Blog Four

The following technology explorations are about different means of presentation.  This week we were asked to discuss TED talks as well.   I have watched a few TED talks, and I have listened to even more on the TED Radio Hour, which brings together talks from TED events around the country. This is where to access them:

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/

I like to listen in the car to the podcasts.
In the discussion board, I talked about Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight

I did not have access to students this week, but I will add a presentation that I have made in the past that addresses how literacy can be enhanced or improved using a particular content area.  I wrote this presentation about technology courses.  The theoretical audience was school administrators/school board members.  The presentation was intended to argue that technology classes can be used to improve reading skills in students.

I think the content within the presentation is still quite valid, but the graphics could be improved.  There are no pictures to get the audience thinking of specific examples.  If I were to do this presentation over, I would need to imbed more graphics and add video clips and more examples. The content of the presentation is more relevant than ever for me personally because the technology department was REMOVED from my school, and replaced with another math or reading position. 

Here is the presentation, hosted by slideshare.net:

Dr. Goldberg will be pleased that I learned how to embed this presentation on this blog, and began using slideshare.net as well!

Here are my technology explorations:

Comic Life

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	Comic life is online software that lets users transform their pictures into comic strips or graphic novels.  The software can be purchased for $30, but educators can buy single copies for $20, and site licenses are available.   Comic life's creators consider it "the word processor for digital graphic writing".  Any kind of digital images can be incorporated into a comic.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	The program is appropriate for all grade levels and subjects.  The teacher could start out by making comics to illustrate lessons, then the students could make their own. The comics can be used anywhere that content need to be explained or displayed.  The level of help required would decrease with the age group.  Any image found on the internet (or uploaded) can be incorporated quickly.  The site has many suggestions for ways to use Comic Life in the classroom.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	There's a free trial available so teachers can experiment with the way the software works before committing to a purchase.

VoiceThread

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	VoiceThread is complicated to explain.  I offer the following definition from the article, "Seven things you should know about Voicethread," which sounds like it could be straight from Voicethread's branding department, but is actually from a higher education consortium for educational technology: "VoiceThread is a media aggregator that allows people to post media artifacts for community feedback. The application, developed  at the University of North Carolina, makes it easy for users to add voice those who disconnected will to an artifact, which might be a document, a slide presentation, a video, or a collection of photos. Commentators can add remarks by means of microphone, webcam, keyboard, or telephone. The resulting Flash-based animation contains the original artifact and the commentary on it. In educational settings,  students can post visual media, instructors can comment, and peers can offer verbal or text-based assessments..." The article can be found here: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7050.pdf
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	Students can collaborate using text, voice and video.   The teacher can start with a file, such as a document with a research topic, and students can add other media as they discuss it, and add their comments to make a complete presentation.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	I would need more experience personally with this technology before recommending it.   I do have concerns about the fact that the site uses Adobe Flash to create the Voice Threads, and flash is no longer supported for android or iOS devices.  VoiceThread Mobile makes VoiceThread media files available for Ipad and Iphone, but there is no mention of support for Android phones and tablets.  I would not personally buy any software for a school setting that is strictly tied to Apple because I have as many or more students using android devices.

Storybird

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	Storybird lets users create their own stories using illustrations and art from the site.   They say, "Your words, our art."  Students build storybooks by selecting art from the site, and its compiled.   Examples of work created in storybird are here: https://storybird.com/read/
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	Students can illustrate their stories, poems or essays, or even non-fiction writing for other content areas. Teachers can create presentations of content for use in class, and monitor, score and comment on students' work on the site.  The teacher maintains a class with student accounts.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	Storybird is entirely free, and is already in use by a lot of people, so there is no risk in signing up to see if it works for your own needs.

Kidblog.org

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	Kidblog.org is a blogging site with educators in mind.  Teachers control the classroom blogs and the student accounts.  The idea is to keep the content appropriate for kids.  Other media files created with"web 2.0" programs can be embedded into log posts.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	I think that blogging for students could be effective at any age group with reading and writing skills.  I am interested to see how blogging develops in the future, and if there are schools that are participating in blogging school-wide, not just classroom-wide.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	Kidblog.org's basic program is free, and is doable at this level. Teachers or schools that are really using the blog model across disciplines would likely want to upgrade.

Read the Words

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	Readthewords.com is a site that will convert any document into speech, and you can download the speech files for later use.  The site also has custom animated avatars that read the texts.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	This site is appropriate for creating audio files from any printed document or webpage, so its uses correspond to any need for a custom audio file.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	The free account only allows audio recordings up to 30 seconds in length.  The $10/mo. /$40/yr plan allows recordings up to one hour in length.   The $15 mo/$70/yr plan allows audio recordings up to 8 hrs in length and more features .   The free package will allow you to see if this is the right text-to-speech program before purchasing.