Personalized Urls

We normally start my classes with a five question quiz where my students can use their notes from their flipped video to answer the questions. It serves a few purposes. First I won't count the quiz grade if the notes aren't good enough as I want the kids to have a repository they can use later (which is easy with the search function in Google Drive). Secondly the questions are the main points for the day so it tells the kids what their exercise is going to be about.

But to the point. I very rarely use the LCD in my classroom other than for when I am giving our opening quiz. But the other day the my LCD lightbulb went kaput. So I had to improvise by taking the url from the Google Drive document into a Tinyurl which I also personalized. For example I am doing the fifth and sixth units in my for AP microeconomics called tinyurl.com/apmicro56. So I wrote the url on the board and didn't worry that we didn't have a LCD. It also is nice when kids want to redo a quiz, I just give them the url and we are all set.

In addition there is bitly.com that allows you to keep a repository or your shortenings as well as Google's shortening.

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Homework Reminders

When I want to quickly contact my online students, I use Remind.com . It allows you to send a text without knowing their phone numbers. Additionally you can set a time for it to be sent. You can add a link and/or upload a document. If you choose, you can also text individual students. All of the texts are recorded and kept as long as you keep the class. Above is a video giving you a great overview and here are several videos explaining how to use different parts of it. If you use Blackboard, the video below shows you how to embed Remind texts into a Blackboard page.

How to Make Your Own Flip & Tutorial Videos

Over the years I have made lots of video tutorial for my blog followers and flip videos for my students . Every single one of them have been made using Screencastomatic . You can purchase your own yearly subscription, but I have not only never paid, but also never even set up a free account. You don't need to since you can make the video and then just upload it onto YouTube. Watch the video above and you will be able to see how to record, add you talking (or not) to the recording and to upload it - all in less than two minutes. Go forth and make your own tutorials and teach lots of others. In a later post I'll show you how to organize your YouTube video library.

Tech Conferences

On March 7th and 8th I will be at the South by Southwest Education conference in Austin. Another conference that I have enjoyed is the ISTE one which this year is in Denver from June 26-29 . The key, if you can do so is to find someone else to pay for you. For example I am doing work for TES (more on that coming later) and so they are paying my entry ticket. So why bother? Well first off you will meet lots of tech minded people like yourself and make some connections that you can work with when you return home. Secondly there are lots of companies showing all of their latest wares and then, there are talks and demonstrations - literally hundreds of them. If you can't get the big ones, look for one close to home. Here is a place to start.

My AI Education

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