. This link can now be bookmarked, and it will play the video from that specific point.

*BONUS TIP Added August 2018: Want more control over the ads that play in YouTube?

Ever wish you had more control over the types of ads that show up on YouTube videos? Your Google ad settings allow you to make some changes to how ads are personalized- or even opt out of ad personalization- and this goes for those ads you see in YouTube as well. https://adssettings.google.com

Amoeba Sisters- Tools we use

6/6/2017

Updated: March 2018
We are often experimenting with new tools to create our videos and illustrations. It's a changing process! Tech is simply a tool in our eyes, and because of that, we focus on our goal of what we are trying to do as our driving force---not the tech itself. It's why we believe that you can do video creation with students in the classroom even when tech is limited. One thing we love to present on!

When we started (in 2013), we only used a cell phone to record audio, Moviemaker (free), and Microsoft Paint. You can see our milestones here from when we first started.

As we grew, we wanted to create more types of things with more detail. We now make infocomics, GIFs, misconception comics, and add more detail to our videos---so we have looked for tech to help us meet those goals.

Here's what we use as of June 2017 with a limited budget:

Drawing Software- Petunia has no artistic background, but she practices a lot. She started with MS Paint. Over time, her style of drawing has changed. She now uses the software Sketchbook Pro for all video illustrations and GIFs. All of the illustrations---for videos and for GIFs---are individual image files. To make a GIF, the images can be looped together in a GIF maker. Sketchbook has this ability. If you are trying to make GIFs with your images, here is a very easy to use GIF maker: www.gifmaker.me. Additionally, here are some other suggestions for free drawing programs on a variety of device types.

Drawing Hardware- It's hard to imagine (or maybe it's not ;P), but Petunia used a simple computer mouse to draw for a long time for a lot of our videos. As her drawings have evolved, she now uses a Cintiq 13 HD drawing tablet by Wacom.

Movie Editing Software- We used to use free Windows Moviemaker to put the audio and pictures together, and it really is an easy to use, great program for the classroom. After wanting some extra features, we switched over to Camtasia, which we really like. If you are looking for some free options for movie editing, check these out.

Audio Software- Pinky still uses the free program Audacity to record. It works for both PC and Apple computers. While you don't technically need any audio software (we didn't in the beginning), it adds a lot of awesome features like cutting things out or removing background noise.

Audio Hardware- Pinky no longer uses a cell phone to record audio or the internal microphone on her laptop. She now uses this Yeti microphone. She also made a "portable sound booth" to put her microphone in which we think has made a difference in our more recent videos. You can find a lot of instructions for making one of these online!

I notice you animate some portions of your videos. What tool do you use to animate?
Our videos are mostly a series of comics timed to audio, but sometimes they contain minor animations. At this time, we do not use a fancy animation program. We create an image, save it, reopen it to make a slight change (such an image rotation or position change), save the new image, and repeat--- and we eventually end with a series of images that can appear animated once they are all put into a movie editing program in order. If trying this out, we would suggest naming your images numerically in sequence as shown below.

P.S. We're very passionate about involving students as video creators in the classroom. Check out our student creation page for step by step instructions on a teacher-student collaborative video creation procedure that maximizes your classroom time.

Amoeba Sisters Biology Discussion Topics with GIFs

3/21/2017

Reviewing? We have a resource that uses our GIFs in a powerful way! We think reviews can be great with visuals and questions- and these Google Slides use our Amoeba Sisters GIFs (animations)! Click the GIF below to access our "Biology Discussion Topics with GIFs!" These can make GREAT warm-ups and exit tickets, and they also can be powerful in facilitating discussion.

Instructions on how to use and present it will be found in the second slide. Click the purple button below to access entire slideshow.

Sorry, this GIF review is not set to allow for editing, but you can get the individual GIFs found in this slideshow to use in a different way. Visit our GIF page. Are you looking for a print-out? Scroll down at bottom of this post for a PDF copy.

Click purple GIF button above to access. Due to GIF animations, this is too large as a PowerPoint. However, in Google Slides, you need only click "present" (at top right) to present it just like a slideshow.

Do you need a PDF of the questions that can be printed? You can download it below. (Note: GIFs are not animated in a PDF. See our GIFs page to access individual GIFs.)

Amoeba Sisters Bio Discussion Topics PDF (not animated)
File Size:	5684 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

Chromebook Science resources

11/13/2016

We're so happy to be on this list (check out this link for other great science suggestions on the Chromebook)!

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About This Page

This page features some of Pinky's favorite instructional technology websites, apps, online resources, response systems, and other tools. Please always read the terms and privacy policy of any technology tool that you plan to use in the classroom.
Disclosure? If we share a tool or website on this page, it's because we like it and find it useful. We are not endorsed by these tools, and we are not affiliates of the tools on this page. If our disclosure changes, we'll update it here.

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