Web Based Tools Tryout

I had a great time this week working on the examples of web based tools! It really makes you realize how cool these tools can be and how great they would be for the classroom. They were all very simple to use and can be implemented into a classroom easily.
The first tool I used was Animoto. I made a simple 30 second clip at first and fell in love. It was so cool seeing pictures in that video form. Its a lot more entertaining then using a windows movie maker to create a video out of pictures. I then signed up for an educators account which gave me the capabilities of making a longer video. I decided to make a video on my cross country trip I took this past summer with my three best friends. I thought that this was a good video to make because it shows one way that this could be used in the classroom. When there is a spotlight student of the week, instead of students bringing in a few pictures, which is sometimes uncommon with photos being digital now, they could make a video about a certain time in his or her life. There is a variety of other ways that this web based tool could be used in the classroom and this is just one example. Animoto
The next tool I tried was Wordle. Wordle is a great tool for vocabulary words, analyzing a character of a story or even a historical figure. For my example, I stayed with the theme of describing myself. This could be used the first week of school for students to hang around the room. They can choose words that they think describe themselves then can present them to the class.

Last was VoiceThread. This was the web based tool that was the hardest for me. VoiceThread would be a great way for students to work on a project if they are all not in one place together or doing it at the same time. This would also be a great way to get responses on some sort of piece that the class could have a discussion on, maybe a poem or picture. I do not know if it was my computer but the uploading of files was very slow when I tried to add pictures. I also was not able to put any voice comments into it because of my computer. When completely the VoiceThread I noticed that the doodling tool was not as great as I thought it was. Doodles that I canceled or from other slides would show up. Although this is a great tool I think students would need to be pretty experienced with computers to be able to use it without guidance from the teacher. VoiceThread