ViewPure: Viewing Youtube Videos Without the Worry of Inappropriate Content

I'll set the scene: it's five-minutes before the high school will be walking through the auditorium doors to view three video trailers. The stage is set, the projector is on, sound works - we're good - until Heather notices a lot of skin on one of the video suggestions that pops up at the end of the trailer -- no longer good.

Fortunately, I remember that Lori had tweeted or emailed something about viewing youtube videos without ads. I did a quick search and came up with ViewPure: this handy feature requires you to simply navigate to the ViewPure webpage, paste in your youtube url, and then it creates a new viewing site where you will no longer have to worry about comments, suggestions, and the annoying/most-likely-inappropriate-related-video-suggestions. Phew.

I have yet to find information on how long the ViewPure link works, but it was so nice to simply be able to plug the newly generated url into my browser and view the youtube video full screen, worry free. No on the spot, red-faced, made-up explanation needed when the students see something you wish they hadn't at the end of the video.

I suppose, in retrospect however, that  at least they were playing attention and observant.

Embed Classroom Google Calendar on Powerschool Student Grade Page

Although I am not a huge proponent of students checking their grades all the time, I do like the idea of getting important information to students in multiple ways. On this front, I did find a way to add a classroom or grade level homework calendar to students' Powerschool grade lookup - to clarify, when you add the homework calendar in your gradebook, each student will be able to see the homework calendar above his or her grades page when he or she clicks on your class in Powerschool.

For those who are not using an online calendar, google makes it straight forward to create a calendar and then add homework, quiz, test, and/or project event due dates. You can also set reminders.

The powerful features of google calendar are that students (and parents) can subscribe to your homework calendar, thereby making it available to them directly from their google calendar app. Further, students can set their own reminders, email and/or SMS.

Hope you enjoy.

Creating a fillable pdf

I must admit that since this summer when I started watching Nate's tutorials on Sophia, I have been trying to replicate how he was able to make fillable text fields in Adobe Reader. Today, after hearing a few questions about fillable forms, it finally struck me that he was using a pro version of Adobe Acrobat.

So, I turned to the all-knowing Google, and I came up with www.pdfescape.com. This is a free online fillable pdf creator.

In addition to Nate's great tutorial, which can be viewed here. I have added a video below specifically about how pdfescape can help you accomplish the outcomes Nate was able to accomplish.

Quickly Collect & Use Student Emails for Effective Document Sharing

Today's post is an overview on a few steps teachers can take to gather student emails using a Google Form, followed by creating a class contact list in gmail based upon the form's submissions. See the video for more of an explanation.

Doctopus (and Goobric) for document sharing, project management, & efficient assessment

Hello again,

Today I wanted to tackle a comprehensive script that allows for a lot of functionality in the classroom: Doctopus. Below is a picture of the doctopus workflow I discuss in the overview video.

Here are a few things the Doctopus script can do for teachers:

1. Efficiently share a single document template (or resource folder with multiple resources) with all students so that all students can either edit, comment, or view only the single document / resource folder. The document types doctopus can handle include drawings, presentations, docs, and spreadsheets.
2. Efficiently deny one user or all users access to the document/folder you shared with them.
3. Allow for quick commenting on all student documents and email those comments automatically to the students.
4. Efficiently share a single document template with the entire class where each student can edit his or her own document, but you maintain ownership of all documents.
5. Efficiently share multiple different document types (one per student) so that you can differentiate the type of work that each student or student group is doing. (See the video I created.)
6. Efficiently share multiple documents (one document template type / group) with multiple groups.
7. Attach a rubric to a doc using the goobric script (through doctopus.)

Overview Video

Doctopus in action




Applying Goobric to Doctopus for quick assessment



Additional resources:

Click Doctopus Script for more information on the script.

More information on the Goobric Script:

Connecting to Marshall's shared server (aka Marshalldata or U drive) without connecting to Students or Secure wifi

MAC instructions first, followed by PC instructions second

MAC Step 1

MAC Step 2

MAC Step 3

PC Step 1

PC Step 2

Using gClass Folders

The gClass Folders script is a great script associated with Google Forms to quickly and easily create View, Edit, and Dropbox folders for your students.

Click here to access the generic template I discussed in the video.

I have created this tutorial to help explain using gClass Folders. You can also click here for further information.




Thanks for your time!