More Tech!

Further showing there is, literally, no end to the potentially useful technology resources out there, here's three more that I like.


TeacherTube
http://www.teachertube.com/

My school network blocks YouTube by default. While there are some ways around this, they don't always work from every (or any) computer every time. TeacherTube has a lot of the same available content and usually isn't blocked. Plus, it is less likely to bring up any inappropriate suggestions for next or related videos. However, it does have ads and ad overlays that can make it slow or interfere with playing the videos. Always pre-load the videos.


Voki
http://www.voki.com/

If they ever send me the email so I can verify my account and actually log in, I'll probably use this one a fair bit. I like the idea of being able to insert voice. Using the embed code in PowerPoint actually works quite well. Does require an internet connection and it does take a few seconds to load, so make sure you have a good internet connection if you plan to use it. Check out the test character I made:
http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=12460202&height=267&width=200


Jing
http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Seems like every week or two somebody needs a quick tutorial on how to do something. Like, how to get information that's in a pdf into an editable format so some changes can be made, then the new one uploaded as a pdf. Well, there's a way to do it that works with the software at my school and on every computer it's been tried on. Explaining it is a bit of a pain, so I made a tutorial that used a whole lot of screen caps to show where menus and such were. With Jing, I can just make a video, with commentary and directions, directly from my computer. Since all our work laptops are pretty well identical, anyone should be able to follow it without trouble. In theory. I do have some concern for file sizes when it comes to sending out the tutorials, but I'll have to use it to see.