Interactive Images on ThingLink

Happy summer break! I'm always torn at this time of year -- do I take a break or use this time "off" to start exploring ideas for next year?

For those of you on board with the latter idea, here's a tool you might want to play with over the summer: ThingLink. 

logo via the ThingLink website

I've known about ThingLink for a couple years now but didn't start using it until this year....and I wish I had started sooner. :) It's such a unique tool with so many possibilities!

What is ThingLink?

ThingLink describes themselves as a way to create interactive images. Basically, you upload a picture and then add "tags" to it. Adding a tag creates a bubble that pops up when moused over; this bubble can provide a link and/or text. 

via the ThingLink website

Free Features

• Access via the web, iOS app, or Android app 
• Create 1 group of up to 100 students by registering the students under your account (so kids don't need an e-mail address in order to log in) OR students can log themselves in with their existing Google account
• Tag images and videos with text and links
• Create slideshows with your ThingLinks
• Students who are logged in can only see other students' and teachers' ThingLinks

Premium Features -- $35/year for the teacher (my fav capabilities are italicized)

• Advanced tagging tools (like these rich media tag options)
• Create up to 30 groups with up to 1,000 students
• Students who are logged into their student account (under your name) have the same abilities as you do (except they can't tag videos)
• Ability to present your ThingLink full-screen 
• Replace the image on your ThingLink without losing any of your tags or other information
• Access to wider variety of tag icons (100+ options)
• Ability to make icons always appear (so that people don't have to mouse over the image in order to see the tags)
• Upload custom tag icons
• Use the rich-text editor on tags (include bold/italicized text)
• Make images private
• Customize the bubble and text color of your tags
• Add multiple interactive images to create one slideshow (unlimited images can be added to a show)
• Google Drive links work directly within the image (see the feedback form embedded into the bottom, right corner of this presentation ThingLink)
• Remove the ThingLink logo at the bottom, right of your slides or replace with your own image

Gettin' Fancy

You can upload any picture to create a ThingLink, but I like to upload images I've created on my own. Click here for an example of a ThingLink where I created the image.

You can create your own image in basically any photo-editing site or app, but I actually just use Microsoft PowerPoint to create my images. This post reviews how to edit and save pictures in PPT. I just use a colored shape for the background, import the pictures I need, group it all together, and save as a picture. This post has a video tutorial that shows how I use PowerPoint and digital scrapbooking elements to create an image. 

Ideas for Use

• Teachers (for students): give your students a paperless or flipped lesson (like this, this, and this) -- works really well if you're incorporating a lot of media (like a Blendspace + EDpuzzle or YouTube video + Prezi + Socrative quiz, etc.) 
• Teachers (for other teachers): create a professional development session/workshop in ThingLink (like this)
• Students (any subject): ask students to create a ThingLink as part of a culminating project to show their learning
• Students (any subject): create a mini-research project 
• Students (back to school): tag a personal image to create a "getting to know me" ThingLink at the beginning of the year
• Students (ELA): upload a student-made illustration, and then place tags that tell a story all around the illustration (Ooh...could you do a "choose your own adventure" story with this?! My wheels are turning...)
• Students (ELA): tag the image of a book cover to give reviews on the book, favorite quotes, descriptions of characters, and/or examples of literary elements
• Students (geography): tag a collage of land forms with a student voice recording explaining what each land form is/looks like and can be found
• Students (geography): tag the capitals on a map 
• Students (history): tag a map where each battle in a war took place (describing each battle and telling who won)
• Students (history/social studies): tag an image of a person as a mini-biography (this would be particularly handy if students were using lots of different tools to display facts about the person -- like a video or audio recording of the person from YouTube, a mock Facebook page for the person, a Voki depicting what that person might have said about x issue, an iMovie with photos from the person's life, etc)
• Students (science): tag a collage of the steps or results of an experiment with a student voice recording explaining what's happening in each picture, a website or video explaining why the results occurred, etc.
• Students (science): tag a diagram -- say, of a cell or a flower -- with labels, and explain each part's function

Seesaw: An ePortfolio and Paperless Class Option

Seesaw, who advertises themselves as "the learning journal," is my newest favorite tech tool. It's available both on a browser and on iOS-compatible devices {download the app for free here} or on Android devices. In a nutshell, it's an easy way for students without e-mail addresses to turn in work to you and/or create an ePortfolio. 

More Information You, the teacher, must create an account on the Seesaw app. Afterwards, add a journal for each student -- it's very quick! Seesaw generates a QR code that students scan in order to join your class. From there, students can upload or take a photo from within the app, annotate over the top of it, and record his/her actions and voice. In that respect it's a lot like Educreations, but Seesaw allows each kid to have his/her own special journal.  Pros:

• Totally free.
• Compatible with iOS and Android. Both apps are free, of course.
• Free web access.
• Multiple sign-in options. Kids can sign in with a (Seesaw-generated) QR code or an e-mail address -- choose what works best for your students.
• Unlimited space. Teachers can create an unlimited number of spaces, have an unlimited number of students, and students get unlimited amount of space for work uploads.
• No e-mail address, username, or password required. Each class has a QR code that students simply have to scan in order to access the class. This eliminates the need for logging out and back in before every assignment, which can eat up a lot of time!
• Plays well with others. Seesaw is compatible with lots of commonly-used creation apps so that you can import work from there into the Seesaw journal. It can also help you bypass the need for an account in those other apps. For instance, users typically need an account in order to export work from Shadow Puppet Edu. However, if they export to Seesaw, no account is needed!
• Co-teaching? No problem. Add a co-teacher to your account by simply e-mailing the Seesaw team. 
• Moderate as needed. Ability for the teacher to approve/deny each journal entry, along with reassigning work to students if they accidentally upload to the wrong journal.
• School-wide account option. E-mail the Seesaw team to activate this option. Once done, you can upload student accounts in bulk, and a student's work can go with them from year to year.
• Activate alerts. Get notified via e-mail and/or on your device each time a student uploads work, if you want. {Parents also have this capability with their own child's work.}
• Easy parent communication. Teachers have the option to invite parents to view their child's work {parents only see their child's work}. Parents can view everything that is uploaded to their child's account and comment on individual assignments {if you activate that feature}. If their child is enrolled in more than one class that uses Seesaw, the parent should see all work merged into one stream.
• Optional upgrade for parents. A basic parent account is free, but they can upgrade for $10/year to access additional features. 
• Quickly find student work. The teacher can access a calendar view; click on a day to access all work added to the journal that day. The teacher can also click on a specific student's journal in order to see work only he or she completed. Finally, the teacher can flag work for follow-up, and then later choose to view only the flagged items.

Cons:

• No way to push information to students. I spoke with the support team, and they said they've heard this from a few teachers and might be adding this feature in the future. But for now, you cannot upload anything to a class journal for students to grab and work on, for instance. If your iPads have AirDrop, though, there's an easy work-around. 
• No way to edit. This is a feature the team is supposedly working on, but for now, once something is uploaded, the teacher has to delete it -- as students cannot delete -- and the student will have to edit and re-upload, as there are no "do-overs." 
• School accounts seem needed. Journals do not carry over from year to year unless you have a school account. I'm not sure what happens to the student's work after the school year is over, but it's something to look into. 
• No way to grade. It would be super if this app gave you the ability to grade things or annotate on work, but right now, it's just a storage hub for student work.
• No PDF support. But you can take photos/screenshots of PDFs, so this is only a minor annoyance.

Personally, I think this would be awesome to take into parent conferences. If the parent already has an account, there are no surprises! But if not, all of the student's work is on your iPad, so you can just let his/her work samples do the talking.  You can use Seesaw even if you only have 1 iPad in your class. Just have students take a picture of their paper work and upload it to their own account instead of turning in the paper version. And because Seesaw is compatible with so many other commonly-used creation apps, you aren't limited to just annotation and videos for student uploads. Here's a list of apps with which Seesaw plays well. Plus, the Seesaw website even has lots of activity ideas already posted for each subject area so you can dive in ASAP.

Tackk

If you're a fan of Smore {read my post about it here}, you'll love Tackk! I heard about it over the summer, but I figured there was no reason for me to have accounts at two very similar websites. Now I'm kicking myself for not investigating it earlier... 

What It Is

Tackk allows users to create online posters with text, videos, audio recordings, pictures, and embedded widgets and links. Each Tackk {poster} is stored at its own unique URL for easy sharing. 

Features

• 100% free
• Account not necessary to create a Tackk {only downside? Anonymous Tackks are deleted after 7 days.}
• E-mail address not needed to create an account or sign in -- kids can sign in with a social media account or with Edmodo! 
• Free iOS app
• Customize the poster's text, colors, and design
• Add headlines of different sizes, colors, and fonts to make them stand out next to regular body text
• Add photos -- upload your own, grab from Instagram or a specific URL, or use Tackk's partnership with 500px or Giphy to find a photo to use
• Adjust the size and add captions to photos
• Add video from 150+ {YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, U-Stream, Animoto, ShowMe, etc. included -- here's the complete list}
• Add audio from 22 sources {SoundCloud, Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, etc. included -- here's the complete list}
• Add a button to make links more visible:

• Ability to add "listings" of things you can sell directly from your Tackk {PTO and spirit shops, I'm lookin' at you.}
• Add a contact form -- all responses are sent to your e-mail inbox
• Embed widgets to things like other Tackks, a Poll Everywhere poll, Prezi, Listly, Screenr, SlideShare, Twitter, etc.
• Add an RSVP {I'm thinking of field trip, class party, extracurricular group event, etc.}
• Make your Tackk public or private
• Option to add password protection to a private Tackk
• "Tag" Tackks -- similar to tagging in Blogger or Evernote -- as a way to collect and/or organize data. {For instance, I would have my students tag their Tackks with special phrases to ensure I could find them easily.}
• Customize the URL {only downside? the URL is an extension of tackk.com and not your profile, so no other Tackk user can ever personalize their poster with the same name}
•  Add an interactive comment stream -- great for encouraging conversation between your students. {Admin rights gives ability to moderate.}
• Create an assignment template so students only have to click and edit {more about that below}
• Saves automatically every few seconds -- similar to LiveBinders 
• Duplicate your Tackks to save yourself time creating similar posters
• Transfer ownership of your Tackks to a different account
• Variety of sharing options when you're finished:

I like that I could embed all the class's Tackks onto my school webpage, or even create a Tackk that links to everyone's Tackk {how's that for a confusing sentence?} to show off student work to parents and the community.

Assignment Template Feature

I have to  share the assignment template feature with you. There is currently no tutorial on the Tackk blog that tells how to utilize the lesson template feature, but I got the inside scoop from a sweet and knowledgeable Tackk rep {shout-out to Andria!}. She's going to write a blog post about it soon, but I thought I'd share here, too. 

The assignment template feature lets you create a Tackk that is editable and share that with students. So instead of sharing a static page that no one can edit {here's example I created about ABCD drawings in a science notebook}, you share this editable page that acts as a template for the assignment. For instance, here's an editable template about the scientific method. If you give students the special link to your template, they can edit a copy of your template without ever changing your original. 

To create an editable assignment template:

1. Create a Tackk. 
2. Customize the URL under "Tackk options." 
3. Make the Tackk private, and then publish it so it's live.
4. Before sharing the link with students, edit it so that "/create/copy" in written after tackk.com. For instance, my scientific method page is www.tackk.com/scientificmethod. So to let kids edit it, I would share this link, instead: www.tackk.com/create/copy/scientificmethod

I love the idea of this for my elementary students! 

Because I only have 50-60 minutes total with each class per week in Science Lab, I often print a recording sheet to glue into the notebook -- especially for my youngest students. Not only does it help prompt them about what step in the scientific method comes next, it's a way to help speed up their writing so that we have time to do an experiment and write about it in our notebooks, too.

I can definitely see myself transferring some of my recording sheets into Tackk templates. From there, I envision students tagging each assignment with a specific phrase so that I can assess and share. 

I'll leave you with my first full assignment created on Tackk {link here if you want to see the full version on the Tackk website}. My fourth graders are actually in the middle of this assignment, so I probably will not get to use Tackk for it until next year. But now that I know the process, I'm sure there will be plenty more Tackk projects to come.

     

Blendspace

I've been making lessons with Blendspace for my classes this year, and I really enjoy it so far.

In a nutshell
Blendspace is a free service that allows you to pull content from various sources for a single lesson, and then store and present that lesson online.

More details
Blendspace allows you to import media from a variety of places on the web or upload your own stuff {from a cloud service, any website or embed code, from your computer, or just by typing directly onto the page} and keep it all in one space. It's set up like a grid, and you drag and drop your lesson components into the grid's boxes where you want them. You can rearrange the boxes however you'd like, which is, essentially, rearranging your lesson.

Blank lesson template

It's a great way to pull in a variety of media types for one lesson and not have to hunt down each component separately. For instance, I have one lesson where I uploaded a YouTube video, Google images, my direct typing, a PDF from my computer, a picture from my Dropbox, another website, and a Prezi presentation. I like that Blendspace keeps it all in one place so I don't have to hunt down each component on its own when I'm teaching the lesson.

Users can "play" a Blendspace lesson much like they would a PowerPoint presentation -- just click the arrows on the right and left to scroll through the slides. Depending on how details you make your  lesson, I think you could literally just type the link to the Blendspace into our lesson plan book and be done with it. I particularly love that I don't have to write a lesson plan that lists every single component I'm going to use because Blendspace corrals it into one space for me.

There are a few ways to share a Blendspace lesson: you can link to it {which is short and sweet}, share an automatically-generated QR code, share on social media, and/or embed it onto another website. 

Here's an example of an embedded lesson that I made for my 2nd graders about the scientific method:



If you are doing a flipped classroom, the ability to share on social media would be nice. I could also see a teacher just showing the pre-generated QR code on the Promethean for students to scan as they walk into the room... Then students can immediately begin working on the day's lesson without the teacher doing anything other than clicking a couple times.

Speaking of lesson planning, if you ever have a substitute, all you'd need to do is send them the link to your Blendspace lesson. As long as they have some way to log on to the computer, that link would be all they need to get through the day. You can even print them a copy of the lesson so they know which slide is coming next. The printed version of the lesson above would look something like this:

Blendspace allows you to make your lessons public or private, AND you can share and collaborate on them with your team. The collaboration portion would be great if you are team teaching because you can all work on and teach from the exact same Blendspace lesson. And because some Blendspace lessons are public, you can search for other teachers' lessons, copy their to your account, tweak them for your needs, and then share them with students.

Browse other teachers' lessons by subject or search for one on a particular topic

You also can create classes and assign Blendspace lessons to each class. I use this portion for sorting the lessons I use for my five different Science Lab classes so I can easily find the lesson I need, but there's another use for it, too: Blendspace allows students to connect their account to their teacher's.  You, the teacher, can assign lessons for the students to view, and then you can see when or if the student views it {another great option for those you that are doing flipped or blended classrooms}.  Additionally, if you add any quizzes into the Blendspace lesson, the students can take those quizzes on their own account, and Blendspace will grade the quiz and send the results back to you. I personally haven't been able to utilize that option because my kids are so young {and don't have access to many online accounts because of their lack of e-mail address}, but I think that would be amazing for any teacher trying a flipped classroom.

The top toolbar doesn't give you a lot of options -- just enough to get you by -- so the website isn't overwhelming.

Blendspace saves your lessons continually as you work -- much like LiveBinders -- so there's no need to remember to hit the "save" button over and over again. In fact, there isn't a "save" button.

There are 5 templates, which just give you different ways to show the grids in your lesson. You see the first template in the picture of the grid toward the top of this post. Other templates make the boxes larger or put them into a scrapbook-like format, with some squares bigger than others.

There are only two themes: gray or colorful. The gray theme makes the top of every square gray. The colorful theme give each square a color based on what type of media is inside the square -- you do not get to choose the colors. For instance, the video below has a red-orange title, while the picture has a teal one.

Text that you type directly into your Blendspace lesson has a purple title, and links you import are blue.

You can add a title to every box, which shows up above the element when you are "playing" your lesson in the enlarged view. Other users can also add comments to the different squares in your lesson, which means that your students could add comments if they have an account.

Additionally, you have the ability to add captions to all of the boxes in your lesson grid except the "type directly into it" boxes, and those captions appear in a white space to the right of the squares when you're playing the lesson. You can choose to show or hide the captions while you're playing the lesson.

Here are some video tutorials I made about Blendspace {remember to type in the password to have access to the videos... CISD employees, it's our plural mascot}:

• A Tour
• Create Your Own Lesson

Also: this link provides you with some ideas about how to use Blendspace in your classroom.

Smore

Smore is a free website that allows you to make colorful, online posters {You do have the option to print it when you're finished.}

Every year, during the organisms and environments unit in my 4th grade Science Lab class, I ask students to create an organism of their own with certain adaptations. It's a big ordeal, but I am always amazed and so impressed with the results.

I won't go into too many details about the project, but one of the requirements is to create a write-up for the science notebook that includes all of the necessary details. I give students a template, and they just fill it in with their information.

The template gets the job done, but it is rather boring to look at. I think this works against me when I go to explain the project to the students; I am always looking for a way to spice up the lessons!

Since finding Smore, I decided to use it to display my example. Below, I'll show you screenshots of the features of Smore while I'm working on my poster. At the bottom of this post, you'll get a chance to see my finished project.

Features

• Make up to 5 flyers totally free. {After that, it costs 1 credit to make 1 flyer, and the price looks steep for this frugal gal. Check out the screenshot of their current credit prices below:}

• Send up to 200 e-mails per month {links to your flyers}

• Create really pretty flyers either starting with a template or from scratch

The beauty about the template is that Smore has already inserted elements that are common for that type of flyer onto the template, so all you have to do is edit. 

• Choose from 5 different designs

• Choose from 12 different backgrounds -- all of which are pathetic, in my opinion. {If you want to upload your own, you have to pay. Of course.}

• Pick a color from 21 options

• Choose from 6 different fonts

• Add 11 different elements to your flyer. Drag and drop to put them exactly where you want them on your flyer. {The 12th element, payment is added if you purchase a paid plan from Smore.}

Hover over an element to see a plus sign to easily add an element right there on the flyer.

Also by hovering, you can click the "x" to delete an element or click the pencil icon to edit it.

• When you go to publish, you can change your settings to allow/disable comments, your name and profile information, social media sharing buttons, and related flyers. You can also change the privacy of your flyer and any of your profile information. 

• After publishing, you have the option to share via 5 social networking sites, embed it on a blog or other website, and to share via e-mail. 

• Also after publishing your flyer, you have the option to go back and edit it, preview how it will look to your audience members who receive the link, and print it {in standard quality -- not high-res -- and with a Smore ad on it}. You can also see how many people have viewed your flyer, although keep in mind that this does include you when you click the "preview" button. :) Finally, you have the official link so that you can put it in an e-mail on your own without using any of your e-mail credits. 

Cons

• New users get 5 credits when they sign up. Each flyer you make costs you 1 credit. If you pay for a subscription to Smore, you get new credits each month. But if you're just on a free plan, it looks like the only ways to earn more credits is to create a new account with a different e-mail address or to purchase new credits or a monthly subscription. I'm really annoyed about this. However, Smore does have an education plan for a steep discount {compared to their other paid plans, which range from $240/year to $1200/year!} -- read more about it in the next section.
• Limited background and template choices. Not a huge deal, but can be annoying if you're working on something special because, like I said, the background picture options are truly pathetic. 
• As far as I could figure out, the gallery has 3 pictures in it -- no more, no less. Logically, I'm thinking that number has got to be customizable, but I couldn't figure out how!

I've been trying to think of a work-around for the 5-credits thing because I rarely pay for online stuff {why pay when you can get it for free?}. You could just sign up for a new account with a different e-mail address after you hit your limit. OR I suppose you could just edit your existing flyers and download them as a picture file before re-using that template for the next flyer. That doesn't help if you want kids to use it, and it would be a pain, but I think that would be the best option if you're going to go the free route.

I don't normally advocate for paying for things since, you know, teachers aren't typically millionaires. :) However, the educator plan {$60/year} looks like a good deal if you're thinking of using Smore for classroom newsletters or with students during projects and assignments. Here are some of the cool features of the educator plan, in case you're thinking of purchasing it:

• Use your own custom backgrounds
• Make flyers private by default to protect students' privacy
• Send up to 5,000 e-mails monthly
• Get analytics for the e-mails you send out {read more about that by clicking here}. Let's say, for example, that you use Smore as a classroom newsletter website, and you send it in an e-mail to the parents each month. With this plan, Smore allows you to see who is opening your e-mails -- and who isn't -- and who clicks on any links inside them. 
• No ads on the flyer
• Ability to download a high-quality jpg {picture file} of your flyer so that it will print nicely, if you need it
• Make unlimited flyers

Uses for the Classroom

1. As you'll see below, you can use it as an example for any project or assignment. It's nice for those things because it's quick and easy to make, you can add media anywhere in the flyer, you can print it for kiddos who need a copy at their desk while they work,  and it will display nicely when projected on the Promethean. 
2. Piggybacking off of idea #1, you could use Smore to post assignments for a flipped classroom. For instance, if you created 1 flyer per lesson that you teach, you could embed picture examples or a teaching video into the flyer, step-by-step instructions about what you want students to do, etc. Then you could embed all the lessons in a unit or semester onto one class page. All you'd have to do after that is give students the link to that one class page, and they'd know the agenda for the entire class. 
3. Create your classroom newsletter with Smore. You can even utilize the flyer options for parents to subscribe to your mailing list and click a button to e-mail you easily. 
4. Have students use Smore for project creation or even a portfolio. Of course, you'd have to purchase the $60/year education plan, but you could always try to make a case for it to our generous PTOs. :) 

Example
I used Smore to make an example poster for our 4th grade adaptation project. I embedded the poster onto the instruction page of our class website, and I can display the poster on the Promethean during instruction and/or print it so that students have a copy at their table while they're working. Here's my finished poster:

 

Facebook: Ideas for Use

Now that you've successfully set up a Facebook class page, it's time to start using it. 

Here are my ideas about how to use Facebook in the classroom:

1. Host discussions. Maybe instead of having students post comments to a blog, you could have them answer discussion questions found on your Facebook page. You could also consider hosting weekly discussions where students get to ask questions about materials -- homework? -- for an hour or so. Facebook makes it easy to reply to certain comments or to just post a general comment on someone's wall.
2. Post updates. This tip is vague because there are a ton of things you could post. Check out my article on ways to use Twitter in the classroom; a lot of those ideas could be used on Facebook, as well. 
3. Create events. Maybe you could create an event about a large, upcoming exam, or a project that's on the horizon. You could also do silly things to boost camaraderie between classmates -- like participating in "talk like Shakespeare day." 
4. Have students share book reviews in wall messages.
5. Use Facebook apps. Teaching economics? Find a game that makes kids set up their own business. Want a summary of something? Have kids log on to the bumper sticker app to find a sticker that summarizes a character of chapter of a [text]book. Want to conduct a poll? Use the poll app to get some answers. 
6. Keep up with current events. Find groups over world events and ask students to learn more, discuss, and/or get involved. 
7. Teaching government? Have students friend a politician and ask him/her questions. 
8. Post multimedia. Share videos of things related to your class's materials, podcasts you've made, pictures that go along with that day's assignment, etc. 
9. Have students post multimedia. Refer to the suggestion above, but make posting the students' responsibility. 
10. Create photo albums of special events or lessons in your classroom so that families can see what's happening in your class, even while they're at work. 
11. If you wanted to flip your classroom, you could post all of the assignments and due dates on your class Facebook page. If you needed the students to download something, you could post a link to the document in your Dropbox or other cloud storage. 

Tellagami

Our librarian loves to use Voki with our kiddos. And I have to say: our kids respond well to Voki. But with the rise of iPads in our school, I thought it might be nice to know about an app version.

The app is called Tellagami, and it's free to download.

Tellagami works a lot like Voki, except there are only male and female options {no aliens or animals like Voki offers}.

Customize skin color, hair color and style, clothing, eye color, and even head size.

There aren't too many customization options -- for the female avatar, there were about 4 top options in 3-4 colors each in clothing, for instance -- but it's enough to get the job done.

Once your avatar looks the way you need him/her to, move on to customizing the background.

The app comes with 2 free sets of backgrounds {"free" and "road trip"}, but there are plenty of other background packs you can purchase if you so choose. I particularly liked the educational backgrounds. One of the edu sets appeared to be for college, while the other set was geared more toward elementary; the elementary backgrounds have alphabet/color borders above the blackboard and brighter colors.

 I chose to customize the emotion of my avatar after my background. Choose from 7 emotions:

Finally, add some speech. You can either record your own voice, or type something in and choose from a dozen or so male and female voices.

Preview your Tellagami to make sure he/she sounds the way you need it to, and then share your creation. I like that you can share on social media sites + e-mail + text messages.

I e-mailed it to myself to see if I could figure out how to embed it on my blog, and wouldn't you know it? Clicking the link in the e-mail takes you to a screen that offers a link to the video and an embed code. Yay! Here's my sample Tellagami:

One thing I love about this app is that you don't have to have an account in order to save anything.  Just open the app, create, and send. I don't see a way to edit the Tellagami after it's made, so that may be the only drawback I see so far.

For reference, the maximum length of time for a recording on Tellagami is 30 seconds {which is the same for Voki, if I remember correctly...?}.

Ideas for using Tellagami or Voki in the classroom:

1. As a getting-to-know-you activity, all students could create a Voki or Tellagami to represent themselves. The avatar could speak essential information, favorites, etc. about themselves, and then al students could play their creation for the class. 
2. After reading, students could create a Tellagami or Voki project to summarize what they read. 
3. After reading a story, students could pick their favorite character and create an avatar that speaks from that character's POV.
4. On a similar note, students could create an avatar of a famous person or a historical figure; the avatar could speak facts about that person's life and achievements. 
5. After writing a story, students could make an avatar of their choosing, and then use the call-in feature to read their story to world.
6. Instead of always posting things to your classroom website in words, create a Voki or Tellagami video to get the information across. For instance, I once embedded a Voki into a class blog entry and used it to prompt students on their next assignment. {I included text, too, in case students didn't have speakers available, but this is a good option in the paperless classroom for those kiddos that may struggle with reading or just prefer verbal instruction.}

This article tells you about 6 other free avatar-creating apps for iPad.

LiveBinders

I love organizing. Because of that, three-ring binders have played a huge part in my life ever since elementary school. Binders were {and still are} a great way to organize tons of paper.

But with the push toward paperless classrooms and storage in the cloud, the traditional three-ring binder is becoming obsolete as we eliminate paper from our lives.

However, we still need a good way to organize files. I've talked before about my love affair with Dropbox {shameless plug: use my referral link to sign up, and we'll both get more free space!} and how much it has helped me store and organize my digital files. But there are times when a prettier visual and more than just file storage is needed. This is where LiveBinders comes in.

Logo from the Live Binder website

How It Works

1. Create a virtual "binder" via the LiveBinders website. 
2. Add tabs and subtabs to organize your binder. 
3. Upload files, import links from around the web, or type directly into the binder. 
4. Make multiple binders and organize them on virtual shelves for easy access. 
5. Share your binder(s) with others or keep them private. 
6. Make copies of others' public binders and edit them to your liking. 

Ways to Use Live Binder in Your Class

1. Have students create ePortfolios using LiveBinders.
2. Create a tab for each student in your class. Use subtabs to upload files you would keep on those students -- RtI information, assessments, examples of work, etc. 
3. Create a "back to school parent binder." Upload all the information you would normally print for "meet the teacher" day at school, and pass out the link, instead. 
4. Store lesson plans and their corresponding materials online and share them with your team, across the district, and/or with teachers from around the world.
5. Create a substitute binder where you've pre-loaded information about your classroom procedures, schedule, and even emergency lesson plans. When you're sick, the sub just has to pull up the link to your binder, and you can go back to bed and rest. 
6. Create a professional portfolio for yourself if you're job hunting.
7. Create a binder full of common links students will need to visit in a digital classroom. {Here's an example.}
8. Create a binder full of instructions for accessing classroom websites, navigating classroom digital tools, etc. 
9. Have students turn in work via LiveBinders -- you just need access to their binder. Then you can grade it and not have to print anything at all. 
10. Not sure what to do with all the links and files you get from professional development? Upload them to a binder

Here's a binder about how teachers are using this site in their classroom:

                

    

How Teachers are Using LiveBinders

Cool Features

• Go paperless! Stop trying to keep up with pages of paper. Scan things in to your computer and file them away in LiveBinders. It's a three-ring binder for your computer!
• Add others' public binders to your shelf so you can access their information quickly and easily. 
• Link to your LiveBinders and/or embed them into your classroom website.

There are even free apps so you can access binders via your tablet or smartphone.

Click here to visit the iTunes store to download this app

Other Helpful Info

• Click here for a good tutorial about how to use LiveBinders
• Here are some tutorials directly from the LiveBinders website.  
• Here's a LiveBinders tutorial:

               

   

LiveBinders Tutorial

• Live Binder tips and tricks:

               

   

LiveBinders Tips and Tricks