New YouTube features to create and educate

Over the last several months, YouTube has silently added some great features for educators which I hope helps to sway some of the site’s detractors. For those of you who might not know, there are many school districts that block students and teachers from using YouTube in their classrooms.  I find this really disappointing, and [...]

Public domain images for student projects

For regular readers of the 8 Blog, you know that I advocate using creative projects as alternative forms of assessment with students.  Instead of giving an exam or having students write a paper, educators could have their students develop a podcast, build a wiki or create a digital story.  One concern that emerges with these [...]

Find and download images easily from Microsoft Clip Art Online

I’ve been known to agonize over the images I include in presentations or projects. I search around looking for the perfect photo that communicates exactly what I want to say. In the past, I’ve avoided Microsoft’s Online Clip Art site. The site was difficult to use and most of the content was not that usable. [...]

Nine copyright-friendly sites for student multimedia projects

As our students create more digital projects as assessments for our classes, we need to be conscious of copyright restrictions and direct our students to places to find copyright-friendly materials to use with their podcasts, digital stories or Glogsters.  This week, I thought I’d feature nine sites that students can use to find and download [...]

Roleplaying with xtranormal

Roleplaying can be a tremendous instructional activity to use with our students.  By planning out the dialogue for a roleplaying lesson, students visualize possible interactions and write scripts that capture the event.  By acting out a roleplay, students get to experience the interaction firsthand and vicariously learn from the staged performance. There are numerous ways [...]