ZooBurst is "A digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D popup book." This a fun tool that would really get students engaged, and eager to share their work with others. Books can be viewed later and controlled via keyboard commands or webcam. (Let's face it, though--the webcam option is so much more fun!) Below, I'm embedding a Screenr screencast of myself interacting with a very simple pop-up book that I created in about 10 minutes in order to "test drive" ZooBurst.
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I haven't tried this program yet, but after watching the video below, I am definitely curious about its potential as an educational tool. I'll be posting in the future after I have the opportunity to experiment with it. IF you are interested in using Edusim, check out their website here. Also, please contact me if you have any experience working with Edusim; I'd love to hear what others are doing with this. A tutorial on getting started with Edusim can be found here. Creative Commons allows users to search for media online without violating copyright laws. This is a great tool for teaching students about fair use, copyright, and plagiarism. If your students are looking for images that they can display publicly on websites and blogs, have them use the Creative Commons. Slideshare allows you to upload slideshows (such as Power Point) to share with others. You can also search among uploaded slideshows for a presentation that might fit your needs. One of the best features of Slideshare is that it turns your slideshow into an embeddable document that you can add to your website. Slideshare is also completely free, unless you decide to upgrade to a Pro account. But enough of me; let the Slideshare people tell you for themselves why you will love their product... SlideShare Quick Tour - Summary of features & capabilities View more presentations from Amit Ranjan. Books of Hope is a wonderful nonprofit organization that assigns schools in the United States to schools in Uganda. US schools then create educational books for their sponsored schools overseas. There is a $200 participation fee per school. In the past, when my school district was able to cover the cost of the project, this was one of the most fulfilling projects that my students participated in all year. Books of Hope does a wonderful job of providing background information for multiple age levels, in order to provide a context for students to better understand their audience. Students will truly enjoy knowing that they are creating a valuable tools that will affect the lives of others. Bomomo is an unusual, and extremely addictive art tool. I could see this being very useful for creating backgrounds for slideshows, as well as abstract art for websites, blogs, wikis, e-portfolios, or other student pieces of work. It could also be interesting to have students use art generated by Bomomo as a creative writing prompt. Sumo Paint is a free website that offers some pretty impressive features. In addition to mimicking the appearance of real art tools, such as paintbrush, ink and pencils, it also has some unusual features, including: smudge, blur, rotate, custom shape tool, and many more. The images below are from Sumo Paint's "Popular Artwork" section. With the right amount of time, patience and talent, Sumo Paint is capable of creating some truly inspiring artwork. Webspiration is a free "online visual thinking tool." Create mind maps, webs, graphic organizers (whatever you like to call them). Webspiration will even convert your creation into an outline for you. You can toggle between Diagram view and Outline view, save, print and export. Big Huge Labs has an endless supply of fun creation tools for photos. My personal favorite option is the mosaic maker (pictured left). I created a mural of famous African American writers to display on a classroom homepage. You can also create motivational posters, puzzles, magazine covers, movie posters, trading cards, slideshows, and tons of other goodies. This a great website for anyone who wants to create some visual appeal for their handouts or websites. You could also have students use the website to create interesting visual aids for projects and presentations, or for posting on e-portfolios. I learned about DocStoc from Richard Byrne's blog, FreeTech4Teachers, in his post 7 Visually Appealing Ways to Post Documents Online. What I liked the most was that it offered the ability to embed documents to websites so that people can view them without having to download them. Of course, there is a download option for those who do want to keep a copy. I first used DocStoc to post my classroom syllabus on my class website, and then I started to go a little crazy with embedded documents. The downside is that, if you get as excited as I did with your embedding, your website can become cluttered and difficult to navigate, so I recommend using DocStoc sparingly. This would be great for classroom newsletters or for publishing student writing online. Another thing that makes DocStoc so wonderful is that you don't have to worry about the person viewing the document having the same version of software as you. |
AuthorDr. Jessica Pilgreen, Ed.D. Archives
December 2020
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