Thing #2

I used Wordle in 23 Things. So I tried Wordsift this time. What really impressed me about this tool was the visual thesaurus. I put an article about being a new librarian in the box and the visual thesaurus brought up some amazing connections and extensions on some very important and profound concepts of librarianship. So a student who is looking at speeches for instance, could see some interesting connections and added depth in the implied and unimplied expressions shared. This is an awesome way to get the students to add more depth and complexity into their thinking about a subject.
I love VoiceThread. This has been one of my absolute favorite 2.0 tools. I wanted to use this last year, after discovering it last summer, but was blocked by my district. Students can do some really high level thinking with this site. You displaay a concept, image, or text. Then you allow the participants to chime in with their own thoughts, which is their actual voice. You can see a running conversation on a subject. The students can read others opinions and bounce off of their ideas. I just went to thread on Readicide and the thoughts of educators across American on how schools are killing reading for students in so many ways. The ideas of each person's contribution really made me think about this sad dilemma and what to do about it.
Yeah! I made my first Animoto! It was fun and surprising. I can't believe how easy it was to create such a fun visual experience. It was a bit tricky in having too many pictures, and being cut off at the end. But with practice I feel this is a great tool to use with students. They could use this for Social Studies (primary sources, time travel photos), Science (photos showing scientific concepts), Language Arts (poetry, Book Review) and the list goes on.
Bookr looks like a fun site. The students could use this to create a picture book online, for publishing their writing. This also would be a great alternative to powerpont to showcase their projects.

Thing #21

I love Photostory! I used it last year, when I taught 5th. It was the first time I had used this technology in my classroom. The kids loved it. They could easily navigate the program. It was a great venue for them to express their thoughts about subjects and allow them to use some higher level thinking skills with analyzing whatever subject or book we were covering. I will definitely use this to create some book trailers. That is, if I can fix my audio problem with my laptop. I tried to create a photostory about a Bluebonnet book, so that I could post a new podcast. However, my internal microphone would not work. When I ran the test it made this high pitched screeching noise. I was very frustrated. But like I told my students last year, never ever give up on technology. You may get mad and want to throw the computer our the window...but it is our future... and therefore, well worth our patience. I will call the geek squad tomorrow to iron out the kinks on the audio. But in order to go on with Things, I will post a photostory my student, Nia, made last year for 39 Clues.