Sharing MMSD YouTube Videos

I'm announcing a new feature in YouTube at MMSD:  Video Sharing.  Now I can keep videos visible only to whom I specify and not to the whole world. 

Before, YouTube's privacy settings allowed you to make the video public, share via a link or make the video visible only to you (private).  The limitation here was that if you wanted to share the video with anyone, you had to email a link to them and trust that they didn't share the link with anyone else. This made it difficult to post videos of teachers or students online in a protected environment; anyone could get the link that way, whether or not they worked at MMSD.

Now, YouTube is allowing users to share with one or two people, entire groups, or just within the MMSD.  Now, we can use videos for professional development meetings, model classrooms, group PD, study groups, or individual viewer feedback --  All of the viewers HAVE to be logged into their MMSD Google accounts to see the videos.

Here's how:

When you upload a video, you can choose the privacy settings on the upload page.  If you keep it PRIVATE, you can still share the video with specific groups or individuals.

Just add their email addresses to the field below the privacy setting.   They will receive an email that looks like this:

 

The same thing will happen if you share with a group, but you may want to follow up with an email afterward.

If you choose to share with all of MMSD, they will not receive a notification, so you'd have to send the link or post it into a newsletter or onto a site.  However, in order to see the video, they will have to be logged into their MMSD accounts.

Happy posting!

Things to Know About Your New Laptop

Teachers at MMSD who are working over 0.5 FTE have been given a laptop under the MMSD Instructional Technology Plan .  This means that you now have an option to explore more fully the things you can do with this device.  Here are 4 tricks and shortcuts to help you get started with your new device.  (Have any to add?  Feel free to add them in the comments section!

4.  I CAN'T READ MY BROWSER BECAUSE IT'S SO SMALL!
     <CTRL> + will make your browser bigger.  (Likewise, <CTRL>- will make it smaller.) 

3.  I WISH I COULD SEE MORE THAN ONE PAGE ON MY BROWSER
"Tabbed Browsing" is a great way to have multiple pages open at once.  At the top of your browser, under your address bar, look for a PLUS SIGN.  This usually opens a new tab for you.  Be careful!  If you have too many tabs open, your browser will slow down.

2.  OOPS! I ACCIDENTALLY CLOSED A TAB I NEEDED AND I DIDN'T SAVE IT TO MY BOOKMARKS!
<CTRL><SHIFT> T will get that page back for you.  (phew!)

1.  I HAVE WAY TOO MANY ACCOUNTS TO REMEMBER USER NAMES AND PASSWORDS!  HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO USE ALL OF THESE WEBSITES?
Keep a Google Doc with all of your account information.  Include the name of the website, the link to the website, your username, the email address you use, and (of course) the password.  I

Collaboration is Essential

In North Pole, Alaska, a 5th grade classroom has 15 iPads for 29 students.   The iPads are in the hands of the students most of their instructional time and they use them in many different ways.  The activities range from skills review and word processing to projects.

I found this video on YouTube and chopped a piece that demonstrated one of the more transformational ways to use iPads:  Collaboration.  This is an absolutely necessary component behind the success of using iPads (or any technology for that matter) for instruction.  Here is the portion I wanted to pass along, students answering how they feel about having to share an iPad and what classroom routine the teacher uses in this shared environment.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT SHARING AN iPAD? 

Logging Into Educreations With Your Google Account

MMSD teachers and students have been using Educreations as an iPad app for about a year and a half.  It has proven to be a powerful tool, despite its simplicity.   Because it is a web-based tool, Educreations can be used on a PC with a browser such as Firefox or Chrome.   We like this "cross-platform" application as it isn't device-specific.  Students can use it to record their processes as they work through problems on the whiteboard, annotate images and documents, and then share the recordings with teachers and parents.

One of the drawbacks to using web-based tools is that the tool requires the student to create an account in order to store and share their content.   Lately, though, a lot of web-based tools are integrating with Google Apps for Education in order to use the tools with the students district Google account.  This is of great value to teachers wishing to avoid creating yet another student account.

Why is this important?
Being able to log in will allow students to keep their recordings online, and then the recordings can be accessed from any computer or mobile device.  Using the generic "not-logged-in" version of the application limits the recording to stay on the iPad, but it can't be saved elsewhere unless the creator has an account.  Logging in with the student's Gmail account is a way to bypass this and save students' recordings off of the iPad.

On The PC
If you are not using Educreations on an iPad, you can still go to the site to create new recordings or see the recordings you made elsewhere.  Go to http://www.educreations.com and choose to log in with Google.  The process will be the same as the iPad (see below).

On the iPad
If the account is not logged in, a student can log in by creating a recording and pressing "SAVE".  Following the prompts through the save process will be a log in screen with an option to log in with Google.

Tapping on this button will give you a Google log in screen, like this:

However, the way MMSD students and staff log in is different. We can force the log in screen to go to the MMSD domain by typing in the district email address and pressing SIGN IN, without the password. The next screen will look like this:

Once you're logged in, you can now save your Educreations in this account and access it anywhere, iPad or PC, as long as you continue to log in with this account.

Google Translate

Our Sherman LMS, Lydia Bertram, frequently sends out "Tech Tips" which outline some new updates or features you might be interested in using someday. This one in particular is pretty neat: It's how to translate entire websites into another language using Google Translate. Even better, the links you click in the translated page are automatically translated as well. Also: There's an app for this on Android and Apple devices. I used it to communicate with a woman who spoke only Portuguese and it worked pretty well.

Click here: Google Translate Tips at MMSD

My own words of warning about online translation services: The translations are not exact. Colloquialisms, idioms, and sentences that require some context are translated literally. For example, the Chinese version of a saying that means essentially, "Study every day and you'll be successful" translates from Chinese to English literally to "Good good study day day up."  So, this is not a good tool for writing letters to parents who do not speak English.  This is merely a tool to help students understand the general meaning of the text. 

A fun example I've always used with students when driving home the difference between translation and interpretation is this: Write a simple phrase in English. Plug it into Google Translate and choose Spanish. Then translate that phrase into French. Then to Portuguese. Then Italian. Now, translate it back to English and see how close it is to your original phrase. It gets farther off when you use Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

This doesn't mean you should avoid using it all together. When you just need the gist of what is being presented, Google Translate is a pretty good tool. Thanks, Lydia!

P.S. "When you need the gist..." might be translated strangely in this application. :)

MMSD Technology Plan Passes!

Looking forward to seeing the plan get put into place. Many thanks to those that were key in putting this together including staff, students, and community members. 

You can watch the board meeting here...

For more information about the plan check it out here...https://techsvcweb.madison.k12.wi.us/techplan