#FLIPCLASS Tip: Organize Your Videos by Standardizing Links

I've written previously about organizing your videos per unit or chapter in a playlist, and of course, you can send out your videos via Remind, post them on Edmodo, have kids subscribe to your Youtube channel, or host them on your own website, but here's one more idea (that I think is more user-friendly if you're keeping accountability via kids notebooks instead of online).

Use a link shortening app or website like Bitly, customize the shortened links to your name and objectives, and follow the same pattern for all of your videos. Aligning your links' names to objectives or standards already listed in your syllabus will help students and parents match up which video goes with what needs more work or is to be made up.

Here's what I mean - I have a shared syllabus with 3 other teachers in my department for our Algebra 1b course.

Rather than simply posting my videos to Youtube and then sharing out a long, randomized link, or even YouTube's shortened version, I take each url and shorten to bitly.com/baker_starks_**, where the end of the link is a number that corresponds to the standards listed in that image above. So, if you go to bitly.com/baker_starks_5, you get my video on the Distributive Property.

But if you're posting the link on Edmodo and Remind, what does it matter that you've shortened it?

Good question, reader. Do you students ever tell you they "lost the text from Remind" or "couldn't login to Edmodo?" Following a standardized name for your links gives you another defense and the student another chance to get their notes done because if they remember the suffix you always include, they can make some guesses as to the ending.

Why not just name the videos as the standards are worded on your syllabus?

Bitly links must be unique, so only one person in the world can "own" the link to something like bitly.com/orderofoperations. You might be able to sneak in some, but I'd bet at some point you're going to run into a naming issue and have to deviate slightly from the way it was written on your syllabus. Then you've made it HARDER to find that video, instead of easier.

Curate: 4 Ways To Use Storify to Focus Your Research and Ideas

I felt this way often as a student - (who are we kidding, I feel this way as a blogger often, too) - you sit down to write out an essay, research outline, or journal entry, and have a general, broad idea of where you want to go, but CANNOT BEGIN. Where do you begin?

Let the social media search tools at Storify.com give you some ideas. Here are 4 ways to try:


1. Get unstuck.
There's a search box on the landing page. Use it a little like Google's "I'm feelin' lucky" and see what a word gives you. I used "statistics."

I'm going to use the link with that guy with his back to us to find alternative texts/blogs for my AP Stats students to read. Boom. You could do this in your classroom in a current events discussion, or pre-reading activity to activate prior knowledge or misconceptions on the day's/week's topic.

2. Use Storify to archive everything said on a given hashtag, or everything your friends have said during a given time period. Tonight I used Storify to produce an archive of our #statschat.

Archiving tweets/status updates/images can help you find that one tweet you saw that one time in context with others. What's it matter that you found it, if you can't remember why? :)

3. Compile multiple resources on the same subject. 

Once you go to create a story, you can search Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Search for results on your keywords. Here are some resources on "solving linear equations."

Solving Linear Equations http://sfy.co/gH0Q 

A teacher could use this to compile reading/viewing material for in or out of class, students could be tasked with developing their own stories as content experts in a jigsawed lesson, or students could use Storify as digital notecards for their sources on research papers. If you trying to co-teach/co-learn to make your students' studies more relevant, you could use these multiple sources (that kids find) as a place to begin study choices. I wrote more about another tool for co-learning and relevance here.

4. Digital Storytelling 

Have students create a timeline or narrative of an event using news articles, images, video, and tweets. This digital storytelling could lead students in investigating content-specific material to model their understanding of how something happened and why it is/was important. Students could do this with any history subject, a new scientific theory, economics, mathematical problem solving, etc. I've done mine on the 2012 Cardinals' playoff run.

"Save to Google Drive" Extension - It's Not Going to Replace Your Social Bookmark Service

Mashable ran a post Dec. 12th about a new Chrome extension called "Save to Google Drive" (Chrome web store), but the service doesn't quite fulfill as advertised. ("New Chrome Extension Lets You Save Web Content to Google Drive")

As I was drafting this post in my head throughout the day, thinking of possibilities, I was hoping "Save to Google Drive" was going to replace Evernote or Diigo as my web-clipping/bookmarking utilities and integrate seamlessly for anyone running Google Drive.

I had visions of my students browsing in Chrome, saving their bookmarks in Drive, and sharing that folder with me and others in work groups.  Here's what I found out.

This extenstion is fantastic for syncing photos to Google Drive to save within my organization or classroom, but do I even want it there?

Why Does This Even Matter For My Classroom?

Sadly, I'd say it really doesn't. Bo.lt is a good service for anyone that wants a reliable backup to pages they archive or create (which sounds like every teacher who has EVER made a webquest), but its not even that great as a social bookmarker for students because it gives me a link I would still need to paste to Evernote or Diigo. I also continue to favor these two options over this new extension because both work well with iPads (Evernote app, Diigo app). Sure, Drive is cloud storage, and has its own app, but I feel let down by the Google Apps experience for my students on the iPad more often than I'm satisfied.

Google Certified Teacher, +Molly Schroeder wrote about it here on Chromebook Classroom, so perhaps she has a different take. Her environment is certainly different (Chromebook v. iPad), and sometimes in technology, that's all the difference.