Week 8 – Presentation tools 1 (15/6 – 21/6)

I love this week’s activities – these are cool tools.

Wordle and Tagxedo are similar tools.  Tagxedo allows you to create a picture with your words as well as edit colour and text themes.  Having used Wordle with young students, I found it best to get them to create and edit their word lists in a word processing package first.  This allows for spell checking etc.  If you want a word to appear large, repeat it numerous times in your list.

I like the ability in both programs to insert text from other websites.  In particular it is fun to import your tags from Delicious and create a pictorial presentation.

ToonDoo is a great comic strip maker.  I have used this with children as young as Prep (age 5) through to Year 6’s (age 12).  They all loved it and found it simple to manipulate.  The variety of styles of pictures available  allows for lots of indivualisation.  I have asked children to use them to reflect on an activity/experience, for example – challenges overcome at camp. Having to have Primary students log in to these types of sites can be problematic – a site that does not require log in is MakeBeliefComix. More comic strip creator stes are described on Edubeacon

A great example of using Comic strips for  different purpose (as I have mentioned before) is the work of Edna on WhatedSaid.

Voicethread has so much potential and I will admit that I have tried to use it, but had a few technical hitches.  A fellow colleague has created some great resources to assist teachers to set up Voice threads. In particular, it details the creation of an educator account. (Thanks Tom)

Voicethread Educator Account for Teachers in Classrooms from Tom Wursthorn on Vimeo.

I intend to use it more in the near future and love the idea that children can insert sound and video recordings.

Wikis are interesting too and I have my wiki page linked from this blog. I basically use it to store and sort links and ideas. We have used Wikis with children as reflective class journals, but have not yet found a ‘fantastic’ purpose.

Glogster – well, it took me a while, but here is my first try

I can see the potential here and I will need to find out about the Educator accounts as Glogster’s terms of Service do not permit under 13’s. Apparently Educator accounts make this possible. Some good resources and ideas here at Edunology.