Massac Tech Ed

     One of the great online video creation tools I have come across is WeVideo ( http://www.wevideo.com/ ). WeVideo strives to make sure video creation is available for everyone. The interface ranges from being suitable for a novice to experienced editors. There are a variety of editing modes including storyboard, timeline, and advanced. There are also many themes to choose from. WeVideo is browser based, but also works on some mobile devices. This is free, but there are paid options available as well. WeVideo is certainly worth checking out if you are interested in any aspect of video creation.

One of the easiest tech tools I have found to use is Screencast-O-Matic ( http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ ). The free application allows you to perform  screen capture (also audio and webcam) recording on Windows or Mac computers with no installation needed. Screencast-O-Matic is centered around being user-friendly. The free account allows you to record up to 15 minutes, publish to YouTube HD, and also publish to various file formats. It is a wonderful component for those of you that want to record lessons for your students to watch at home, on their mobile device, or in school. The paid account ($15/yr) offers quite a bit more features, but the free account is certainly very useful.

One of the interesting features about Google Search is that you can refine results by reading level. Google breaks items up into three areas (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced). If you or your students are searching for information, this may be handy in finding level appropriate content. The following is from Google's help page about reading level: How to modify your search results by reading level Click  Search tools  at the top of the search results page. Click  All Results . Click  Reading level . You'll now see results annotated with reading levels as well as a percentage breakdown of results by reading level. To filter your results by a specific reading level, select your desired level ( Basic , Intermediate , or  Advanced ). At any time, you can click  View results for all reading levels  to go back to seeing all results. Here is a picture illustrating this feature: To learn more about this feature, check out Google's help arti...

During the last week of March, I had the pleasure of attending the Illinois Google Apps for Education Summit. While there will be more information shared via training/etc, I figured this was a good platform to share three different, but very useful Google Chrome extensions. [This applies only to those of you using the Chrome Browser ( https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ )]. Make sure you are signed into Chrome for these extensions to apply themselves to your account. This way they will work on any computer that you sign into with Chrome on it. 1) Big G Black Bar Sorter ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/big-g-black-bar-sorter/oiamgkpplhllmgmjkmpoapkidpgfhmdo ) This extension allows you to reorder the options in the black bar that you see at the top of various Google websites (i.e. http://google.com ). You can even put items on there that have been previously removed (i.e. the Sites link for Google Sites). 2) Eye Dropper ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/det...

As of today, we now have access to Google Plus with our Massac accounts. If you are unfamiliar with Google Plus, it is essentially Google's version of Facebook. In the upper left corner of your e-mail inbox, you will see a +You link. If you click this, it will direct you to the pages that need to be filled out in order to use the feature. Likewise, you can also visit http://plus.google.com and sign in with your Massac account. Google Plus has been around for a little while, but it is completely new for our Google accounts. Think of it as an additional way to network with your peers and professional colleagues. It is a great way to share ideas,  links, pictures, videos, etc. This is entirely optional, but I wanted to let you know that it was available. Also, we are on our fourth school year of Google Apps. We are using these Apps more and more. Almost every staff member uses Google Drive (Docs, Spreadsheets) in some form or fashion. Since we installed our web tracking back in O...

Hello Massac Staff! For the 2012-2013 school year, we are going to experiment a bit more remote support. We have done a little of this in the past through various methods, but have found this to currently be one of the best options available. If you visit http://tech.massac.org , you will see a Remote Support button in the links at the top (see picture below). If you click this button, you will be downloading the join.me client software (Windows version). After you run the quick installation, you will be given a 9 digit code that you can share with us so that we may remotely access your computer. Provided  you can reach us on the phone or through Google Voice Chat on the computer (microphone and speakers required), then we can hopefully talk through the issues while we are accessing your computer.  You will need to have internet access for this to work.  This will not be useful for every problem, but could certainly provide us a way to tackle the smaller issues ...

Some of you may have already noticed that Google Drive is replacing Google Docs. It can be accessed via your web browser, the Google Drive client on your PC, or the Google Drive mobile app. With 5GB of storage, this is a very nice feature within your Google account. It will be rolling out to all users over the next 4-8 weeks. Everything you did with Google Docs is still the same, however, there are many added new features including What’s completely new  - Sync files between all of your devices with Google Drive for your Mac/PC - Download the  Drive mobile app for your iPhone or iPad - View and search Google Drive on the web in a visual way with  grid view - Add a file to a folder by clicking the folder icon within a file or Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation - Work with more file types by installing  Google Drive apps  from the Chrome Web Store What's changed  - Collections are now called folders - More things have be...