Here’s the latest video from the Commoncraft show by Lee and Sachi LeFever.

tag: k12, edtech, podcasts, podcasting, commoncraft, video, Lee and Sachi LeFever

Flickr now allows Pro users to upload videos, up to 90 seconds in length, smaller than 150MB in size. The video upload process is the same as the photo upload process. Just like images, videos can be set to private or public. A public video can be viewed by anyone, Flickr member or not. After the upload was complete and it was processed, the video was available for viewing within a few minutes.

The embedding options allow me to set the video player size and display video title and author at start. The player is very basic, but does offer full screen. When I preview this post with the embedded video, I’ve noticed the player is not properly positioned in my post, but off to the right, rearranging my entire blog. I tried changing the player size, but this didn’t correct the problem. Maybe when I click the Publish button it will magically move over. I’ve tried using the Flash button to embed the video, instead of just pasting in the provided code. But this hasn’t worked either. It did work when I published the post directly from Flickr, as you can see in the next post. Thus I tried copying the embedding code from that post into this one. Didn’t work. Once I edited the post from Flickr, using my Edublogs dashboard, the video issue appeared in that post as well.

Conclusions: To post a video from Flickr into an Edublogs post, use the “Blog this” feature in Flickr. Do not edit this Flickr published post from within Edublogs.

Please see the next post to view the video.

I apologize to my subscribers for clogging your reader with several editions of this single post.

tag: edtech, Flickr, k12, video

The first webcast news story from our Willard High School Eye of the Tiger News Team is
now onavailable School Tube. Justin D, Eye of the Tiger weekly anchor, produced a segment entitled Environment in the Election. Donna Fishel, Publications Adviser and teacher promises more videos to come.

To view the video, click the image or the title link above. The embedding code from School Tube does not work with Edublogs.

tag: k12 edtech journalism video WHS Eye of the TIger election environment

Willard Staff: This YouTube video will be blocked at school, but you can watch it elsewhere.

Twitter is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. This commoncraft video paints a good picture. I’ve found Twitter to be a great tool for connecting with other edtech people. I don’t use it to share my everyday activities, as much as to exchange resources, and as an immediate support system when I need something.

tag: Twitter commoncraft video edtech k12 social network

When reading the Google Docs Blog I learned of a new useful feature. The Spreadsheet Sharing tab now includes to fill out a form. Basically, a form is generated based on the column headings in your spreadsheet. You are given a url for the form that you can email to participants, or use to create a link to the form on your web page. When a participant completes the form, the data is dumped into your spreadsheet/form. The participants don’t need a Google account, or even an email address.

The form has some good customization features like adding help text, editing questions, and choosing question types: paragraph text, multiple choice, check boxes, or choose from a list. You can also write your own confirmation message that your participants will see upon submitting their data. You have the choice of including the form in an email, which might not work for all email platforms. If it doesn’t, the reader can copy and paste the provided link to access the form through his/her browser. While participants don’t have access to edit the spreadsheet, they can view previously submitted data, if you enable that feature.

Since I already use Google Docs, the idea of consolidating my documents into one web location is appealing. Currently I use Survey Monkey to gather feedback from my workshop participants. The spreadsheet graph button would be more efficient when summarizing the data from these evaluations. I use Jotform to collect workshop registrations. Now with Google docs, I can subscribe to the spreadsheet and be notified in my Pageflake of new registrations. Some teachers are using Jotform for students to submit their passwords for various sites to their teacher for future reference. Since these teachers are already using Google docs, I think they will want to start using this new form feature.

A couple of features that I’d like to see added would be the option of making a question required, and password protecting the form.

Here’s a screencast to lead you through the process of creating, managing, and subscribing to your spreadsheet. Since it is a longer than usual tutorial (8 minutes), you will find a Table of Contents. Don’t let that the length of the tutorial scare you. The process is easy.

tag: k12 edtech tutorial,screencast video Google Docs spreadsheet form survey JotForm Survey Monkey