I'm not telling stories...these are seriously some cool tools!

I don’t know about everyone else, but when I look for a web site or tool that I can use for a lesson, I consider the following:

1.      Is it free?

2.      Is it easy to navigate?

3.      Will I be able to remember and explain how to use this to students?

4.      Will learning how to use this tool not take up the entire lesson, leaving no time for the actual content?

If something does not meet these standards, I know I will not use it. So after exploring a bit this week I thought I’d write about some of the tools I did find that are exactly what I look for.  

First there is Storybird. I saw other people blogged about this one too, so it seems to be a popular choice. I liked that it was free (some tools were not). I also liked that it provided images and artwork. I always worry about copying and pasting images from the internet for copyright purposes. So I would feel a lot better having students use a site where I know they have permission to use the images. This tool also makes the process of creating a story pretty fast and easy. I thought this was good because often teachers avoid projects like this thinking they will take up too much class time. The student created stories can be saved into a library for your class.

For voice threads, I thought that Yodio was a pretty cool site. You can make a recording and add it to a slide show, online photo album, picture, etc. If you cannot record from your computer, you can use your cell phone! I actually used this in class last year. With the help of our school computer tech., the students brought their cell phones to class (yes, they were allowed to have their phones that day), and recorded an introduction about themselves in French. They liked it because they could basically set up camp anywhere in the classroom and did not have to present in front of the entire class. I liked it because I was not under the pressure of having to grade right there on the spot. I  could change the volume or hit replay if necessary. Having students record instead of presenting during class also freed up class time. Instead of taking 2-3 days for presentations, it took about 20 minutes to make the recordings.

I have also used Glogster before. Glogster is like making an online poster. You can add headings, text, and choose the theme and background. Similar to other tools, you can add images and videos onto the page. This is something I think could be used for an assignment in basically any content area.

Finally for making something more along the movie line, the site Animasher is also cool. Again, you can choose the images to add, make them do different movements and actions, and add text and music.

So that sums up some of the tools that I enjoyed playing around with this week. Storybird and Yodio are under the Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools and Glogster is under our class content on D2L. I will put the link for Animasher below because I think I found that through another site.

http://www.animasher.com/