Instagram and Vine

Instagram and Vine are awesome social networking tools that allows you to share your memories, ideas, and just every day life!

Instagram
What is this Instagram that all the celebrities and cool kids are using? Well, it's a free social networking app for all people (even the not so cool ones like me) that lets you share pictures and short 15 second videos. It is available for iOS, Android, and Windows phone.  It is similar to Facebook and Twitter. It displays your profile and your feed. People that follow you will see your posts and you will see posts of people you follow as well. Your profile is public when you first create it and then can be set to private where you will be able to approve who follows your posts. You may use the search tab to look for hashtags or specific users. A neat thing about Instagram is that when you capture your photos or video, it allows you to edit. It has 24 filters for photos and 13 for videos. You can edit the brightness, sharpness, add frames, etc. You can also configure your Instagram to posts pictures and videos in your other social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr automatically when you press the "share" button. Instagram would be an efficient tool in the classroom and library to share presentations, ideas, lessons, book reviews, book trailers, and many more neat things. 

Weathering, erosion, and deposition

A photo posted by Rebecca Ybarra Cabriales (@rebeccacabriales) on Nov 20, 2015 at 9:15pm PST

Natural Bridge Caverns

A photo posted by Rebecca Ybarra Cabriales (@rebeccacabriales) on Nov 20, 2015 at 9:17pm PST

Vine

Vine is a video sharing app that is owned by Twitter. It must be downloaded to a smart phone either on iOS devices or Android devices.  When you sign up, all your Twitter account information transfers over such as your biography, photo, and name. This app allows you to film short, separate instances and then allows you to create a six second video. Each video plays in a continuous loop. You can publish to your Twitter timeline or embed into a web page or blog. Your Vine will look like an animated image (GIF) on your Twitter stream. It has an Explore tab that allows you to search for popular categories. The activity tab allows you to see who follows you, comments, and likes. The interface looks very similar to Instagram showing you a scrollable feed of all your friend's Vines. Some disadvantages of Vine is that you can't save a video to your camera roll for later use. Vine doesn't have social network buttons to be able to share of Facebook or Tumblr like Instagram does. Vine is an easy to use tool and can be used to review book talks, author's visits, presentations, A.R. kick-off parade, and many more recordable moments.

Screencasts

Screencasts are a great way to capture a computer screen through a video. This tool is great when wanting to explain to your students or any audience a particular website or how to use a specific Web 2.0 tool. Below are some screencasts that I created using different programs. Take a look below:

Screencast-o-matic

Screencast-o-matic is free and easy to use. I've used it before to create a screencast on how to utilize the school online card catalog. At first I was a bit reluctant to use this tool because I was afraid of messing up and having to start all over again. I learned to use some features that made my presentation flow and easy to record. I also like how easy it is to share the video. You can share with an email, social media websites, and Youtube. I posted this video easily on Youtube and the uploading didn't take long. You can either get the URL or embed code to post to your blog or share with others.




Jing

Jing is free and easy to use. It is alot like Screencast-o-matic. It has the same features. For example, when you are recording, you have the option to pause, gather your thoughts, and continue. When you review the final outcome of the video, you can't even tell there was a pause in between. I really hard a hard time getting the embed code to work on the blog. I used the embed code provided and couldn't get the video to view on the blog as I did with screencast-o-matic.  I watched and followed the tutorial given by Jing. The file also takes very long to upload.

URL     http://www.screencast.com/t/f77FY0fQm

Link for Video:   rcabriales_sciencefair


Screenr

To my surprise, I went into the Screenr website today. I had viewed it about a week ago and was already planning on using it for my blog today. As soon as I went into the webpage, I got a message that said that Screenr is retired as of November 11, 2015. What a bummer because it was free and easy to use as well. This is what they had to say:

Sadly, we're retiring Screenr on November 11, 2015.

As you might already know, Screenr’s recording capability is based on Java RE (Runtime Environment), which is rapidly becoming antiquated. For example, Google Chrome doesn’t support Java RE anymore. So Screenr can’t run there. And on other browsers, Java support is also limited, causing constant problems for users.

Because we at Screenr pride ourselves on providing a superior customer experience, these issues are simply unacceptable. And there’s no way around them.

If you’d like to download your videos, please do so before November 11th. After then, you will no longer be able to log into Screenr. However, all of your embedded videos and links to your videos will continue to work.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our services as much as we’ve enjoyed providing them to you.

The Screenr Team

Cartoons and Comics

Tellagami 

I love love Tellagami! This app is only available for iPad or iPhone. There is a free app but, I purchased the Tellagami edu which has more options when creating your avatar. You can change the hair style, hair color, clothes, shoes,background, and emotions. It is easy to use. All you do is create your avatar and voice record or type your message. You can save and share via social media. It also gives you an embed and video code. I will be using this with students to explain concepts they are learning. For example, they can present a book report and describe the story elements.

ToonDoo

This cartoon creator is easy to use and free. As soon as you create a free account, you can start creating. You first choose your layout which as many options. Next, you get to choose your background, characters, props, text boxes, and clip art. One feature that I really liked was the "search" button that helps you search for any character or item you might be looking for. It was easy to save. You could share with the public, just your friends, or with social media. I was able to get and use the embed code.

By rcabriales | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Pixton

Pixton is a great Web 2.0 tool for visual learners. It makes classroom learning so much fun.Students can create scenes and dialogues for their comics and share with their teachers and friends. Pixton for fun is free. Teachers may purchase for 200 students for $8.99 a month and a school or district may purchase for unlimited students for $1.75 per student/year. Pixton can be used to present book reports or discuss favorite books like the comic below. Comics can also be used to describe the story elements of a story or the may also support other content areas. Once a comic is created, you can either print, download, or share. You may share publicly,  with friends or  through social media.

MakeBeliefsComix

This is another cool comic generator tool that requires no registration. It is free and it is pretty easy to use. Compared two the first two comic generators mentioned, I did not like the fact that you couldn't save to the site. Either you print or save to your own computer. It doesn't give you an embed code either. It doesn't have many backgrounds or objects to insert, but it does have plenty of realistic looking characters. It gives you the option of using three sizes of bubbles. You don't have the option to drag and make them larger or smaller. Overall, it is great to use in the classroom where some students might not have e-mails to register with. They can create and print right away. These comics can be used as informal assessments to check if students' have grasped the concept being taught.