More Tech Resources

In the past couple of weeks, I have done a lot of exploring and learning online.  I am amazed by what I find and what is now on the internet.  I can’t believe I have seemingly been missing out on so much. As a way to document my own learning, and, hopefully, inspire some new learning amongst other educators, I am going to demonstrate some of the tech tools I have learned about recently.

These are a fabulous resources you can use in your classroom, at meetings, or at home (with your own children).

The first  tool I’d like to share is a brainstorming tool, Bubbl.us.  I used it to brainstorm some things about my new school: Bear Creek Elementary. Take a look:

As you can see, my new school is a diverse, complex school. It’s going to be a busy, exciting place, indeed!

I liked Bubbl.us, however there were a couple of things I would have liked to have been able to do with it (and maybe you can, and I just didn’t play around with it enough).  I wanted to be able to change the font. While you could change the colour scheme, you could not seem to choose one bubble to be a specific colour, while all the others were the same. If you change the colour on one, all the colours changed on all your bubbles. I also would have liked the ability to center the words in the bubbles.  That may just be me though – I like things symmetrical. 🙂

It is a simple brainstorming tool that would be easy for children to use. They could use it to brainstorm words for a topic of study, do a character map, a story map of a story or chapter, make a timeline, etc…  The uses are endless really.

The next brainstorming tool I’d like to show you is Popplet. This is a really great tool!  It is a little more user-friendly than the previous tool, at least for me.  I still can’t figure out how to embed the picture though, although it is probably pretty easy (so, if anyone out there can help me with this, I’d really appreciate it). I really like the layout of this brainstorm tool. You can add youtube videos, pictures from flickr (although, you can’t seem to choose pictures from your own stream, which is a shame), photos facebook, items from your computer. You can move things around very easily. I got a little frustrated at times with bubbl.us, but I found the tool to be easier to manipulate items.
http://popplet.com/app/Popplet_Alpha.swf?page_id=53450&em=1

Since I can’t seem to embed it, here’s the direct link: http://popplet.com/app/#/53450

Then, there’s also Glogster!  This is a cool tool for making posters.  You can embed photos, video, words, and fun decorations as well.  I am working on one with my daughter on RATS. She loves rats!

Here is a good Glogster about the importance of Play in Kindergaren.

http://katmayo.edu.glogster.com/bringing-play-back-to-kindergarten/

Again, I wish I could embed this in my blog. Arrrgghhh…. more to learn.

I will post my daughters Glog on Rats when we finish it.

These Glogs are very easy to do.  Students would find these very motivating and would likely be very engaged making their glog. This would be a great Big-Buddy activity for little kids and older kids to do together.

You could use this tool to make a poster about a current unit of study. This could be done individually or in groups.  You could also use this tool for a beginning of the year activity – All About Me – as a getting to know you activity for the older kids.  There really are many different uses for this tool.

Next, I will be exploring Prezi!  Stay tuned!