This Is What You Missed So Far...

As I walk around campus and visit other schools, I have noticed many classes using Pages for student projects.  Well, I wanted to share something I discovered a few months ago; a fantabulous way of exporting your newsletters or publications using Pages as online magazines (ezines). Imagine allowing your students to produce newsletters in Pages to highlight what they learned during the week and have the ability to publish is online. Wow! A new way of mind mapping for the digital child. Imagine That! Check out how I turned a staff development publication into an ezine. I have modified it a bit to advertise Tech Tuesdays...coming to a campus near you.

Open publication - Free publishing - More training

Giving Them A Voice

Looking for a something to use to culminate a lesson while giving your students the opportunity to voice his/her opinion. Well, VoiceThread is your Web2.0 tool of the day. Many have heard me preach the praises of Voicethread, so I thought I would put it down on paper, so to speak, and share with my Thompson family. 

VoiceThread is a highly-praised Web-based tool which enables students and teachers to add text and audio commentary to digital images and create unique interactive presentations.  Voice thread allows you to record a single or multiple voices and images to create a multimedia show that is personalized and applicable for educational projects as well as personal multimedia endeavors.  Your VoiceThread presentations can be made public to anyone or you can make them accessible to selected individuals.  You can even set up an account for individual classes that will allow multiple classmates access to the account for group projects!  As you can see, you can also embed your VoiceThread presentations in your blogs. The possibilities are endless for integrating this into your classroom!  Goodbye, PowerPoint!

How could you use VoiceThread in your classroom? Share your comments below.

PowerPoint Who?

Ok, how can you make your power points pop? Well, introducing Prezi. Many of you may have heard of this Web2.0 tool before, some may have seen it in use. However, imagine the engagement when a student is given the opportunity to use it to jazz up that simple presentation that you have them doing on... let's say community. I don't want to commit "assumicide" but I hope you are doing allowing students to get up and present every now and then in the classroom. However, if not, here is something you can use to get them interested without intimidation. I have used it both for student projects and simply presenting the agenda for the day to get the students pumped about what they will learn in good ole' portable 86. This tool is also good for at home assignments. Many of us use Keynote and with the launching of iWorks online, I'll probably use more of it. For those who do not have Macs at home, Prezi can be accessed from a PC just as well.

Just thought I would share.

Friday's Agenda on Prezi