Table of Contents

Introduction
Voicethread and Lesson Plans for
VoiceThread

Created by Teresa Worthy

Google Apps and Lesson Plans for

Google Apps

Created by Mariah Brashar

Evernote and Teacher

Productivity

Created by Amy Settles

TeacherTube and the Classroom

Created by Amanda Swanson

Cloud Applications for Sharing

Information across Devices and
Platforms

Created by Karen Deaton

Conclusion
 Introduction
The Cloud has become a general term for services one accesses through the internet,
eliminating the need for downloading extra software. This means a user can access
and make use of these services from any device, so long as it had internet access.
Typically, these services are free, or available for a small subscription fee. Since they
are internet based, users can often share their work with colleges across the globe,
exchanging ideas and promoting communication. Teachers are using cloud based
services in the classroom to record and share lessons and student projects. Some of
the more common cloud services being used are Voicethread, a website where users
can record and share auditory comments. Google Apps have a wide variety of
applications similar to Microsoft Office, but is completely free. Evernote is a place to
save webpages and articles for easy reference later. Teacher Tube is a place where
educational videos are uploaded and shared. Adobe Creative Cloud is a place where
art is uploaded and shared.

Voicethread and Lesson Plans for Voicethread

Photo credit: https://goo.gl/images/lzTfYi

Voicethread is a media sharing tool that enables individuals to post photos, videos, documents,
or slide presentations. Other users can then give their commentary through voice
comments, webcam, keyboard, or telephone. Voicethread is a cloud application so there is no
software involved you just need to have an updated version of Flash. What
sets Voicethread apart from other commentary sites is the ability to leave voice comments.
Voice is important in the ability to give longer commentary and also helpful for the person
receiving commentary as they can interpret tone of voice; It allows for a deeper
connection (educause).
Voicethread can be used in the classroom at any age and for a wide range of topics. Students
have the ability to have their own individual profiles where they can work on projects and
submit comments on other student projects. Voicethread has been so popular amongst
educators that the company created ed.voicethread, which is “a secure site just for educators
and their students, says VoiceThreads cofounder Ben Papell” (edutopia). Teachers can either
have their Voicethread remain private or they can publish them. If they publish them through
the ed.voicehtread site, that means students and teachers from around the world can see their
projects and leave further comments for them.

Voicethread supplies tons of great ideas for lesson plans at this site from teaching foreign
language to playing I Spy with second graders. In one lesson “Students shared personally
significant poetry against a backdrop of their own self portrait. This Voicethread gave students
a chance to share their work orally, as well as to explore the cultural differences between our
students in a safe environment,” (voicethread). The only limits to lesson plan creations
with Voicethread are your imagination as an educator.
Lalia Weir, author of the Edutopia article "Voicethread Extends the Classroom with Interactive
Multimedia Albums," gives advice to teachers just starting out with the site, “For educators new
to VoiceThread, it's a good idea to experiment a bit before starting with
students. Voicethread offers free educator accounts on its public site. Teachers can begin there,
commenting on others' threads and creating their own practice threads,”(edutopia).

For information on Voicethread, check out Teresa's Diigo. .

Google Apps and Lesson Plans for Google Apps

Photo credit: https://goo.gl/images/gIf274

Google Apps and Lesson Plans for Google Apps are changing the way teachers use technology in
the classroom in schools that have adopted these technologies. Google Apps, like Google Docs,
can enable teachers to collaborate with each other, with parents, and with students in real time
without the need for in-person meetings or phone calls. Google Apps can also make student to
student collaboration easier and more helpful. As Julia Stigliz discusses in her presentation,
Google Apps in Classrooms and Schools, Google Apps can increase efficiency, collaboration and
engagement by allowing students to connect with each other and collaborate (Stiglitz). Student
group work can take place without inconvenient meetings outside of school and teachers can
also keep track of group work: who did what, how much each student contributed, and how the
work was organized.

In addition to these advantages, Google Lesson Plans allow teachers to share lesson plans with
each other. Through the program, educators can create a school-wide lesson plan database
(aeseducation). Teachers can also collaborate to create lesson plans together, even working on
the same pages at the same time! This sort of collaboration can be especially helpful for team-
teachers and for new or inexperienced teachers. In addition to the benefits for teachers, Google
Apps can help schools themselves by “saving schools money, boosting academic performance
and motivation, and [by] preparing students for digital communication in the real world”
(aeseducation).

Google Apps also have a very high adoption rate and are used world-wide by millions of people,
according to Daniel Herrera in his article, "Top 5 Advantages of Google Apps for K-12
Education." Herrera contends that Google Apps are already widely used by students and
educators and come as “second nature” to many. He says Google Apps can also help schools to
maintain security, by reducing online vulnerabilities, and to “go green,” by reducing paper
waste.

For more information on Google Apps and Lesson Plans for Google Apps, check out Mariah's
Diigo.

Evernote and Teacher Productivity

 Photo credit: https://goo.gl/images/jN3NPi

Have you ever seen a bright green backdrop with a black elephant head and wondered what it
was? Meet Evernote. According to Eric Griffith’s article “Make the Most of Evernote,” Evernote
is “an online spot to store anything and everything you might find of interest later. The more
you add, the more useful it becomes.” Griffith sheds light on the usefulness of the service that
could surely pack a punch for teacher productivity.

Although there is a free version of Evernote, upgrading to Evernote premium for $5/month, or
$45/year, allows you even greater benefits. With the premium service, there is no cap on how
much you can upload or store. Additionally, you are given access to your content both online
and off, and are offered better searching capabilities within your content. This could prove to
be invaluable for a teacher who uses Evernote as a means of storing resources and information
for different class subjects.

The Web Clipper function of Evernote allows you to save what you see online. You can save an
entire website, a single photo, or a snippet of an article. This is a real time-saver to the
alternative of printing articles/resources and helps cut back on environmental waste. Using
tools from a menu that appears at the right, you can make highlights and annotations right on
the webpage you're viewing.

Things that you save into Evernote get put into different notebooks. These notebooks can then
be combined to form "stacks" for different subjects. This could be helpful for teachers who
teach more than one subject. With the extensive searching capabilities that Evernote offers,
educators can ditch the old-school methods of cumbersome filing cabinets! Cut down wasted
teaching time by typing in exactly what you’re looking for.

Evernote also allows you to add reminders. Reminders can be made days, weeks, even months
in advance. This could keep teachers up-to-date on parent contact logs, grades, special events,
and more. While Evernote offers in-app email services for sharing and connecting with other
Evernote users, you may purchase Powerbot for $1.99/month. Powerbot is coupled with a
browser extension that allows you to share and connect using your preexisting email account.
Collaboration with educators elsewhere in the world is made possible with this handy
connectivity tool.

For more information on Evernote, check out Amy's Diigo.

TeacherTube and the Classroom

 Photo Credit: https://goo.gl/images/atT5Ps

TeacherTube is a lot like YouTube, only it is specifically geared toward education. It was
launched by Jason and Adam Smith back in 2007 as a tool for showcasing student videos and
sharing lesson plans and resources (Melago). It has really taken off since then, and is used by
educators, parents, and students across the globe. Essentially it has the same layout as
YouTube, but all the videos are somehow related to educational lessons or topics. Some are just
recordings of lectures, so you can get a glimpse of classrooms around the globe. Some are very
wacky, colorful and fun, perfect for engaging younger children who are more used to the same
sort of format on their televisions and video games. It is also a way for students and educators
to connect with their peers and coworkers, you can subscribe to channels or create playlists
(O’Neil).

All you need to access the videos on TeacherTube is the internet and Adobe Flash. There is no
cost to viewing any of the videos, which covers a huge array of topics. The quality of the video
and depth of the content will vary, depending on who made it (Siegchrist). A large portion are
student made, which was done either as their own classroom project or as a recording of a
project presentation. Again, this helps build our education community, since kids can see what
other kids are doing.

One of the best things about TeacherTube is that it is safe. The regular YouTube has lots of
great videos and educational resources as well, but anyone who has used it at length will know
that sometimes questionable material will sometimes accidentally pop up. If students use
YouTube as a resource at home, there is no way to monitor if they are visiting safe channels. In
addition, when using YouTube within school boundaries, there are often strong filters in place
that prevent a lot of the videos from being downloaded, even if the content was legitamate.
TeacherTube administrators monitor the videos that are uploaded in order to block any adult
content that might have been shared, and users of the site are encouraged to report any
suspicious activity on the website. It is a safe website for students to explore, and the content is
not usually blocked by school internet filters (Siegchrist).

For more information on TeacherTube, check out Amanda's Diigo.

 Cloud Applications for Sharing Information across Devices and
Platforms

Photo Credit: https://goo.gl/images/UfA8Ss

Modern-day teaching requires so many more technologically-based tools than it has in the past.
Luckily, app creators have been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with the demand that
schools and teachers require to provide their students with the resources they need to learn in
this fast paced and ever-changing world. Creativity is an important part of the learning process.
Today there is an incredible amount of tools to use for things, such as the arts, that can be
shared within the cloud; one such application like this would be Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud is possibly one of the most useful apps out there. It contains several
Adobe applications all in one that our students can have access to. This app creates an
environment of seemingly endless bounds of kinesthetic energy for the creative mind, which is
a feeling welcome in the classroom. There are places to create incredible resumes, design t-
shirts, create posters, edit photo and video, and many other useful things. Educators will find
apps such as Lightroom, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver to be indispensable tools for
making art relevant outside of the classroom. Learning to use these creative skills in ways that
students can use even after high school is not only a win for them, but also for society! Adobe
Creative Cloud creates an opportunity to help students express themselves in healthy creative
ways that can be used in entrepreneurship after leaving high school. This app is available in the
desktop version, but also on mobile devices as well.
Now Adobe Creative Cloud is all fine and good, but you may be wondering; where does the
cloud come in? Well, the neat thing about this app is that even after your subscription has
expired, or you have deleted the app, all of your student's work is saved as a local file in an
online cloud for them to have access to when they need/want it. This simple fact also makes it
easier to collaborate creatively with shared folders on the cloud that can easily be accessed by
other people in the group to edit the portfolio. The app is available to teachers and students for
$20/ month, or the entire software collection for $50/month. It seems like a lot, but with the
amount of tools available it's well worth it- especially considering to have separate access to
each is approximately $99 a piece.


For more information on Cloud Applications, check out Karen's Diigo.

Conclusion
As the world changes and becomes more connected through technology, so must education
change. School projects are no longer a solitary endeavor, nor are group meetings restricted by
physical location, students’ schedules, or even time-zones. Education at its best in the Twenty-
First Century is more collaborative than ever before, due largely to the advent of “the cloud.”
This massive, accessible storage space enables educators to collaborate through programs like
Voicethread, Google Apps, Evernote, TeacherTube, and other Cloud Applications for sharing
information across devices and platforms. Programs such as these, and countless others, allow
teachers to share lesson plans, collaborate on the creation of curricula, view helpful videos
designed for teachers, and keep detailed records and resources. The cloud also enables
teachers to set up projects for group collaboration in their classrooms in new and exciting ways.
As educators march into the future, “the cloud” helps them see a future for their classrooms
that is more collaborative, more supportive, and more full of information than ever before.

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