Gooru is a service that aims to provide teachers and students with an extensive collection of videos, interactive displays, documents, diagrams, and quizzes for learning about topics in math, social studies, and science.

As a Gooru member you have access to hundreds of resources according to subject areas such as chemistry, biology, ecology, algebra, calculus, and more. Within each subject area you can look for resources according to media type such as video, interactive display, slides, text, and lesson plans. When you find resources that you want to use, drag them to the resources folder within your account. Gooru also offers you the option to add resources to your folders even if you did not find them within Gooru.

A Great Source of Math, Science, and Social Studies Materials–are tied in with Common Core State Standards as well.

Introduction to Gooru Video

Free, easy to use audio recording tool.  The audio file is saved on line and you access it, share it, use it with the URL code or convert to QR code that is readable with mobile devices.  The limitations are that the recording time is limited to 30 seconds.  It doesn’t provide embed code for the recording but the link is available.    This recording could be  added to their assignment and post the URL or QR code beside their work.

Creative Commons – What is it and why should you care-

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.

New website I came across for adding voice to a photo.  This can be used on a computer, iPhone, iPad, and Android phone.  The account is FREE and it’s very user friendly.  So, what is Fotobabble?  According to their site, “its the easiest way to add voice to photos. Its free – just upload a photo, record your voice and share!” Audio recordings can be up to 60 seconds.
Fotobabble could be used in your classroom to share information about field trips, projects, reflections about learning, and much more (see list below from their site with ideas)! The final picture with recording can be embedded on your blog, shared with friends, or posted to social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter.  Easy, free, and great classroom tool to try out.

• Home-made greeting cards
• Talking postcards from your travels
• Review products, songs, movies, TV shows, anything!
• Citizen journalism: Reporting from the scene of something newsworthy
• Provide commentary on a photo found on the web
• Promote your brand, products or services (OR SCHOOL!)
• Narrate the story behind a special photo
• Adding a visual element to your poetry, drawing or music

Sumo Paint is a full featured photo editing / painting application, which works right in your favorite web browser! The application can be used in Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating systems. The only requirement is the Flash Player (which usually comes pre-installed in any OS).

This program upscales your basic drawing/painting and imaging editor possibilities and it is online for free for anyone to use.  There are a lot of positives about the Sumo Paint web application.

Some of the features that make this online application  a viable beginner to intermediate-user tools are:

• Open images from your computer or the web
• Save images to a free Sumo account or your computer–this can be in a “png” or “jpeg” format
• Layer support with blending modes and layer effects
• Wide range of tools
• Good selection of adjustment features for improving photos
• Nice range of Filters for producing creative images
• Full screen option for maximum working area

It seems that whenever someone in our staff finds a video, it is probably online and requires using it “off-line”.  During the school day, our network could bog down and causes problems during class time.  Downloading that file, storing it and then using it when you want to seems to be the best solution for that problem but invariably the format needs to be changed for some reason or another.  If you should do all of this on a Macintosh, a free video file converter, Prism, seems to be a good one for multi-format video conversion and fairly easy to use.  It converts AVI, MPG, 3GP, MP4, MOV, FLV and other video file formats.

QWIKI  Might be a quick and easy way to present topics to younger or special needs students…

To use Qwiki:

1. Go to www.Qwiki.com.

   
2. Enter a topic in the search window,
   or
3. Click the provided links to see the day’s news summary or top stories.
4. Watch and listen to the multimedia “information experience.”
5. Use the provided tools at the bottom of the screen to pause, rewind, change volume, show/hide subtitles, and view full screen.
6. For extended information, choose from the list of related topics at the bottom of the page.

Exploring the Content:

1. Click the Contents tab.

   
2. You will see the transcript of the report along with the included photos and videos.
3. Click any photo or video to see the original source of the information.

Providing Feedback:

Want to suggest additional photos or videos, or find mispronunciations in the info? You and your students can use the provided form to let the folks at Qwiki know, and they’ll do their best to facilitate the changes.

1. Click the “Improve this Qwiki” tab.

   
2. Use the provided forms to suggest photos, videos, or provide feedback or corrections for the audio portion of the report.

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