Poll Everywhere is a resource that I had been hearing about for a while and decided to try last spring with one of my classes. Students were excited about being able to use their cell phones without getting in trouble, and they really enjoyed seeing instant feedback as their answers popped up in real time on the Smart Board. It's very easy to set up polls, and I recommend this as part of a class starter or a class wrap-up activity. A few words of caution, however: make sure that students have free texting before they start answering your polls. Also, depending on the maturity level of your students, you might want to stick with multiple choice or number responses, and steer clear from polls that allow students to text random words and phrases.
0 Comments
One of my amazing, tech-savvy coworkers presented a workshop about Quizlet at a district in-service last spring, but I did not take the time to try it for myself until recently. This website is a great tool; I could see it being priceless for RtI and Special Education students who need accommodations, as well as any student who wants to know how to better prepare for tests and quizzes. Quizlet allows you to create your own flashcards (which I have used Flash Card Machine to do before). Where Quizlet surpasses other online flash card generators is in its ability to take the flash cards that you create and turn them into practice quizzes and games. It also offers the option to print flash cards. Once the teacher has created a set, he or she can supply students with a URL for direct access; or, you can have students collaborate to create their own cards. Note: Apparently, Flash Card Machine has added a lot of new features, including printing options, quizzes, and an ipod app. I first heard about Flip Video cameras at a workshop held by Meg Ormiston, nearly four years ago. She said that they were the latest and greatest thing, destined to get big in the education circuit due to their user-friendliness and near indestructibility--and boy was she right! These little gadgets are everywhere now, for educational and extracurricular use. The fact that they have minimal buttons makes them simple to use, even for younger students. Plus, they plug into your computer's USB port, and come loaded with their own software, so there's nothing to download (although this can cause problems if you want to import the files into another program, such as Movie Maker). The sound and video quality are surprisingly high-quality, especially for the price point; the only problem I've run to is shooting video in dark areas (such as the school play). Other companies are now marketing their own responses to the Flip, but nobody seems to have caught up quite yet. Another selling point is that Digital Wish is offering a Buy 1 Get 1 Free option on the Flip Ultra HD. Note: For converting Flip video files, try Format Factory. Note: A common accessory that has been growing in popularity is the Flexible Tripod, which users can bend into shape to attach to various items for recording from different angles. When I purchased my Flip video cameras, I also picked up a few of these tripods at my local Radio Shack for about $5 on clearance. Audacity is a free download that allows you to record and edit audio. I've used this in the past to record oral interpretation pieces, with great success. The Audacity in the Classroom website is a great place to start. Wallwisher essentially allows you and your students to create virtual sticky notes in a shared space. This could function as a discussion board, or could be used as a brainstorming activity. You could also post a poll and have students post responses. The possibilities for this application seem endless. If you want to collect student feedback including text, images, or files, try using Wallwisher. There's nothing to download and students don't have to create an account. Check out some Interesting Ways To Use Wallwisher on Tom Barrett's blog. Art Rage is a great art program that mimics the appearance of real paint, chalk, colored pencils, crayons, etc. The texture is impressively realistic. Art Rage offers a free version, which is enough to keep almost any teacher happy. If you want even more features, there are higher-end versions available at varying price points. I first learned about Art Rage from Tom Barrett's slideshow about Interesting Ways to Use Your Interactive White Board. Interesting way #16 recommends using a (clean) paintbrush along with your Smart Board. My students have really enjoyed this program, and frequently ask to play with it if we have a few extra minutes at the end of class. Note: I highly recommend visiting Tom Barrett's blog for a ton of information on numerous topics, including technology-based projects. Also, he's been kind enough to include some of my ideas in his slideshows. E-mail him with ideas that you are using in your classroom, and you might show up in his slideshow, too! Photo Story 3 is a free download from Windows. It allows the user to import pictures and audio, along with narration, to create amazing digital movies. In my opinion, this is one of the best options out there for digital storytelling. It ranks up there with Movie Maker, but gets bonus points for being free, which means that students can download it at home and use it at no cost. (Did I mention that it's free?) I have used Photo Story by importing pictures that I have scanned from books; it's a little more exciting than holding up the book and walking up and down the rows, and more attention-grabbing than Power Point. I've also had students create audio files of themselves reading their personal narrative essays and then combining that audio with Creative Commons photos to create original digital stories (with amazing results). My first Photo Story project involved scanned photos from a comic book version of Beowulf. It was a great way to visually represent a scene from the story, and it really benefited my struggling learners. WORDLE Wordle allows the user to create "word clouds" by entering text. The more often a word appears in that text, the larger the word will appear in the word cloud. The sample to the left was created by copying the first page of "The Most Dangerous Game" from an online version of the text and then pasting into the Wordle text box. Wordle allows the user to customize the color, font, and layout of the word cloud. I had another teacher create a Wordle for me using words and phrases that describe me, and it's one of my most cherished possessions. It's hanging on the wall in my classroom. I've had students create these to visually represents the many causes leading to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, which was a great opening activity that I followed up with a cause-effect paper. Click here to access a Romeo & Juliet lesson using Wordle. TAGXEDO Tagxedo takes the concept of the "word cloud" one step further by allowing you to customize the shape of the product. The sample on the left is Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech in the shape of Shakespeare. I first heard of Spell with Flickr at a breakout session run by Meg Ormiston, a wonderfully knowledgeable tech expert (a tech-spert?). Spell with Flickr is a great way to create catchy graphics for web pages or Publisher documents. I also created a vocabulary game for use with my Smart Board, where students have to drag letters into the correct order to spell a word after I supply the definition; using letters from Spell with Flickr gave the activity a little more pizazz than using a standard font, such as Times New Roman. After sharing the resource with students, I noticed a few of them wound up creating inserts for their writing binders using Spell with Flickr. It was neat to see students coming up with their own applications for this website. I've also noticed a trend in artwork that uses similar images to spell out family names and other words; this framed artwork can get pricey. Why not do it yourself using some nice glossy printer paper? Note: Consider visiting Meg Ormiston's blog for a wealth of resources. She's by far one of the most enjoyable presenters I have had the pleasure of learning from at years of Tri-County Institutes. Note: If you like Spell with Flickr, try The Visual Dictionary. Instead of searching for letters, it searches for entire words. As of January 2011, The Visual Dictionary boasts 7500 images of over 4000 words. PicLits calls itself "Inspired Picture Writing." I like it because it's great for visual learners, and it combined writing with grammar. Students can select from a wide collection of photos, and then drag-and-drop words from grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) to create sentences, poems, or to brainstorm words and phrases for a longer composition. I spent one whole day during the summer creating my own PicLits as story starters for descriptive writing practice. I dragged words from the adjective and adverbs columns (making sure that each picture contained a few words that I thought my freshmen would not be familiar with) and then I had students write descriptions of the photos using the descriptive words on their PicLit. It went so well that I laminated them for reuse. I was amazed at the compositions that developed out of this exercise and, while the words weren't completely of their own selection, most students eagerly turned to a dictionary in order to find the meaning and were able to use the words appropriately. I also have students return to this previous writing at times, when they feel uninspired by the descriptive writing muse. |
AuthorDr. Jessica Pilgreen, Ed.D. Archives
December 2020
Categories
All
|