Tech Tuesday for February 4

Happy Tuesday everyone. I have a couple of goodies to pass your way this week. Take a look and give them a try. As always, feel free to drop me a line if you have something you want to share with me or a question to ask. Have a great day!

DragonTape

DragonTape is a cool program that allows you to make mix-tapes of YouTube videos. You can select the videos you want, edit them together and play them on one continuous loop. This is perfect for the teachers that like to show multiple clips for class instruction. Instead of bouncing from one video to the next and having all of that load time, you can put all of the videos together and hit play and pause as you need. You are given one link for all of the videos and you can share that however you want.
When you are done, you can embed the mix on your website and share through social media. This is great for sharing videos that students might have missed in one spot on a website instead of having them bounce through different videos. There is even an app on iTunes if you want to mix on the go.

Here is a mix I made of my favorite SoulPancake videos guaranteed to make you smile and possibly shed a tear. (If the video is not playing, click the link to check it out.)

Random Name Picker

Here is a simple tool that adds a little pizazz to selecting students for various things in the classroom. This is a free tool that allows you to enter the names of your students and spin the wheel. When the wheel stops, the student's name appears and they have been selected. What is nice about this tool is that it gives the teacher and option to remove the name after they have been chosen. This eliminates the chance of the student being called on more than once if that is a concern. What is neat, is that this spinner can be placed on a website for future uses. You can create it once, embed it, and come back to it when you need it on your own website. It's a little tool that can make some tasks in class a bit more fun.