How to create great video memories on the iPhone and iPad

While I’d like to think someday I’ll be a great videographer that probably won’t happen anytime soon. Thankfully the memories section in the iOS photos app has you covered. Apart from a few quirks, the memories app will help you quickly put together your favorite memories into a nice video.  You can quickly create awesome movies to preserve your memories using just the iOS photos app. Here is a quick guide on using the photos app to make a video memory.

How to get to the memories app

  1. Open the photos app
  2. At the bottom select the second icon labeled memories
  3. There will be several memory videos already created.


How to customize

You have to play the memory video first before you can customize or edit the Memories movie.  If the video looks exactly like you want and the music is to your liking, then you can go on to the steps below to preserve this Memories video.  Otherwise you can edit the the video by selecting the “Edit” link in the upper right hand corner.

(in iOS 10 it will be a small icon with lines on the bottom right) .The easiest edits are to change the Mood of the music and change the length of the video as shown above.  You can set the movie length to short, medium, or long.  You can also change the music to dreamy, sentimental, gentle, chill, happy, uplifting, epic, club, or extreme.  The photos Memories app will automatically update the movie with your new choice.

Choose more pictures or videos

The app does a pretty good job choosing pictures, but what happens if you have a picture in your Memory video that you don’t want? You can choose not to include some of the pictures or videos in the memories video.  You can also add more pictures and videos to your Memories movie. 

Select the Photos & Videos to edit what pictures are used in the Memories video.  You can scroll along the bottom to see all the pictures included in your Memories video.  Tap on the picture or video you want to edit.  You can change the length of the video clip or you can remove the picture or video by putting it in the trash.  (It does not delete the picture on your iPhone or iPad)

 

You can also add more pictures by pressing the + sign at the bottom left.

Edit title and song choice

Now that you have the pictures you want you can edit the title and song.  You can either choose from Apples song Soundtracks or music you have saved from iTunes on your iPhone or iPad.

How to save and export video memories

Since the Memories movies are always changing you need to preserve your favorite memories so they won’t get changed or removed.  To preserve the memory movie scroll to the bottom of all the pictures and then select “Add to Memories”.

 

Having finalized the memories video I highly recommend you export and save your video. Ideally you would think the logical export option would be iMovie but alas I was dearly disappointed. You can indeed export to iMovie but there is little you can do since the whole memory is exported as a video. To save your Memories movie file press the box with the up arrow at the bottom of the screen where you edit the Memories movie.

You now have several options on how you want to export your Memories video.


https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht207023

P.S. Memory movies only work on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. You won’t see Memory movies on your Mac (for now).

How to get rid of your math curriculum

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Math is the subject parents love to teach right?  Wrong! Even though I have a minor in math, I can still get frustrated trying to explain what seems like simple concepts to my children.  The traditional math curriculum utilizes a number of worksheets to cover each new topic.  At our house many times there is a search for the math book before we can even get started.  We have tried several different math curriculum. The problem we encounter is the different learning styles of our different children.

My goal is not to have my child finish their X grade math book.  My goal is for my child to master the math concepts.  I know I never mastered some of the most basic math concepts so I vowed that my children would master math.  Since we started homeschooling I have tried to chose curriculum with that goal in mind.

Most curriculum is still based on the grade levels with lots of workbook activities.  With math, you usually need instructions at all levels.  Sometimes while trying to teach my kids, I would show one of my kids a Khan video.  My daughter was having problems recently so I decided to look at Khan academy once again.  Below is an example of one of the Khan videos.


Multiplication 5:  2-digit times a 2-digit number: Multiplying a 2-digit number times a 2-digit number

I was surprised that Khan academy has been updated to taking tutoring to the next level and paves the way for eliminating math curriculum.  Now at Khan academy you can track your childs progress along with watching all the tutorial videos. Students can also practice on the computer with thier progress being recorded.  You can create a mentor account at khanacademy.org.  You can then add each of your children under your account.  To do this you just log into your account and then add /createchild to the end of the web address and then press enter

www.khanacademy.org/createchild

The only problem I had was that my passwords I chose were too weak and therefore not accepted.  Finally I capitalized the first letter of my password and it was then accepted.  Once you have added your children you can then watch their progress as their mentor.

Creating accounts for your children on Khan academy now allows you to track the progress of your children.  There are some other advantages also to using Khan academy.

Advantages:

  1. I don’t get frustrated with explaining again and again.
  2. They can watch the videos as often as they like
  3. Self paced learning – learn for mastery.
  4. Record of individual progress.
To see more of Khan academy in action you can watch the Ted talk about Khan Academy.

Last but not least there is also an iPad/iphone app for Khan academy.

So have I gotten rid of my math curriculum?  Not yet but in the future hopefully I can track the progress of my children with Khan academy.  Who know maybe one day I can just say we use Khan academy for our curriculum.  What do you use for your math curriculum?  Do you use a tablet in place of worksheets?

Homeschooling with the iPad

The iPad is great for homeschooling.  Each week it seems like there are new uses for the iPad.  We are still trying to figure out the best use of the iPad for our homeschool.

Here are two videos of how we are currently using the iPad for our homeschool work.

Here is a short video of my daughter drawing a map with Adobe Ideas App.

Here is a short video showing my son entering the Latin Vocab word into keynote.

Teachers list 20 iPad apps for education teachers

There are a number of schools that have started using the iPad.  Have you ever wondered what apps they use?  The video below shows some of the apps educators are using.

20 Apps in 20 Minutes Ipad Edition from TJ Houston on Vimeo.

In this webinar @tjhouston and @llacrosse will overview 20 apps in 20 minutes. These are the apps that were used in the classroom and found to be effective supplements to the curriculum. They were used with 5th grade science students while working with ipads for an entire school year.

While there is no perfect list of apps that will be guaranteed to work with all students in all classrooms, this list may be a good starting point for seeing the variety of apps available for the classroom. The types of apps available to teachers and students range from basic consumption of information apps to creation apps that allow teachers to provide a platform for students to showcase growth and learning. Each teacher and group of students will benefit from working to individualize their class with app usage. The best apps are those that work for YOUR content, YOUR class structure, and YOUR needs.