Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is a really great online tool that allows you to create a survey with an unlimited (if you pay for it) amount of questions and answers. Once you think of a topic for your survey, you can start typing questions that you want to be included in your survey, and Survey Monkey helps you out. It provides great questions that you can use, or you can just create your own. It also provides answers to the questions that your target audience will choose from.  Again, you can go with their answers or make up your own.

I did my survey about working out. I asked questions like how many times a week do you work out, what forms of exercise do you do, and how important is exercise to you. Answers can range from numbers, like 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, or word answers. You can design your survey so that your audience can choose one or multiple answers per question. Survey Monkey will also help you send your survey to your targeted audience, collect the data, and analyze it for you. You can also print your surveys and do phone and Facebook surveys.

This would have been a great tool to have when I was getting my Bachelor's in Psychology. I had to create many long surveys, with hundreds of questions and answers, and hand them out to people and analyze the results. A tool like this would have saved me so much time, as well as improved the quality and accurateness of my survey.

Survey Monkey would be a great project to assign to students. I think it would help as an introductory assignment, to allow students to get to know one another by asking all sorts of questions. This could also help teachers get an idea of who their students are, what their interests are, and how much they know about a certain topic area. This could help a teacher better prepare their lesson plans and narrow down the focus of what should and shouldn't be taught, and what they need to spend more time on.

My Survey Monkey can be viewed at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MPZY7M3

Prezi

Prezi is a really cool tool. It is useful like Powerpoint in that you can creat professional presentations in any topic you want. Prezi is different, however, because you can make it interactive much more easily than you can with Powerpoint. On Prezi there is a toolbar on the side where you can insert pictures, videos, hyperlinks, etc. You can also change fonts, sizes, and rotate text boxes faster than you can with Powerpoint. Prezi makes a smoother presentation that isn't so strict in its layout. It glides from one point and one picture to the next in a liquid manner, as opposed to Powerpoint's rigid slides.

Making a Prezi is really fun, too. There's a lot you can do with it, and it's easy to change formats and layouts. It reminds me of Animoto slightly because all you have to do is enter your text and pictures, decide what path the presentation should follow, and you have a very professional-looking presentation. Prezi is definitely a great tool to introduce to students when making a presentation.

The only negative thing I would say about Prezi is that it's very time-consuming. Besides that, I love it! Check out my Prezi below:

http://prezi.com/pwjxcloedsio/how-to-stay-young-forever/

Skype

Skype is an incredible tool.  I can definitely see a valuable use for it in today's classroom. Students can Skype with other students from different countries from the safety of their classrooms. At the click of a button, students can be transported to foreign places that they've never been before. This tool can enable students to learn all about a particular place and the people who live there. Skype lets students ask questions that they want to know about another country directly to other students who live in that country! This is an invaluable resource, and a lot more fun than reading about it in a textbook. Skype has the capability to capture students' attention and keep them enthralled in the subject at hand.


Personally, I love skype. It allows me to see my14-month old nephew who lives in Baltimore. He changes on a daily basis, and is constantly saying and doing new things. Skype allows me to watch him grow up, essentially, and it allows me to see him much more frequently than I would in person. It also allows my family to be together, if only briefly, on all the major holidays. We live throughout three states, and Skype brings us together for those special occasions. It also allows my boyfriend and I to see each other every week, as opposed to once every month (he lives in Indiana)! Skype adds a much more personal level to a conversation. Being able to see the person on the other end really lends to a great conversation.

As well as being a great tool for a classroom, Skype is also great for business use. It allows people to have face-to-face conference calls for free. You can Skype from your computer, your iPhone, your Ipad, and even your TV!

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action by Renee Hobbs

Renee Hobbs' book talks about the importance for people to become more effective in finding information online, getting jobs, and using all of the resources available to them in an efficient manner. This book stresses the need for increasing media literacy in all of America's citizens.  She believes that visual literacy is very important as well as written information.  People express themselves using images and icons, and we need to be able to decipher them. Media literacy is extremely important because of the enormous amount of media we now have available to us, like TV, internet, movies, newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. We should all be able to use these resources properly and to our advantage. With all the new ways for people to interact with each other online, like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, many hazards come along with it, which is why media literacy is so extremely important for us to understand. She stresses several big ideas: access, critical thinking skills, power of creativity, and the skill of reflection.

Access is about reading competency and knowing how to use a tool. Critical thinking skills are needed to understand and dissect all the messages we are fed every day through internet and TV. The power of people to share their creativity with others and teach strangers how to do something is invaluable. Anyone can be can be an author, an artist, a game maker, or create something that can be viewed by millions of people at the click of a button. Since access and sharing is so easy nowadays, reflection is of the utmost importance. We all have a social responsibility to know the impact of our behaviors and our comments on other people. Teaching our students media literacy is becoming more and more important the more we use technology in our classrooms. Therefore, I would definitely recommend this book to teachers and parents. For more on 'Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action', see the video below:

Empowering Students with Technology by Alan November

This book is an excellent resource for teachers on how to use technology in a classroom.  It includes a section on information literacy, which we discussed briefly in class.  It is imperative to teach students critical thinking skills so they can decipher between a valid resource and total nonsense. They need to be able to understand the world wide web, and recognize domain names in order to choose which sites are reputable and which are not. In addition, students should be given a lesson on using search engines and filtering through search results.

Alan November recommends using tools like Skype in a classroom.  This allows school-to-family and school-to-world connections.  He really stresses the importance of connecting students with their communities to give their education a purpose and a real meaning. In addition, by publishing student work on the web, parents and other family members can view a students' work and leave positive feedback.  Creating class websites is a great way to connect family members to the school and to showcase what students are learning about and the work they are producing. He believes, and I agree, that students should also be taught proper email etiquette, and how to compose a professional email. I would absolutely recommend this book to teachers, and even parents, who want to teach the importance of technology and the proper way to use it. For more of Alan November's insight, watch the video below:

Library

Fairfield University's library is rather impressive in what it makes available to students. Aside from thousands of books, the library offers flip-cam rentals, scanners, a plethora of music and film titles, digital archives, journals and newspapers, over 200,000 electronic books, iPads, and computers.  In addition, students can contact the librarians via text with questions about where to find information on a certain topic. Librarians are an undervalued resource. They really can find anything! For students, having access to online journals is invaluable when doing a research assignment. And students don't even have to step foot in the library, although quite beautiful, they can access everything online via the Fairfield University website.

Edmodo

Edmodo is very similar to Facebook, however it limits students in what they can post. I think it's important to use a tool like this in school so as to avoid students posting inappropriate comments for everyone to see. Edmodo is great for posting assignments, their details and due dates. Instead of a calendar, students can just check Edmodo for upcoming due dates. It's a great way for parents to keep track of what their children are learning in school, what kind of assignments they're working on, and when they should be turning projects in. It's also a great way for parents and teachers to work together to ensure students are working efficiently in school. Edmodo is a also a fast and east way to give feedback on assignments and issue grades.

The layout is strikingly similar to Facebook. It allows students and teachers to post comments, post pictures, and search for teachers. It's a great way for a student to contact a teacher with a question about class. Edmodo also allows students to keep a library of resources which they can contact from anywhere as long as they are signed into their Edmodo accounts. Teachers can also create and distribute quizzes via Edmodo and take polls of their students. This is a wonderful tool for teachers, students, and parents!

Twitter

I've been hearing about Twitter for a couple of years now, but it never really sparked any interest in me.  I thought it was, just as one of the articles said, people updating about what they were eating for breakfast and other nonsense like that.  However, after reading the articles and watching the videos about its advantages, I see them clearly now.  Twitter is really a great way to get different messages across to everybody all at once. It isn't like the news where they feed one message to one audience, and that's the end of the discussion.  Twitter allows a functioning discussion to take place. A discussion that evolves and changes and feeds various information to everyone who chooses to listen.

How incredible that Twitter may have saved some lives in Haiti, or informed family members about the safety of their loved ones after the earthquake hit. I found it astonishing that people's comments on Twitter after the earthquake in China was how Chinese officials actually found out about the earthquake. And these comments were up before the U.S. Geological Survey even registered it!

Besides helpful in spreading worldwide news, Twitter allows you to follow everything, and everyone, you're interested in. Instead of clicking on msn.com and reading the headlines and only the news they are feeding to me, I can use Twitter. This way I am sure to find news on the topics and events that interest me most and pertain to my life. I look forward to tweeting with you!

Glogster

Glogster is a great tool for students to use to create posters.  Glogsters are the new posters, allowing for them to be interactive. It's a great way to set up a page of resources for students to learn about a particular topic that is being taught in the classroom. It provides links to various websites, key words to take note of, informative videos, and an overall explanation about the topic at hand.  For example, I did my Glogster on Going Green.

 It includes a link to a website that informs the student how to reduce, reuse, and recycle various products and the importance of doing so. The student can listen to a song while perusing the glogster, which I think makes learning more fun for them. I included an inspirational video about how everyone's acts have a lasting impact on the environment and how rapidly the earth is changing due to global warming.  It educates the student on how they can help reverse the damage by planting trees, riding bikes, and using our resources without depleting them.  The glogster also has a list of books from the library with the Dewey decimal codes so that the students can easily locate them. The water drop links to a website detailing how to recycle and reuse water. The gift tag links to a UConn website that describes how we can conserve water and electricity. The orange thought bubble links to a site that describes 50 ways to conserve energy, including activities as easy as changing lightbulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs. The globe links to General Electric's Ecomagination site describing programs around the globe that are contributing to energy conservation and committed to going green. The solar panel connects to energy.gov, providing more information about the benefits of solar power. The 'go green' footprint links to a carbon footprint calculator that allows students to calculate their own impact on the earth. And finally, a video about how one can reduce their carbon footprint. So many different resources on one page! Glogster is an amazing tool to use in the classroom.

Free Rice

Not only is the game Free Rice fun, educational, and extremely easy, it feeds hungry people with every mouse click.  All you have to do is match a vocabulary word to its meaning, and voila, the game donates 10 grains of rice to a starving people. In this case, I was clicking to feed people in Sahel, Africa. During the game, you can choose to actually read about the starving people in this country, and see the latest news and pictures related to their hunger crisis.

Games can't get any more informative and educational than this. Free Rice teaches students first and foremost that starvation is a real, grave issue around the world.  However, we can help. And we can help by playing these games nonetheless! This game teaches social studies, math, vocabulary, and empathy all at the same time.  Free Rice is addicting because while playing you feel like you're really accomplishing something great.  I earned 300 grains of rice. While this might not seem like a lot, I'm only one person playing the game for 10 minutes. If a lot of people got together and played this game for a long, long time, imagine how much rice could be donated to Sahel. I love this game. Play it!!

World Without Oil

For someone who never plays games, I think World Without Oil is a great game for everyone. It's realistic and relevant to our current times. This game teaches students how to survive in a world during an oil shortage. It allows them to learn in depth about the oil shortage in the U.S. and the effects of this shortage on our lives now, and the potential dangers for the future. Supply, demand, and price become more than just vocabulary words in this game. The students are immersed in it, and hence learn what these words really mean for the U.S. economy and themselves. This game encourages students to reflect on a personal level on how an oil crisis would change their lives. They begin to lead their lives as if there were really an oil shortage presently going on. This forces them to change things about their every day life, and perhaps see the importance of our natural resources and the potential danger overusing them could have on our country. World Without Oil shows students how much oil they use, and not just for gas for their cars, but for other aspects of their lives, and shows them how important a resource it is.

In conjunction with this game, watch 'Jane McGonigal: Gaming Can Make a Better World' on YouTube. She explains how by playing games such as this one, we can actually begin to solve real world problems. She explains it in detail, and it's fascinating!

Animoto

I love Animoto! It was extremely easy to use. All you had to do was upload pictures, add your own text, and choose a song, and you have a professional-looking video. I think it's great that this program really creates a wonderful, animated video with your material.  It looks like you spent a long time creating it yourself.


Animoto has an abundance of songs to choose from for your videos, which makes it easier when it comes to copyright issues. Since they have their songs organized by category it makes it very easy to find a song that suits your video. 


I really enjoyed using this tool. Below are the two videos that I created.


Technology and classrooms:
http://animoto.com/play/arVIiKubuWN7OswG2JP9rw

Technology and me:

http://animoto.com/play/K2ejqixGT1v9fczi9e0uVg

Audacity

Audacity was intimidating. It wasn't the easiest tool to use, and I had to delete my recording and start over a few times because I couldn't figure out how to go back and fix it (even with a page of instructions in front of me).  For someone who doesn't work with music or audio, Audacity was confusing and had too many buttons to choose from and lots of options.  Who needs to zoom into a voice recording, anyway?

That being said, I can see how useful it could be to people in the music industry, allowing them to pinpoint each sound exactly, adding and deleting where they see fit. Audacity allows you to manipulate the recording, by cutting and pasting, deleting sections, and even allows you to pause for a breath or a new thought.

With more practice, maybe I could see some use to Audacity in the classroom. Allowing kids to play around and be creative with their recordings could be fun and educational. Children love to sing and record themselves and post videos to YouTube and Audacity could be a great program for them to edit their music, as long as they know how to use it.

VoiceThread

I think that voiceThread is a great web 2.0 tool. I love how the topic of discussion is at the center of the screen, and is surrounded by everyone’s comments.  This is a great tool for discussing a topic or, in this case, a video. It’s nice how you can just click once on the first comment and it will play through and start the next person’s comments right away.  You can kind of just sit back and enjoy a discussion among classmates.

Like blackboard, I think this is a great tool to facilitate discussions and I can see this being used in classrooms.  This could help students who are shy and less likely than others to answer a question or reply to a post.  VoiceThread could enable them to be more open and more comfortable to join in the discussion than they would normally be in a classroom.

I like how everyone can upload a picture of themselves if they so choose.  This personalizes the discussion more and allows you to put a face to the name of the person speaking at the time.

Also, VoiceThread is fun and very easy to use. It is a user-friendly tool and I found it extremely easy to record my comments and upload my picture.  The video and sound quality are also very good, lending to the actual feel of being in a discussion with other people.

Wiki

I liked working on the wiki activity because it wasn’t a very complicated or complex tool to use.  It’s very straightforward and has a user-friendly platform.  I didn’t really know what a wiki was before doing this activity.  It’s interesting to see how easily someone can go on and change information that I have provided about Gossip Girl.  As long as I enter them in as a writer, they can change anything, and I find that fascinating.  I will definitely think twice about the reliability and the source of the information I find on Wikipedia. 

I think wikis can be extremely helpful for group projects in a classroom.  Students don’t even have to be together in the same room to work on their projects.  They can all log in from home and make changes to the wiki and share information with one another that way.  Using a wiki could help save valuable time when working on a joint project.  It can also just generally increase people’s knowledge about certain topics.  If one student knows a, b, and c about something, and they share it on a wiki, and another student knows d, e, and f and posts it to the wiki, that’s six facts that maybe another student didn’t know about the topic before glancing at the wiki. 

Also, I think it’s cool that I can say that I now know how to create a wiki!

iGoogle & Wordle

I think iGoogle is an excellent tool for teachers to use to encourage creativity in their students.  Each student can have their own unique home page by adding whatever features they want, while at the same time allowing them to become more familiar with computers and with the iGoogle program.  I added the New York Times and Facebook gadgets to my homepage because I am regularly checking those websites. In addition, I added an inspirational quotes and pictures gadget so I can get inspired every time I log in. This program also proves useful to keep track of assignment due dates and class schedules, which could prove useful to students of all ages.  I think a drawback of this program is the limited amount of options presented.  There doesn't seem to be an abundance of choices for various gadgets, colors, fonts, etc., which could inhibit students' creativity potential.

Wordle is such a fun tool! I like how it brings my words and aspects about me to life.  This would be useful in a classroom in many ways.  I think this could help students get to know one another at the start of a new class.  If each student created one and shared it with the class, it would give everyone an opportunity to get to know who they are and what they are interested in, including the teacher.  I think Wordle could also help when doing book reviews. The students could write the title of the book, or the name of a character, then all of the adjectives and nouns they can think of that correspond to it.  This is another great activity for students to create something that is unique to them, by changing fonts, word directions, and colors.