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Cyflwyniad handi i'r Fframwaith

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Handy intro to the DCF

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Tri cham ar gyfer cynhyrchu
3 steps for producing, in Welsh

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Delweddau heb hawlfraint Copyright free images

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Delweddau heb hawlfraint Copyright free images

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Syniadau da ar gyfer gwefannau llawn lluniau di-hawlfraint
Ideas of useful websites for copyright free images

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So often we want to find images to use in our everyday work. Google images doesn't really provide the answers when it comes to high quality CC free images. Digital citizenship is high on the agenda for pupils and students but equally so for teachers too. In this post I'll share my favourite places to get high-quality images for you to use in your resources, presentations, posters and more.

Pixabay has been high on my list for this purpose for some time. It allows you to not only search for high quality photos but also illustrations, vector graphics and videos.

Simply sign up and away you go. I find the iOS app really handy on my iPad too and there's an Android version available too.

The creative commons team have created a search engine for searching for images that you can use and adapt that meet your requirements. You can easily access the site here.

A site I am returning to more and more (probably more frequently than Pixabay) is Pexels. This site is purely photos but with so many high-quality photos in one place, it's a one-stop shop for images for me.

They are really clear on the licensing on the images on their site too although unfortunately there is no app (yet) for searching through Pixels, although it does work reasonably well in your browser on a tablet or phone.

On the topic of Pexels too I should also do a shout out for the Pexels Videos site. Just like Pexels the videos are free and can be used for any purpose. They are awesome.

Here's an example video I made using video clips found on Pexels Video:

Unsplash is a seriously clean site featuring some jaw-droppingly gorgeous images. Be aware, you may end up just spending your time scrolling through all of the beautiful photos on Unsplash. As with Pexels, all images are free for you to use:

Ok so this site only contains patterns but they are really good. They're great for backgrounds on text images you might be looking to create for resources, fliers, adverts and more. There are lots of themes to search and browse through. The Amazing Pattern Library is definitely worth a look!. The site design is pretty awesome too alongside some fantastic contemporary pattern designs.

There are so many different sites you can use to find brilliant imagery to use in your work. When I first started teaching I used to be terrible at wall displays and how I presented my work. I know now that with some simple tools and sites, such as with these resources, you can create some very professional outcomes.

I recently found too an awesome site and plugin for Chrome called ' Polarr Plugin'. The Polarr Photo Editor app is a great tool. What this plugin does is that it enables you to directly open any photo you find on the web that you want to edit with its impressive features.

Just a few little tweaks can give you a much richer image for you to use, should you wish to play with the filters and the settings as this image shows with a few adjustments to it from the original image for the title of this post.

Of course there are lots of other tools you can use to edit photos but if you're working with images online, it's a great little plugin to add to your browser.

And finally, if you've read this far - please check out the Piktab extension for Chrome. This handy little extension will bring you image searching of the sites mentioned above and many more. Just remember to check licensing on some of the sites searched such as FreePiks.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. If you have any sites or tools that you would recommend of like me to check out then please do get in touch. You can get in touch via my contact page or you can tweet me at @ICTEvangelist.

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The best sites for finding high-quality, free images - ICTEvangelist

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So often we want to find images to use in our everyday work. Google images doesn't really provide the answers when it comes to high quality CC free images. Digital citizenship is high on the agenda for pupils and students but equally so for teachers too.

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Sgwrs TED talk am bwysigrwydd gofal digidol i bawb
Ted Talk about the importance of taking care with digital decisions

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Gwerthuso Gwaith Digidol Evaluating Digital Work

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Gwerthuso Gwaith Digidol Evaluating Digital Work

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Hyfforddiant staff @BroEdern ar sut i werthuso a gwella gwaith digidol
@BroEdern staff training on evaluating and improving digital work

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Egwyddorion creu tasgau digitol effeithiol

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Guardian: The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/maps/timeline?...

Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices.

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/

Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.

Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com/settings/secur...

Google stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic ...

Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s...

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your phone, the businesses you've bought from, the products you've bought through Google ...

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day ...

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/takeout

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.

This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you've ever sent or been sent.

Click here to see your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic "girl").

Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It's just a joke at this stage).

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.

And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.

(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)

The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.

Here's the search history document, which has 90,000 different entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to show how much damage this information can do).

Here's my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I've ever added, whether I actually attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing job, and what time I arrived).

This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've ever made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.

This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).

This is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos

Every email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.

I'll just do a short summary of what's in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.

First, every Google Ad I've ever viewed or clicked on, every app I've ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I've ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I've ever installed or searched for.

They also have every image I've ever searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I've ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.

This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you're not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.

This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because - to hell with it! - I want to watch cute dog videos.

A caption was corrected on 28 March 2018 to replace "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows 10".

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Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you | Dylan Curran

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone.

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Tips for better graphic design

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The Key to Better Graphic Design and 5 Ways to Nail It
Amy Copperman |

The right words are important when it comes to promoting your brand. But without smart visual treatment, the potential impact of those words can be lost and your message hindered. Conversely, when brilliant copy is showcased in visually strategic ways, your message can soar to new heights. The key (at least a very important one) is establishing visual hierarchy.

Visual hierarchy is the use of visual cues, such as color, typeface, size, and positioning, to convey the relative importance of information in a design. Like punctuation or syntax, hierarchy provides order and helps readers prioritize and comprehend information more quickly and accurately, and ultimately enhances communication. By giving different pieces of information different visual weight and by strategically organizing how you group and position your information, you can elevate and reinforce key points and make your messages more effective, efficient, and engaging.

In this post, we're exploring some of the strategies for establishing visual hierarchy in order to give your message a boost. Click on any of the graphics included in this article to employ the strategies right away and scroll down to learn how to easily adjust color, font, shope, and more with Spark Post's new multi-style text editing.

1. Use color to make key info pop.

Creating contrast is at the heart of establishing visual hierarchy. Elements that look the most different from their surroundings demand attention first; therefore, your most important information should be strongly differentiated. This intrigue effect can be created using a number of variables, but one of the most effective (and fun) ways to create contrast is with color. Consider the following example:

What is the first thing that jumps out at you in this design? We're betting the word "Bright" or the white lines. The deep purple background sets the stage for those elements to pop. It allows the lightbulb to glow as a light value and have visual continuity with the large stand-out word "bright." The three lines provide direction, steering the eye down toward the show name. Through the strategic use of color, positioning, and shapes, a viewer could glean the gist of this poster (bright light) without reading any of the lower-contrast dark text.

The use of color to communicate similarity or continuity is just as important as its use in creating contrast. Take, for instance, this marvel of an advertisement for Bifröst Bridge:

Reds are the highest-energy hues in the color wheel. They demand attention first and convey vitality, passion, and excitement. The magenta hue on the left grabs attention and brings the other magenta item to the foreground. That other item happens to be most important piece of textual information (if you don't take away anything else from the words here, you will at least know it's about a bridge.) The magenta pairing with navy in the text mirrors the first and last colors in the rainbow bridge above, subtly reinforcing the concept of connection.

2. Let text size do the the heavy lifting.

Size is another tool in creating contrast and visual weight. Contrasting sizes help convey scale and relative importance. Let's look at another example:

In this book cover, high-contrast colors combine with large, bold text to produce the most visually heavy element in the composition: the title of the book (Big City). Its heaviness overrides the fact that it is placed far down on the page and ensures that it is our focal point. Although "New York" is also treated in high contrast, it sits below "Big City" in the hierarchy because of its relative size.

3. Employ typeface in strategic ways.

The impact of the right (or wrong) font cannot be overestimated. Like color, typography conveys mood and tone, sometimes more powerfully than the copy it delivers. When considering how to utilize it to establish hierarchy, you should think about the desired tone of your words. Some of your copy may be intended as more humorous; some more serious. Know where you have room for expressive flourishes with your typeface, and where you'd like your font to be more neutral. From there, you can explore which typefaces work best together.

In the example above, copy on the left is set in clean, neutral Lato Bold typeface, and the power words "comeback," "stronger," and "setback" are set in the more expressive Flood. This pairing creates emphasis on keywords and helps show the grit and motivation behind the sentiment. A good rule of thumb when pairing fonts is to choose drastically different typefaces, then apply a more expressive or decorative font to the words you want to emphasize. More simple or neutral fonts are typically good for communicating logistics, such as the when and where of an event, while decorative fonts can shine in headers or short phrases.

The typeface in the book cover above, called Megrim, is very thin and ephemeral. The color contrasts are not high, and the letter spacing is loose and irregular. These variables along with the placement of the text partially on the image background and partially off work together to create a disorientation in the reader. Although perhaps not the best example of legibility, the typeface and layout here are extremely effective in evoking a feeling of being lost. Not incidentally, the word "Lost" is the most compelling visual element here.

4. Add backing shapes to create focal points.

Shape is another important tool in creating visual weight. Adding shapes to your messages can help establish focal points, or signal categories of importance. For example, the are four main levels of information in the menu example below. The first tier in the hierarchy is the restaurant name "Wild Sparks Kitchen" (sounds good!), conveyed by font size and the border that is unique to it. Then we have the price info with the white background, which is also unique. In the tertiary tier, we have the category names "salads," "pizzettas," etc. And fourth, the individual dishes.

Highlighting, as done with the category names above, can function in a similar way as typeface in terms of emphasizing copy, but it is a little more nuanced and neutral since typefaces tend to carry their own personalities. In the example below, the last syllable is altered for humorous effect, but the highlighting of that syllable draws attention to the wordplay and adds emphasis and enthusiasm. With this simple design touch, this graphic was lifted out of the realm of borderline-funny ambiguous-typo territory and transformed into sharable meme content.

5. Consider positioning and don't be afraid to think outside the box.

When we talk about positioning in design, we are talking about where you choose to place your various elements (copy, imagery, shapes) in your frame, and to what effect. These choices encompass alignment and spacing as well as areas, such as top, bottom, center, left right, etc.

It may seem intuitive that more important information should live at the top of a page; this is because we are used to reading top-down, and left-to-right. And it's true that employing that classic arrangement can be effective and instantly understandable to the reader. But as we've seen with the examples above, visual hierarchy is not necessarily so literal (or vertical). The most important question to consider is how your positioning works (or doesn't work) to establish your most important information as your focal point. In the example below, this is done by positioning your copy so that is acting out the action it describes. Hierarchy is also at work in the color of the text; although the orange on white is not as high contrast as the black on white, its difference makes it an outlier, which alerts readers of its importance.

While there's no one right way to establish hierarchy in your designs (and you may employ a few tactics in one design as these examples do), being aware of the methods at your disposal can help you be purposeful in your visual communication or troubleshoot a design that isn't quite right yet.

How to Establish Visual Hierarchy with Spark Post

Giving parts of your message more visual weight is easier than ever with Spark Post's new multi-style text editing, which allows you to adjust the style of key parts of your message with just a few taps.

Long-press on the part of the message you want to emphasize in order to apply distinct styles or tap on the 'a' icon to enter the new multi-styling mode. Change up the font, color, shape, or opacity to make your highlighted text appear just as you want it. To apply the new style to any other word(s) within the text block, just tap on the words. To remove the style from a highlighted word, simply tap it again. Insider tip: give the Style Suggestion Wheel a spin for awesome text effects.

Employ these design strategies and Spark's multi-style text editing in your next design-don't forget to share them with #adobespark. We love to re-share great design!

Header Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

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The Key to Better Graphic Design and 5 Ways to Nail It | Adobe Spark

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The right words are important when it comes to promoting your brand. But without smart visual treatment, the potential impact of those words can be lost and your message hindered. Conversely, when brilliant copy is showcased in visually strategic ways, your message can soar to new heights.

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Barn Wicipedia am beiriannau cyfieithu / Wikipedia opinion on machine translation

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Barn Wicipedia am beiriannau cyfieithu / Wikipedia opinion on machine translation

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Wicipedia:Polisi am beiriannau cyfieithu - Wicipedia

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The reason for this is that the translations produced by these programs do not reach an acceptable standard. The Welsh that it produces is usually ungrammatical, and often the software also misinterprets words in the original language, particularly in English where the same word can often have several meanings.

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Interesting article about implementation of Digital in schools

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I have been doing a lot of thinking for a presentation on technology in the English Language Arts classroom I am planning for the end of January. In the course of my preparation I came across the SAMR model developed by Ruben N. Puentedura It provides a framework for how technology impacts pedagogy. This YouTube video does a great job briefly explaining each of the stages. As such, the SAMR model can help teachers think about their own implementation of various tech tools in the classroom.

While thinking about the best way to present the model to teachers, I came across a blogpost by Tim Holt that compared the various levels of tech implementation to ordering coffee from Starbucks. A person ordering from Starbucks can simply substitute its coffee for the homemade version or order a Pumpkin Spice Latte, which truly redefines an espresso drink. This metaphor gave me the inspiration to create the following slide (included here as a stand alone image) for my presentation. The comparison is between the drinks a person could order from Starbucks and the coffee he or she could make at home.

But I also came across this blogpost by Catlin Tucker about the limitations of the SAMR model. The mistake would be to assume that the SAMR captures the typical journey of tech implementation in the classroom, beginning with substitution and ending with redefinition. Instead, she suggests, tech implementation involves a transformation to the teacher. Most teachers get connected with other teachers using technology, and through that influence begin to teach with engaging online tools. This observation also fits with the Starbucks metaphor since people also start drinking coffee and espresso drinks by connecting with others who do the same. The SAMR model can help such a teacher evaluate his or her use of a particular tool as technology continues to transform the teacher and classroom.

Finally, this blogpost, especially the comments, made me realize that SAMR can not be read hierarchically or be used as a way to look down on other less tech savvy teachers. At different times in the classroom the substitution level of technology implementation can be just as valuable as the redefinition level. Indeed, a redefinition of a task may later turn out to be less valuable than the original task. In addition, many teachers are already teaching at high levels even before technology tools are used in the classroom.

In conclusion, the SAMR model, in conjunction with the coffee metaphor, can help teachers think about technology implementation in the classroom. But it can not take the place of connecting with other technology using educators and thinking about how these levels impact the high level of teaching that is occurring in so many classrooms across the country.

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I have been doing a lot of thinking for a presentation on technology in the English Language Arts classroom I am planning for the end of January. In the course of my preparation I came across the SAMR model developed by Ruben N. Puentedura It provides a framework for how technology impacts pedagogy.

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Creating a video about your town - Worksheet for pupils

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English version - guidance for secondary

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Dangers of using Google Translate

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21 attempts at Welsh translation so bad they might not be real

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Ol-troed digidol
Digital footprint

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Ôl troed digidol / Digital Footprint by Ceri Anwen James

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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17 things to do before hitting "Publish"

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If you're a blogger, then I think we can both agree - writing blog posts ain't a joke. There's quite a lot that goes into blogging and you're forced to wear a bunch of hats. You're the content creator, editor, marketer, SEO specialist, and more! But you, my friend, are a game changer. I can tell. You probably like wearing a zillion hats because, like me, you're insane. So, since you really want to craft awesome posts that are read, loved, and shared, this post is for you.

In this blog post, I'm sharing 17 things that you should do before and after you hit publish on your next post. It may sound like a lot, but many of these steps can be done fairly quickly or over time. Plus, if you're going to put so much effort into writing your post, why not take a few extra minutes to make sure it's at the top of its game? There's also a free, printable checklist you can download, which lists each step so that it's easy to refer to when you write your posts. Can I get a woop woop?

1. Write an effective post title with these two characteristics:

It includes keywords or phrases.

It is persuasive or encourages someone to click through.

Your post title is perhaps the most important part of marketing your blog post. If your title is weak - even if your content is great - then people are less likely to click through and actually read it. By creating a persuasive and descriptive title, you'll get more people to check it out. This post by CoSchedule has great advice for writing effective headlines.

By adding keywords, you're also optimizing your post for search engines. The title of your post is incredibly important for its "SEO," so you want to make sure you're including a keyword or phrase in your headlines.

Here's an example of a "meh" post title: "Things I've Learned About Blogging"

Here's a better version: "Advice for New Bloggers Who Want to Grow Their Blog."

The second example is better because:

1. It targets a specific group (new bloggers)

2. It includes keywords ("advice for new bloggers" and "grow [my] blog"), which are things that someone might search for on Google in order to find your post.

2. Divide up text into smaller sections with headings.

When I see a blog with enormous blocks of text - even if it's something I'm interested in - I usually just say, "peace out" and find something that's more formatted for reader sanity. Try to include no more than 5-6 lines of text in your paragraphs and divide up sections with larger headlines.

Many people will scan a post, see if it sounds useful to them, and then decide if they'll actually read the whole thing. By using big blocks of text with no headlines, you're making it hard for people to see what your post is actually about.

3. Deep link to past posts.

Deep linking is basically just the practice of linking to past posts in a new post. So, each time you write a post which mentions a topic you've written about before, you can link back to that previous post. This both gives your readers more information about your topic (helpful!), but also keeps people on your site longer (awesome!).

4. Add a question at the end to encourage discussion.

One of my favorite parts of a blog post is what happens after I hit publish: receiving comments. I love hearing other people's perspectives and answering questions that people have asked.

By asking a question at the end of a post, it encourages people to comment. In the online world, people often need little nudges or "calls to action" to actually do something. This is a small thing that helps people - especially people who wanted to leave a comment, but who might have just been feeling lazy - to actually do it.

5. Add on-brand, SEO-ready images.

It's important for your imagery to be "on brand." This essentially means that it fits with your blog's theme, personality, and audience. I recommend creating templates for your blog post images, which use the same fonts, colors, and overall design. That way, your blog post images will be more consistent (not to mention, faster to create - woo!).

Making them "SEO-ready" just means that you have changed the image name to something that includes a keyword. For example, instead of "IMG_1254.jpg," your title could be "chocolate-cake.jpg." Can you tell I'm hungry? 😉

6. Add "alt text" to your images for one reason in particular:

That reason? For most themes, the alt text is what will automatically be added to the "description" when someone pins an image from your site. Descriptions are powerful on Pinterest, especially when you add keywords, persuasive text, and a call to action. Here's the description I added to this blog post image's "alt text". You will see it pop up if you try to pin an image from this post.
17 Things You Should Do to Every Blog Post Before + After You Hit Publish | If you want to grow your blog, but you're a little stumped on how to actually create high-quality blog posts or how to market your blog, then this post is for you! It includes 17 tips for bloggers, which will help your work be seen by more people - woohoo! Click through to check out all the tips.
And here's how to add Alt text to your uploaded images in WordPress. Easy!

7. Add a featured image (on WordPress).

Featured images can be important for a number of reasons. They can be used in your blog's layout in a variety of ways - for example, as the image that is automatically pulled to be used in a "recent posts" slider.

Also, if you use Bloglovin', your post's featured image is the image that appears with your post. Like Pinterest, vertical images with text on them tend to draw more attention to them when people are scrolling through Bloglovin'. For that reason, it's a good idea to add a vertical image with text on it as your featured image if you want to gain more traffic from your Bloglovin' followers. Why does this work? It makes your posts more visible when people are scrolling through their Bloglovin' feed.

8. Make sure my post is SEO-tastic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an absolute must and should not be ignored, yo. With the right SEO, your blog and income have the opportunity to grow tremendously because it will drive search engine peeps to your website. If you're on WordPress, I recommend downloading the Yoast SEO plugin ( I talked about it here!). This plugin makes it easy to build excellent SEO.

Check out this post for some specific SEO tips. Also, if you subscribe to my weekly mailing list, you'll get access to a library of free ebooks I've written - one of which contains my best SEO advice.

9. Proofread.

I know. You're probably like duh Melyssa, I know I should proofread. You're probably also going to find a mistake somewhere in this post and then think of me as some sort of village idiot who doesn't follow her own advice. *grin* In any case, I highly recommend proofreading your posts several times before hitting publish. This may sound monotonous, but it's not bad if you divide up your editing.

For example, I'll write about half of a post, then save it as a draft and preview it. I then read through what I've written so far, both so that I can correct any errors and so that I can see how my writing flows as if I were someone who was reading this post. I probably do this three times before hitting publish, at various stages of writing. My friend, Regina, also suggests reading your post backwards, one sentence at a time, as that pulls your text out of the context of the post and will show you any blatant grammar or spelling mistakes.

1. Pin your post image onto Pinterest.

Since you've already added your "alt text" for your images before inserting them into your post, the description is already written. #happydance. Now, all you have to do is pin your blog post image onto Pinterest. Easy, right?

I recommend creating a Pinterest board specifically for your blog (I have one called "The Nectar Collective"), which only shares pins from your own posts. Pin your blog post images onto that board first. Then, over the next couple days, pin them onto other relevant boards with a medley of pins from your blog and from other sources. This will keep your pin in rotation and distribute it to different audiences (who may be following different boards).

If you want to get serious about refining and growing your blog by strategically using Pinterest, check out my e-course, Pinfinite Growth. Here's what one student recently said in our private Facebook group for Pinfinite Growth peeps:

2. Schedule it to be pinned to any Pinterest group boards that are relevant.

Similarly, if you're part of any group boards, you'll want to share your pin to these boards as well. You can either do this manually, over the course of the next couple days, or you can use a scheduling program to schedule your pin to your group boards.

By the end of this step and the one above, your blog post image will be on about five different boards. This will give your image the chance to be seen by many audiences, especially if they missed your first pin. Also, don't worry - because of Pinterest's smart feed and the scheduling you'll be doing, your followers will not see two of the same pin at once. Pinterest filters out pins that are the same so that only one version will appear in the feed at any given time. Thanks Pinterest!

3. Share your post on Facebook and Twitter.

I generally use a scheduling program ( Edgar) to do this, but there are many other options as well. You could also do it manually. If you want to get fancy, you could create even an image specifically for your Facebook and Twitter posts. Tweets with images tend to perform better, so this is recommended. You can find all of the social media image sizes here.

4. Schedule your post for Twitter several more times.

The Twitter feed moves so quickly that it can be easy to miss a specific tweet, especially if you're in a different time zone. For that reason, I'd recommend sharing your new blog post onto Twitter several times over the next few days. Social media scheduling programs work great for this. You can also use scheduling programs to schedule your post to be shared again in 3 or 6 months, allowing you to constantly circulate your older content.

Related: 5 Useful Programs for Scheduling Social Media

5. Do a Facebook Live about your blog post topic.

Facebook Live is quickly becoming a "thing." Have you hopped on le bandwagon yet? It is a video platform, where you can record yourself speaking live while your audience leaves comments as you're talking. It's a pretty awesome and fun way to connect with all of the bloggers and online peeps you've - until now - only seen in photos.

The neat thing about Facebook Live is that it gives you a different medium to share your content. Some people dig reading blog posts. Others would prefer to watch them. So, after you publish your post, try doing a Facebook Live video about your post's topic. You already wrote the post, so your "script" is finished! Obviously, I don't recommend just reading your post word for word, but share the main points of it on Facebook Live and get people hyped to read the full post on your blog. This is an excellent way to repurpose older content, too.

6. Respond to comments.

If your post receives any comments, make an effort to respond to them, especially if people have questions or are extra thoughtful. Responding to comments is a great way to build a stronger readership, more engagement, and friendships with people who will come back because they feel valued.

7. Check the analytics of your post to see how much engagement it received.

At the beginning of a month, I'd recommend checking your Google Analytics account for the previous month so that you can see which posts received the most pageviews. While you're at it, check to see which posts received the most comments, too.

These statistics can be very telling, as it shows how much engagement they received. You may begin to find patterns - oh, this topic is really popular! - and will know which types of posts your audience loves or doesn't really care for. Use that info to craft an even more fabulous editorial calendar, you little game-changer, you.

8. In 1-2 months, repin your post onto Pinterest.

This is called "looping." Basically, it's the practice of repinning your old pins. A couple months after pinning your post image onto Pinterest, try repinning it onto your account. Once an image has been pinned, your followers will no longer see it unless someone else pins it. Looping fixes that problem by keeping your older content in constant rotation. I explain this strategy in detail in Pinfinite Growth.

Phew! Thanks for hangin' in there with me. As a parting gift, I put all of these points into a checklist that you can print out and refer to whenever you write a blog post. No email required, friend! You can download the checklist right here or by clicking the image above. Holla!

Anything you'd add to this list? Anything you're going to try? Let's hear it!

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17 Things You Should Do to Every Blog Post Before + After You Hit Publish (Free Checklist!) - Melyssa Griffin

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If you're a blogger, then I think we can both agree - writing blog posts ain't a joke. There's quite a lot that goes into blogging and you're forced to wear a bunch of hats. You're the content creator, editor, marketer, SEO specialist, and more! But you, my friend, are a game changer.

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Creu fideo am eich tref - taflen waith ar gyfer disgyblion

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Appiau a Gemau e-ddiogelwch
E-security apps and games

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e-Ddiogelwch / e-Safety by Ceri Anwen James

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Hawlfraint / Copyright

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Hawlfraint / Copyright by Ceri Anwen James

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Thinglink - Cysylltiadau i adnoddau / Links to resources

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Diogelwch ar-lein
Online safety

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Diogelwch ar lein / Online Safety by Ceri Anwen James

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Cyngor ac adnoddau mapio ayb

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Mae'r Fframwaith yn nodi'r sgiliau sydd eu hangen ar ddysgwyr i lwyddo mewn byd cynyddol ddigidol.

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Ten principles for good design | Design Principles FTW

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The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

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When I opened up Apple's new Clips app yesterday, as I've been doing for the past few days, I was greeted with the same photo-capture screen that's prioritized in all the social "story" apps. Take a picture! Capture video! Share! Share everything! they scream at you. I added some text overlays and emoji, and fumbled my way through Live Titles, the feature that's distinctive to Apple Clips. And eventually, I shared my Clips. But it took a while. Because Clips take a while.

After Apple first announced its Clips video-making app a couple weeks ago, a lot of people - including me - wondered whether this was the company's attempt to grab some of the attention that's been siphoned by social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. After using the new Clips app for the past five days, it's become clear to me that this is not Apple's attempt at a "social" app, at least, not in the way that social networks work.

Instead, it's a video-making app that borrows some features from other apps. It's an app that requires some thought and a little more work than a Snap or tweet or 'gram does. These days, it's possible to use those apps in public and with friends in a way that doesn't feel terribly rude, whether it's because everyone else is doing it or because the point is to share something quick and raw. With Clips, prepare to spend at least a few minutes making something share-worthy.

Clips is now available in the App Store

But that's not a bad thing: it's a distinctly Apple-like approach to mobile video. Parts of the app are also fun to use. There's at least one element of the app that feels like it could use a whole redesign, and the question still remains as to whether this app is one that iPhone (and iPad) users will feel compelled to use before they use their favorite social apps. But overall, this is a kind of next-generation iMovie that I'm willing to bet a healthy portion of Apple's user base will be happy to use.

If you ever said, "I wish iMovie was less about dissolves and transitions and more about adding cool filters and text," then you are in luck.

Clips is free to download, and it's available on iOS only. I wrote previously about its core features, but to summarize: you can shoot new photos or videos from within the app, or you can pull from your existing iPhone library. From there, you can add text, filters, overlays, emoji, and something Apple is calling "posters," which are opaque transition cards. You can also add music, pulling either from your iTunes library or a selection of other instrumental music tracks curated just for the Clips app.

Clips are created in a square format, and are added to a basic timeline at the bottom of the screen. You can add individual video clips up to 30 minutes long to this timeline; and the total run time of a finished Clips video can be as long as 60 minutes. It's also created and shared in 1080p HD, if your source video is HD. This is the kind of stuff that makes it much more of a video creation app than a Snapchat competitor.

The Clips app breaks a kind of social code: it takes more time than the quick, raw clips of other social story apps

And then there's Live Titles. Live Titles is the app's big differentiator, and utilizes voice recognition technology in a way that's both clever and confusing. Rather than punch in text or scribble it on the phone's touchscreen display, with Clips you're supposed to narrate your thoughts out loud. You can opt to have those words included as audio, text, or both. This option was partly driven by the way people are watching video online now - text only, no audio - which makes sense. Unfortunately, the way the feature is designed doesn't make as much sense.

After selecting a Live Titles style, you're then supposed to hold down the record button and speak. If you want to mute your voice in a video, you have to tap a mic button. This isn't exactly intuitive; most times you're tapping a microphone icon to start recording your voice. While you're speaking, the text doesn't appear on the Clip; it's processed after the fact. If you want to undo Live Titles, you don't unselect the Live Titles icon; you have to go into the Live Titles options and select "None."

You also just can't simply type in text to start from Live Titles; you have to go to the Overlays tab for that. So yeah, it's complicated.

Considering that Apple plans to include a Help section in the app when it goes live, I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has given early feedback that it's the most confusing part of the app. It's a cool concept, but I really hope Apple considers seriously simplifying this.

.@LaurenGoode is just repeatedly yelling "My Cat Loves Gadgets!" into her phone and I'm wondering what the best intervention options are.
- Dieter Bohn (@backlon) April 4, 2017

Despite that, making Clips is easy, especially if you ignore Live Titles. I've made Clips videos of my cat (of course), a bowl of pho, a recent vacation, and California-esque things I've done in a single day. The comic filter is cool, and it renders the effect on photos and videos as you're capturing them, not after the fact. Individually, the features are reminiscent of the features in other apps - sepia-toned filters, location and time stamps - but combined, it all feels distinctly Apple. Example: one of the text overlays is a familiar blue iMessage bubble.

The comic filter is cool; one of the text overlays is a blue iMessage bubble

When you tap the share button - assuming you want to share your Clips when you're done, unless you just like to make videos to look at all by yourself, which is possible - all of the usual suspects are there, from Vimeo to Facebook to YouTube to Mail. And iMessage is supposed to be slightly optimized for this. The app will use facial recognition technology to determine who is in your clips videos and prioritize those contacts in the share function; although, I haven't tested that much, since I was using the app in advance of its official release and couldn't share the videos to all of my contacts.

So while Clips isn't Apple's answer to Snapchat, or Instagram, or Facebook Stories, or Prisma, or the ill-fated Qwiki, there is still an element that's inherently shareable. Which is to say, after making Clips this week, I actually wanted to share them. In a way, Apple has again renounced the responsibility of being a social network while also encouraging a kind of network-exclusive interaction. Just like the blue bubbles of iMessage will give you away, so will some of the features of this app.

Just don't try to make a fancy Clips video to share while you're out in social settings. It takes too darn long, at least at first.

Update, April 6th 1:30PM ET: Article updated with new download links.

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Apple's Clips app is iMovie for the next generation

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When I opened up Apple's new Clips app yesterday, as I've been doing for the past few days, I was greeted with the same photo-capture screen that's prioritized in all the social "story" apps. Take a picture! Capture video! Share! Share everything! they scream at you.

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Fersiwn Excel - wedi'i rewi ac heb ei addasu ers Ionawr 2018 - mae'r mapio go iawn ar Google Sheet mewnol yn yr ysgol

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Mapio'r Fframwaith Cymhwysedd Digidol (2).xlsx

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https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/staying-safe-online/

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Yn Gymraeg!

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Datganiad Preifatrwydd Microsoft - Preifatrwydd Microsoft

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Mae Datganiad Preifatrwydd Microsoft yn esbonio pa ddata Microsoft mae Microsoft yn ei gasglu a sut mae'r cwmni'n ei ddefnyddio.

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Guidance, mapping tools etc

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The Framework encapsulates the skills that will help learners thrive in an increasingly digital world.

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With millions of subscribers, top YouTubers such as Zoella have huge, passionate audiences. Here's a handy guide to help you understand their popularity

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Faint o amser o flaen sgrîn? How much screen time?

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Faint o amser o flaen sgrîn? How much screen time?

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Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

The notion of screen time evokes strong and often negative emotions. Photographs of people, young and old alike, staring into screens instead of talking to each other are almost always followed by dispirited comments about the dysfunctional state of our society.

Parents of young children, including me, worry and often feel enormous guilt when their children spend too long in front of devices instead of running around outside, getting fresh air and climbing trees. And spare a thought for parents of adolescent children. They too feel anxious and concerned about how long their 15 year old spends locked up in her room in front of a screen instead of getting more involved in family life.

Even if you don't have any children, you are probably troubled at times by the realisation that you are surrounded by a seemingly ever-increasing amount of screens. Computer screens at work, television screens at home, and tablet screens in a variety of sizes for when you're making your way from one to the other. Combine all this and you might be forgiven for thinking the world is going to pot and we have a big, big problem. But have we?

The media's tendency to resort to click bait journalism and our human propensity to favour simple solutions to complex problems over complex solutions to simple problems have coalesced to create the widespread perception that technology is eroding away at our humanity. From Nicholas Carr's implausible yet widely accepted claim that having more sources of knowledge and information at our fingertips is somehow making us dumber to Sherry Turkle's specious contention that checking social media on smartphones and tablets is causing us to be "alone together", the internet - and I hope the irony is not lost on you - is full of dystopian visions warning about the dire consequences of our addiction to technology.

So, is technology actually bad for us? Is it bad for children? It is certainly a question worth asking. There is a substantial number of studies that, for example, have looked at the effect of video games or at what effect looking into bright screens for prolonged periods has on our eyes. Whereas the balance is tipping in favour of 'video games are good for you', when it comes to screen time it is widely accepted by the scientific community that prolonged exposure to bright screens can harm our eyes. This is not disputed, but if you compare this to the fact that it is well known that simply reading paper books can cause myopia, and yet nobody seriously suggests that children should stop reading, you begin to realise just how hysterical the guidance surrounding screen time can be.

Chris Ferguson, professor of psychology, believes that much of this apparently negative expert opinion can be explained through a phenomenon he calls 'the scientific pile-on effect'. Ferguson thinks that, in clinical psychology, "once something is identified as 'naughty', it's predictable to see an ever-increasing crescendo of studies linking the naughty thing to everything bad imaginable... bad behaviours, low intelligence, adult health problems, cancer, global warming..." And he cautions that "this is really the inverse of snake oil salesmanship. Just as hucksters sold junk medicines with cure-all promises, academic psychology spends too much time selling moral agendas with claims that the naughty thing, whatever it is, causes all problems, just as snake oils cure all ills. This scientific pile-on effect should be a warning that something has gone amiss in the scientific process."

This moral agenda, apparently backed by clinical psychology, contributes to the blatant medicalisation of this perceived problem, encouraging us to view the use of technology through the lens of pathology. So we talk about addiction, dependency and detox, as if the use of technology in our daily lives were analogous to injecting heroine or smoking crack cocaine. But professor Tanya Byron is sceptical about this medicalisation. Byron suggests that "by labelling [technology use] as an addiction before we really understand the processes at work we run the risk of removing our own responsibility for how we use technology".

And herein lies the paradox: many things that you can do on screen - reading a book, video conferencing with relatives abroad, playing video games or watching a nature documentary - are generally good. Yet screen time is bad, for so say the experts. So which is it? Should we or shouldn't we?

Maybe technology is not the problem. Maybe it's just down to human behaviour. Consider again the parents of young children who worry about screen time but put their toddlers in from of an iPad for hours on end and then blame the technology. Consider the fact that teenagers have been locking themselves up in their rooms, avoiding talking to their parents and responding only with barely audible grunts to 'how was school today?' for, probably, centuries. Screens didn't cause any of this. From this perspective, the mere existence of screens contributes to this problem in the same way that cars contribute to crashes. That's right, car crashes wouldn't happen if there weren't any cars, but it is the person in control behind the wheel who causes them, not the car.

None of this is to say that we should carry on unconcerned when addictive behaviour is displayed around the use of technology, be it social media, video games or Pokémon Go. Instead I suggest that we should be concerning ourselves with controlling our behaviour, in the knowledge that most of us will be able to develop and exercise an appropriate level of agency and self-control, but fully aware that some individuals will inevitably lose control. As Byron observes, "of course there are those who are vulnerable and who may become addicted to new, pleasurable behaviours. We have a duty of care to those people. But as a species, this is about adaptation, it's about understanding our behaviour, not panicking about change and taking personal responsibility - responsibility as parent, responsibility as individuals, and as a society as a whole."

Personally, I am persuaded by the conclusions of Sonia Livingstone, professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Alicia Blum-Ross, research officer in the same department. According to Livingstone and Blum-Ross 'screen time' "is an obsolete concept. As digital media become integrated into all aspects of daily life, it is more important to consider the context and content of digital media use, and the connections children and young people (and parents) are making, or not, than to consider arbitrary rules about time."

The essence of this approach is that we should fret less about how long we spend in front of a screen and worry more about what we are doing on said screens. Catching up with geographically distant friends and family members, keeping up with current affairs or reading an e-book are all demonstrably good and fruitful things to be doing in one's spare time. The fact that we are doing this on a tablet, a laptop or smartphone should not really matter and it's certainly not bad for us.

But do consider your context. There are occasions when - rightly so - it is socially unacceptable to spend too long or any time at all on devices. When you are out at the cinema, the theatre, or with some friends we should avoid the temptation to check our smartphones. This is not because technology is bad for us, but rather to avoid being rude to others.

If you feel trapped in a maelstrom of notifications, emails, messages, pings and whistles that are vying for your attention, it may feel that 'detoxing' and eschewing technology altogether for days or weeks at a time may be the solution. But this simple solution doesn't even touch the more complex problem of controlling our behaviour. Instead of a full detox, we could first consider turning on the do-not-disturb feature our smartphones or tablets and leaving it on permanently. Perhaps switch off notifications altogether to avoid pop ups and vibrations. This is how my tablet and smartphone are set, so I am never disturbed when I am reading a book, marking students' work or having dinner with my friends or family. I check any messages when I'm ready, not when my devices buzz a demand for my attention. It's a more complex, but highly effective solution.

As schools begin to explore the educational potential of using more devices with screens in the classroom, parents who don't necessarily understand how this technology is used might understandably but erroneously assume that technology in schools is used in the same way that it has traditionally been used at home, that is to say to keep children entertained, busy and quiet. Schools clearly have a responsibility to explain more clearly and justify how technology is being used to support great teaching and learning. Are the children reading and writing more? Are the children learning maths more easily? Is it easier to learn a foreign language? Can teachers give feedback more effectively? These are the really important questions that need an answer. This is where researchers need to be focusing their research. 'Are the children spending more time on screens?' is a valid but much less important question, since it's what they are doing on those screens that really matters.

Angharad Rudkin, clinical psychologist, suggests that "any guidance needs to be based on solid evidence base rather than a fear of change. We need good quality research that looks in detail at different aspects of child development and their relation to screen time." Rudkin concludes "I think the next step is to empower parents. Teach them how to identify when screen time is becoming problematic for their child (meaning that is interfering with normal development and functioning) and give them the confidence to manage it."

In summary, not all screen time is equal, so we should probably adjust our advice accordingly.

Your thoughts and considerations are always welcome. Please consider sharing this article or leaving a comment.

Using technology in the classroom, by José Picardo is available now.

Order your copy here.

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Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate The notion of screen time evokes strong and often negative emotions. Photographs of people, young and old alike, staring into screens instead of talking to each other are almost always followed by dispirited comments about the dysfunctional state of our society.

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Beth wnaeth y cyfryngau cymdeithaol i fy merch?  What social media did to my daughter

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Beth wnaeth y cyfryngau cymdeithaol i fy merch?  What social media did to my daughter

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I want to say the duck face picture days are behind us but I'm not sure if that's a safe statement yet. We still have the mouth wide open, peace sign pics but I haven't seen a duck face pic in a while so I'm hopeful.

I'm not one for selfies. They actually freak me out and when I see my teenager take 75 selfies during the 3-minute ride to church, I completely lose my cool. She says she has to get it just perfect. She once tried to get me in one of her selfies so I shot the camera the bird in an effort to make it unsendable (I know, I know, there's no need for chastising comments) ... it ended up being sent anyways and now she's the kid who's mom flipped off the camera.

Seriously.

Snapchat is nonstop in our house. We have two teenagers that use Snapchat 26 hours a day.

What's wrong with these kids?

How did we raise a generation of selfie taking teens who are constantly sending their friends pictures of themselves. I told my daughter to send something else instead of a selfie to her friends on Snapchat and she looked at me like I had 2 heads. "Like what? What else would I send?"

I was speechless.

Last week one of our teens missed a week of school and ended up in the ER because she was so sick. I have no doubt that on Monday morning, when her friends realized she wasn't at school, they started snapchatting. I'm pretty sure they all got a selfie of my sick child with puffy eyes and pale face.

Oh my God, make it stop.

But then something strange started happening.

The first day she was home sick the doorbell rang mid-afternoon and it was one of her selfie taking friends with a milk shake for my daughter. She knew my daughter couldn't eat because her throat was so sore so she brought her a milk shake. She drove to Sonic and spent her own money on a milkshake for my daughter. Even if it seems like the smallest act of kindness, it's kind of huge in the teen world.

The next day the door bell rang and it was the delivery guy from Panera Bread. Her "oh my gosh mom, stop calling him my boyfriend, you're so embarrassing" called in an order for her and had it delivered to our house. For real, this sweet young man placed a lunch order for my daughter and had it sent to our house. What? Who does that? I'm sure she snapchatted him a thank you. I called my husband to tell him he needed to step up his game because this kid just schooled him!

The following day the doorbell rang again and when I opened the door, there stood a pizza delivery guy. Her BFF (who doesn't even live in our city) called in a pizza and had it delivered to my daughter. He handed me a personal pizza, fries and a drink and let me know that everything down to the gratuity was covered.

I called her mom later on in the day to tell her thank you and her mom had no idea that her daughter had sent mine lunch. There was no glory in it for her friend, she was simply and silently being kind.

The next day we landed in the ER and as she laid in the hospital bed I watched her phone go off nonstop with friends checking on her. I also watched her snapchat pictures of her IV, monitor, socks, and whatever else was in that room.

On the last day of the week, her "oh my gosh mom, stop calling him my boyfriend, you're so embarrassing" and her best guy friend showed up to our house during their lunch hour with hamburgers from our favorite fast food joint. The three of them sat outside and had lunch together. They kept her company and gave her several reasons to smile after a long and isolated week.

These kids proved me wrong over and over all week long. It was a humbling experience to say the least. Maybe all this technology, Snapchat, texting and selfies aren't making them all crazy, self-centered bullies. It's giving them access to each other in ways that we didn't have growing up and maybe that's not always a bad thing. I know that sometimes social media is abused and used in hateful ways but I've learned this week that sometimes it's used in the sweetest, most generous ways.

When I was growing up and friend missed a week of school due to illness we really didn't do much about it. We might have called them from our Swatch phone after dinner to see if they were okay and if we were really cool we added a friend to the conversation by using three-way calling. But other than that we kind of just let their parents handle it and waited for them to return to school.

The instant access these kids had to each other over the week gave them the ability to show compassion to my daughter in ways we couldn't when we were their age. It gave them ways to love on her while she was home sick. It gave them the ability to show her that they cared and that she was not only loved but she was missed. I want to call each one of their parents and tell them thank you and well done.

We don't give this generation enough credit. These are good kids doing their best to navigate through a world that has instant access to everything and every event the moment it happens. Their lives are being played out through social media in real-time right in front of all of our faces. Teenaging is hard stuff right now but they're actually doing a pretty good job at making it work for them.

If you have little ones and are terrified of the teen years please let me tell you that the best is yet to come. These kids are the coolest and even through their struggle in trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in, they can be surprisingly awesome. It's so amazing watching these kids grow into compassionate and generous young adults, even if we have to see most of it via Snapchat.
Related post: Related video: This post comes from the TODAY Parenting Team community, where all members are welcome to post and discuss parenting solutions. Learn more and join us! Because we're all in this together. I found out what my daughter had done through her social media

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What social media and the selfie generation did to my teenage daughter

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I want to say the duck face picture days are behind us but I'm not sure if that's a safe statement yet. We still have the mouth wide open, peace sign pics but I haven't seen a duck face pic in a while so I'm hopeful. I'm not one for selfies.

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BBC Gogledd Iwerddon
BBC Northern Ireland

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They are two separate mothers, with two different and unconnected experiences with cyber-bullying.

For one - Mandy Trowbridge - the painful loss of a child who was a victim.

For the other, who spoke anonymously, the shock of being told by police that her child was a cyber-bully.

But from both, the same message: Cyber-bullying is a real threat that parents and children must tackle to avoid similar heartache in their own homes.

Facebook and Twitter could face 'online abuse levy'

Both mothers shared this message and their separate cyber-bullying experience with BBC Newsline ahead of the launch of a new awareness programme designed to promote online safety to children and parents alike.

The programme, developed by the Safeguarding Board of Northern Ireland, will be shared in schools, church groups and community groups.

Its aim is to make parents and children aware of safety when using social media sites, chat room and internet forums and also to be mindful of the damage that can be done by sending threatening messages online or on mobile phones.

The awareness strategy comes at a time when the NSPCC has said that children as young as five are on social media and one in three has been the victim of cyber-bullying.

One of those victims was Elle Trowbridge, a 16-year-old from County Tyrone, who took her own life in April after being targeted by cyber-bullies since she was 11.

Her mother Mandy told BBC Newsline's Donna Traynor that she did not want anyone else experiencing what her and her family have gone through.

'Sent her spiralling'

"Awful messages were sent to her phone one day," she said. "Elle came and told me about it straight away.

"So the following day I reported that to the police but Elle really believed if that's what people wanted, that's what she should do - so, unfortunately, she did start self-harming at just the young age of 11.

"And Elle never really recovered from that.

"We had her at the doctors, we had help from social services, therapists but unfortunately about five or six weeks before she passed away another message came through, again anonymously.

"Elle just couldn't understand why somebody could be so cruel and this just sent her spiralling."

Mrs Trowbridge said she believed children had sent the messages but that she "did not want the same thing to happen to them, for them to fall into a deep, dark place".

"Possibly they need help and intervention. Children act on impulse and emotion. They don't think of the consequences months down the line."

The other side of cyber-bullying was experienced by a mother who told BBC Newsline that her 14-year-old daughter had sent a threatening message to another child asking her to self-harm and consider taking her own life.

The mother, who spoke anonymously, said police arrived at her door and told her that her daughter "had sent a very terrible message to someone who was a friend".

"I couldn't believe that my daughter would do that.

"When she was sending that text message she was 14, and whenever the police came along to my house and I saw her sat there at the table she looked like a four-year-old girl.

"I realised she is a child but she committed something very, very bad.

"She was shocked and I think she was more horrified that she actually got caught.

"I think she assumed she would get away with it and I don't believe she gave any thought to the possibility of that girl taking her life because of that message."

The mother said she believed her daughter was encouraged to send the message because of peer pressure.

"I know my daughter is not innocent because she pushed the button and sent the message.

"But I do believe that because her friends were there she had power - I do believe she had support do this terrible thing she might not have done on her own.

"But she pressed the button and sent the message.

"I hope they (children) realise they cannot blatantly harass anybody and not get caught."

The important message, she said, is that children and parents become aware of the threat cyber-bullying poses.

"You don't know what they're looking at on the phone," she said. "You have no idea.

"You try to give them an element of trust but that can only go so far and they are not fully developed human beings.

"This cyber stuff is encouraging them to be negative, to show blatant and absolute harassment to other weak individuals. This is not the way to go. Where will it end?"

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They are two separate mothers, with two different and unconnected experiences with cyber-bullying. For one - Mandy Trowbridge - the painful loss of a child who was a victim. For the other, who spoke anonymously, the shock of being told by police that her child was a cyber-bully.

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Mae'r adnodd yma yn cynnwys y fframwaith digidol ar bob poster. Gwych ar gyfer arddangosfeydd, cynllunio ac i ddod yn gyfarwydd ar fframwaith newydd.

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Fframwaith Cymhwysedd Digidol Blwyddyn 3 i Flwyddyn 6

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Mae'r adnodd yma yn cynnwys y fframwaith digidol ar bob poster. Gwych ar gyfer arddangosfeydd, cynllunio ac i ddod yn gyfarwydd ar fframwaith newydd. This resource is available in Standard, Super Eco Colour and Editable. Please Log In or Join for FREE to suggest a change for this resource.

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Logan Paul y mwyaf poblogaidd ar YouTube

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Logan Paul y mwyaf poblogaidd ar YouTube

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Logan Paul, a vlogger who fooled around on camera beside the body of a man who had hanged himself, has ousted Zoella as British children's favourite YouTube star.

A report by Childwise said that the popularity of the 22-year-old American marked a new era where children admired online personalities who were "edgier" and "less wholesome" than the English beauty vlogger.

YouTube is the favourite online destination of British children, and is used by 90 per cent of those aged 5 to 16, according to the research company's survey of 2,000 pupils. Children's regular use of the site comes despite repeated criticism over its failure to identify and remove dangerous content, including videos that show child abuse and promoting terrorism.

YouTube removed two acid attack prank...

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Zoella loses top spot to Logan Paul as children prefer 'edgy' YouTube stars

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Logan Paul, a vlogger who fooled around on camera beside the body of a man who had hanged himself, has ousted Zoella as British children's favourite YouTube star. A report by Childwise said that the popularity of the 22-year-old American marked a new era where children admired online personalities who were "edgier" and "less wholesome" than the English beauty vlogger.

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Pwysigrwydd prawfddarllen Importance of proofreading 

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We're excited to be publishing a free new resource for teachers, made entirely in Book Creator.

50 ways to use Book Creator in your classroom is our new year gift to teachers. This book is packed with resources covering every subject and grade level you can think of! We draw from over 5 years of case studies, thought-pieces and tutorials published on this website and beyond, packaging them in an easy to read ebook.

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You can read the book from cover to cover in half an hour, or dip in as you need to using the interactive contents page. Be inspired, and click on the 'Read more' links on each piece if you want to delve deeper.

Use the link below to access the online version of the book. Book Creator for Chrome users will find a handy link to the book in their profile menu (click on your avatar in the toolbar).
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50 ways to use Book Creator in your classroom - Book Creator app

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We're excited to be publishing a free new resource for teachers, made entirely in Book Creator. 50 ways to use Book Creator in your classroom is our new year gift to teachers. This book is packed with resources covering every subject and grade level you can think of!

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As we know that iMovie is an excellent video editing tool for users, but iMovie has some tricks that can come in handy for users, once they get to know this, iMovie will give them better results and high quality videos.
Below are some of the top tricks that iMovie hasn't told you clearly.
This trick is so important because it allows your video to have a smooth look when you transition from one clip to another. The most important thing is that you should not go overboard with transitions because it will lower the quality of your video. iMovie makes it easy for users to add transition effects to videos, but when doing it you have to make sure that a cut from one clip to another is less distracting as well as easier on the eye. By doing this, you are able to make your videos look the way you want them to. In addition to this, people watching your video find it more interesting and enjoyable.

When it comes to making a video, color correction is very important. Color correction depends on the feel of your video and in order for you to have a great video the color of the video and the feel have to match. This helps viewers see what you are trying to convey. When you use iMovie to color-correct your video, you are able to take your videos to a new level they become more professional. Before you color correct your video, first take your time and get to understand the tool better. This will help you learn how to go about it and get to know which color suits your video best.

Importing movies from DVD to iMovie

This is an excellent trick especially for a student that is doing a project and wants to add footage from a movie that is on a DVD. iMovie is not so clear about this trick, because this program cannot import directly. For you to be able to import you have to download a free program called Handbrake. The program will help you to efficiently import your movie.

It is important to finalize your iMovie project once you are through with it. This makes it easy for you when you want to upload it to the output video or the internet. iMovie is unclear about what happens after finalizing your project because after you have finalized, you won't be able to see any of those files that you had worked on. When this happens, a lot of people panic and they think that their project is lost. As long as you do not make any edits to the already finalized project, your project is safe and you will be able to use the video however you want. In case you need to make some edits, you still have to re-finalize after you are through. iMovie should be clear about this trick so that a person can know whether to finalize a project or not.

Ducking allows iMovie users to reduce the audio level on all your audio tracks that are competing with other selected tracks. There are different kinds of tracks that can be added to videos. The problem comes when the user needs to quickly lower the audio of some of the tracks in order to avoid the tracks from competing with each other. If you have a specific sound track that you wish to be the loudest in a certain part of your video you have to first select that clip. Then go ahead and turn on the ducking feature. If you do not select the clip, you are not going to get the results that you want.

If you need to add multiple audio tracks to your video, you first have to add the songs to your project and when you do this ensure that the track goes under your video track on the timeline. After the track is underneath your video track, right click on the track where you wish it to start and select the split cut option. Where you want the music to end, repeat the process. Afterwards delete the parts that you do not want. Most people find adding multiple tracks to a project very difficult, but if you follow the above procedure, it becomes so easy.

Log on to Aimersoft.com for more tutorials on iMovie.

Jignesh Padhiyar is the founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around iPhone and iPad.

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Top 6 iMovie Tips & Tricks for Editing Videos Like a Pro

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iMovie is one of the most amazing video editing programs for PCs and Macs. There's a sea of information, tips and tricks for iMovie that can make your video look stunning, pro level. Here are some iMovie tips you should know:

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Amazing possibilities - check with the county that it isn’t blocked ...

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Microsoft Learn for Educators takes the best of Microsoft Learn online learning paths and helps you to bring instructor-led training materials from Microsoft into your courses. This program provides members with access to Microsoft ready-to-teach curriculum and teaching materials aligned to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications.

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Gwaelod yr uwchradd
Lower Secondary

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Welcome to the Know IT All Secondary Toolkit for secondary school aged pupils. In this area we hope to provide educators with a range of ready to go e-safety resources. Browse, download and personalise the range of downloadable lesson plans, films, games, PowerPoint presentations and more.

Cyberbullying Open or Close

Further Information:

Our Hot Topics - Cyberbullying section in the Teachers and Professionals area provides information on how you can support young people and practical advice you can give them.

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Welcome to the Know IT All Secondary Toolkit for secondary school aged pupils. In this area we hope to provide educators with a range of ready to go e-safety resources. Browse, download and personalise the range of downloadable lesson plans, films, games, PowerPoint presentations and more.

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iMovie for ( MacOS can be daunting to the amateur iPhone$1,199.99 at Amazon.com) videographer. For a consumer-grade video editor, the MacOS app is fairly complex. Here are some tips and tricks to start you on the road to becoming an iMovie master.

1. Crop to zoom in

Your iPhone can capture video at a resolution of 720p, 1080p or 4K, so you've got pixels to spare if you are creating a movie to share online (and not watch on an HDTV). If you've got a clip that you wish you had zoomed in on when recording, all is not lost. iMovie lets you zoom in on a portion of the frame. You can even use the Ken Burns pan-and-zoom effect, but I find that's better suited to still photos than videos.

To zoom in on a clip, highlight the clip in your timeline and then click the crop button above the preview window in the top right. Select Crop to Fill or Ken Burns and drag to select the portion of the clip in the preview window that you want to crop. Click the check mark button in the top right to apply your changes.

2. Add photos with Ken Burns effect

You can add photos to your movie to break up the video clips, which can make the proceedings a bit more interesting. To add a photo, click Photo Library in the Libraries section along the left edge and then drag photos to the timeline as you would a video clip.

By default, photos are given a duration of four seconds along with the Ken Burns treatment. You can change the duration of the photo by clicking on one of its edges in the timeline and sliding it -- just as you would when trimming a video clip. Double-click the photo in the timeline and then you can tweak the start and end points for the Ken Burns effect.

3. Split clip

If you've got an overly long clip, you might lose your audience's interest by the end of it. You can split the clip into multiple clips and trim out the parts you don't want. To split a clip, just right-click the point in the clip on the timeline where you want to split it and choose Split Clip.

4. Detach audio

You can do interesting things by detaching the audio from a video clip. You can keep the audio going and split a clip and insert a photo montage, for example -- it will sound better than if the audio drops out while the photos play. To detach audio from a clip, just right-click the clip in the timeline and choose Detach Audio. You'll see the blue audio portion of the clip will detach to become its own green audio clip below.

5. Add a soundtrack

You can liven up the action by adding a soundtrack to your movie. Click the Audio header on the left and you can choose a song you purchased in iTunes or one you created in GarageBand. Often I'll go hunting in iTunes for a song for a video. Just drag a song to your timeline; it will appear as a green audio track below the video. You can trim it and split it as you would a video clip.

Be warned that if you upload your movie to YouTube, it might mute your video if it contains a copyrighted song. Other video sites, however, aren't as vigilant as YouTube.

6. Adjust audio levels

You might want to hear the audio of your video above the music of the soundtrack you added. You can adjust the level of both audio tracks to favor one over the other. Just click the horizontal line that runs through the middle of each audio track and raise or lower it to your desired percentage.

You can also use iMovie's audio "ducking" tool to greatly lower the music audio track -- useful for a clip where someone is speaking. To do so, click the video clip in the timeline so it shows up in the preview window in the top right. Above the preview window, click the audio button and then check the box for Lower volume of other clips. You'll see the sound wave of your music track shrink to almost nothing for the duration of the selected video clip.

7. Fade audio in and out

A transition from one video clip to the next can be jarring if the audio is loud at the end of one clip or at the beginning of the next. You can gently fade audio in and out by mousing over an audio track -- attached blue or detached green audio tracks -- and dragging the little round button at the start or end of the clip. Drag it toward the middle of the clip to let the audio gradually fade in or out of a clip.

8. Add transitions

Video transitions make going from one clip to the next less jarring and more interesting, and iMovie has lots of styles from which to choose. Click the Transitions header at the top of iMovie and drag a transition in between two video clips in your timeline. By default, transitions are one second in length but you can change the duration by double-clicking the transition after it has been added to the timeline.

9. Who doesn't love instant replay?

iMovie has a quick and easy Instant Replay tool that's great for videos of your kids or friends playing sports. It lets you replay a portion of a video clip at regular speed or, better yet, in slow motion. To create an instant replay, hold down the R key and select the range of the video clip in your timeline you want to use for the replay. Next, from the top menu, select Modify > Instant Replay and choose the speed of the replay: 100 percent, 50 percent, 25 percent or 10 percent. iMovie will then duplicate the clip and add it directly after the range you selected. In the Modify menu, you'll also find Slow Motion, Fast Forward and Rewind effects.

10. Space bar and backslash buttons

The space bar lets you play and pause a video clip in your timeline so you can preview your project. Hit the space bar, and the clip will start playing wherever your cursor is on the clip. If you want to play a selected clip in the timeline from its beginning point, you don't need to navigate to its leftmost edge -- just hit the backslash button.

11. Undo changes

Did something to your movie that you wish you could take back? You can! As with other apps, Command-Z will let you undo previous edits that you made.

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iMovie for ( MacOS can be daunting to the amateur iPhone $1,199.99 at Amazon.com) videographer. For a consumer-grade video editor, the MacOS app is fairly complex. Here are some tips and tricks to start you on the road to becoming an iMovie master.

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Instructions for beginners

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If you have video clips from a holiday, a birthday party, or a day trip, you might be wondering how you can turn them into a movie that you can share with friends and family. The good news is you can create a movie on your Mac easily using iMovie - the video editing software that Apple bundles with all new Macs.

If you don't have a Mac you are out of luck as Apple doesn't make iMovie for Windows. But you can play a video created in iMovie on Windows PCs - is there is no need to worry that your Windows using friends and family won't be able to view the video. Just follow our advice below for how to save and export your iMovie for sharing.

There's also a companion iMovie app available for iPhone and iPad. We also have a guide to making a video slideshow on your iPhone using Photos Memories feature here.

Here's how to use iMovie, we'll cover the basics here and then add some useful tips to help you get even better results.

How to get good video footage

Before we begin, here are a few tips that should help you get some good material to work with:

1. A working, fully charged, video camera:

This is likely to be your iPhone since the iPhone is now considered such a good video camera that it's been used to shoot movies like the Steven Soderbergh movie Unsane. The newer your iPhone the better the camera features it will offer you.

You could also record video using your iPad - which may appeal as you will benefit from the large screen. But not that the quality may not be as good as that you would get with a new iPhone. And obviously it's more bulky so might be a two hand job. If you are heading to a friend's wedding, off on an outing, or going to a child's birthday party and you want to be able to capture some video of the occasion then it goes without saying: make sure your iPhone (or camcorder) is fully charged and if possible bring a spare battery pack (or you might not get through the day).

2. Enough space for the video:

Another obvious one - you will be kicking yourself if you get there and then after recording for 10 minutes find you are out of space.

If you are using an iPhone you can quickly offload some content by deleting apps you don't tend to use, and any video you might have downloaded from iPlayer and other services. Here's how to make more space on your iPhone or iPad.

3. Good quality video clips:

We recommend that when you shoot your video you keep your clips short as it is a lot easier to edit together short clips than to watch and cut the best bits out of longer videos.

Luckily video quality is much better than it used to be thanks to features like continuous autofocus and optical image stabilisation for video, that mean you can record while moving without the finished product being jumpy. But we still advise that when you are recording video you keep the camera relatively still, panning around slowly, rather than sweeping from one thing to the other. In fact, if you are recording one thing and then something else, stop recording and make the second thing a new clip.

Generally we would advise against using the zoom as you are likely to lose a lot of the quality as you zoom in - especially if it's a digital zoom rather than optical. Most iPhones since the 6s Plus have offered an optical zoom for video recording, but beyond a point this will switch to a digital zoom. Other phones will only offer a digital zoom and the quality will be poor. If you need to zoom into something, use a tripod, and if you don't have a tripod, lean against something like a wall. We'd recommend starting a new clip after zooming in and use the editing features in iMovie to create a nice transition. Or even better, get closer to your subject, if you can.

Think about the audio you will be picking up - remember that if you talk you will be heard in the video unless you mute the audio at that point. Avoid recording on a blustery day.

You also want to make the most of the light available. You'll probably get the best results shooting outside on a sunny day, but if you are shooting indoors, avoid shooting your subject in front of a window, for example, if you actually want to be able to see them. And if you are indoors, turn on the lights and open the curtains.

Get yourself some b-roll. It's good to get a few shots that you can use to flesh out your movie and set the scene. For example, taking some video of the outside of the church where the wedding is taking place, or filming people arriving at the reception. If it's a party get some video of people talking and kids playing.

How to add movie clips to iMovie

Now you have your raw footage, here's how to add it to iMovie on your Mac:

1. Open iMovie on your Mac.

2. If you are importing footage from your iPhone, plug the device into your Mac via a Firewire to USB cable.

3. You may see a message asking you to confirm that you wish to allow the computer to access the information on your iPhone, click on Continue. Then confirm that your Trust the computer on your iPhone (you should see a message pop up on the device). Enter your passcode.

4. If the iMovie Import window isn't open, click on the down arrow beside the red, yellow and green close/minimise/full screen buttons.

5. Click on Import Media and wait while the Mac and the iPhone sync up. This could take a while the first time you connect if you have a lot of footage on you iPhone.

6. When the two devices are synced, click on your iPhone in the list of Cameras. Or if you were using a camera or camcorder, click on that.

7. You'll see thumb nails of all the clips on your iPhone (or camera). Scroll to the ones that you wish to use. Select the clips you with to import. If you want to import a random selection of clips, press Command (cmd) as you select them, if you are selecting all the clips from one day, click on the first then last clips of that day while pressing Shift, and if you are selecting a group of clips click with your mouse and draw a marquee around them. Once the clips you want to use are selected, choose where you wish to Import to by clicking on the dropdown beside Import To: and then click on Import Selected.

8. If you later want to add more clips click on Project Media > Import Media and wait for the Import window to open up again. To avoid importing the same clips twice, make sure there is a tick beside Hide Imported.

9. Once your clips are imported you will find them in My Movie in the column on the left. By default iMovie shows clips in a Show Separate Days in Events view, but this meant that our clips were shown newest to oldest, and we wanted to see them in date order. To fix this we went to View and clicked on Show Separate Days in Events. You can also change the order by clicking in View > Sort Clips by and choosing Ascending or Descending but the results will be determined by whether you have Show Separate Days in Events view turned on.

How to edit video in iMovie on the Mac

Now that you have imported the video you can start editing.

1. There are three tabs at the top of the iMovie window. Media, Projects and Theatre. Click on Projects > Create New.

2. You can create a Trailer or a Movie. Trailers are a good option if you want to make something short and fun - they follow a template created by Apple and pretty much tell you which kind of clips to add to your Storyboard depending on the mood you are trying to create. It's a fun feature, but if you want things to be a bit more flexible then we recommend the Movie option.

3. After clicking on Movie you'll see a new screen with a window for viewing the video and a place below to drag and drop clips to.

4. On the left you will see folders in which you should be able to find the clips you have imported. Click on a folder and your editing window should fill with the clips available.

5. If you aren't seeing the clips you have imported make sure you have My Media sleeted from the options at the top of the window.

6. Before you start editing, we recommend scanning over everything you have, if you see anything you like you can favourite it by clicking on the heart in the bottom left of the movie viewer.

7. You can start the video playing by selecting the first clip and then pressing the space bar. You can pause the video by pressing the space bar again.

8. If is would take hours to watch all the video, then we recommend scrubbing through each clip by dragging the mouse over it. You'll see a speed up version of the clip which should give you a good idea of its content. Armed with a bit of knowledge as to what clips you have and the features in each you can set about editing the video clips you have.

9. It's easy to drag clips from this section into the bar below. If you don't want to edit out any bits then you can simply drag all the clips into that bar. If you do want to trim the clips we discuss that in the next section.

10. You don't have to stick with the same order as the clips were imported in. For example, if you have taken some B-Roll to set the scene, as we suggested above, you might want to add those clips at the beginning, middle and end of your movie. If you have video footage of someone walking towards you you might prefer to use it at the beginning of the movie, and if you have footage of someone walking away from you it might be fun to use it at the end of the movie.

11. If you drag the wrong clip into the timeline then you can delete it from there by selecting it and pressing the back delete key.

12. When you have dragged two or more clips into the timeline, you will see a gap between each clip. This is where you can add a transition. We will discuss how to add a transition here in the next step.

13. You can scroll along the timeline by clicking on the bar at the bottom of the screen. If you have a touch pad you will be able to swipe along the timeline.

However, before we look at that, if you want to get really creative with your iMovie, or if there is some content in your clips that you would rather not use, you may wish to cut your clips so that you can remove the less professional looking parts. We will look at how to do that next.

How to cut clips in iMovie on the Mac

We recommend that each clip in your iMovie is only a few seconds long. It makes for a more engaging movie if clips are kept short and snappy.

Another reason to cut clips is if there is footage you don't want to use. Suppose you have a 15 second video clip but you want to cut it so that it starts a few seconds in, when everyone is in frame, and end as the subject disappears from view. Luckily it's easy to cut out parts of a video in iMovie.

1. Start by clicking on the clip in the view on the left. Once the clip is selected the frame of it will turn yellow and so that the edge turns yellow and you'll see brackets on either side.

2. Click on the bracket on the left and arrows will appear.

3. Drag the left edge of the clip to where you want the clip to begin, as shown below.

4. Do the same on the right side of the clip.

5. Now you can drag the part of the clip that you have bracketed down into the timeline below.

The rest of the clip will still be available in the section above, so if you wanted to use another part of that clip you can. Just repeat the process. You'll see an orange underline representing the section of the clip that you have already added to your movie.

How to add transitions in iMovie on the Mac

Now that you have populated your timeline with the clips you want to appear in your video it's time to add some transitions. If you add transitions your clips will flow more naturally into each other.

1. Along the top of the window you will see the tabs My Media, Audio, Titles, and at the end Transitions. Click on Transitions.

2. Before you start adding transitions you might want to take a look at the transitions offered by iMovie. You can get a feel for what these do by clicking on each and dragging the mouse over them.

3. Once you have found a transition you want to add between two clips in your movie just drag and drop it into the timeline.

4. We like Cross Dissolve which fades the second clip onto of the first. Cross Blur is another nice transition that blurs the first clip before playing the second. If you'd like to go for a more eye catching option, there's Cross Zoom, which adds a swirl to the transition, Ripple which makes it look like a puddle, and Mosaic that flips little squares over the image. There are lots to try.

5. Scroll along your timeline adding transitions between your clips. To see how each one looks, click on the clip before (you can select the end of the clip, you don't need to watch the whole clip) and click on the spacebar to play.

6. Once you have added all the transitions you can play the whole movie by scrolling back to the beginning and pressing the space bar.

How to change the length of transitions

You might decide a transition is taking too long, or the contrary, that your video would be better if the transition was slower. It's easy to edit your transitions, here's how:

1. Click on the transition between the two clips - the transitions look like two triangles pointing inwards. When you click on it you will see how many seconds the transition lasts. In this case, 1.0s.

2. Double click on the transition icon to change the duration. You can pick a duration and make that apply to all your clips but beware: if you do that all the clips will automatically gain the same kind of transition.

3. If you would rather have each transition be different. Drag and drop the different transitions into the timeline and then double click on each being careful just to apply the change to that transition.

4. Note that you won't be able to add longer transition durations to short clips, if you try to you will see a message that The clips do not have enough media available. If you are determined to have a longer transition you could slow down the clip before the transition. We show you how to change the speed of clips below.

5. For yet more fine tuning, right click on the transition and enter the Precision Editor. This will allow you to choose exactly where you want the transition to begin and end.

How to change the speed of clips in iMovie

If you want to lengthen a clip, as we mention above you could slow it down. This would allow you to add a longer transition. But slowing down or speeding up clips can be a fun way to make your iMovie more engaging.

Say you have a long clip showing someone walking towards you. You might want to use the whole clip but it would be boring for the viewer to watch two minutes of someone walking down a hill.

1. Above the viewer on the right side of the window you will see a collection of tools including colour balance, colour correction, crop, stabilisation, volume, noise reduction, speed, plus filler and audio effects. Click on Speed (which look like a dial).

2. Click on the dropdown beside Speed: to choose from Normal, Slow, Fast, Freeze Frame and Custom. If you choose slow you will see a tortoise icon appear on the timeline, if you choose fast then a hare icon will appear.

3. You can choose just how fast of slow to make the clip. Beside the drop down menu you will see options. If you choose Fast then you will see options for 2x, 4x, 8x, and 20x. If you choose Slow then you will see 10%, 25%, 50%, and Auto. By default Slow will be Auto and Fast will be 4x.

4. If you were looking to make a clip last a particular length of time you can finesse things by finding the dot that will appear on the timeline at the end of the clip and how the speed up or slowed down clip looks, find the dot shown and hovering your curser over it until you see the message Drag to slowdown or speed up the clip. The clip length can be seen on the left of the clip.

How to split a clip in iMovie

Sometimes you will find you have one long video clip that you want to use but it would be boring to watch without adding fancy transitions, speed changes, crops, and the like to it. The best way to make these kinds of edit is to split the clip into different parts so you can add the transitions and other features to the different clips.

1. In the My Media view drag the brackets to the position you want the first clip to begin and end and drag that section down to the timeline below.

2. Then drag the brackets to the second part of the clip you want to use and drag that section into the timeline.

3. Now you an add your transition to the middle of the original clip.

How do you zoom in on a clip in iMovie

If you have a clip where the action is all focused in the distance, you can zoom in to that section of the clip by using the crop tool. You may also want to use the crop tool if you wish to frame the clip a bit better.

1. Find the clip you wish to zoom in on in your timeline and click on it so that it appears in the viewer on the right.

2. Click on crop in the tool bar. You will see the following Style options: Fit, Crop to Fill and Ken Burns.

3. To zoom in on the clip choose Crop to Fill and then drag the corners in to frame the clip how you want it to appear. The whole clip will play with only that part of the frame showing.

4. If you want to show a zoom effect while the video is playing choose the Ken Burns option. This effect lets you choose a start and end point for your zoom, so that the video clip zooms out, or in, as the video plays.

5. Once the Ken Burns effect is selected you can choose whether to zoom in or out by dragging the corners of the start and end crops. Make the end crop bigger or smaller based on whether you wish to zoom in or out.

6. Alternatively you can create a panning effect by positioning your crop boxes beside each other.

How do you rotate a video in iMovie

What about that nightmare scenario where you have taken some amazing video only to discover that because you rotated your iPhone slightly, or because you had Portrait Orientation lock turned on, the landscape video is actually appearing in portrait view or vice versa. Luckily you can use iMovie to fix it.

Crop the video clip to include just the part of the video you want to use (assuming that there are parts of the video that include you rotating the phone) and drag the new clip into your timeline.

1. Click on the Crop option in the menu bar above the video viewer.

2. Click on the rotate clip icon that matches the direction you wish to rotate the clip.

How to flip a clip in iMovie

You may have a clip showing people walking from left to right, but you'd prefer them to wake right to left. Here's how to switch the direction.

Select the clip in the timeline.

1. From the options above the viewer chose the Filters option (three circles).

2. Click on the drop down beside Clip Filter.

3. From the Filters offered on the left choose Flipped. This will flip the clip so it's like a mirror image of what it was.

How to reverse a clip in iMovie

Another way to make a video more engaging and maybe add some humour would be to reverse a clip, so that someone walks backwards, for example.

1. Drag the video you wish to reverse into your timeline.

2. Click on the video in the timeline so you can see it in the clip inspector window.

3. Assuming you don't want the audio playing in reverse we suggest you mute the audio - we explain how to do that below.

4. Click on the Speed icon above the clip inspector window.

5. Below that you will see the options: Smooth, Reverse, Preserve Pitch. Choose Reverse.

6. Now when that clip plays it will do so in reverse.

How to add filters and effects in iMovie

There are lots of filters you can use in iMovie.

1. Add your clip to the timeline and click on it so it appears in the clip inspector window.

2. Click on the Clip Filter and Audio Effects icon.

3. Click on the drop down menu beside Clip Filter and a collection of filters will open beside the clip inspector window. There are 30 to choose from including Aged Film, Sci-Fi, Old World, Dreamy and Flashback.

4. If you hover your mouse over any of the filters you can see how it will look.

5. Choose your filter and it will be applied to that clip.

6. If you want to apply the filter to all your clips, just cmd+A to select all and then apply the filter.

7. If you want to apply the filter to a few clips then you can select each clip you want by clicking on it while holding the cmd key.

How to add audio effects in iMovie

You can also add some fun audio effects in iMovie. As in the section about adding filters above, click on the Clip Filter and Audio Effects icon at the top of the clip inspector window.

1. Click on the drop down menu beside Audio Effect and a collection of effects will open beside the clip inspector window.

2. There are 20 to choose from including Robot, Cosmic and Echo Delay, there are also various pitch options to make the voice will be higher or lower.

3. You can listen to each by holding the mouse pointer over them. Select the one you want and it will be applied to the clip.

4. We will address more audio tips below, but before that, there are a few more special effects available.

How to add special effects in iMovie

There are more effects available in iMovie including: Picture-in-Picture, Cutaway, Green-screen and Blue-screen and Side-by-Side.

We will describe how to do a picture-in-picture effect next - the other effects work in a similar way.

How to do picture-in-picture in iMovie

If you go for the Picture-in-Picture option you will be able to play two clips at the same time, one will appear as a smaller window inside the other clip. Here's how to do that:

1. Find the clip you wish to appear as a picture-in-picture and drag it above the clip you want to have playing at the same time. You will want the two to overlap for the duration of the time you want the picture-in-picture to play.

2. You will see that a new icon appears in the menu above the clip inspector, it looks like two boxes. This is the Video Overlay Settings button. Click on that.

3. Right below the menu you will see a drop down box with the options: Cutaway, Green/Blue Screen, Split Screen and Picture-in-Picture.

4. Choose Picture-in-Picture and drag the picture into the frame.

How to turn down background audio in iMovie

Right, you are nearly done with your blockbuster but some of the audio sounds terrible. Here's how to turn it down or mute it entirely. (Although you could always try adding one of the audio effects mentioned above to see if that makes it sound better).

1. If you look at the timeline you will notice there is a blue section below the video. This represents the audio. You can see peaks and troughs that should you where the audio is loud and quiet.

2. If you click on this blue area you will see here is a line you can move up and down. When you do this the volume will lower or increase.

3. To adjust the audio, click on the Volume icon in the menu above the clip inspector.

4. There is a dial here that you can slide to a position where the audio plays at the level you like.

5. Alternatively, click on Auto and iMovie will do its best to improve audio for you.

6. To turn the audio off just slide the dial to 0%.

How to add audio or a voiceover to iMovie

You can record a voiceover for your movie from within iMovie.

1. Click in the timeline at the point where you want to start the recording.

2. Now click on the mic icon below the clip inspector so that a recording button appears.

3. You will get a three second warning before recording starts, three beeps will sound then you can start talking.

How to import music into iMovie

Now you have your movie it's time to add some music.

1. On the left of the window you will see the options My Media, Audio, Titles, Backgrounds and Transitions.

2. Click on Audio.

3. You will see all your music in iTunes. Find the track you want to use and click on it and drag it in to the timeline below.

How to export an iMovie

Now you have completed your blockbuster it's time to export it.

1. Click on the Share icon in the right corner.

2. Select one of the following options: Theatre, Email, iTunes, YouTube, FaceBook, Vimeo, Image and File.

3. Choose File to save the movie. You can change the description, add tags, choose the resolution, quality and compression rates. The latter three options will allow you to make a small movie if space is a premium, if you want to watch the movie on a large 4K TV though you will want to choose 1080p, in this case a larger file size will be beneficial.

4. If you want to email the movie to a friend then you can choose the Email option via the Share icon and choose from Small, Medium, and Large resolution, as well as HD 720p and HD1080p.

Further iMovie training

If you fancy learning a bit more about iMovie you could try these programmes.

Linda

Linda.com has iMovie training and tutorials. You get unlimited access to the content and tutorials available on the website. There is a 30-day free trial. Sign up and get more information here.

Udemy

Udemy has a beginner to advanced iMovie course available. Normally the course costs £39.99 but at the time of writing there is an offer running where you can get it for £11.99! Sign up to the Udemy course or get more information here.
In a future update to this article we will cover the following. Let us know if you have any other requests!

How to do colour correction in iMovie

How to add subtitles in iMovie

How to make music fade in and out

How to import music into iMovie

How to fade out music in iMovie

How to add Apple Music to iMovie

How to bleep out words in iMovie

How to save iMovie as MP4

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iMovie for Mac is a powerful video-editing program that among other things can turn iPhone-recorded video footage into stunning movies. Here is our guide to using iMovie for Mac, including our best iMovie for Mac tips for getting the most out of Apple's video editing software.

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This resource is the brain-child of Apple Distinguished Educator and Book Creator Ambassador Paul Hamilton.

Find out more, and subscribe at ipadmonthly.com, and view the archive of Book Creator content below.

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This resource is the brain-child of Apple Distinguished Educator and Book Creator Ambassador Paul Hamilton. Find out more, and subscribe at ipadmonthly.com, and view the archive of Book Creator content below.

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The Upper Secondary Toolkit, for pupils in Key Stage 4 and above, has been created by Childnet. The toolkit contains two different resources; The Advanced Project and the drama activity Picture This, which are easy to use and are matched to the skills and interests of young people aged 14-19.

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The Upper Secondary Toolkit, for pupils in Key Stage 4 and above, has been created by Childnet. The toolkit contains two different resources; The Advanced Project and the drama activity Picture This, which are easy to use and are matched to the skills and interests of young people aged 14-19.

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Understand how to use credibility criteria and how to carry out online research efficiently.

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New in Spark Video! Create Engaging Square Videos for Social Media
Amy Copperman |

Did ya hear?! Square videos are totally blowing up social media news feeds. And now Spark Video allows you to easily create video using a 1:1 aspect ratio. We're doing happy dances over here:

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Spark Video makes it easy to turn your ideas into thumb-stopping social video. Add video clips, images, text, or icons to slides and let Spark Video's cinematic themes bring it to life. Most people watch social videos with the sound off, so make sure your videos are readable. It's easy to add text to your video story with Spark Video's easy editor. Select the layout you want and drag your text to nine different locations.

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Want to know more about video and social marketing?

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