Monday, November 14, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Tool reflection part 2 - Musuembox and Go!Animate
Today I will discuss two unique classroom tools and their uses.
First up we have Museumbox presented by Cody - http://museumbox.e2bn.org/
This is a very cool tool for an aspiring history teacher for sure. What would a Greek soldier have on hand during a battle or an American World War 2 have on hand storming up the beaches of Normandy? Museumbox allows you to look in to the life of that person and what was essential to them. You can place items in to boxes that is something that specific person would have on them at that time. You could do a project where students ask their parents what they found essential when they were teenagers growing up and to make a Museumbox about them. I see a lot of possibilities with this free program.
Next we have GoAnimate from Dashaya - http://goanimate.com/
For simply signing up you can make short animated clips of anything that youd like. GoAnimate also has a large amount of possibilities at its disposal, allowing recreations of events in history through the creativity of the student. Check this program out for sure and have fun with it - there is alot of potential for the teacher themselves to make a project for their lectures - it's not just for the students with GoAnimate.
This concludes my second analysis of classroom tools - please feel free to comment and share your ideas on these two tools.
First up we have Museumbox presented by Cody - http://museumbox.e2bn.org/
This is a very cool tool for an aspiring history teacher for sure. What would a Greek soldier have on hand during a battle or an American World War 2 have on hand storming up the beaches of Normandy? Museumbox allows you to look in to the life of that person and what was essential to them. You can place items in to boxes that is something that specific person would have on them at that time. You could do a project where students ask their parents what they found essential when they were teenagers growing up and to make a Museumbox about them. I see a lot of possibilities with this free program.
Next we have GoAnimate from Dashaya - http://goanimate.com/
For simply signing up you can make short animated clips of anything that youd like. GoAnimate also has a large amount of possibilities at its disposal, allowing recreations of events in history through the creativity of the student. Check this program out for sure and have fun with it - there is alot of potential for the teacher themselves to make a project for their lectures - it's not just for the students with GoAnimate.
This concludes my second analysis of classroom tools - please feel free to comment and share your ideas on these two tools.
Wordle, Popplet, and StoryJumper - The first round of classroom tools
So in class all of the students are presenting cool free classroom tools they have found on the internet and my assignment is to reflect on their possible usage in the classroom and if they were share a place in my future classroom or not and why.
First up is Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/
Wordle is a free online program that allows you to type a paragraph in to a text box and on the next page the words that show up the most in the text will be the largest, the second most be the second largest, and so on and so forth. I can see something like this being a good use of poster space in my future history classroom, to get across the broad message of important words used in famous speeches or documents. My students could write a report and then pop it in to Wordle to see what words they use the most and why - and they could write a response for that as well! I see Wordle being a very useful tool in a history classroom setting because words hold weight in history.
The downsides are that there is no real printable method of these creations and you have to result to print-screen capturing the design and then printing it out after some editing.
Next up is Popplet - http://popplet.com/
Popplet is a never ending brainstorming bubble that can be made to organize thoughts or simply just to hold thoughts for later use. For a history project, students could pick to write about say, Abraham Lincoln. They could use Popplet to brainstorm endlessly about him and have a database of everything accumulated over the course of the project and then write about their discoveries. This can be useful to more creative thinkers - brainstorming is not for everyone, however and while the project may open a door for an unsuspecting brainstormer, not all students will enjoy organizing their thoughts this way. This would take classroom 'testing' to see if this program would truly be effective in my classroom - but I believe it is very cool nonetheless.
Last but not least is StoryJumper - http://www.storyjumper.com/
Unfortunately, I don't think StoryJumper will have a huge use for my classroom. This is a tool designed for younger children and I am focusing on becoming a high school teacher - but for younger children I can definetly see this as being a great tool for creativity. There is a maximum page amount which can be confining to a child but also keep the child from making hundreds of pages of material. StoryJumper is certainly interesting but I think I would rather have my children draw their own books at that age because I personally believe in a more hands on approach to artistic projects.
All three of these tools are very cool in their own way. I urge you to mess with them a bit and see what you can come up with! Let me know what you think of these tools. Thank you Tasha, Nicole, and Colton for demonstrating their uses!
First up is Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/
Wordle is a free online program that allows you to type a paragraph in to a text box and on the next page the words that show up the most in the text will be the largest, the second most be the second largest, and so on and so forth. I can see something like this being a good use of poster space in my future history classroom, to get across the broad message of important words used in famous speeches or documents. My students could write a report and then pop it in to Wordle to see what words they use the most and why - and they could write a response for that as well! I see Wordle being a very useful tool in a history classroom setting because words hold weight in history.
The downsides are that there is no real printable method of these creations and you have to result to print-screen capturing the design and then printing it out after some editing.
Next up is Popplet - http://popplet.com/
Popplet is a never ending brainstorming bubble that can be made to organize thoughts or simply just to hold thoughts for later use. For a history project, students could pick to write about say, Abraham Lincoln. They could use Popplet to brainstorm endlessly about him and have a database of everything accumulated over the course of the project and then write about their discoveries. This can be useful to more creative thinkers - brainstorming is not for everyone, however and while the project may open a door for an unsuspecting brainstormer, not all students will enjoy organizing their thoughts this way. This would take classroom 'testing' to see if this program would truly be effective in my classroom - but I believe it is very cool nonetheless.
Last but not least is StoryJumper - http://www.storyjumper.com/
Unfortunately, I don't think StoryJumper will have a huge use for my classroom. This is a tool designed for younger children and I am focusing on becoming a high school teacher - but for younger children I can definetly see this as being a great tool for creativity. There is a maximum page amount which can be confining to a child but also keep the child from making hundreds of pages of material. StoryJumper is certainly interesting but I think I would rather have my children draw their own books at that age because I personally believe in a more hands on approach to artistic projects.
All three of these tools are very cool in their own way. I urge you to mess with them a bit and see what you can come up with! Let me know what you think of these tools. Thank you Tasha, Nicole, and Colton for demonstrating their uses!
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