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Thank You for 20 Years.

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After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many yay me moments. But after 20 years, I think I'll soak this one in.
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YouTube Video Editor

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Having a class set of iPads in my room has allowed me rely heavily on the iMovie app as a platform for video editing in my classroom. It's worked well and students have been able to use it with great easy.  At times, the features of the iOS version are not as robust as the macOS version and that leads to some frustrations. But, it has worked well until students want to be able to work on projects outside of class and need to check out an iPad.

This fall, we are going 1:1 with chromebooks.  So, I've been looking for alternatives that will maximize this new access to technology.  I thought I had found one in WeVideo, but it would cost $750 per year for my 150 students to be able to use it.  So, that is off the table.

When I was pursuing my Google Certifications this summer, I discovered the power that YouTube has within as a web based video editing tool.  In conjunction with the graduate course I am taking right now, I created some video tutorials and collected them on a website.




YouTube Video Editor

There are many different video editors out there, but most of them are not free. YouTube Video Editor is free and very powerful. It is completely web based, so it works on devices such as Chromebooks.



With YouTube editor you can

  • Combine multiple clips from your YouTube
  • Trim and split video
  • Adjust speed of video
  • Adjust color and add filters to video
  • Add "stock footage" from Creative Commons
  • Add music tracks
  • Add photos
  • Add speech bubbles and titles
  • Embed hyperlinks within a video
  • And a lot more

If you are looking for a place to edit videos in a web based environment, I recommend checking out YouTube Video Editor. It may not be as good as the macOS version of iMovie, but you don't need a mac to use it.  The fact that it's free and can run on a Chromebook makes it an essential option in my classroom.

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