Friday, July 24, 2009

Thing #4 Video Hosting (YouTube)

I did not know it will be so easy to upload a video on YouTube, no wonder there's been so many videos being uploaded. I had made a photostory last summer on Houston during 23 things, so I just uploaded that.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFoyksOPcRA

I liked TeacherTube and how it is arranged into channels. There were lots of small videos on Science that I would like to show to my students and may be put the videoclips in my flipchart. My students would also love to get their work or lab uploaded to Teacher Tube, and that can also be used and shown to my other students.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Thing #3 Like Skype

I have been using Skype for couple of years now. It is a great and very inexpensive way to talk/chat with people across the globe. I have friends and family in India/England/Dubai, so we have setup a time with them when they come and we do conference call with them. Sometimes we have friends and relatives from 7-8 different places and we all talk to each other at the same time.

We used to use Yahoo messenger and MSN messenger, we still sometimes do, but the sound quality is little better with skype. In Skype, however we cannot do video conferencing with more than two contacts, so we also open Yahoo messenger and use that webcam, but we have to compromise in picture and voice quality.

In the classroom, we can use this to stay connected with other teachers, or team teach and collaborate.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Thing #2 Image Generators 2

Wordle is a great tool to work with especially to introduce or review the vocabulary to the students. Here is the one that I made on Forces and Motion. Students will have lots of fun making their own wordles.

Wordle: Untitled



I liked both the Glogster/edu and the VoiceThread. I think students can sometimes use glogster instead of making a poster. It will be something different for the students and will give them some variety and also learn this great tool. VoiceThread is a great for commenting.

Animoto – is very similar to photostory and can be made very easily. Students, at the end of the project can create an animoto with the snaps of their project and create a movie. I liked the Voki – the talking avatar, it did not have as much choices as the yahoo avatar though.

Bookr is also another great tool show pictures. Here is the one I made on Michael Jackson.