Student use of Wordle—because the user can either type in text or copy and paste, Wordle can be used to look for the frequent use of vocabulary in newly assigned text, maybe predict a theme or main idea of a reading assignment, or the student can examine their own writing for redundancy of a word, and create word posters. Using Wordle, students can work either as individuals or as part of a team.
title="Wordle: For Library2Play2">
alt="Wordle: For Library2Play2"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">
Student use of WordSift has many helpful functions and some especially helpful to identified ESL students such as the visual Thesaurus, providing examples of different meanings to the same word, the Academic Word List (AWL), posts of images and video related to selected words, sound (ability to hear the pronunciation of a word in English and other languages--awesome), and the organization of key words according to color (green, red).
Glogster—As a student learning how to create a Glogster for myself, I needed to plan and research images as well as my pictures, links, video, and possible sound. I also needed to give thought to my font type, color, shadowing and layout. Different (different than traditional cardboard poster) thinking was obvious—that related to the video, sound, links, and images so easily available on the net, options that allow the student to present more information using less space. Using the electronic poster online allows the student to combine art and layout skills of the cardboard poster along with presentation available on the net. An added bonus is that the Glogster can be easily viewed by a larger audience.
Depending on the purpose of the poster, it is difficult for me to say that one is better or worse. Because I feel so very strongly that we should be using technology in such a more creative way in our teaching and learning, I have to make sure that I am not biased in my thought process. Ex. There is a place for hands on Art (the cardboard poster) and using that instructional delivery across the curriculum areas is also a valuable tool.
Voice Thread is an easy to use internet tool that combines visual, auditory, and text mediums and can be used by students as a presentation tool for sharing (favorites, how-to’s, greetings, announcements, etc.) sharing with the intent of gathering input, as an evaluating tool (their own work or another’s), story telling, sharing an experience, and simply being a voice (i.e. electronic portfolio). There is potential for using Voice Thread in every classroom.
Animoto—Another presentation tool--Fun, easy to use. I did like that there is a library of music and images for the student to choose from. Many options available for sharing the final product.
Voki— a talking avatar can be used to send a strong message in an email or blog relevant to the theme of the blog or mission of the email writer by putting a voice to words regarding, for ex., living green or eating healthy.
Bookr— students can easily use this tool to create a photobook instead of any other application that creates slide presentations (ex. powerpoint, virtual whiteboard, voice thread); however, the user is limited to using only those pictures/images that have been loaded into Flickr
