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!