Tech Tool 'O' the Week: Viewbix

I am not sure where or when I ran across this, on a little sticky note inside my sketchbook I just noticed the word"Viewbix" written on it.  After a quick search, I remembered why I wanted to blog this.
Viewbix works with several video sharing sites to create interactive apps that can be embedded into videos.  Did your head just explode?  Mine did when I first was reading about it.  The pic below can give you a little bit more of an idea:

With Viewbix, you can take a video and add widgets to it.  The menu along the side shows some of the many things that you can add to your video to enrich any activity or lesson explanation, giving students options to continue learning more about the lesson, watching more videos, completing a document for an assignment, or visiting a webpage with more information.

I can see this as being a great way to introduce concepts to students, embedding this video into your website or blog so students can view it and continue along with attached activities and assignments.  Perfect for the kid who missed the day you introduced a concept in the classroom as well!  The power of this free tool is hard to measure, but the potential is enormous.

Viewbix

How to Think Creatively

Tony Schwartz, author of the book Be Excellent at Anything wrote an exceptional article about thinking creatively for The Atlantic.  With the help of Betty Edwards (Artists and Art teachers know her as the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) Schwartz was able to develop an understanding that the traditional right-brain-left brain separation method of thinking does not force us as learners or creators to choose a side, but that real creativity comes from moving back and forth between the two modes.  In his article, Schwartz lays out a simple 4 step process that can be used to help boost your creative output.  I think that this article is useful to me as a way to pattern student projects and "toggle" between both left and right-brain-oriented activities to not only maximize student creative output, but also to break away from "subject overload" and increase motivation in student learning.
Read Schwartz's article here