Another Easy Way to Create End-of-Year Slideshow Videos
Yesterday I shared three quick and easy ways to create end-of-year slideshow videos. Shortly after I hit publish on that blog post I realized that there was another great option that I’ve been overlooking for a few years. That option is built right into Google Photos. In Google Photos there is a section called “utilities.” […]
Three Tools for Quickly & Easily Creating End-of-Year Slideshow Videos
In my weekly newsletter I mentioned that a sure sign that the end of the school year is near always lands in my inbox as an uptick in the number of questions I get about saving and moving files. Another sign that the end of the school year is near is an increase in questions […]
More Adobe Spark Alternatives
The Best Adobe Spark Alternative was one of last week’s most popular posts here on Free Technology for Teachers. The alternative that I recommended in that post was Adobe Creative Cloud Express which is the new name for Adobe Spark. If you’re looking for other alternatives to Adobe Spark for creating audio slideshow videos, here […]
The Best Adobe Spark Alternative
In the last two weeks I’ve had a handful of people email me to ask for alternatives to Adobe Spark for creating videos. I’m taking that as a sign that Adobe didn’t go a great job communicating that they simply rebranded Adobe Spark as Adobe Creative Cloud Express. It has all of the same tools […]
How to Use Flipgrid With Students Who Don’t Have Email Addresses
Last week I shared a tutorial on how to get started using Flipgrid. That tutorial included the perspective of a teacher and a student. The student perspective that I showed featured a student who has an active email address. It’s important to note that you can use Flipgrid with students who don’t have active email […]
How to Use Loom to Make a Whiteboard Video
This week I published a couple of videos about making whiteboard-style instructional videos with Screencastify (you can see those videos on my YouTube channel). Of course, Screencastify isn’t the only browser-based screencasting tool available to teachers. Loom is also an excellent and popular choice for making screencast videos right from your web browser. In the following […]
Make a Whiteboard Video With Google Slides and Screencastify
Earlier this week I published a video demonstration of how to create a whiteboard-style instructional video with Google’s Jamboard and Screencastify. At the end of that video I mentioned that you can do a similar thing with Google Slides and Screencastify. That’s exactly what I demonstrate in the following new video. One of the “tricks” […]
How to Create an Audio Slideshow Video in Canva
Canva is a graphic design tool that I’ve used for years to create blog post and social media graphics. In the last year I’ve started to use it more and more for developing presentations and creating short videos. Canva offers a library of music that you can easily incorporate into your presentations. Those presentations can […]
Screencastify Submit Looks Promising – Easy Way for Students to Make Videos
Thanks to John Padula this morning I learned about a new Screencastify feature called Screencastify Submit. This feature is currently in beta and you have to apply to get access to it, but it does look promising. I’ve applied and I hope to get access to it soon. Screencastify Submit will let you create an […]
Now You Can Use Flipgrid to Make Screencast Videos
On Wednesday afternoon Flipgrid announced the launch of a new recording feature for teachers and students. You can now create screencast videos within Flipgrid. The feature is kind of hidden so I made a screencast video to show you where Flipgrid’s screen recording tool is found and how it works. As I demonstrate in the […]
Quickly Turn Articles Into Videos With InVideo
This morning I was browsing Product Hunt when I saw a new product that was promoting itself as a way to create “insanely good social videos.” The service is called InVideo. While it is fairly easy to use to make audio slideshow-style videos, that’s not why I’m mentioning it today. The reason I’m mentioning it […]
How to Create a Video With Canva
In last week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned that Canva has planned lots of new features. One of those new features is the option to turn your graphic designs into videos. For example, you can take a set of slides design in Canva and turn them into a video with just […]
One of My Favorite Tools for Quickly Creating Audio Slideshows
Whether it’s for an open house night, an awards night, or another school event I’m often asked for a recommendation on a quick and easy way to create an audio slideshow. When the requirement doesn’t call for spoken words, my usual recommendation is to try Sharalike. Making an audio slideshow video on Sharalike is an […]
Adobe Spark Now Has a Collaboration Option
Adobe Spark has been one of my favorite video creation tools since its launch in 2016. It can also be used to make simple web pages and graphics. Adobe Spark is a versatile tool that I’ve used to help students make video book trailers, to create video biographies, and to showcase the highlights of their […]
Making Animoto Videos With Purpose
It was almost eleven years ago that I discovered Animoto during my lunch break between two ninth-grade world geography classes. That day I tried Animoto while eating lunch and decided to have my next class make some short videos with it. In less than 30 minutes all of my students had made videos based on […]
How to Find More Free Images to Use in Adobe Spark Videos
Adobe Spark is one of my favorite free tools for creating videos. It works well on Chromebooks and any other laptop that is using a modern web browser. One the excellent features of Adobe Spark Video is the integrated image search tool. When students use images found through the integrated search, the image is automatically […]
Best of 2018 – Adobe Launches Spark for Education
This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from April. Earlier this year at the BETT Show Adobe announced that they would launching a new version […]
How to Use Adobe Spark to Create Videos
Since the first day that it launched two and a half years ago, I knew that Adobe Spark would be a great tool for students to use to create videos. Like any good product it has evolved over the last couple of years by adding more features without eliminating the core features. Some of the […]
Create a Screencast Within Padlet
Back in June I published a video that demonstrated ten types of notes that you can add to Padlet walls. Thanks to Dan Methven I recently learned that there is another new way to add notes to Padlet walls. The new type of note is a screencast video. If you install Padlet’s Chrome extension you […]
Headliner – A Slick Online Video Editor
Headliner is an online video editing tool that could challenge Adobe Spark and WeVideo for the top of my recommended video tools list. I just learned about Headliner from their PR person this afternoon. 99% of the PR emails that I’m sent are useless (seriously, I got one today about lawn fertilizer), but the one […]
Animaker Edify – Easily Create Animated Videos In an Online Classroom
Disclosure: This is sponsored content. Animaker Edify is an excellent service for teachers and students who want to create animated videos. In reviewing Animaker Edify it hit on all of the things that I look for in a video creation tool for classrooms. It provides for teacher management of students’ accounts, offers a huge gallery […]
Adobe Launches Spark for Education
Earlier this year at the BETT Show Adobe announced that they would launching a new version of Adobe Spark designed specifically for school use. That new version is finally here. Earlier today Adobe launched Spark for Education. Spark for Education is a free service that Adobe has launched to address the concerns that schools have […]
Sharalike – Quickly Create Audio Slideshows
Sharalike is a free iOS, Android, and web app that makes it easy to create audio slideshow videos. To create an audio slideshow video with Sharalike simply open the app, select pictures to import, drag and drop them into any sequence you like, and then choose some music to accompany your images. Sharalike handles all […]
7 Ways to Create Screencasts on Chromebooks – Updated for 2018
This week’s news about Screencast-o-matic has prompted me to update my list of tools for creating screencast videos on Chromebooks. All of these tools can be used by you or your students to create demonstrations of how a tool works, to create a simple video lesson in which you talk over a slideshow, or to […]
My Favorite Screencasting Tool Now Works on Chromebooks
Screencast-o-Matic has been my favorite screencasting tool for years. I use it on my Windows and Mac computers to create almost all of the videos that you see on my YouTube channel. The one knock against Screencast-o-Matic has always been that it wouldn’t work on Chromebooks. That has changed. Last fall Screencast-o-Matic launched a beta […]
Important News About Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a great tool for making videos, storytelling websites, and simple graphics. It has been popular since its launch a few years ago. Also since its launch there have been many questions about whether or not it can be used with students under the age of 13. For while Adobe’s guide for educators […]
MySimpleShow Offers a New Service for Classrooms
MySimpleShow is a great tool for creating explanatory videos. The service features artwork to drag and drop in individual story frames, background music, and automated narration in a variety of voices. But the best part of MySimpleShow is the storyboard editor. Students have to write the script for their videos before they can begin to […]
18 Tools for Making Videos on Chromebooks
In the first years of Chromebooks the options for making videos were rather limited. Today, while there still aren’t as many options as there are for Mac and Windows users, there are many more options available. In the document that is embedded below I have featured eighteen good options for making screencasts, animated movies, stop-motion […]
Toontastic 3D – A 2017 Favorite
For the last five days I have featured the most popular posts of 2017. On this last day of the year, I’m going to highlight my favorite posts of the year regardless of their popularity. This post features my initial review of Toontastic 3D followed by a tutorial video. On Thursday Google released a new […]
MySimpleShow – Create Explanatory Videos
MySimpleShow is a great tool for creating animated explanatory videos. One of the things that I like about MySimpleShow is that students have to create a script in order to produce a video through MySimpleShow. In fact, that is really only way that students can make a video through the service because it is through […]
7 Ways to Use Online Video In Your Classroom
Four years ago I was in love with a great video creation tool called Wideo. I made a bunch of videos on Wideo’s website and featured it in many blog posts and workshops. Unfortunately, Wideo is no longer free, but a good promotional video for Wideo still remains. The video highlights seven ideas for using video in […]
Stupeflix is Closing – Try These Alternatives
Stupeflix, one of my go-to video creation tools for the last eight years, is shutting down in 2018. In a message posted on their website, the Stupeflix team explains that the service is now closed to new users. Current Stupeflix users who have created accounts on the site will have until August 2018 to use […]
How to Create a Video on Typito
Typito is a new-to-me video creation tool about which I wrote a short review last weekend. Typito sits comfortably between the simplicity of tools like Animoto and the complexity of tools like WeVideo. I received a few questions about Typito during the week so I made the following video to demonstrate how it works.
Typito – Simple, But Not Too Simple, Video Editing
Typito is a good tool for creating simple videos. Typito is designed for making audio slideshows like those you might have made in the old YouTube photo slideshow tool or with Animoto. Typito offers a bit more control over the editing process than Animoto does. To get started on Typito you upload a picture or […]
Student Use of Adobe Spark – Your Questions Answered
My post about alternatives to YouTube’s video editor has sparked a lot of questions from readers in the last 24 hours. No question has been asked more than, “can my students who are under 13 use it?” Adobe addressed this question in their free Adobe Spark Edu Guide. You can get the guide here. Here’s […]
The Five Most Popular Ed Tech Tutorial Videos of 2017 So Far
Every week I publish a couple of tutorial videos on my YouTube channel. As we’re now more than half way through the year, I thought it would be good to take a look back the the most viewed ed tech tutorial videos that I have produced this year. 1. A Tour of the New Google […]
Simpleshow Foundation Seeks Volunteers to Help Educate Through Video
The Simpleshow Foundation is a non-profit organization founder by mysimpleshow’s founders for the purpose of helping to educate the world through video. The Simpleshow Foundation recently partnered with the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) to develop videos to explain the 17 sustainable development goals of UN Agenda 2030. The Simpleshow Foundation is seeking volunteer […]
Screencastify and Nimbus Screenshot Compared
I recently received an email from a reader seeking a comparison of Screencastify and Nimbus Screenshot. Back in March I published a comparison of both tools along with Capture Cast. Here’s a short recap of that comparison. My preference is for Nimbus Screenshot because its free plan offers more of what I need than Screencastify’s […]
8 Ways to Create Videos on Chromebooks
A couple of days ago Tony Vincent Tweeted my list of tools for creating videos on Chromebooks. That list was last updated in November. Tony’s Tweet prompted me to update the list again. The notable differences between this list and the last one is that I’ve removed Wideo because that service no longer offers any […]
Adobe Spark Now Lets You Insert Videos into Your Videos
Adobe Spark is one of my favorite new tools to 2016. In fact, I like it so much that I now feature it in my workshops and webinars about creating videos in the classroom. Today, Adobe Spark got even better by adding the ability for users to insert video clips into their video projects. Prior […]
Video Creation Tools & Ideas – Slides from #TETC16
This afternoon at the TETC conference I gave a short presentation on classroom video projects. As always, I promised to share the slides with folks who wanted them. Those slides are embedded below. The concepts and tools that I talked about in today’s presentation are the same as those that I shared in my webinar, […]
Create Animated Videos & More With Animatron
Animatron is a nice tool for creating animated videos and images. I learned about it from Larry Ferlazzo a couple of weeks ago and I finally got some time to try it this morning. The concept behind Animatron is similar to that of Wideo and Powtoon. You drag and drop characters on a background scene […]
How to Create Audio Slideshow Videos on Stupeflix (No sign-in required)
In my post yesterday evening I mentioned that at the PSLA conference in Pennsylvania I demonstrated how to create an audio slideshow video with Stupeflix. For folks who came to my presentation and anyone else who is curious about the tool, I offer the following tutorial video. Applications for Education Some of the highlights of […]