Mouse Mischief - Free tool lets students participate during class

What Is It?
Mouse Mischief is a free tool from Microsoft that you can add to PowerPoint to allow multiple students to participate in your presentations.  You can add multiple choice, true/false, yes/no, or drawing question into your presentation and the students can use any computer mouse to answer questions. 

How Do I Get It ?
All you have to do is go to http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/ and download the application.  Once it is installed, you will see a new toolbar for Mouse Mischief in the PowerPoint ribbon.  Now, when you open a PowerPoint presentation, you will be able to add interactive items very easily.

Can I See It In Action?
Yes.  There is a link to an eSchoolNews article below that contains a video. 
 
How Did You Find This?
I was getting caught up with Twitter and I saw that a ton of people were tweeting about Mouse Mischief. Then, I found an article from eSchoolNews that explains it a little better.  

Here is a link to the article from eSchoolNews: Free tool lets students participate during class

Free Web Comic Creator - Chogger

I just stumbled upon Chogger.com.  This is a free Web Comic Strip Creator that only takes a few minutes to master.  In the past, we have used stripgenerator.com to create comic "renditions" of Edgar Allan Poe poems/stories in the 11th grade English classes in our district.  The problem we ran into was that Stripgenerator limits the amount of space that can be use for each comic.  So, some students had to make three or four seperate comics to retell one story.  One positive thing about Stripgenerator is that they had tons of pre-made objects that you can use.  While Chogger does not have the pre-fab objects and images, you can upload your own images as well as draw your own objects.  Also, Chogger allows to add more cells as well as more rows of cells.  So, you can make your comic larger if you need to.  I am seriously considering using Chogger in place of Stripgenerator for the Poe activity next school year.  The only thing I would like to see added is the ability to embed the comics after they are finish.  If there was a way to this, I missed it.  Below is a screenshot of a comic I made in less than 5 minutes.  Of course, given more time, I could fix up Bill and take better pictures.  But, those familiar with digital storytelling know that it is about the quality of the story and not always able the appearance. Creating a Chogger account only took about 30 seconds.

Start Youtube Videos Where You Want

Youtubetime.com is a website that allows you to enter the URL for a Youtube video and a specific start time.  The site then provides you with a link that will start the video at a specific point.  This is good for classrooms, where a teacher might want to show only part of a video.  Instead of the teacher loading the video and having to try to find the part they want to show each time, they can do it one time and save the link provided by Youtubetime.com.  Note: you want to use the actual URL not the embed code.

This can be done without Youtubetime by simply adding the following to a Youtube URL.  #t=XmXXs.  So, if I wanted to start 24 seconds into a video, I would add #t=0m24s to the end of the URL.  For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8 would become http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8#t=0m24s

The advantage of using this website is that you don't have to remember this code and it is easy to share this trick with other people.

Google for Teachers - Free 33 Page Guide

Thanks to my Twitter PLN, I just stumbled upon this 33 Page Guide for using Google in the classroom.  This document was provided by Free Technology for Teachers.  This guide covers everything from using the advanced search tools to using Google Docs to create quizzes that can be posted online.  Every teachers can find something they can use in here.  Pass it along.


Google for Teachers -