Week 4

This week we started out by presenting a PowerPoint (PP) and presenting to grade age students. As I am not currently teaching, I took a previous presentation that I constructed from college and modified it to high school students. It was over Forensic Adipocere and its part in the forensic science world. Since I don’t have the ability to present this to high school students in the classroom, I sent it to some friends who have high school aged children and had them take a look at it. I am most proud of the fluidity of the presentation; it just easily flows from one slide to another. I worked really hard on this in college and presented it in Senior Presentation. Since this was for college students, there were not many restrictions for images, seeing as this would be presented to high school students now, I may need to tone down some of them sine they maybe a little too much and too graphic for school policy. Since I couldn’t present this to science students, I knew I was going to get a lot of that is gross comments which I did. Not too many students were interested in this, as it was definitely science based. Next time I need to tie this to the real world and even mention the TV show CSI or Bones and maybe students will start to be more interested in this.  

We also explored a website called TED (technology, entertainment, and design). I surfed around for a while and watched quite a few videos. I definitely bookmarked this site! The science videos were very interesting.  From the videos I watched and countless others, I know this would be so useful in the science classroom. You can present to students that anyone can do experiments; you are only limited by your imagination and not your age. We also see how genetic engineering can be useful to decrease the number of disease carrying species. This would work for the learning of experiments as well as genetics and engineering which are objectives required in the State of Washington end of course exam.

We had four technological explorations to look at this week as well, ComicLife and ISpeech, VoiceThread, Storybird and Scribblar, and Xtranormal and Virtual Manipulatives.

I have to admit I have absolutely no drawing skills what so ever. If you need something hand drawn, well I can draw a stick figure and a heart and that’s about it. With ComicLife, you can bring pictures to life such as in a comic book. Here you can create your own comic book. You upload pictures, drawings, stills, etc. to the website and drop and drag captions and word balloons. This resource helps inspire creativity. The use of comics can help motivate the unmotivated reader, teach students about stories with a plot, beginning, ending, etc., and become a visual representation of knowledge. It also has spell checker support, templates to help get you started, page numbering system, and different fonts and layouts for customization. You also provide the students with additional learning in the art of digital graphics writing! You as a teacher do have to remember to copyright laws. This would be a good resource to help teach your students how to do this properly. The site also has links in helping you and the students know how to do this.  

We also looked at another text to speech resource. ISpeech provides two types of services with text to speech and automated speech recognition (ASR). Text to speech lets users send them text and they provide the users with computer-generated speech. ASR allows users to submit audio data from a microphone or a file and they return transcript of what was said. This can be done on mobile devices as well as through the web. You can even build an application if need be, but that’s really for a business.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. With ComicLife, I could use this for my own use to present classroom rules which I will create with the help of the students. This would be a fun way to create and understand all the rules for the year and a learning experience for the students. Since I want to teach high school biology, this would also be neat to use for a life cycle lesson. Using funny pictures with captions can help visual learners in their studies as well as create funny things that some other students can remember for their notes. ISpeech would be good for the visually impaired. They could have assignments sent in and transcribed so they could hear them as well as transcribing a study guide or notes that were taken in class. This would be useful with any form of written document that needs to be transcribed verbally.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. The Comic Life would be something new and different to use in the classroom. It seems very easy to use with a tutorial if you need help. If you have ever created a PowerPoint presentation, I think would you will be just fine.  They have software for your Windows or Mac computer as well as any IPhone/IPad device. The application is $5 for your IPhone/IPad device. You can buy one license for $19.99 which works on just one computer, but you can purchase more licenses for more computers and you receive a discount the more you buy. For 1000 licenses, the costs are $2490 and for 500 licenses, the costs are $1749. As a teacher I think you would be ok with just putting it on your computer for now and purchasing more if you think there is a need for it. ISpeech seems pretty cool and fairly easy to use, but the costs are what get to me. They charge per word, really per word!!! You buy them in credits where one word equals one credit or for ARS one transaction is one credit. So 10,000 credits is $200, 100,000 is $1000, 1,000,000 is $5000. Anything greater than that costs around .0001 cents per word and you have to contact them personally. For your cell phone its pay per install. Its .25 per install for the first 10,000-100,000, .20 per install for 100,001-500,000 installs, and .175 per install for 500,001-1,000,000. Anything more than that you have to contact them personally again. I just find the cost very hard to swallow; you can buy software for cheaper than does the same thing for a fraction of the price. The only thing this offers is the ability to convert text as well. I figure they have to have something out there much cheaper than this.

Voice thread already sets itself apart by not being software but a cloud application.  It’s a multimedia slideshow which is navigable by users. This allows you to collaborate, communicate, and connect as it states on the website. In VoiceThread you can upload, share, and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files, and videos. This can also integrate with a board range of information systems including Angel Learning at we use at the University of the Cumberlands. Individuals can comment on your presentations using video, audio, or text. You can also either decide to keep your information private, share with certain individuals, or make public. Just like other technology, there is a mobile application you can use on your Apple devices. They also a link to an education VoiceThread that is specifically for the education world. They have quite a few videos on there. They point of this is the ability to use it on campus and collaborate with teachers and students. There was also a VoiceThread Wiki space created by an individual where it has grown to a collection of VoiceThreads from students and teachers. It provides examples of how they are using VoiceThread in the classroom. There are samples, resources, and best practices. There is an array for them for every age group and every subject.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. VoiceThread would be interesting to use for the students. You could use this in the science classroom to create a story for a certain topic, bring the life cycle of a particular animal to life, and teach the process of research and experiments. With the ability to create and upload all types of things from documents to media, there are endless possibilities where you can even share with other teachers. With the VoiceThread Wiki, you can use this the same way as the original, but here you have examples and samples which can help you brainstorm and construct ones on your own for your classrooms or upload ones to the site to share with other teachers and collaborators.

I would recommend this for educators. It seems very easy to use since there is no software downloading, but it can get very expensive quick. For just your own account its $15 a month or $79 a year. You can create student usernames for up to 50 students, you can always add more later for $2 each. You are editor of their work with a manger tool to create classes and student accounts. It also provides you a custom web address to easily share public VoiceThreads. If you need more than one account such as for a school license, this can range from 500 users for $476 to 2000 users for around $2100. You can always ask for more but you need to contact them directly. The Wiki space is highly recommended if you purchase VoiceThread. It’s easy to navigate, free to use, and a great tool to help you learn and understand VoiceThread.

When this site popped up, I was amazed at first at the beautiful artwork. I think of handmade stories with crude hand drawn pictures, not these beautiful pictures. Storybird gives the ability to be a story teller. They have artwork from illustrators and animators and inspire writers of any age to create stories. Then you can read and share them with this large community of children, students, and teachers! This allows for creativity and expression as well as learning the art of writing and reading. You can create a regular or a teacher account which provides private classes where student names are hidden and discussions are private. These stories are so animated and beautiful. 

Scribblar.com is a simple online collaboration. It contains a real-time multi-user whiteboard, image upload and download, text chat, and live audio. You can always upgrade to the Scribblar Pro which allows you integrate it into you existing website. This is good for school district and small businesses.  It’s the same thing as the original but allows you to use your own logo, and personalize it. It can be used for the online classroom or tutoring platform. 

With Storybird, this would be a great addition to an English or Reading class. Here you students could let their minds be their guide with beautiful animations to go along with it. You could also use it in the biology classroom to illustrate a life cycle of a certain animal or ecological event. I wish there was something like this for our classes when I was younger so it could inspire and empower creativity and imagination.

Scribblar could be utilized a lot of ways in the classroom. It could be used to tutor students with the use of the whiteboard. It could connect students from different classes to work on collaborative projects together. This could also connect students around the world to connect and work together. This would also be very useful for brainstorming ideas on research and projects. The opportunities are endless.

I would recommend both resources for educators. Each site is easy to use and could provide a lot of benefits to the classroom. Storybird allows for teachers to buy a Pro series which offers more advance services such as a review dashboard, grading capabilities, printable handouts, class archiving, and feedback on work. If you want to download the books, for 150 books it is $69 a year and $99 a year for 300 books. To me it doesn’t seem that expensive for a lifetime of memories. Scribblar is free for everyday use, but the Pro is custom made for each individual so you have to contact them to get the price for it.

Xtranormal actually takes the words from your stories and brings to live with animation! You have the ability to add and delete characters, change the camera angles, have the characters speak dialogue, and upload media such as pictures and audio to your story. You pretty much become the director of your own story. For anyone who has ever wanted to create a movie, this is a sight to take a look at. Special tools allow you to create assignments, moderate, grade, and give feedback. Learning now takes a more hands on experience, can help teachers reinvent their lectures, and you can help engage your students more. 

The virtual manipulatives is a national library created by Utah State University. This resource is a project that began in 1999 to develop a library of interactive, web-based virtual manipulatives or concept tutorials for K-12 mathematics instruction. The usage of this virtual learning environment helps engage the students in the lessons of mathematics. Visual objects that help illustrate mathematical relationships and applications and allow students to visually examine concepts. They also have the eNLVM which is an extension of the original and are interactive online units that target objectives and include online activities and assessments. Teachers can view class answers and assess how students are doing. Teachers can also modify the lessons to the needs of students and share their lessons as well as collaborate with others

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. Xtranormal could be something new and interesting to bring to the classroom. With this you could animate lectures and bring history to life from 1776. You could bring fun animation to the life cycle of a frog, or animate an ecological disaster and what the consequences of this could be on the ecosystem. The virtual manipulatives would be an incredibly helpful resource in the mathematics classroom. As I one of those students who struggle daily with math, I would have enjoyed this in my classes so that I could understand more. This could be helpful in different contents of mathematics and would allow for the teachers to readily see if the students understand the information and change their instruction as needed.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. It seems very easy to use and has a complete manual and demos to help you get started. It is $10 a month for the teacher and to add student access is .50 cents per student. This offers all the amenities you will need to create whatever movies you want.  The virtual manipulatives also seems easy to navigate and contains tutorials as well. The offer the license in English or Spanish and run around $39.95 per computer go up from there with a slight discount the more you purchase. For mathematic classes this would be such a good investment for the students especially students who learn visually.

Week 3

These week we looked at quite a few different resources including desktop publishing, bloom’s technology, and assistive technology. As I am not yet, teaching I haven’t made an fliers or newsletters, but I was a Zumba instructor for a year before an injury made my hobby come to a halt. I have made fliers advertising my Zumba classes I offered. What makes it visually appealing is all the bright colors and designs. You can’t help but look at something like this. It has the Zumba logo and my picture. 

I think what distracts from it is too much wording on one flier. Its overloaded. It needs to be sharp, simple and to the point, not long winded or you lose the audience halfway through! Some of the colors also need to be a little darker so you can seem them.

I was unable to use the Zumba logos again as I am not currently an instructor anymore, but this is how I would shorten the wording and make it a little easier to read. As I am not the greatest creator of fliers, I plan on working on this until I can be better at it.

We also looked at 4 technology explorations this week, assistive technologies, 4Teachers & Dimio, Full Measure, and WebQuests & Read to Words.

I am unfamiliar with assistive technology. The IDEA defines this as Any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of children with disabilities. The term does not include a medical device that is surgically implanted, or the replacement of such device. This definition is very board and lets the IEP teams decide what would be in the best interest of the student to utilize. A host of technology resources are available to support student performance, achievement, and independence in the following areas: academics and learning aids, aids to daily living, assistive listening and environmental aids for the hearing impaired and deaf, augmentative communication, computer access, leisure and recreation, seating, positioning, mobility, and vision. They also have resources for academics including math, reading, writing, spelling, study, and organizational skills. The Georgia Project for Assistive Technology (GPAT) is a part of the Georgia Department of Education which provides support to the local school systems in their efforts to provide assistive technology devices and services to students with disabilities. According to the website “The mission of GPAT is to improve student achievement, productivity, independence and inclusion by enhancing educator knowledge of assistive technology and increasing student access to appropriate assistive technology devices and services.” The IDEA mandates the school system’s responsibility to provide assistive technology devices and services to students with disabilities. If a student needs assistive technology, it should be documented with the IEP. GPAT has developed resources to assist educational teams in the implementation and integration of assistive technology into instructional activities.  They also provide sample lesson plans which include set up and follow up activities for each lesson. Educators can also receive tutorials, technology tips, and supplemental materials.

Zoho.com offers productivity and collaboration applications. To date they have launched 25+ applications including Office Suite and Web Conferencing. The collaboration application would be the best use for assistive technology, here you can create and store documents, chat, create and store projects, online web conferences, discussions, and creation of Wikis. The productivity applications include the creation of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and the use of a notebook where you can create, aggregation, and collaborate. I didn’t find any real testimonials where educators had used this; it seems to be more of a business benefit. I did see where some educators asked about their interest in Zoho, but they never came back to say if it worked out for them. There are different plans that you can purchase from free to $5 month per user. 

I am not currently a teacher, but I am definitely using something along the lines of this for my students. I know I will have some students in my classroom with disabilities and I am hoping to be able to use this assistive technology to help them. Since I am not sure what type of student’s disabilities I will come across, I will start with study and organizational skills. I plan on using Microsoft Word to help print out agendas and calendars. If I have students who have visual disabilities, I will use software such as screen readers and text enlargement programs so they maybe to see the PowerPoint content. As I have read through all the information on these websites, I have learned one big point which is the use of assistive technology depends on the needs of each student. Like I have learned, education is not a one size fits all!

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. Anything that is beneficial to special education students, is a must for me. It is our duty as teachers to make sure everybody receives an education. There is no cost for GPAT but very minimal cost for Zoho.com. The personal plan has one workspace, 1 GB storage, file processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools. The standard plan is $3 per month per user, and extra $3 for 5 GB. This plan has everything from the personal plan but includes password protector sharing, user management, role based access, and custom branding. The premium plan is $5 per month plus an extra $3 for 5 GB. This includes everything from the standard plan plus adding attachments into folders. Both seem very easy to use as long as you have some history with Microsoft.

4Teachers family of tools is a site of educational resources that use technology with all content areas and grade levels. These resources align with current standards and promote higher order thinking. 

TrackStar is place point for online lessons and activities. Teachers collect web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add explanations for your students, and you have an online lesson. You can either create one or search through a database by subject, grade, or standard. All tracks are reviewed to make sure they pass copyright laws. Appropriate material includes educational value, images, sounds, and language. There is also a tutorial to help you learn how to use TrackStar.

As we all know classroom management is very important. We need to provide a safe and nurturing environment inside and outside of the classroom. Classroom Architect helps you play with the layout of your room visually before you actually move the furniture.  You select the basic dimensions, drag objects to and around the grid and then print it out so that you have a hard copy to use to actually move the furniture.

Another tool that I thought was useful was the Assign-A-Day. Here teachers can create a calendar for each of their classes and add assignments for the students view. Students can use these calendars to view their assignments for their classes to keep up in class or see assignments they may have missed die to sick day. This can only be used for school; it is not for personal calendars. 

The other website we looked at DSpeech is a text to speech program with the ability of Automatic Speech Recognition integrated. It is able to read aloud the written text and choose the sentences to be pronounced based upon the vocal answers of the user. All programs are free, but he allows for donations. They also have this in numerous languages so that it is available to everybody.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. The 4Teachers tools that I picked can use be used in the classroom. TrackStar you can use to create and find lesson plans specifically for your classroom. The Classroom architect can be used to sketch out the layout for my classroom so that it is an inviting and fun environment for the students. Assign a day I can use to post a calendar of assignment so that my students can keep with them or find assignments that may have missed while they were out sick. These programs don’t have many variables, but generally one purpose but these are all something that can help you in the classroom. Dspeech is useful for the visual impaired. This can be used to any of your presentations or documents that can be read.  

I would recommend these for educators since they are very useful for the classroom. All of these are free to use and easy to use, the only one I question about is the DSpeech. It seems like it could be a questionable website and I would prefer to use PowerTalk since it seems more of a reliable site. All the sites from the 4Teachers are incredibly useful for teachers to build lesson plans, make a classroom layout, and establish a calendar for your classroom. The Dspeech is more to utilize in the classroom and would be helpful for the visually impaired.

I had heard of text to speech programs, but here you don’t have to buy software and uplaod it to your computer. PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation and slide from Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. The advantage over other Text To Speech programs is that it is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images. Speech is provided by the synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows 7 and Vista and XP. PowerTalk uses PowerPoint supplied with Microsoft Office to show the presentation. This is very beneficial to the limited sighted community. It is a good example of assistive 
technology. The only real requirement is you have to have PowerPoint 2000 or later.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to students with visual impairments. You could use this software to help students in your classroom who may not be able to see a PowerPoint presentation. As I plan on using PowerPoint to put my notes on, this would be an awesome resource which could allow the students to be an active participate in the classroom. You could also use it to read stories created by students.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. This would be a very important resource to use in the classroom for the visual disabled community. It is very easy to use since it works with PowerPoint which you should already have on your computer. There is no fee unless you have to purchase an updated version of Microsoft.

After looking WebQuest, I have bookmarked this for my future classes. I find inquiry based learning very interesting for my future science classrooms. WebQuests are a way to make good use of the internet while engaging my students in the world of web 2.0. A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which the information that learners interact with comes from the internet. Here you can create, share, and search for WebQuest for the classroom. WebQuest include an introduction, a task, information sources, process, guidance, and then a conclusion. They are most likely to be group activities, use motivational elements, and can be designed with a single discipline or interdisciplinary. Short term goals include acquisition and integration while long term goals of these activities are extending and refining knowledge. They have links to websites that would help you getting started in constructing one with short term goals as well as a link to books you can purchase. The site allows for you to bring inquiry based learning into the classroom plus allows for the learning technological resources.

Read the words is where you can convert everything to speech. You can always write text, copy, and paste it into a text box. There is also a file upload section, where you can upload any Microsoft office document, Adobe PDF, txt, and HTML document. They have 15 voices and you can choose any reader that you want. You can also have someone read in French or Spanish. If you see the reader is mispronouncing a word you can try typing in the word phonetically. You can embed your recording in web pages, emails, and share on Facebook. There are video tutorials if you need them to get started. This site allows you to do more than just with the previous sites since these reads documents, but it doesn’t work with PowerPoint. You can custom create an avatar that talks to you. There is also a toolbar you can download that will talk webpages on the internet that you surf. Read the words also allows for the creation of videos as well as audio podcasts which can be uploaded to the internet.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that is definitely beneficial to all my students. The WebQuest would be a great resource to find and create web-inquiry based activities for my students. Not only would I be teaching this part of lesson, but also teaching them how to navigate around the internet with a purpose in mind. Read the Words would be great for any student especially students with visual impairments. With the toolbar it could read words off of pages on the internet that you or the students want to hear. Here you could upload an important document that they need to know about or even upload a story that was created by a student. The video creator and podcast creator are also very useful for your classroom. Here you could record experiments that can be seen by students as well as using podcasts where you could record study material that the students can listen to for a test. This would be helpful in the end of course exam for high school biology students.  It has endless possibilities for use.   

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. WebQuest are free to use and will a little tutorial and some practice you could construct your own for students or locate ones to use for your classroom. As for Read the Words, it seems fairly easy to use, but there can be fees involved if you wanting more. The free bronze plan created 30 audios files up to 30 seconds in length, 15 voices, 3 languages, 2 customable avatars, 8 podcasts, 8 embedded reading and 8 saved readings. The Silver plan is $40 a year or $10 a month and includes all from the bronze plan but allows for unlimited audio files up to a n hour in length, 5 customable avatars, access to manipulating and enhanced reading, 25 podcasts, 25 embedded readings, and 25 saved readings. The Gold plan is $70 a year or $15 a month and includes everything from the Silver plan but allows for unlimited audio files up to 8 hours in length, unlimited avatar customization, unlimited podcasts, 100 embedded readings, and 100 saved readings. There is a specific teacher pack which is $100 a year or $20 a month and includes everything from the Gold plan plus the ability to share your readings with your students. There are testimonials from other teachers on the website including a librarian who states that this site has been a lifesaver and even had their students go up a letter grade with its usage.

Week 2

Looking over this week’s technology, our first resource was spreadsheets and databases. I am familiar with both of these as I readily utilized databases and spreadsheets in my undergraduate studies in Animal Biology at Texas A&M. By using Microsoft Excel I was able to list my results from my experiment, plug them into a graph, and determine things such as standard deviation for my lab reports. I came across a website of http://www.kabt.org/2008/05/08/hardy-weinberg-spreadsheet-model/. Here students were using spreadsheets to model population genetics using Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. This may be more for the advanced AP courses in high school, but can be adapted for the regular classes as well. This actually surprised me since I hadn’t thought of using this in a spreadsheet.  I had spreadsheets for experiments and reports, but mostly to determine the standard deviation and if the experiment was successful. 

Since I am not currently a teacher, I know that I will be using Excel frequently in my biology classrooms to organize data such as experiments, grades, and student information. Being able to quickly type in the data collected and then being able to construct a graph of any sort for reports is both efficient and easy. If I do utilize databases, it will be for my own usage such as keeping track of information such as phone numbers, addresses, etc., for my students. Even though I have had training in Access, I find Excel easier to use for the purposes that I need.

We also delved into the world of Wikis. As a student for many years, I really only knew about Wikipedia which out professors banned us from every using material in any of our reports which a promise of an automatic 0 if we ever did. You can say that I just thought all wikis were this way, just because it had been crammed in my head for many years to stay away! After going through the readings and the websites, I found that wikis weren't actually a bad thing for things such as classroom websites. One site that caught my eye was http://bergmannscience.wikispaces.com/Science+8. This teacher, Dr. Bergmann who is the author of this wiki, is so amazingly detailed with the material. He has a calendar for assignments which even points out homework in the color red for students to remember. He has a parent portion where it tells them the subject the students are working on as well as questions for dinner discussions at home. There is a link to pictures and videos, as well as links for the syllabus, class information, and the units they will be working on. You can tell this teacher spends a lot of time on this wiki to help out his students. What Mr. Bergmann has for his students is along the lines of the same type of wiki I would like for my students, but I want to add a discussion board for assignments as well as a place for students to post questions that everybody can help answer. I want to make this wiki an interactive site where students can post research and information for projects and presentations.

We also looked into three technological explorations such as Mindmapping, Animoto, and PhotoPeach.

I have to say, I am impressed. What will technology be able to do next? I had heard of brainstorming maps before and had actually utilized them in grade school, but I didn’t know they now had webpages where you could do this all online. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words or ideas that branch off from a main idea. These maps are used to organize and structure information. This is a good tool to have in helping you organize and structure for an important paper or research report. Bubbl.us is a free mind mapping site where you only have to set up an account to save your material. If even helps assist in how to construct a mind map. It’s a very basic site, not hard to navigate or figure out at all. Wisemapping is a little more advance where you actually download the software to your computer at no cost. They run off donations. They offer tutorials and seem to be very helpful all the way through the construction process. Since it’s been a while that I have used any type of brainstorming maps, it took me a little bit to navigate how to construct one, but this website is a little more advanced, more features, and better quality than Bubbl.us.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that maybe beneficial to my students. These maps would be useful for my students in organizing and brainstorming their ideas for a research paper or even a presentation. A student can quickly construct a mind map and be able to see how they want to lay out the paper and presentation so that it flows from start to finish. Sometimes students have a difficult in planning out how they want a paper or presentation to sound. I have found it easier to use something along the lines of a mind map to organize my thoughts, write out what I want to write or say, and then plan out the process of constructing the paper or presentation.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. It could be very useful with all grade levels. If students have never seen or been taught how to construct a brainstorming map on paper first, you will have to go over the basics of how to construct one and what they are for. After this, you could teach them how to construct one on the computer through a light tutorial. If the student has used a computer before and has a little of word processing background, this won’t be difficult at all for them to use. It is free for both, Bubbl.us and Wisemapping.com, all you have to do create an account and you are ready. Bubbl.us I would recommend for first timers and beginners, Wisemapping.com I would recommend for students who have previously constructed a mind map and have worked with word processing before.

What will they come up with next? I remember when I had to record a presentation, my mom had to bring out the huge video recorder that weighed a ton and looked more like a boombox! Now with the use of Animoto, teachers can create videos and presentations with the ability to incorporate images, video clips, music and text. 

Animoto also offers an array of tools to help with this. They make it easy to share your videos via email, Facebook, YouTube, or downloaded to a computer for use in presentations. There is a large library of music to choose from or you can upload your own MP3. They also offer HD video. They offer cinematic technology that evaluates and combines images, video clips, words and music with the same post-production techniques that are used in film and television. It also presents unbranded video with no logos or advertisements that appear across the screen if you pay for the more advanced plans. There is also a mobile application so you can record your videos with the use of your smartphone either through IPhone or Android.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that maybe beneficial to science my students. It could be very useful to construct presentations that need top of the line technology for a graduation presentation. Something that needs HD quality for a portfolio or higher level class. Especially for the sciences, you could add images from your lab procedure so that you could visual present the information to students. You could add an MP3 of certain jungle noises or mating calls of a certain species of birds that you recorded to the presentation for an audial effect. Even though phones generally are not allowed in class, you could use the mobile version of this application to take a video on a field trip or record a special video out in the field that you needed to upload to a certain website.

I don’t believe this is something that I would recommend for the average educator. Although it is very easy to use and incorporate your own images, media, and audio, the price is really what threw me off. You can sign up for the free services but it only offers unlimited 30 second videos as well as limited styles and music. You could purchase the Plus which is $30 a year and offers unlimited full length videos with limited styles and music and this service allows you to download it to your computer or a DVD. If you need more, you can purchase the Pro for $249 a year which offers unlimited full length videos, free HD, unlimited music and style choices, downloadable to your computer, unbranded labels, and you receive priority customer service. Most educators I know need more than 30 second videos, so the free service is not very useful. If you don’t really need something very advanced, the Plus would be sufficient, but you need to consider if this something you really need for your classroom. There are plenty of resources out there to make presentations for free if you have the right technology with the ability to import videos, media, and audio if need be without having to worry about logos and advertisements. They do have a mobile application of this, but as most phones are not to be used during the school day this might be difficult and violate school policy.

PhotoPeach is a site where you can create a slideshow for your friends or family. They can add background music, captions, and comments so you can expand on your story. You can set the transition speed and the effects. You can add quizzes on your slides, three privacy levels of public, unlisted, and private so you can protect the photos however you need to, and there is a comment function where others can comment on the slideshow. There is also a PhotoPeach Education! Here they inform you this site can help you put together works of art for a presentation which assist in the learning of media literacy. It is useful for all age groups and all subject areas. You can have the free sign up account which has ads and 30 maximum photos per album. The personal premium account doesn’t have ads, unlimited photos per album, downloadable to your computer, and you add your own music. The class premium allows the educator to create and manage multiple email accounts, organize projects with tags, students can’t delete anything so educators, and helps students avoid seeing any improper contents. There are plenty of ways to use this site! Some teachers used it to teach computer applications. A library used it to present slideshows of new books that were coming and some schools used it for teacher training. This site can be used for all places from a business office to a class reunion.

I am not currently a teacher, but this is something that maybe beneficial to my students. This can be used to put together projects or presentations. With the ability to put in quizzes, you could add a different aspect to your presentation to where your audience has the ability to participate instead of just sit back and listen. You could also use this for a slideshow for graduating seniors at the senior pep rally. Here you can add music and text to personalize it. I also think this would be useful for field trips where you could load up the pictures from your classroom adventures to present to the parents or to place on your wiki.

I would recommend this for educators to use in the classroom. It could be very useful with all grade levels. It is very easy to use but there is a fee involved for a premium service. The free account doesn’t offer much to be useful in the classroom, it’s more for a personal use. For $9 you have one educator and up to 50 student emails. If you have a small class or small school this would be good for you to use, but I plan on teaching high school biology where I will have about 100 students a semester. For $25 you have one educator and up to 150 student emails. According to their site, they can accommodate more students but you have to contact them personally. This would be a good resource to add to the classroom.