Youtube in Powerpoints

Now this is one I would have thought I would already know, but wouldn't you know, I didn't.

But now that I am well equipped once more by my fantastic BYU education I can once again enter the classroom well prepared whether it has the same technology options as BYU or not.

My presentation..."Duck and Cover"

As this particular clip is 10 minutes long and I am not sure how long the original piece was it could be difficult to know what time length would be appropriate to show, except that this was a film made by the federal government to be shown in schools. It was made to educate students and the general public, so it might very well be in the public domain. That could take some checking or you might be able to call, email, or otherwise contact the Department of Education to find out.

Other problems that this could solve is that videos are sometimes removed from YouTube by the owner and not because they were infringing on copyright laws. By actually having the video file on your computer this could be prevented. Another problem that downloading the video can solve is the fact that you may not be the only one show YouTube videos in class. If your students want to show a video. If you have multiple videos to be shown by multiple students, you could save time by downloading them all and have them in cues so that there is no wait time in between the videos. We only have so many minutes to teach our students, so we have to save every last one we can.

I feel this technology could be used to fulfill certain core standards such as...

• World Civilizations: Standard 4
  Students will understand the influence of revolution and social change in the transition from early modern to contemporary societies.
• World Civilizations: Standard 5
  Students will understand the interaction of peoples in the global integration of the 20th century.
• US History II: Standard 9
  The students will understand the emergence and development of the human rights and culture in the modern era.
  
• US History II: Standard 10
  The students will understand the economic and political changes in contemporary America.

Google Earth

Who doesn't want to see the Seven Wonders of the World?

Who doesn't wish they could take a class on field trips every single day to see the reality of what they are teaching?

On Google Earth we can now take our students for a ride across oceans and continents to see the worlds we are trying to open to them.

They have not only the ability to look up their own address and try to see their home, but also the ability to look at 3D images of some of the most famous places in the world. Kids are always saying that history is dry and boring. What if they could see history like they do the games they play on play stations or the movies they see on television? If we can catch their interest through things like virtual tours on Google Earth than maybe we can keep them interested enough to learn the facts as well as the big picture themes and lessons of history.

Take them on field trips to Boston, Philedelphia, and Washington D.C. in the first section of American History. Take them to Mesopotamia and Egypt and Rome in World History. They can see and learn a great deal if we can take them there.


I would find this strategic for openings of lessons or most especially the opening of a unit, but like all other strategies we must be careful not to over use it. Sparingly and it will help keep their attention! (Besides I like playing on this website as much as they do.)

This tool could be used to fulfill certain core standards such as...

• US History I: Standard 7
  Students will explore the territorial growth of the United States before the Civil War.
• World Civilizations: Standard 1
  Students will gain an understanding of early civilizations and their contributions to the foundations of human culture.(objective 2 about Geography)
• World Civilizations: Standard 2
  Students will comprehend the contributions of classical civilizations.
• World Civilizations: Standard 5
  Students will understand the interaction of peoples in the global integration of the 20th century.

Hopefully I would be able to use this on a projector at the front of the class.

Photoshop

So all about photo editing...simple right? Yes and no.

There are a lot of programs that allow you to edit a photo to many varying degrees. The most common of things are removing red-eye, cropping, and rotating of images. These are all pretty simple. The things that I discovered in Photoshop that I found new and useful are manually adjusting color, adjusting contrast, and what you might call patching or covering where you can write over part of an image with another part of that image. (very helpful for removing unseemly objects, lines, or people from images.)

Image 1: Manually adjusted colors to make it more vivid.



















Image 2: Removed people from an image so it was only a landscape.




























Image 3: Composite photo.

This technology comes in handy when you want to use images to give your students a more authentic feel, or image. Sometimes you have an old photo that is difficult to see and you could sharpen it, or you only want them to see part of it, or you wish to put multiple images on the same slide or spot and a composite or collage would work better than individual images.

As a history teacher I would love this for powerpoints of lectures. I think power points should only enhance and not replace a lecture or discussion with the teacher and this could be useful. Also the more primary documents I can give my students that they can see and appreciate the better. If I can get an image of the Constitution and blow it up so they can read the actual words in the paper or look at the original John Hancock, I feel that might help arouse interest in a topic many find boring. It could also be a great way to have students do small personal projects by making collages that define a certain time period or event and have a written explanation of the images to go along with them.

This tool could be used to fulfill certain core standards such as...

• US History I: Standard 2
  Students will investigate the relationship between events of different time periods.
• US History I: Standard 8
  Students will examine the expansion of the political system and social rights before the Civil War.
• US History II: Standard 1
  Students will expand their knowledge of pre-Reconstruction America.
• US History II: Standard 3
  Students will recognize how social reform occurred at the turn of the century.

I would love to use this in my classes.