Voice thread

VoiceThread is a web-based communications network for students and educators. It is a place for creating and collaborating on digital stories and documentaries, practicing and documenting language skills, exploring geography and culture, solving math problems, and it allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

• It has an accountable environment where all users on the network are known users, responsible for their content and behavior.
• All content is created by registered members of the community.
• There are no Free accounts, students may only participate after being added by their teacher or school, and student email addresses are not required.
• Students participate in VoiceThread only after being added by an educator or administrator with a VoiceThread class or school subscription.

Vocethread is a creative, fun and educational tool that can be used to support all outcome learning areas, which allows the students to develop their language skills (from writing and), speaking skills (audio messages) and art skills (creating the voivethread). It is safe for teachers and students to use as a means of communication and expressing ones opinion. Voice thread is a great tool to assist in the students cognitive development and allows them to enjoy themselves in an educational setting, which motivates them to learn new concepts.

For more information on what and how to use Voicethread visit: http://voicethread.com/#home.b409.i848804

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes is a software where teachers and students can communicate with each other, and allows the teachers to create worksheets for the students online. Hot potatoes is a simple and easy to use software that allows the teacher to educate students in all the learning areas in a fun and creative way. It acts as an educative tool to support learning rather then a means actually teaching a specific topic or learning area, which means that it can be integrated into the classroom effectively. Hot potatoes has six applications which enables the teacher to create interactive worksheets and allows the students to comment back to the teacher. the six applications are:

1. Multiple choice questions
2. Short answers
3. Jumbled sentence
4. crossword
5. Matching/ ordering
6. gap filling exercise

These areas help children in the development of several English skills such as writing, spelling and sentence structure. It is also effective in the classroom because it allows the students to immediately check if there answers are correct, so it allows them to 'have a go'. Hot potatoes is not only beneficial for the students in that it is a creative way to learn and communicate with the teacher, but it is also beneficial for the teacher because it is easy to upload the worksheets and they can organise the students grades and worksheets in one area. It also helps in several other learning areas such as maths, society and environment and technology and enterprise due to the activities that can be posted by the teacher to the student. An example of how Hot potatoes can be integrated into several learning areas and the classroom can be located on this website http://marshalladulteducation.org/student_lessons1.htm where it provides several worksheets on different topics for the students to fill out. Hot potatoes is a great tool that assists and supports teachers in educating the children about several different concepts in a fun, creative and interactive way.

Game Maker

Game Maker is a program that allows students to create their own games such as 'catch the ball' or catch the clown. This innovation topic allows the students to be:

• Creative- where they learn to create their own games
• Challenging- students have to think in more complex terms because the program is difficult to navigate however once mastered easy to understand
• Enhances the students learning in technology and software

It acts as a means of developing cognition because they have to challenge themselves in creating their own game and understanding the process of how to do it. The only problem with Game maker is that it can be time consuming and hard to navigate. However once the students become familiar with the program it does become easier to understand. This can be integrated into the learning area of technology and enterprise where the students learn about the process of enterprise and creating a game that can potentially become a popular game in society, which can lead to the students looking into advertisement, costing and 'running' a successful business.

Glogster

~Twit twit--Twitter~

Before being introduced to Twitter in the classroom, i used to believe that twitter was just another form of communication between individuals (like my space, facebook and msn) however it can also be used as an effective tool for sharing documents, pictures and other documents. Twitter can be used as a form of communication between teachers and students, and also teachers and parents. Whilst using twitter in the tutorial i found that whilst it can be an effective tool that is simpy to follow it is time consuming because it takes some time locating your 'friends' or students. Also it is hard for the teacher to supervise because students are able to communicate with eachother without the teacher being able to control what is being said. Therefore even though Twitter is great and simple to use as a form of communication i believe there are other programs that can be used in the classroom like google docs that allows students to communicate with each other but also where the teacher can supervise the conversation and ensure the classroom has a friendly work environment...

*^Scratch^*

Scratch is a program where you are able to create your own interactive stories, games, music and animations- that can be shared on the web for others to see... When we first started with scratch it was hard to grasp but after a few minutes of 'fiddling' and investigating i found that it become easier to create, which leads me to believe that the more you practice the more simple and easier it becomes to create and share your scratch stories. Whilst it is a fun, creative and interactive tool it is hard to implement into the classroom across several learning areas.

Benefits of scratch

• Customize pictures, images and cartoons
• Import and export files- share files with others
• Change the colour and sound
• Create sound effects
• Record sound

Disadvantaged of scratch

• Difficult at first
• Time consuming
• Hard to integrate into other learning areas

In some features scratch is similar to Bitstrips where it can be used as a creative tool for the arts and in one of the scratch stories it was used for Society and Environment where the students had to locate where the State was in a certain country-(http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/astein/34448)... Although it is a difficult program to navigate it can come in handy for some learning areas like the arts but it may be time consuming and at times frustrating.. however i think the students may actually find it interesting and easy to follow because they are more experienced with technology and enjoy 'playing around' with new programs.

--Jing--

Jing is an innovation software that allows individuals to record conversations and communicate with other people. The concept of Jing is for people to be able to record and capture anything on their computer screen, which can be beneficial for businesswomen/ men but it is hard to implement into the classroom because there are limited things one can do with jing. Some of the benefits of Jing are:

• Jing can be Incorporated into a design project
• Recordings
• snapshot of pictures/ documents

Jing is a difficult software to critique because whilst it is hard to use in the classroom it can be handy for other careers. which leads me to believe that although it is an effective tool, one is better off using other innovative softwares that could be put to better use, and can be implemented into other learning areas...