I have had to recently change the software I use to rework images I screen capture or take with a phone or camera. I used Adobe Elements, but the last OS upgrade to my Mac would have required that I purchased a new version. I ended up with PixelmatorPro for $40 instead (on sale today for $20). My requirements are not sophisticated so paying for Elements or Photoshop did not make much sense. Mostly I have to resize image or crop images and occasionally attempt to improve a photo that was under or overexposed, but I seldom work with layers or filters even when such capabilities are available in software such as Pixelmator.
Finding something I could use on my Chromebook required I explore some options I could run within a browser. Based on reviews I read, I ended up using the ad supported version of Photopea. The features seem very similar to Pixelmator and again provides far more capabilities than I need.
This a recommendation for a specific episode of a podcast from “Your undivided attention”. Are the kids alright? explores the connection between adolescent depression and social media use within the broader context of digital activity. The discussants reach a conclusion on the topic and recommend a school-based activity in response that is more an effort to describe an experiment that would provide some answers.
I collect online resources using Diigo. This is one of those online services that keeps adding capabilities that I tend to ignore. I have long been interested in social bookmarking services as a way to both offer the resources I am collecting (public) and explore what others I follow have collected. I don’t think many others do this and perhaps it was a capability that most have abandoned if they ever used it at all. As is often the case, there are unique capabilities that end up being lost to Internet time.
Aside from visiting the public version of a site (mine), it turns out you can share your Diigo tagrolls and linkrolls. Here is my tagroll.
iMotion for schools is an app for the iPhone or iPad that allows the capture of still images at specified time intervals for the purpose of creating a video. I have provided an earlier post explaining the types of classroom purposes to which this tool can be applied.
We have been shutdown today because of a blizzard. I have viewed stop motion videos of snow accumulation before so I thought I would point my iPad out my back door and show the storm over what ended up being about four hours. The video was based on images captured every 10 minutes and these images were then used to generate a 12-second video.
The following two videos provide a tutorial on the use of this app and the video I created today.
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Holiday break time and perhaps you are searching for a tech project. Here is my suggestion. Explore the CloudReady version of Chromium by adding it to an old computer you no longer need (complete instructions from PCWorld if you are working with a Windows machine). I happened on this company (Neverware) because I read that Google had purchased CloudReady. What this means for the future is unclear, but Google’s interests would seem to mesh well with the mission of Neverware. This company was focused on developing a way to repurpose aging machines as Chromebooks with an emphasis on schools. Neverware developed a service for schools expecting $10 per year per machine based on salvaging old machines (Windows and Macs) that may even be donated. One of the use cases originally targeted was having access to machines for online testing. I know this use is not popular with many educators, but it was clearly needed in some schools. Just think of this as a way to create a Chromebook from a machine no one uses anymore.
To be fair, I am using the free CloudReady Home edition rather than the version intended for schools. I am also running CloudReady from a flash drive. I have a high-end Chromebook so I don’t really need another chromebook. I have had an old Dell I have been trying to repurpose for years. I have tried several Linux distributions, but I kept running into the same problem. I could not get the operating systems to access anything online. I could get the OS to run from a flash drive, but required drivers for WiFi must have been missing. The same OS on the same flash drive booted from a Mac always worked.
Anyway, I have finally found something I could get to work. I decided not to complete the install from the flash drive because I have a great Chromebook already and who knows when an old Windows machine (running 10) might be useful for something.
If you want to give this a try on a Windows machine, use the instructions from PCWorld I link above. The flash drive builder works great (unlike some of the multiprocess techniques I had to use with the linux installs) and you don’t have to go beyond running from the flash drive if you simply want to explore a bit. This same article explains the tiers – free and school – for those who might want to consider going beyond creating a chromium machine for your own use.
The “testing effect” is one of the most reliable tactics for improving the benefits of study behavior. This tactic involves the use of some study time to attempt to recall information to respond to questions. This is sometimes called “retrieval practice”. An important part of this explanation is understanding the part that recommends “the use of some study time”. This means that in research allowing equal amounts of time substituted retrieval practice for the time that could have been devoted to traditional study actually is superior to the same amount of time spent in traditional study.
The Agarwal et al. (2008) research I cite here goes a step further and compares self and other generated questions with traditional study. Both self and other generated questions and the use of these questions during study were found superior to study without retrieval practice. To be fair the participants in this research were college students and the self-generation of questions was scaffolded, but the benefits for independent study seems promising.
I have been writing for the past few years about the potential of “layering services” in improving the benefits of studying online text and video. While I have focused on the potential of these services for allowing educators to function as instructional designers most obviously for this proposal by adding questions to web content and online video when this content does not contain questions, these services could also be used by students to generate questions for their own use and for the use of peers.
An issue with studying in general is that the tactics of studying are seldom directly taught. Students kind of learn to take notes, highlight, review, self-question, etc. by trial and error. An important benefit of the layering services I encourage educators to consider is the opportunity to model and evaluate student efforts at applying these skills as part of their actual study efforts. What do they highlight? What notes do they take? What kinds of questions do they create for review?
One useful scaffold is the use of question stems. Here are some examples of more advanced questions:
Do you agree or disagree with …..? Support your answer.
Give an example of ……
What is the difference between ….. and …..?
How does ….. connect with what you learned before (xxxx)?
Search online for “question stems” and you should be able to find all kinds of examples. What does xxxx mean? questions are easy and a way to start and a straightforward effort to require retrieval, but questions can also trigger other types of cognitive processing.
The use of layering tools with digital content allows a useful way to apply both other and self-generated questions.
King, A. (1994). Guiding knowledge construction in the classroom: Effects of teaching children how to question and how to explain. American educational research journal, 31(2), 338-368.
Agarwal, P. K., Karpicke, J. D., Kang, S. H., Roediger III, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (2008). Examining the testing effect with open‐and closed‐book tests. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 22(7
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