I enjoyed using Wordle. I actually had looked at Thing 2 a few days ago. Then after that I heard someone on the radio talking about Wordle and was glad I knew what it was! I submitted the URL for my other blog (Have You Read With Your Child Today?) several different times. It was fun to see what would come up. I liked changing the font, color, and layout as well. It is very easy to use. A teacher could use this to help students review concepts for a test. She could enter vocabulary words and have the students define the words in the word cloud. It would be more interesting to see words displayed like this that just a black and white list. The students could make their own as a way to study also. The teacher could have the students choose the important words they think they need to know from a chapter. The students' could then compare their creations, decide which words everyone in the class thought were important and make a class cloud together with all their important words.
above cloud made with http://www.wordle.net/I looked at WordSift for a minute too and can see it would be beneficial in a classroom as it links to other websites, like Google images, related to the words in the cloud.
I have never heard of Glogster. Wow, what a change from the days of cutting and pasting posters together for class projects! It reminded me of my days in college. This is much more advanced of course than anything we did (even though it wasn't THAT many years ago I was in my education classes at college!). I love that it is interactive and students get to be creative. If they've researched a particular topic, this would be a creative way to display what they've learned to all of their classmates. It seems like it would need more thinking for a student to present information here than on a cardboard poster. A student would need to determine what was most important and if that information could be turned into some audio, animation, or video where as on a cardboard poster you don't have to plan this.
I had to try an Animoto also because I've never heard of it either. It was easy to upload the pictures from my own images and use some of theirs as well. I made a couple videos and emailed one to myself. I tried embedding one through the "edit html" feature here but my internet shut down two times when I pasted it in. I was able to make a video in a new post though (seen below). This was a video I made with some scenery pictures from a trip we took earlier this year. I liked scrolling through the music selections they offered; they have a good variety. This could be used in the classroom to make fun slide shows to remember projects or field trips. Also, teachers could create lessons set to music for the students. For example, if the class was learning about the various regions of the state of Texas, she could use real pictures of the regions, add text before each region to identify the region, and then put it to fun music. This would give the students visual examples of what they'd find in each region rather than just reading the description from the text of a book. The teacher could even have groups of students come up with their own videos using pictures on a topic she assigns.
My son and I played with Voki together. It was so much fun! I could play with this for a long time!
Finally, I looked at Bookr (another one I've never heard of). It is very easy to use and learn. Children could make their own books, even using their own photos. Teachers could make books for their students to read. I see many possibilities for classroom use.
What a great lesson! I learned so much!
No comments:
Post a Comment