The last few weeks of the school year are an odd mixture of two parts celebration for what the students have accomplished and one part anticipation for what the next year will hold. Teachers teach classes up until the final moment of the year while making plans and setting expectations for next year.  And sandwiched between what was and what will is that brief respite of time called "summer vacation."

As a classroom teacher it was always interesting to hear a non-teacher describe their expectations for my 'summer vacation.' They believed my vacation was filled with idyllic weeks at the pool, and lazy, lingering days on the porch with a book in my hand and a dripping glass of iced tea. I am happy to say that I did experience those things - but in brief snatches of time rather than weeks.

The truth of a teacher's life is that much of our summer is spent preparing for the next school year - in classes both face-to-face and online, studying and learning, and catching up on those new pedagogies that we didn't have time to explore during the school year.  For many of us summer vacation is a time for personal, professional learning.

If you are looking for specific training for devices or resources this link gives you practice by focusing on each of the apps in the Google Apps For Education suite.  The training modules are stand alone, or you can move to the next step and take the test for certification.  

If your school district is a Google school, this professional development option may be just the one for you!  Follow the highlighted links for all the information

To use this website for your personal, professional growth, you would need to pair it with your own integration practice and reflection options. You might even 

I saved my favorite personal, professional development for last - that is this very website and my Digital Learning Team at Grant Wood.  This site offers a wide variety of professional development options from the TMI YouTube channel to the EdTech Takeout Podcast and this very blog.  For example the previous post was a SMORE with many professional learning classes offered at Grant Wood this summer and in the upcoming school year.  Be sure to check it out!

Spend some time this summer exploring the many links included in the site.  Feel free to reach out to the members of our team as well, each of us brings our own unique teaching experience to our technology consultant work.  ​

Here is the link to this month's update!

This update contains information about iPadU 2016, our new Digital Learning Institute, opportunities for instructional/technology coaches, information about The Edtech Takeout podcast, Think, Make, Innovate Makerspace show, as well as some opportunities to learn about coding! Please feel free to share with other educators who may be interested in the content! 

Please contact me or one of the technology consultants know if you have any questions!

~Stacy Behmer, Coordinator of Digital Learning, Grant Wood AEA

For more posts like this, please subscribe to our blog! You can also connect with us on social media if you Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter or add us to your circles on Google+. We even have our own podcast you can listen to. 

Follow Sam’s account or check out his podcast Beyond the Hour of Code Podcast by Sam Patterson - as he shares amazing resources, companies, and ideas about coding and robot integration into the classroom.

I love learning about ways to rethink robot use, if you have an idea or blog that inspired you, please share with me in the comments section.

~Amber Bridge-Smith
@abridgesmith
​

YouTube is a fantastic resource for teachers. However, there are certain things that we sometimes wish were not visible for our students. Comments are a prefect example. They are frequently unmoderated and contain all kinds of language that we would rather avoid exposing students to. The suggested videos on the sidebar or at the end of a video are another case in point. Then there are the ads. Waiting 30 seconds to view a video is an eternity for some teachers and exposes your students to commercial products you may not want to endorse. So, is there any hope? Indeed there is! Take a look at this list of tools that are guaranteed to give you a distraction free YouTube viewing experience for your classroom.

If you visit viewpure.com and paste in the link to the video you want to watch or share with students, you will instantly be greeted with a clean view that strips out the comments, sidebar and more. You also get a link that you can use to share that specific view with students on Google Classroom, an LMS or by email. If you click the gear for advanced options you can choose the start and end time for your video as well as the option to create a custom URL. They even have a nice bookmarklet you can add to your browser toolbar so that you can clean up videos in one click - no copy and pasting required. Oh, and you get all this for free!

This Chrome extension was built by a teacher, for teachers. It modifies a YouTube URL so that when clicked, you automatically get taken to a full screen version of your video. No sidebar or comments are visible and you get a nice big video player to view your content. As a bonus, you will notice that when you use this extension, the tic tac toe board of videos that you normally see at the end of your video, is also gone. Once the extension is installed, all you do is click it when viewing the video you want to use inside of YouTube. A drop-down menu reveals the modified link for you to copy or preview. Easy, right? The video below has more information. Download the YT Full Fill Chrome extension here.

Watchkin is similar to ViewPure. In fact it does many of the same things so this could come down to a matter of preference. However, it does include a dark theme and full-width option that you don't get in ViewPure. They also have an auto-redirect browser add-on that will automatically redirect any YouTube link you click on to a cleaned up Watchkin version. It takes a little bit of setting up, but could be a worthwhile option. Otherwise, they do have a bookmarklet you can drag to your toolbar, and copying and pasting YouTube URLs also works. 

Installing an adblocker on your browser will often remove all pre-roll ads from YouTube videos. It is a quick and easy solution and is something you basically set and forget. There are adblockers for every modern browser, and several to choose from. Adblock Plus, Adblock and Ublock Origin are some of the better known ones. 

However, be aware that adblockers do more than just block ads on YouTube. They will block ads on every website you visit. Sounds awesome, right?! Well, yes...and no. The internet that we know and love is mostly free for a reason. Ads pay for a lot of the sites that we use on a daily basis. If everyone installed an adblocker, the way we get content from the internet would likely change very quickly. In short, we would have to pay for a lot more of it.

Is it illegal to install an adblocker? No. Does it hurt sites that rely on ad revenue to stay afloat? Yes. I like to think that as educators in the classroom we get a pass on this, however, what you do at home with your personal devices is up to you. Many adblockers let you "whitelist" sites you want to allow ads to be shown on. This could be a good compromise in the free vs paid debate, but regardless of where you stand on this issue, adblockers will block pre-roll ads on YouTube.

Ever wish you could trim a little off the beginning or end of a video? Well, you can. Tubechop.com was created for just that purpose. Simply paste in the URL of your video, drag the sliders to include the content you need, and then click CHOP IT to lose the parts that you don't need. The resulting video is shareable by a link, and can be embedded with an HTML embed code. You also get a pretty good distraction free viewing experience. Try it for yourself at tubechop.com.

~Jonathan Wylie, Technology Consultant, Grant Wood AEA (@jonathanwylie)

For more posts like this, please subscribe to our blog! You can also connect with us on social media if you Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter or add us to your circles on Google+. We even have our own podcast you can listen to and a Makerspace video show!