Created a Zooburst augmented book. Very cool project for younger kids. The free version allows for 10 books, which is enough for a class at my school. It does not allow voice recording, whereas the paid version does.


Click on this link to check it out  -->    My Zooburst

If you choose webcam mode, and print the image as indicated, you can look at the book in augmented mode.  Let me know what you think.

Reflection on Day 6

I appreciate the time we spent starting from scratch to create a project. The decision making as to which tools to use and how to get started was valuable. I also loved the quick easy collaboration using Google Apps. (Somehow  I have to get our admin to see this value and allow student email accounts.) We saw some limitations to this method, as we spent quite a bit of time working on a tool (Present Me) that we were not able to include at the end. Although it is powerful learning to explore independently and  discover something new, students would most likely want to have a good looking project to share in the end. They would not be as satisfied with telling about learning from taking the wrong avenue.

Day Six

We spent much of the day working on presentations, using Google Docs and Dippity, both of which proved to be highly interesting tools. I really enjoyed working on them, especially searching Youtube for applicable material. That was lots of fun. Wish we had more time to work on something a bit more complicated.

I think I may work Dippity in the wiki project my students will work on.

Day Five

The discussion about blocking sites stirred up a lot of passions in people. While I can see the logic to blocking sites for students, I have to come down on the side of giving teachers the power to unblock sites for educational purposes. Teachers are professionals and districts should trust their judgment as to what is appropriate. And if teachers show poor judgment, then there are disciplinary procedures in place just like for any other inappropriate activity.

Jing is another tool I like, particularly when combined with Google Earth or other application. Then there's Edmodo. I wonder which would be better for students to exchange information and comment on media: Blogger or Edmodo?

Day Four

What can I say? I love Google Earth. The ability to view almost anywhere on the planet (or Mars or the Moon) is addicting. I hope someone makes up a Marcellus Shale drilling sites ap for it. My students would eat that up.

Day Three

In day three, we talked about Tweetdeck, which is an interesting way to following Twitter. Twitter itself is useful networking tool. As a learning aid, however, I am kind of skeptical. It requires students to follow the feed and keep up with the instructor's tweets.

Creative Commons is one of those things that seems to be growing in popularity, especially among people who create digital content. I love that it makes content usable for educational purposes.

Wolfram Alpha at first sounds like something from a Joss Whedon TV series, but it is another useful tool for looking up information.

One thing that I think I disagree with is the Pecha Kucha approach to presentations. Maybe it's because I see PowerPoint slides as an aid to presentations and not the presentation themselves.

Day Two

Day Two was all about wikis, Diigo, and Google Docs. Diigo, while an interesting way to mark and leave comments about websites for my students, I wonder how many would go out their way to mark websites if they weren't assigned to them. On the other hand, Google Docs are a fantastic tool for students to collaborate on group projects. Wikis are what I feel the most enthusiastic about. I think having students put together wikis as a class project would be very effective as a learning tool.