This was a great list! I loved the core standards that were given under each heading. I only have experience with - or had heard of - 2 of the sites: Pinterest and easel.ly. (And I know about easelly only because of this class.) I loved playing with the sites but it did bring home - again - just how hard it is to keep up with everything.
There were so many websites that I wanted to look at, but the three I chose to write about are:
Smore - https://www.smore.com/app
Smore is a site where you can create flyers. I really liked this site because it brought up so many ideas for use in the library or for a class. It is so easy it could be used in elementary or middle school. Even with just the free account, you could have students make flyers to advertise books they've read (sort of like a visual book talk), advertise library events (they would be more invested in an event they created advertising for), or use the flyer to present research (for example, the student could make a flyer as a wanted poster to catch someone like Paul Revere, thereby giving information they've learned). They could make flyers to advertise a fictional event in a book....the possibilities are countless. And it would give the students hands-on practice working with technology and maybe uploading pictures.
Edcanvas - http://www.edcanvas.com/lessons
This website was not only on ALA's best websites of 2013 list, but it was also one of the websites we are taking a look at this week. I love Edcanvas and I immediately watched several how-to videos on youtube. I think I am going to use Edcanvas for my final project (the AASL conference presentation.) With Edcanvas, you can use the blocks to embed websites, powerpointpresentation, documents, images..and you can do all of this without ever leaving the Edcanvas page with your canvas on it. When you present, the websites or videos you put in a block open up right in your presentation. Edcanvas can be used for tons of things - students can use it present information, teachers can make lessons on a canvas and include all the facets of the lesson, the canvas can be shared with students who weren't in class so they can learn the information on their own. You can do assessments, like quizzes, with Edcanvas, too. I hope by using this for the presentation project that I can learn a lot more about what it can do.
Workflowy - https://workflowy.com/
I can only pick three of these sites to write about, and the one that really started working for me immediately was Workflowy. I am already using it - and it was easy and fast to learn. The description on ALA's site was enough to make me check this site out because I make lists constantly. I write down things I have to do on the back of my hand if paper isn't handy. I have lists in my purse and on my table and by my computer. I love the idea of making perpetual lists and they all show up in one place -- no more losing lists. And it would really help with organization.
You could use this in a class for students to plan collaborative projects - you can put a person's name by something like this @Carla and they can click on their name and see what they are responsible for in the breakdown of the project. Because you can open access to the list to anyone, groups could use this tool to demonstrate the organization of a collaborative project. An individual student could use it for the same purpose. It would be a great "effective study habits" tool to teach students - they could learn overall organization. Workflowy would be a very fast way to write up an outline for a paper.
Too bad I can't take Workflowy to the grocery store with me like I can my hand.
Padlet - http://padlet.com/
I am only supposed to write about three sites from the list, but I really liked this site, too. It is a "blank wall" you can put anything on. And you can save your wall and other people can put things on there. I was amazed that I could take pictures instantly with the webcam to put on the wall. So many possibilities -- one teaching application I saw was a "word of the day" wall. The word was "fascinate" and every student posted a sentence using the word on the wall. The teacher went back and overlapped some of the posts - to say that the word was used incorrectly or there was another misspelled word in the sentence or the word was used as the wrong part of speech. Of course, this would have lots of educational applications - I saw other walls that were timelines or information on a particular topic, for example.
No comments:
Post a Comment