Tonight is actually the last class for this semester. Time sure flies! It was an exciting semester and truthfully, I have learned a lot, especially considering the fact that I am quite technology challenged. Tonight we finished off with the rest of the web 2.0 presentations as well as the podcast.
In class, they presented Bubblesnaps, which I thought it was an alright site. Bubblesnaps is about creating bubbles on pictures and writing your own caption on it. Not something that I would prefer to use in my classroom though. The next one is Animoto. This site is formatted like a power point presentation, but the main difference is that it focuses more toward including pictures, videos, and music from your very collection or the internet. Unfortunately, only 30 seconds is free and can be used like a demo. On the plus side, there are two other versions, the plus plan and the pro plan. These versions offer more, however they cost money, so the membership fee is paid by monthly. Luckily, the pro plan is free for teachers.
The next web 2.0 presentation is by far my most favorite presentation and most likely something that I will use in my future classroom. This one is called Voki. The program records the voice of the user and puts it into an aviator that you can create online. Students can use it too! Oh, I forgot to mention that this web 2.0 offers “text-to-speech” in 25 languages!! How awesome is that?!
The next one is current.com/group. This web 2.0 is about collecting video clips from any sites and placing it all in one group. There is a possibility that I would use it, but sadly, it will be in the lower percentage tile. The next one is Spelling City. It is a good website that offers games and other things to help expand the students’ vocabulary. There are many spelling lists and these lists can be shared. I would most likely use this one too.
The last but not least is Edu Blog, which I could have sworn someone else in the class did it last week. Oh well… Sadly, I did not pay too much attention on it since I am still not too much of a fan of blogging. Oh, we also watched the last podcast tonight. It was about three tips to become a studious student.
There was also a pleasant surprise at the end of class. We watched a presentation about a new invention called TED, created by a student at MIT. Anyway, this technology is quite amazing. The device has a camera to read the hand gestures as a way to process what you want to do. For example, taking pictures, organizing photos, comparison rate of product at hand vs the price on Amazon, calling someone, rating, more information on the product, etc. There is so much more to say, and to think, this technology came out two years ago. I wonder what it is like now… I must admit, this class has peak my interest in technology. I am amazed to see so many ways to implement new technologies.
