Technology Tips for Educators

Best practices and tutorials for educators, students, and the general public.

Case Study: Webinar-Based Professional Development

Former CMES Outreach Coordinator Anna Mudd wrote the following case study on conducting online professional development for teachers. It includes valuable advice on how to host a professional development webinar—from choosing the best format to support your material to troubleshooting technical issues—gathered from the Outreach Program's experience developing and running online educator workshops. 

Tutorial: Creating a Google Alert

Creating a Google Alert allows you to stay informed on a region, country, political situation, or subject in real time. Google does this by sending relevant links to you by email at your preferred frequency. The links will include articles, news stories, videos, features, blogs, and other current search results on the topics you choose.

Open Google.

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Click "more."

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Under "more" there will be several options. Click "alerts."

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In alerts, enter the search terms, how often you would like to receive the alert, the number of results you wish to be alerted to, and your email address.

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A summary of your alerts will pop up with options to edit the information you have entered.

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Tutorial: Embedding a Video into PowerPoint with a Mac

Embedding videos in a PowerPoint presentation allows you to build presentations and classroom lessons that can display online videos without an internet connection.

Follow these simple steps to download a video to your desktop and insert it into a PowerPoint with our example below featuring a YouTube video from an Outreach Program event at which artist Omar Offendum performed “Damascus.”

First, go to your desired video on YouTube.

Copy the URL by highlighting the URL then clicking Edit → Copy

Open video a converter such as http://keepvid.com.

Edit → Paste your YouTube URL into the URL box at the top of the screen.

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Click download.

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A screen will pop up with your video and a list of links to potentially download.

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Select the “Download MP4.”

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And save the video to your Desktop.

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Next, open PowerPoint to a blank slide.

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Click “Media” then “insert movie."

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A finder box (titled “Insert Movie”) will pop up. 

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Then select your video.  In our case, the video is “Damascus – Omar Offendum.mp4”.

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Click “Choose.”

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A black box will appear in your PowerPoint slide with a window that asks you when you would like your video to play. Choose your preference.

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Enjoy your presentation!