Toni Orr's Blog:
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2009
BL4_2009111_ResearchingandbloggingaboutWeb2.0tools
There were many interesting sites that seemed great to use in the classroom but many that I checked looked like they were free but really not. Many sites had a free trial period before you had to pay.These would not be acceptable for most teachers as we know there is no money for this school budgets. Some sites will let the subscriber use the site but will not remember what was done as Typing-Web. To subscribe for a meaning tool in the classroom it would be around $900 + . Not sure if this was for a year or you own the program for that fee.
Found another cool looking site that seemed to be a great classroom site called "EkoLoko" http://play.ekoloko.com/ekoloko/index.html. This was an Ecological Virtual tour of the Environment for Kids as well as being interactive about friendship, nature and the world "at risk". It really had great ideas to help the students with critical thinking skills and to help the world around us but the characters in the "environment" were smoking pipes or cigarettes and blowing smoke!! Turns out this site is from Israel and it must be acceptable to smoke in front of the students. Sad they had to ruin a great site.
Another great site that I found was PB works, formerly PB wiki. The new site is https://my.pb.works.com. Before we knew about all of the iGoogle products my colleague created a wiki site to collaborate with at http://fullsailjuly09.pbworks.com/. This is also one that our school district has been working with for us to use in the classroom that is gated. The teacher would have control of it. You could get students to collaborate on projects together, put videos on it for tutorials so they could view at home, etc. Another great thing to implement for your students. Mine from last year was http://mumlttcadreorr.pbworks.com/ You can add video, images, links, etc. while you are monitor.
The next item I thought to use to teach my students was a skill they need to know since so many of them are into video taping and photography was about sizing and resizing images. Students many times want to email or use images for different reasons but do not understand that different cameras and media devices save images in many different sizes. Most students do not realize that when they are unable to upload a picture to the email it is because of the large size and how much memory it can use. I found a site called "Re-sizer" that will take a large image (3264 X 2448 - 960 KB) and size it in usable form to 200 X 150 but putting through the re-sizer. The site is http://resizr.lord-lance.com/ and it is very useful. It does the re-size as simple as I have seen. Here is the picture that I re-sized. My colleague does not even realize how large the file for this one picture actually was.
This is a tool students need to know about for the 2.0 digital world they will be living in. Most students do not know or understand this as life long skill they need to develop. As an educator in the digital world it is my job to teach them about this.
Found another cool looking site that seemed to be a great classroom site called "EkoLoko" http://play.ekoloko.com/ekoloko/index.html. This was an Ecological Virtual tour of the Environment for Kids as well as being interactive about friendship, nature and the world "at risk". It really had great ideas to help the students with critical thinking skills and to help the world around us but the characters in the "environment" were smoking pipes or cigarettes and blowing smoke!! Turns out this site is from Israel and it must be acceptable to smoke in front of the students. Sad they had to ruin a great site.
Another great site that I found was PB works, formerly PB wiki. The new site is https://my.pb.works.com. Before we knew about all of the iGoogle products my colleague created a wiki site to collaborate with at http://fullsailjuly09.pbworks.com/. This is also one that our school district has been working with for us to use in the classroom that is gated. The teacher would have control of it. You could get students to collaborate on projects together, put videos on it for tutorials so they could view at home, etc. Another great thing to implement for your students. Mine from last year was http://mumlttcadreorr.pbworks.com/ You can add video, images, links, etc. while you are monitor.
This is a tool students need to know about for the 2.0 digital world they will be living in. Most students do not know or understand this as life long skill they need to develop. As an educator in the digital world it is my job to teach them about this.
2 COMMENTS:
Colleagues that share are such a wonderous thing!
All these Web 2.0 Sites sound really awesome. I agree that most schools need to use Web 2.0 Tools that are free because of reduced budgets, so I think it is great you found so many amazing sites that are in fact free. I really liked the one where it teaches students how to resize photos because I definitely think that that is a simple skill that many students do not have because most social networking sites that students use have built in programs that resize the photos for them. I will admit that before I started this class I didn't know much about resizing photos, so I might just use that site myself :)