Well, what a big unit of work this time. Gone are the days of the butcher's paper, whiteboard covered with a huge array of ideas provided by the children with teacher direction, of course. Bubble.us - way to go to with the techno mind mapping tool to record and organise ideas on any curriculum area. Bubble.us would be an asset to the visual learners in the classroom. An idea for pre and post testing. It is engaging and helps process thoughts and lay out ideas. A great NEW TOOL for me to use in the classroom at any grade and level.
Glogster was a little more difficult for me with my limited knowledge. The signing in was tiresome but worth it in the end. I am running out of ideas for passwords, etc. Have to record the whole lot. If I lose it I'm lost!! I can certainly see the benefits of this powerful and attractive tool. To me, it is like having the whole program on one page. A colourful poster with style, text, information, video links, sound and responses. Glogster is a great tool to allow children to work together on units of work to enhance learning by allowing them to be creative, encouraging skills and at the same time allowing individuality and co-operative learning. The teacher can evaluate at a glance to see the development of skills and knowledge of the individual child.
Prezi had the advantage of zooming in and out and I can see it being used in my text type writing where language features need to be emphasised. The children can consolidate their learning by adding graphics. Great tool for class presentation.
A must do for me is to continue my experimenting with Prezi and Glogster as I can really see its valuable use in the classroom. A dream of mine is to have 30 fully functional computers so that I can use the tools suggested by the Web 2:0
I thought this was a massive unit of work as well -it had the content of atleast 2 modules! I agree that each of these is a valuable tool that could really make learning valuable and motivating. I think though, that these tools would be better suited to your students' age, than mine.I guess you'd be a good judge of that old grade buddy :) I also dream of having a class full of computers that work. Until then, I will dream of having my 4 laptops all working at the same time. Row
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