Have you tried this free tool, Talktyper? Free speech to text dictation software in a browser

I have only recently come across this free, webtool called Talktyper https://www.talktyper.com/. Admittedly one can now use Google Docs and the Chrome browser for dictation that types up your words, but what I like about Talktyper is that it works in any browser.  What is Talktyper? It is a free speech to text dictation software that works in any browser. How does it work? All you have to do is open your browser and type in www.talktyper.com. When it opens click on the on-screen microphone...

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10 ideas for podcasting in your classroom using Audacity

Submitted by Fiona Beal The free application, Audacity, has so much potential for students who have access to it on a desktop or laptop. In a previous post we showed how to download the free application ‘Download and use Audacity on your desktop or laptop for audio podcasting‘ These are just a few ideas on ways of using it. Make an audio advertisementWith audacity you can: Insert sound clips, and background music Save audio clips from websites Create an audio voice over to ‘sell’...

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Create attractive, visual collections of digital resources using Symbaloo.com

Submitted by Fiona Beal Heard of Symbaloo? Symbaloo.com is decidedly one of my favourite bookmarking sites!  Let me show you an example. This is a collection of National Geographic e-book readers collected on a Symbaloo webmix for easy access. http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/natgeobooks  What is Symbaloo? It is a free visual bookmarking site – a fun, simple and colourful way to organize and store all your digital resources in different categories in the cloud. It allows you to curate c...

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Use Chirpstory for archiving tweets from Twitter events

Often, after an exciting event one wants to create a chronological story from all the tweets shared on a specially created Twitter hashtag as a memory of the events before the tweets disappear . My usual tweet archiver has not been working well lately so I decided to try Chirpstory.com created by a team in Japan to curate the tweets from the recent Google Innovation Tour in Cape Town. (I wrote a post about the Google Innovation Tour in Cape Town which can be read here.) 1. Create a Chirpstory account a...

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Tips on how to create great videos using the online video-creation tool, WeVideo

Submitted by Fiona Beal Digital Storytelling is all the rage currently. One of the online tools that one can use to create a story is WeVideo.  WeVideo has several pricing plans one of which is a free plan. I am particularly interested in this application as it is one of the Apps that integrates with Google Drive.  Richard Byrne has written about this feature in a post called ‘Create Videos Online with WeVideo in Google Drive’.                 &nb...

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Be wary of unintentionally downloading unwanted software from the Internet…and what to do about it when it happens!

Submitted by Fiona Beal Have you ever downloaded a recommended application from the Internet and in so doing downloaded some unwanted third party software as well? Yes? It happens to us all at some time or other I think. It happened to me yesterday on my Windows laptop! Yesterday I put out a tweet about a useful application program that I had discovered and liked, and someone replied mentioning a similar application that they use successfully.  So, of course, I decided to download their recommended ...

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Microsoft tools #4 – Use Photosynth to capture the world in 3D

Submitted by Fiona Beal Microsoft’s Photosynth is a powerful set of tools for capturing and viewing the world in 3D. You can share your creations with your friends on Facebook, publish them to Bing, or embed them in your own blog or Web site. Here’s the big picture from Microsoft  http://bit.ly/1ndqR9p  How to get started • Go to http://photosynth.net/ and join. • It will ask you to download the application on to your computer. Ideas for the classroom 1. Give a tour of y...

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Microsoft Tools #2; Photostory 3 for Windows is a great free classroom tool

Submitted by Fiona Beal Photostories are digital stories shown in a sequence of photographs. You can write on the photographs, narrate what is happening, add music and effects and turn the whole digital story into a movie.  It is a fantastic programme and can be used in a multitude of ways from Grade 1 – Adult! Microsoft has a marvelous free tool called Photostory 3 for Windows that is very useful to use in a technology-integrated classroom. If Photostory 3 is not already part of your Windo...

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Microsoft Tools #1: Explore the magic of Microsoft’s SongSmith

Submitted by Fiona Beal Microsoft’s SongSmith is such a fun free tool to use in the classroom. If you join Microsoft’s Microsoft Educator Network as an educator you can download and install this programme for free. It is really worth it! I have found that it mainly works best from a laptop – I haven’t tried it on a tablet as yet.  SongSmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Basically, you choose a musical style and beat from their options, sing i...

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Have you tried using Diigo for bookmarking websites? It’s a must!

  Submitted by Fiona Beal What do you do when you find a good article on the Internet and you want to keep a record of it it later use? The best way is to ‘bookmark’ it quickly and simply. Bookmarking is an online process. So the question becomes ‘How do you bookmark sites when you are surfing the Internet?’  There are so many superb ways to do this ‘bookmarking’ but one of my favourite bookmarking sites is Diigo (http://diigo.com) because of all the amazing options that it off...

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