Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Mural.ly: Collaborative Visual Brainstorming... and more

I love any tool that allows for students to collaborate in real time. I also love tools that allow students to visually organize digital information. Enter Mural.ly.

Mural.ly is a a free (Pro-Version with additional features available) tool that allows you to "stick" images, web-clips, documents in your google drive, shapes, stickers, and backgrounds, to name a few options, onto a board.

This is a great tool for brainstorming, collecting research, creating info-graphics   putting together final presentations to display student work...  There are really endless possibilites for this great tool in the classroom.  You can even create a guided walkthough of your board once you have 10 items. This turns Mural.ly into a presentation tool similar to Prezi.

A simple drag and drop interface makes creating a board quick and easy for all. Integration with Google, makes it easy for students in Google Apps schools to sign in and begin collaborating.  The video at the bottom of this post shows just how easy it is to use Mural.ly.

With the free version their are some limits. You cannot print or download your creation, but you can share the link or embed your board on a webpage. (See the amazing work I created in just 2 minutes!) 

Other great features are the live feed from the board that allows teachers to monitor student progress. I also really like the image search from Google built right in.

Definitely another great tool every teacher should add to their digital tool-kit.






Quick intro video from the folks at Mural.ly

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Using Google Drive to Embed Documents and Video

Your Google Drive provides an easy way to embed Documents and Video into websites.  Any document that Google Drive can open to view (I've tested .doc, .pdf, and .ppt) as well as any image or video files that can be previewed in Google Drive can be embedded by using an embed code that you can grab from the "file" menu.


You MUST make sure to make the file that you want to embed "public" under the sharing menu or else those who visit your website will not be able to see the content of your embed.  Google is kind enough to display the sharing settings on your file above the embed link to remind you to change it if not set to public. 
The video below was embedded from my Google Drive:



Video credits to the Students of Padua Academy. Thanks for making a great video that always get's my students talking about Women's Suffrage.