TELL US ABOUT A COOL TOOL! ADD YOUR ENTRY AS A COMMENT BELOW. PLEASE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IN YOUR RESPONSE.
- name of the tool
- platform(s) on which it works (web-based, iOS, Android, etc.)
- what it does
- one way it could be used in your situation (classroom, PD, etc.): Be specific with your ideas!
- optional: screen shots of the tool in action
- optional: "testimonials" from users (i.e. students or staff)
One Cool Tool that I have found useful is an app called Show Me. It is a web based application and website that works well with the IPAD.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interactive white board where students or teachers can make quick presentations about any topic and then share them on the web. You have to have a touch screen to make the presentations but they can be shared anywhere the web is available. The presentations can be enbedded in websites and other presenations and you can record your voice over any content that you share. It is easy to add pictures and maps to the application and to annotate on them.
I use Show Me to make quick review presentations for my students. They usually are less than 3 minutes and deal with quick overview of a topice we have covered. I can then share the presentations with my students on Twitter or My Big Campus. They can use this information anytime they need it to study or review. Also, I have students make Show Me presentations to demonstrate their understanding of topics we have covered.
One cool tool I really like is Prezi. I use Prezi with teachers during PD as an alternative to Powerpoint or Keynote. Since it is web-based, I can use Prezi on any computer, at any time. This is helpful if I lead a session that then I need to do follow-up on. Prezi is really helpful in provide a visual connection for teachers.
ReplyDeleteOne specific way I've used Prezi is to do a presentation on RtI. Being able to create a pyramid, diving in and out of the tiers, while remaining in one presentation was helpful. Teachers who are visual learners were able to grasp some of what was being presented in a better way because of the way it was presented.
Krysten
DeleteIs this similar to power point? In a recent college class I completed, fellow classmates were sharing presentations. A gentleman had a very interactive and engaging presentation. He said it was from Prezi. It looked like this presentation would take forever to make. With some practice, would an avid power point user be able to become proficient in Presi? Thanks
Absolutely! The biggest difference between Prezi and Powerpoint is that Prezi is an open space (sorta similar to Padlet) where you can add in any direction you want and then you create links between slides. The first time I created a Prezi I was totally freaked out. Now I adore them! They also provide templates if you want, so then the path is already created for you. I definitely suggest you check it out!
DeleteLaura, Prezi has the ability to take one of your current PowerPoint presentations and upload it to a Prezi. Quite the time saver!
DeleteI am trying to implement tic-tac-toe homework assignments (also called choice boards) in my class. For students to show their comprehension of vocab or grammar I have a variety of tasks that incorporate the different learning styles. Activities such as -creating a song, poem, or rap.
ReplyDelete-survey fellow classmates and create a visual that reflects the responses.
-work with a partner and create a situational skit
- create a puzzle or game and include instructions for how to play
-create an 8 scene cartoon that depicts the vocab/grammar theme.
Students do enjoy creating the cartoon situation, however some students may lack the artistic ability to draw clear pictures The Chogger website allows students to create cartoons to depict a short story. This is a free website where students can sign up for free. Students are able to choose pictures, download their own photos or create their own photos. Students can add captions to each cartoon. This would be a great idea to incorporate for the Homework choice board as it encourages creativity and encourages students to incorporate concepts in an authentic situation. Students could work with a partner to create a story, write the script and select corresponding photos. In addition students would be encouraged to problem solve and work together to complete a task.
One tool (program) I love to use with my second grade students is Photo Story. This web based program is (at least it used to be) free! When I was first introduced to it I decided to do a class project. It was near the end of the school year and we didn't have much time left to create individual projects. When thinking of a topic I thought of how that year's second graders could tell the incoming students about second grade. I had the students brainstorm what makes our classroom unique. They came up with more ideas than I could. Then I paired up the students to write a brief description of each thing they brainstormed. I took photos of students engaged in the various activities. I uploaded the pictures to Photo Story and had the students record their descriptions. Then I added effects for the photos and background music to complete the project. I had parents in the classroom at the end of the year to watch our play productions and decided to debut our project then. It was quite impressive! The following year, I had the students create their own projects. They were assigned a non-fiction animal book to read and complete a book report. Then they found pictures on Google Images to use in their Photo Story. They recorded their voices reading the book reports and had a wonderful project that they completed on their own.
ReplyDeleteIn high school science classes, one of the important understandings students need to learn is the reason we need systems of classification to organize the things in our world and students also need to develop skills for identifying those things. For ages, science teachers had students do leaf collections or insect collections so that they could learn to identify organisms. An activity I have been considering for our school is to have students use their digital cameras to collect photos of living organisms and to use existing dichotomous keys, social media expert contacts, or other Internet research methods to identify their pictured organisms using a tool like Picasa to add metadata to the picture with identifying information such as Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species and then publishing these photos to either a local file server or better to Google Drive, Flickr, Dropbox, or some other cloud-based file repository where they could be shared. The idea would be to create a database that students at the school could continue to add to year after year, using not only pictures of local organisms, but bringing in pictures they have taken while travelling also. Anyway, Picasa is a photo editing tool that is free and is available for PC's or Mac's and as a web-based app. The Picasa application allows some touch-up on pictures as well as cropping and other popular photo editing options. This idea could be expanded to include other collections that might be of interest to other disciplines. I have considered doing something similar in my PLTW Principles of Engineering class having students take pictures of bridges and classifying them according to the type of bridge or by their truss designs.
ReplyDeleteNearPod
ReplyDeleteCreated online and pushed to each student device (iPad for us).
NearPod takes PowerPoint presentations and pushes the presentation to each device. The teacher saves the PP as a PDF and plans the presentation on NearPod.com. The great thing about this app is that it is controlled by the teacher. Students log in and the teacher goes through the presentation. Then, within the presentation, the teacher can add several interactive tools to check learning and get instant feedback. Tools like quiz, drawing, poll, or video. Then NearPod sends a report of any interactive tools done for each class. These tools are GREAT examples of formative assessment!
I've used this more and more during the year. Instead of the typical lecture or PP presentation, I put it into NearPod so I can use the interactive tools. The students enjoy it because they can take screen shots and use for note-taking purposes if they are "slow" note takers. I also try to add fun poll questions just to keep them engaged. For example, when talking African animals, I asked them which was their favorite animal. They took the poll then we looked at results. Again, all this was pushed to each iPad so they saw the graph. Then we talked about why they chose the animal and if they had ever seen the animal at the zoo or in real life. Simple but effective way to talk about differences in culture.
Check out www.nearpod.com for more information. Really great tool!
We are new to the world of IPADS so this may not be cool, but we used IMovie to create movie trailers about our book series. This was for 3rd grade. Groups of students read different books from the same series. Then they had to do a compare and contrast of the book and create a movie trailer using iMovie. The students were so excited about the project, that they went home and told their parents. 5 parents came in to class to watch the viewing of the project. We uploaded the videos to youtube so that all parents could view student work. This was very successful. Another tool we have used in 3rd grade is www.storybird.com. Students can create stories online beginning with the art work and creating from their. This has been helpful during writing which students generally dread.
ReplyDeleteHere is one of the projects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skf3emGIBGE
Do you know what library management system (catalog) your school uses? We use Destiny and it allows us to add links to book trailers so our students can view them within the catalog as they are searching for books. It might be worth talking with your media specialist about this.
DeleteMy web 2.0 tool is also Prezi. This tool has been around for a little while and is extremely usefully as a cool and fresh version of Powerpoint to liven up presentations. It works on a web-based platform but it also has apps that allow viewing on iOS and Android. It allows students to create new and dynamic presentations that include unique animations and some cool canvas zooming that make a presentation look amazing. I have used it once to try and spice up my lessons and while it was more work than the usual powerpoint it was worth it to give everything a different look and feel. Overall I would say that this is a great tool for both teachers and students...
ReplyDeletePrezi is a fun presentation tool. I also like the fact you can upload your old PowerPoints to make a new Prezi presentation without having to start over!. It is a little more work than ppt. For my middle school students I like Popplet. Fun and really user friendly!
DeleteMy web tool is Keynote. This may be old for some of you, but as a beginner with an Ipad, I have entered a whole new world!
ReplyDeleteTeachers looking for a few visual aids to go along with their lectures should explore what Keynote has to offer. For ease of use, they can choose from 12 premade themes and sprinkle notes with animations, pictures, tables, charts, videos, and other multimedia touches.
The iPad hooks up to external displays, projectors, desktops, and laptops so the presenter can reach a large audience; nobody has to crowd around the tiny display screen, though files can easily be bounced from machine to machine via e-mail and .pdf files.
A great tool!
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ReplyDeleteOne of my responsibilities as a media specialist is to teach digital citizenship to my students. We cover digital footprint, Cyberbullying and online safety throughout the course of the year. I typically present this content through the use of Prezi, but plan on revamping these lessons into something more engaging and interactive now that I have a class set of iPads.
ReplyDeleteI was looking for a way to culminate these lessons and gain some data on student understanding. I was recently introduced to Nearpod and hoped this would be my solution. Nearpod allows teachers to create multimedia presentations with interactive features. Through either iOS or Android devices teachers share content with students while controlling their devices. Students receive the content and submit their responses. Teachers can monitor progress and measure results.
Features that can be added are slides, slideshows, polls, question and answers, quizzes, videos, draw and adding links to browse the Internet. Once the teacher customizes their lesson with the content and selects the features of how that content will be presented they are ready to launch the Nearpod. Students open the app and are asked to enter a pin number for the particular Nearpod lesson the teacher has launched. Once it is downloaded the teacher now controls what is being presented. The second slide always asked for the students to enter their name so the teacher can monitor the class. As the teacher advances through the presentation the student devices follow along.
As of mid April Nearpod has added a new homework feature that allows students to access Nearpod presentations and review them at their own pace, whenever they want, wherever they want. This allows students who work at a faster pace to work ahead without having to wait for others to catch up. On the flip-side it allows slower workers to review content as often as needed to gain mastery.
Once I launched my digital citizenship lesson students became instantly engaged. They read through a slideshow presentation reviewing content we had already covered. They then watched a brief video regarding Cyberbullying and were then asked to answer a question about what they had just viewed. Answer selections were visible by me so I could see how each student answered and a pie graph showed class results. If the majority of the class answered incorrectly, I would know to reteach that concept.
I then surveyed the students regarding their knowledge of Cyberbullying within our own school. This data could be given to our counselors or be used by me to help develop future lessons.
I can see the power behind this app and it potential for the classroom teacher looking to integrate technology. It is easy to use and visually stimulating for the students. I look forward to creating more lessons with Nearpod.
Here is a link to my blog post about the super cool tool: www. delicious.com
ReplyDeletehttp://betsyrigby.blogspot.com/2013/05/cool-school-tools-deliciouscom.html
This little box told me I used too many words. lol.
Prior to our district rolling out My Big Campus this year, we did not a support social learning platform. Two years ago, I had started using Collaborize Classroom in my classes to test the waters in what had previously been a taboo in our school policy for using any kind of social network sites. My middle school students loved it. Maybe because it was something new and once forbidden and now they could access this social site from school but they enjoyed the interaction. The majority of my students already had Facebook accounts but several students whose parents did not allow them to have a Facebook account thought this very cool.
ReplyDeleteThe following is part of a write up I did when I introduced this Web 2.0 Tool to our tech department to get this site approved.
Collaborize Classroom, A Free Online Learning Platform for Teachers and Students
Topic: Online Collaboration
Learning Style: Verbal / Linguistic
Taxonomy Level: Evaluating
What is Collaborize Classroom®?
The term collaborize is a combination of the term collaborate + one or more of the following: realize, energize, materialize, and improvise. Collaborize Classroom is a Web 2.0 teaching tool that provides teachers and students with a safe, private, secure platform to engage students with online activities, assignments, and discussions that is similar in the look and features of other popular mainstream social media sites. With the ability to incorporate text, documents, photos, and videos in an online forum, this learning platform empowers teachers with a variety of tools to engage students in becoming active participants in their learning.
Features:
•Ideal for middle and high school aged students
•Easy to use. Students will find Collaborize Classroom has the feel of other social media sites and will find it easy and fun to participate in online assignments
•Students have the ability to use an anonymous screen name
•Free topical library and resources for teachers
•The teacher has control over content
•Detailed participation reports
Benefits:
•Web Based and is supported on Android and iOS platforms
•Meets many of the common core standards
•Develops communication skills: reading, writing and language fluency
•Students engage in critical thinking and collaboration
•FREE – FREE – FREE: To register you only need an email address
Where can you find Collaborize Classroom?
http://www.collaborizeclassroom.com/
A.nnotate
ReplyDeleteTeachers have been stressing the importance of “marking and coding” text for years as a way for students to improve comprehension of complicated text and to serve as placeholders for “important” information. As students are encountering more and more of their text in a digital format, marking and coding isn’t always easily accomplished. Sure, there are ways to “mark up” a PDF or add comments to a Word document. However, they are not always user friend and are often time-consuming. Additionally, sharing of these marks will vary depending on the program and the device. A.nnotate (a.nnotate.com) can help with that and much more.
A.nnotate is an online service for marking and sharing documents and images and even snapshots of webpages. Once a user creates annotations about a document, those can be private or shared with others using a web browser. Accepted document formats include Microsoft Word PDF, Excel, Powerpoint, and OpenOffice (text and presentation).
Individual users can enjoy this cool tool for free. Free accounts allow you to upload about 30 new pages a month. If more pages are needed, there is a pay-as-you go route that makes it possible to buy additional credits, which never expire. Also, there are monthly rates for those who know they will more access to the service. There are also rates for groups and organizations.
Once you start playing with A.nnotate, it is easy to see that this program can lend itself to more than just editing. For example, when demonstrating the importance of generating questions while reading a text, a teacher can use A.nnotate to model her questioning during whole group instruction. Students then would work individually or with partners to generate and add more questions to the text in A.nnotate. For following lessons, students would then begin to sift through the questions to determine the “most important” ones. They will use the answers to these questions to generate good summary statements about the text. A.nnotate allows multiple peoples to go back to a text, review, refine, and change thinking about the text.
The tool I chose is Ted-ed, which appears to be web-based. Ted-ed allows you to add your own graphics and text to a youtube video to enhance instruction. Rather than just embedding a youtube video into MBC or moodle, I can now create an entire lesson on one screen. From what I can tell, it seems to be more visually appealing, and with all the items on one screen, this format should be much more user-friendly for my students. I can use this in conjunction with flipping my classroom, which I plan to begin to do this summer. This would also allow me to verify that students are watching the videos when I go to a more flipped classroom.Since I use youtube clips with all my classes, I can use this all across the board.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Drive
ReplyDeleteIt is awesome!!! Used to allow students to collaborate with each other when working on a presentation or document. It is an awesome tool to use in the classroom and for personal use. All files are saved in the google cloud. So great..