Mrs. Bonicelli's Edublog

Hagen Jr. High

Online Convertor of ANYTHING!

May21

This conversion tool is awesome—it is free, no need for registration and it will just about convert anything—text files, audio files, video files.  Want to convert a video to a new format or download a video from the web? Do you need to convert an audio file to MP3 or WAV? No problem, Online-Convert has you covered. Need to convert a document to HTML from PDF? Online-ConVert does that too. Those are just a few of the many conversions that you can accomplish with Online-Convert. And you can do all of this without ever entering your email address, Facebook credentials, or any other form of registration.

One of the features of Online-ConVert that I really liked is found in the video conversion tool. Not only can you change the format of the video, but Online-Convert also allows you to specify the display dimensions of the video you’re converting.

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47 Alternatives to YouTube

September2

Updated list of possible sites for videos offerings other than YouTube…..from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

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CleVR–Create Your Own Panoramic Images

August17

CleVR is an application (free signup and download of Stitcher software) allows you to take a set of images and stitch them together to create a panoramic image. All you have to do is Shoot–Stitch–Shar.   The panoramic image you create can be rotated side to side, up and down, and zoomed in and out.  You will drag and drop images onto your CleVR clipboard or upload to your clipboard.  You select the sequence of the images and CleVR stitches them together to make your panorama.  You finished product can be posted on the CleVR website or embedded into your own website or blog.

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Snag Learning Films

July26

SnagLearning:  This site has free downloadable films on numerous topics, can be searched by topics:  arts & music, children’s learning, math & science,  history, foreign language, political science & civics, foreign culture & geography.  Grade levels are available and are free to use in the classroom.  Films are streamed from such channels as National Geographic, NOVA, or Discovery Channel.

Other videos sites are reviewed in this short video, “Top 10 Educational Video Sites for Teachers and Learning”.

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Automatoon–Create Animations for the Web

July8

automatoon
Automatoon is a free service for creating simple to complex animations that you can reuse anywhere on the web.  There are three basic steps to using Automatoon.  First, you draw and color your images.  Second, you break apart each element of your drawing and third, you specify the animation action for each part of your drawing.  There are three basic animation actions that you can specify:  bend, move and change.  Automatoon uses HTML5  so you what you create can be view on devices like the iPad 2 that doesn’t support Flash. 

Here is a video tutorial on creating animations using Automatoon.

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Digital Storytelling

June10

Great group of audio video and animation website for students to use for storytelling and more from Ozge Karaoglu, blogger for Tech & Learning online publication that I receive.

Audio Tools:

LittleBirdTales is a tool that lets you capture your voice; create an online book using artwork, pictures and words. You can scan your pictures, upload them from your computer or you can draw your pictures on LittleBirdTales’ art pad. When you finish uploading your pictures, you write your text and record your voice for each one. When you finish, you can share it with others via email or get an embed code to place it on your blog/website. This tool is ad-free, user friendly and a great tool to create digital stories with young learners. It will certainly foster the creativity of our students. LittleBirdTales is a tool that lets you capture your voice; create an online book using artwork, pictures and words. You can scan your pictures, upload them from your computer or you can draw your pictures on LittleBirdTales’ art pad. When you finish uploading your pictures, you write your text and record your voice for each one. When you finish, you can share it with others via email or get an embed code to place it on your blog/website. This tool is ad-free, user friendly and a great tool to create digital stories with young learners. It will certainly foster the creativity of our students.Children can illustrate their favorite stories and share them with others.

Vocaroo is a tool that lets you record your voice immediately and get a link for it. You don’t need to download any software or get an account for this tool. It’s the easiest tool for recording voice. Children can tell/retell a story by recording their voices and sharing it with others.

Voxopop is a web-based audio tool. You can consider this tool as a message board that uses voice instead of text. You create a talk group and share it with others and let them record their voices on the same timeline. Children can create a chain story by recording their voices on the same timeline.

Voicethread is a site to create collaborative and multimedia slides that you can navigate and leave comments for. Each slide can hold images, videos or documents such as PDF, Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents that can be commented by the people you choose to share your Voicethread. Children can create a collaborative story by adding their own pictures or drawings and recording their voices.

Voki is a tool to create speaking avatars with your own voice. You choose your avatar; you customize it by changing the hair, clothing, bling and the colour of the hair, eyes and skin. When you finish, you give your avatar a voice by recording your voice by phone or using a microphone. You can also upload an audio file or you can use text-to-speech feature to convert your text into speech choosing the gender and the accent. When you finish, you can get a link or the embed code to publish it on your blog or your website. Children can tell their stories by recording their voices or they can retell a traditional story with a different ending.

BubbleJoy is a tool to create and customize video greeting sites. You don’t need to download anything or get an account. All you need is a camera. You choose your message card and record yourself using your web cam and send it others via mail.Children can record themselves while telling/retelling a story that goes with the frame that they are using.

Fotobabble is a tool to record your voice for pictures. You upload your picture, record your voice using your microphone and publish it online. You can get a link or an embed code to place it on your blog/website. Children can record their voices telling a short story or a poem about a picture or they can listen a fotobabble story and talk/write about their favourite part.

Jing is a tool to take a picture or make a video of what you see on your computer screen and share it online instantly via mail, web or by saving it on your desktop. Children can record their voices for the presentations that they have prepared or they can get a picture, talk about it and create a story for this picture.

Picture Tools
Bookr is a tool to create and share your photo book using Flickr pictures. You can write tags to find the pictures from Flickr photos or you can search your name on Flickr to find your own photos. When you find them, you drag and drop the picture on the book, write your text for that picture and share it with others via mail or you can place your online book on your blog or website. Teachers can create a Bookr and ask the children to add text on it. Children can answer questions, complete the sentences or answer true/false questions according to the Bookr they have seen.

Zooburst is a tool to create 3D popup book. When you start building your book, you can choose any angle and rotate the book. You can make the items click-able and let the readers read more about them. You can place speech bubbles on the characters that pop up when it is clicked and make them talk with each other. Children can retell a story, book reports or biographies.

Animoto is a tool to create videos from your images and videos. It produces a video from your pictures, video clips and music automatically using transitions and text. When you finish, Animoto does the rest by putting all the information together and creates your video in minutes. Children take their own pictures and create their own story or they can watch an Animoto video and write a story about it.

Mixbook is a collaborative tool to create customizable photo books, cards and calendars online.You choose your theme and start adding your pictures. You can move and change the pictures move, rotate, crop, zoom into your photos. There are different fonts and styles to add your text to it. You can also choose your templates, backgrounds, stickers and you can add pages to your Mixbook. Children can create a newsletter or a newspaper or they can publish their drawings and create a story using them.

ScrapBlog is a great way to share photos and videos on a creative outlet and create your own digital stories. You choose from colourful and cute backgrounds, add speech bubbles and frames. You can delete or edit anything you want on your scrapblog. You can add your pictures, text or videos and you can create as many pages as you like. Children can illustrate a story that they have written or they can create a scrapblog for their favourite books.

PhotoPeach is a tool that lets you make slideshows using your pictures, adding captions and music. When you finish your slideshow, you can add a quiz to it. You can also leave comments to the slideshow. Children can create their slideshows telling a story and add a quiz at the end for their friends to answer.

Animation Tools

ZimmerTwins is a tool to make great and fun animated stories. You can start making your animation from scratch or you can create your own, using one of the story starters. You choose the characters, settings, transitions, actions and emotions by using drag-and-drop feature. Then, you only write the text in bubbles. Teachers can create the animation and children write the dialogues. When they finish, they can act it out in the class while they are watching the video or children can write an ending or a beginning of the story after they watch.

DVolver is a tool to create your mini animations by pointing and clicking. You can choose the setting, characters, music at the background and how the chosen characters interact in your animation. You write what you want your characters to say and it shows up in bubbles in your animation. Children can watch a video and write an ending for it or they can summarize a story.

GoAnimate is a tool to create your animations. You choose your theme and characters or you can even create your own animated characters by changing the size and the color of their body parts and clothes. Characters can do different actions such as walking, dancing, and talking. You can use text to speech application to make your characters talk or simply record your own voice using your microphone. Children can redesign a scene from the story or they can create their own animations using the new language that they have learnt.

Xtranormal is a text-to-movie tool that lets you create your movie using your own words and text-to-speech application. You choose your characters, settings, background, voice and music. You then write your text into the appropriate boxes and create your dialogue. You can also play with the camera angles and sounds in the scripts. Children can create their own films on different topics and share them with others or children can create their animated book reports.

DomoAnimate is another tool to create animations. You can animate the characters, change the background, movement, sound effects and emotions; you can add speech bubbles, interactive elements and music to your animation as well. You can resize things, delete, and move or change their places. Children can create their animated books that talk or they can write their own screenplays and turn them into animation.

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FedFlix

May28

FedFlixFedFlix is a good source for teaching lessons on the 20th century political, military, or cultural history of the United States.    FedFlix is hosted by the Internet Archives, and is a collection of over 2000 films produced by the US government during the 20th Century.  The topics of these films range  from training films to history, arts and music, news and public affairs, sports videos, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors, all of these fine flix are available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever.  These films were produced by the United States Government and can be viewed, downloaded, embedded or shared.  Along with the videos, audio and text files are also included.  This “Internet Archive” is being provided by a non-profit organization working in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute to preserve historical collections that exist in digital format.

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How to Download YouTube Videos

April14

Embedding a YouTube video to your blog is fairly easy but with the blocking filters at our school, many times you can’t access that video link to play it. I find it handy to have the video file (usually mp4) downloaded and then added as media to my blog so students can access it without the worry of it being blocked. Depending on what type of equipment you are showing this video on, PC/Mac, if the mpeg4 version doesn’t work for you, you can always convert it to another format.

I find KeepVid.com is very effortless process and I have the video very quickly on my desktop to do with it as I choose.

KeepVid

Add your video web URL,
press download and your choices are available.Picture 2

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Stupeflix Video

March26

A video creative service online that is offered within your YouTube account.  To create a video in Stupeflix users mix together images, text, and sound to make a slide show-style video.  Learn more about Stupeflix in the video below.

There are some limits to the free version of the service.  Stupeflix charges if you want to create a video longer than one minute in length.

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ViewPure–YouTube videos without ads or extra tagalongs

March24

ViewPure: Useful tool for downloading YouTube videos without the extra comments, ads, suggestions, “related videos” or “inappropriate” other things that tag along with your YouTube videos. Use the website ViewPure by copying the URL of your chosen YouTube video and paste it into ViewPure where it will then strip away everything but the video. Some videos can be chosen at that time as well, such as dimension, background color. Or, a bookmarklet can be installed and clicked on anytime you’re viewing a YouTube video.

See my post on SnipSnip.it. back in February about a similar web tool.  SnipSnip.it

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