Tech Tuesday BlendSpace

SimpleBooklet

Make web flip booklets...

...for student projects, reports, presentations, and newsletters.

simplebooklet.com

Presentations that POP!

This week I'm working with a group of students that requested alternatives to PowerPoint. This sliderocket presentation offers three new vaccines to prevent Death by PowerPoint. Also take a minute to see this Prezi Perspective: Moving Beyond Slides or this short Louisa Cares example I made using the cloud-based software 280 slides.

Who doesn't like snacks???

This will be my last post of the 2010-2011 year... wow the year went by fast! I have already started making plans for the upcoming school year and I know many classroom teachers are as well. This site was recommended in my Twitter feed this morning and it looks like a fun way to share content so when you are thinking about projects for next year, keep this site in mind: flipsnack.

What flipsnack does is takes a PDF file and turns them into an online book. I don't have lengthy self-created PDF files on my computer so I just used one that I was reading today:

Here is another very short one of some of my own Publisher files. I just combined three different Publisher posters together into one Publisher document, printed it as a PDF using the free CutePDF Writer, and uploaded it to flipsnack.

How cool would it be to have your students create posters on topics they are studying and then to put the projects together in a PDF, upload it into a book and have that book available online for review? Or maybe create a book to show off final projects? Registration is required and final books can be embedded in a blog like I have done or the book's direct link can be shared with others.

So along with flipsnack came a few other "snack" applications, accessible from the same site (bottom of page) using the same login. One is bannersnack, which changed my individual images into an animated image. Mine includes only two images but you can make longer ones, you can pick different sizes, and you can add text.

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There is also quizsnack. If you create a poll (only one answer can be marked) or a personality quiz (like ones you might have seen on FB) you can see the responses when you log into your account. Unfortunately, while users of free accounts can make surveys (visitors can mark as many answers as they wish), users cannot see the results for free so Google forms might be a better option in that case. Here is a short poll I created...

Response data can be put right on the widget for all to see or kept private so it is only available when you log into your account

Guilt free snacking! Gotta love that!

Some New Year's Learning Fun...

I'm going to start the year off on a light note...

As a student, I was never one to voluntarily speak up in class and oral reports were a huge source of stress for me. In college I was required to take a public speaking course and all my speeches were recorded and to this day, I cannot watch them. Even now, speaking to a group of students does not bother me but a group of adults gives me butterflies in my stomach for days beforehand.

Knowing there are students like me in my classes, I find myself drawn towards finding activities for students to replace the stand-in-front-of-the-class-and-talk speech on topics they have researched. Of course PowerPoint and presentation software are great tools and now free movie making software is available but sometimes I just want something that is a bit more on the lighthearted side... where you might laugh the first time you see it but then you want to listen to it again.

Here is one of those sites (middle school teachers if this looks familiar it is because I shared it last year via email): http://blabberize.com/.

I found the opening video funny though I do want to warn you that it includes a conversation about peeing in one’s pants in case you are in a room full of students taking a test or something at the moment. While this site certainly was not designed exclusively for the academic world, there are definitely ways to use its features in a classroom setting.

For example, here is a clip I made with a picture and information about Susan B. Anthony (the opposite extreme from the intro. video; I went serious) ~ it took only a few minutes to create:

If you don't have a place to embed your video, that is okay. Blabberize will give you a link to share with everyone. You can see the above one here.

What a fun way to make a famous person in history share information about his or her self, or to have a character in a book talk about the conflict in his or her life, or to give a small group of students at a station directions on an assignment while you are working with other students.

Here is a link to a blog entry about Blabberize that describes several ways to use it in an academic setting: http://blog.learningtoday.com/blog/bid/27337/Blab-On-Interactive-Classroom-Tool?source=Blog_Email_[Blab+On!+–+Interacti]

Have fun! Happy New Year!