Slides Carnival - Free Google Slides Templates #gafe #edtech @jmattmiller

I was checking out Matt Miller's great site DitchThatTextbook.com and one of his site recommendations is called Slides Carnival.  This site gives you a whole bunch of free, good-looking Google Slides templates.  You can browse the site and find one you're looking for and then open in it.  It will open in Google Drive as a view-only option but then you can go to File > Make a Copy and then it becomes yours and you can edit it to your heart's content.

The templates are broken down into seven categories (playful, formal, inspirational, creative, simple, startup, elegant) and in total there are about 30 to choose from.  This is a great resource to give students and presenters more choice than what Google has to offer.

You can also follow Matt on Twitter here.

Use CuePrompter.com for Free Online Teleprompter #edtech #moviemaking #ipaded

CuePrompter.com is a great website that allows you to use your browser as a teleprompter.  Simply type or cut/paste your script into the box and adjust the settings, like text size, color, and screen size, and press 'Start Prompter'.  A new tab will open and your script will appear and you can use your spacebar to start/stop the scroll and up/down arrows to control the speed.

This is a great tool for students making newscasts or movies who want a simple teleprompter or do not want to buy an app that does the same thing.  Works on mobile devices too!

Dirpy - Easily Download Video and Audio #edtech

I'm always looking for ways to get content from one place to another.  Sometimes the site you want is blocked where you're at or you want to make sure that even if you don't have Internet access that you can show a video or play some audio.  I've used sites like KeepVideo.com before and the occasional bookmark or add-on to Chrome, but one I read about today, Dirpy.com, does a great job too.

In a nutshell, you paste the URL from a video that you want to download and then you have some options.  You can just download the audio as an mp3 in various levels of quality or you can do the same with video.  Then press the Record button and you're done.  I tried a YouTube, Vimeo, and TeacherTube video and they were all recognized by the system.  In fact, Dirpy.com did a good job of grabbing some videos that weren't available using other tools.

Best of all Dirpy.com is free and has no advertisements!  There is also a bookmarklet you can drag into your browser's bookmarks bar and when you come across a YouTube video you want simply press the bookmarklet and it takes you to Dirpy.com and has the video ready to download.  Great tool!

Easy Room Scheduler Google Add-On @rmbyrne #gafe #edtech

Here's a great tip I picked up from FreeTech4Teachers.com about using a Google Sheets add-on to make a room scheduler.  If your school has computer labs or equipment to be checked out, this is an easy, free way to have your own scheduler to keep things straight.  Simple enable the add-on, follow the wizard to configure it, and share the resulting sheet with colleagues.

Here is the add-on

CheckItOut Google Forms Extension - Create Simple Check In/Check Out for Devices, Books, Anything #edtech #gafe @edlisten

I read about a great Google Forms add-on today on FreeTech4Teachers.com called CheckItOut.  What it allows you to do is create a form that allows the user to see which materials are available for check out and which materials they might need to check in.  For example, if you have a classroom library you could put all of your books on a form and when a student wanted to check one out they would visit the form, put in their name and choose the title and they're done.  Now another student cannot check that same book out until it's returned.  Plus, you get a handy spreadsheet of who has checked out all of your materials.  This would obviously work for any technology you have that students are able to use like devices, video cameras, or keyboards.

Once you install the add-on you simply click on it under the Add-ons menu to enable it.  In the first section you'll want to put a place for students to put their name.  The next section will be what material it is they're checking out, for example, Chromebook #1, Chromebook #2, etc.  The final section just leave as is.  Now when you visit your form you'll see the proper sections ready for students to use.  As FreeTech4Teachers.com said, this probably won't replace an entire library checkout system, but is a good alternative for small-scale operations, like classrooms or school-wide resource libraries.

10 Uses for Google Maps in the Classroom - Thanks @jutecht #edtech #gafe #googlemaps

Jeff Utecht is an educator and presenter I've had the privilege of seeing a few times over the past year and he is very engaging and forward-thinking.  I suggest you follow him on Twitter and take a look at his Thinking Stick blog on occasion.  One of his latest posts has to do with using Google Maps in the Classroom and there are some great and fun activities for classrooms (not just students or teachers).

RealtimeBoard for Collaborative Whiteboards - Free (Premium) Educational Accounts #edtech #edtech @realtimeboard

Today I played with a great tool called Realtime Board that allows you to open a collaborative white board space and invite others to collaborate in real time.  I played with it for about 15 minutes and found it to be a very intuitive and easy-to-use tool that I believe has a great place in the classroom setting.  Their free account allows you to have 3 unlimited white boards but they have educational pricing that allows educators to apply for an educational account that will give you unlimited white boards.  It took less than 24 hours for them to approve my educational account.

There is no app for iOS or Android, but that's okay because the service has been written in HTML 5 and avoids that pesky, battery-hogging Flash.  Just open a browser on any device and away you go.  The tools are very easy to use and included are a pencil, shape creator, text tool, sticky notes, comments, and object linking.  Within minutes I was able to create a white board, share it with another account, and see changes happening in real time on each screen.

Students will love this tool and it's full featured enough to do many classroom activities.  You also have the ability to download your board as an image, PDF, and save to your Google Drive, so teachers using Google Classroom could have students turn in work they've done in Realtime Board.

One note of caution is that once students open up this tool and start playing around with it they will want to spend some time monkeying around with everything and seeing it show up on each other's screens.  My word of advice is instead of clamping down on that creative collaboration, give them a few minutes to play around, possibly with a fun purpose that is unrelated to your lesson plan.  They once they're figured out the tool and played around a bit turn them loose on the task you have in mind.

Also, their help section is pretty extensive and they do have occasional webinars.