Tech Classes, Resources and Thoughts For Educators
Offered By Eric Westland And Fresno Pacific University
Here is a lesson on creating a book jacket in Canva with an emphasis on using as many of the AI tools as possible. They are easy to learn and once you discover them, you will wonder how you lived without them.
Feel free to use this with your students.
Canva for Education is the world’s largest free, online design platform that enables teachers and students to easily create beautiful and engaging designs. Bring your ideas to life with over 60,000 ready-to-use educational templates including worksheets, lesson plans, presentations, posters, newsletters, class schedules, book reports, infographics, and more.
K-12 teachers and students qualify for a free Canva ‘Pro’ account without limitations and since it only requires an Internet connection, it can operate on any device, including Chromebooks, iPads and even smartphones. Canva also seamlessly integrates with popular learning management systems such as Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom. Seamlessly collaborate with your team in the same document at the same time. Create talking presentations and pre-record your presentation to share multiple times. Share or export projects as a link, website, PowerPoint, PDF, MP4, and more. Join the thousands of classroom teachers already using Canva to instruct with visually interactive and fun content, both in the classroom and online.
Save Up To $45!
Use this code to save $15 per course: Eric45
The Douglas DC-3 (the military version was the C-47) first flew in the 1930s, made commercial passenger flight affordable, flew in many wars, and still flies today.
Coming soon will be the screencasts for completing this project and they will be published on my YouTube channel. Like many of my projects, this one is:
I’ll post the link for the screencasts here once they are released. If you want to be notified, do the usual YouTube subscribe thing and click on the bell 🙂
Here is the link for the 
DC-3 Blueprint we will use when modeling.
Actual software applications usually cannot be installed on a Chromebook, which usually means that editing video has to be done in the cloud, like at wevideo.com, which was neither free nor convenient for schools and students.
With the advent of being able to install some Linux apps on Chromebooks, developers have bundled together some Linux open-source applications that can easily be installed (You don’t need to know Linux) via Flatpak.
There are several choices, but my favorite is OpenShot. It is a typical non-linear video editor that students can learn easily. It even comes with a nice library of transitions and effects.
You are not going to be able to edit the next Star Wars movie with it on a Chromebook, but for presentations, science experiments, debates, book reports – you name it – it provides the best option for editing video on a Chromebook.
Here is how to install it on a Chromebook:
Up until recently, editing RAW camera images on a Chromebook has not been possible. However, two RAW editors are now available – Raw Therapee and Darktable. Both are very powerful and can now be installed on a Chromebook. Of the two, both can do everything I could ever want to do, but I prefer Raw Therapee simply because it is easier to use, at least for me.
Here is how to add RawTherapee to your Chromebook.
At first, it may look intimidating to use, which is understandable as it can do so much, but the basics are easy to access. These two YouTube guides will convince you in less than 15 minutes that if your students are using Chromebooks, RawTherapee is something you will want to include in your lessons.
There are several good options for capturing screenshots and recording video screencasts. Techsmith sells two fantastic programs, Snagit and Camtasia. I have purchased both of them, but for those that don’t need that level of horsepower, Techsmith Capture is a great choice, which borrows some seasoned basic elements from Snagit and Camtasia. It can be mastered in minutes, captures both images and video (even your webcam), and then easily shares them to your free screencast.com account.
Highly recommended! Here’s a brief diddy on how to use it.
This is a series of video screencast tutorials that demonstrate how to create a pencil using SketchUp. It is a great introductory activity.
Students love doing these activities, but they don’t want to have anyone show them for 70 minutes on a projector screen and then set them free. They also don’t want to have to figure out written directions (did you ever open up the shrink-wrapped manual?). They just want to jump in and create. This format allows students to start from the beginning and model as they watch. If they skip a step or have trouble, they can go back and rewatch that portion of the tutorial. If they find another way to do the same thing, that’s even better. If a student misses a day, they have not missed any instruction.
The screencast is indexed giving students the advantage of quickly find out where they left off from the day before or go back and rewatch a segment for better understanding.
Directions, supplemental files and SketchUp files saved at various stages can be found by downloading the document below.
[mc4wp_form id=”316″]
Have your students use Pixlr to create their own Time magazine cover using the free online image editing site, Pixlr.
While this lesson can be completed on almost any device that can browse the Web, it is ideally suited for students using Chromebooks as they cannot install desktop editing programs like GIMP and Photoshop.
The screencast is indexed, so you can take students to a specific point each day and/or they can easily return to a previous chapter to go over a step again.
You can view the screencast or many others on my YouTube Channel.
Have your students use GIMP to create their own Time magazine cover using the free open-source program, GIMP.
The screencast is indexed, so you can take students to a specific point each day and/or they can easily return to a previous chapter to go over a step again.
You can view the screencast on my YouTube Channel.
Additionally, you can download the files at different stages of completion to share with a student that may need a “fresh start”
[mc4wp_form id=”316″]