Tag Archives: videos

More ways to Prezi-fy your presentations!

Have you used Prezi lately? If you don’t know what Prezi is, it is a free web-based tool that allows users to create presentations in an entirely new way! No longer does a presentation only consist of swapping between slides, but with Prezi, users can add text, images, videos, and more and then use a zooming and panning feature to create stimulating presentations that are completely out of the box! But there’s more…

Now, Prezi has added even more awesome features! These two new features both enhance the visual effects of your Prezi. Now, choose between backgrounds that are not only the basic ones they have offered in the past, but they are 3D! Upload an image you would like to add to your Prezi to be the background, then the 3D wizard will make your image 3D automatically! Even better, you can choose to add up to THREE images and make them 3D…Prezi will then fade in and out of each image throughout your presentation! This touches on the second new feature of Prezi-the ability to fade in and out of content within frames.

To read more about these new features, click here! And, as always, feel free to contact us to learn more about Prezi and how you can use it in your classroom!

Tools to use to engage your students!

This week, we are doing exactly what we love to do on this blog-sharing some new great interactive resources we’ve found on the web! These free tools are great to use in your classrooms when school starts this fall, and great to share with students as resources that can be utilized outside of the classroom (think Flipped Classroom like we blogged about a few weeks ago!).

NBC Learn

Like Snag Films or TED, NBC Learn is a great resource offering several educational videos to play in class or share with your students. From series focusing on the changing climate of our world to the science of football, there are several series of high quality of videos and lesson plans available for you to share with your class.

Discovery Education

This is an all-around great resource for everyone in education. Administrators, teachers, students and parents all have tools and resources targeted towards them. View lesson plans and check out already created curriculums, puzzles, and resources organized by grade level.

C-SPAN

If you incorporate politics into your educational curriculum, this is the tool for you! C-SPAN Video Library is a place for anyone to access a huge archive of videos from various events. Browse through various categories including healthcare, debates, global climate change, and more. This is a great way to bring in the outside world into your classroom and talk about real issues with your students!

 

Watch and Learn with Watchknowlearn.org!

There are so many great free web-based resources to use in the higher education classroom, but sometimes it can be a little overwhelming to decide where to begin. If you know what subject you are looking for, (for example, foreign language or philosophy) then we’ve found a great tool to find some of the best video resources available for free!

With WatchLearnKnow.org, you can simply log on, search by subject and then browse for all the great resources offered! High quality, educational videos will then appear for you to browse through and select to share with your students in the classroom or for them to view at home!

Lectures from the world’s top scholars delivered directly to you!

Ever wonder what happens in a business class at Harvard or how physics is demonstrated at MIT? If you are someone with a craving for knowledge-or just curious of how lectures are at some of the world’s top academic institutions, check out Academic Earth.

Search by subject, university, or even by specific professors and then simply select your lecture, sit back, and learn! A great feature of Academic Earth is the playlists, which are essentially series of lectures presented on specific topics. Learn about all aspects of the financial crisis or even dive into the human psyche and learn how to live “a good life”. This site gives all individuals the opportunity to hear about topics that interest them the most from the individuals who know them the best.

Share this great resource with your students, and they may find it very helpful in the future! Whether they are just interested in learning about certain topics or need clarification on a specific subject area, Academic Earth brings the knowledge from some of the world’s top scholars directly to their computer screen.

The Answer to All Questions…

It’s that time of year; finals. Students sending their teachers emails at all hours of the night seeking last minute help on a particular problem they can’t seem to find in their notes or textbooks. Looking for a reliable educational tool that students can use instead of resorting to these last minute pleas for help? Check out www.khanacademy.org, a website with hundreds of videos educating viewers on a variety of subjects.

From statistics to organic chemistry, these free videos cover just about every subject imaginable. They are great tools for students to use if they are having difficulty with specific concepts or area of a subject. Students can navigate through videos that explain concepts, go through specific examples, or they can work through exercises on their own. Each subject area is organized in a way that allows students to find the specific concept they need help with.

Start off the next semester on the right foot and introduce Khan Academy to your students. It’s a great supplemental tool to be used throughout the entire semester, and can potentially reduce the “panic” emails you may receive the night before exam day.

Spice up your next lecture

What I’m blogging about today isn’t a new tool that is going to revolutionize the way you present your lectures. It is, however, a tool that can be used to spark the interest of students, promote brainstorming and discussion, and spread ideas.

For an engaging way to present material in your class and gain the attention of students without having to ask for it, visit http://www.ted.com, a website full of motivational, educational, and interesting videos of speeches from all over the world. TED’s mission is to spread ideas to change attitudes, lives, and successively, the world. What better place to begin spreading these ideas than in your classroom?

From topics focusing on poverty to collaborating in business to “what makes us happy”, you will be guaranteed to find a speech that can somehow be integrated with your class material. You can even search by speaker if you already have a particular person in mind. Think of TED as a “YouTube” containing only motivational and unique speeches about topics worth listening to. So spread some new ideas, get your students thinking, and then maybe they will change the world.