wiki+group+two

**Group Two - Sarah, Michele, Britney, Heather, Caitlin**
=__**10 Web 2.0 Tools - Evaluation and Classroom Uses**__=

**__[|1.) Animoto]__**


[|Click Here for a sample of the Animoto tool - "Seasons"] This web 2.0 tool is called Animoto. It is a tool allowing you to choose images from their database or from your own and create a video. You can create as many 30 second videos as you want for free but to make longer ones you must pay a membership fee, which can range from $30 to $499 per year depending on the membership plan you choose. We will go through the process of creating a free 30 second video. When you get to the website, you must first click "create video". Next you will be asked to choose a theme for your video. There are 25 to choose from, 17 of which you may use for the free version. When you click on a theme, you must click "make a 30 second video for free" in the dialog box. After choosing this you will be asked to create an account, then you may begin creating your video with Animoto's easy to follow instructions. I think this site is great although it is a little pricey. It is very easy to use and has a lot of options to personalize your Animoto. For instance, you can add your own photos,videos, and music to your Animoto or choose from their wide selection. You can add text to your pictures or videos too. Our favorite thing about this site is how your video looks so professional at the end like you spent days on it rather than just a few minutes. The finished product looks amazing because the initial theme you choose ties everything in so well. I encourage you to check out our sample Animoto by clicking the link above.

**Sample Uses for Animoto:**

 * ====**Grades K-2:** Our Animoto example above, entitled "Seasons", highlights each season of the year in order and the months included in each season. Each season is illustrated with a picture to go along with the seasons. To make an Animoto such as this one more advanced for a higher grade level, you can simply change the subject matter. For example, your second graders can get into groups and pick a planet to research. After they have collected all of their data, they can create an Animoto about their planet with pictures and short educational videos about their planet.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** For a back-to-school assignment, have your students create an Animoto presentation about their summer vacation highlighting any trips they took or other fun and interesting things they experienced.====

**__[|2.) Wordle]__**
Wordle one of the simplest tools we have encountered. This tool takes words that you input and puts them into random places and in random colored font. With Wordle you can make posters for your classroom without much effort at all. After getting on the Wordle website, you just click "create", then it asks your to type in the words you want to use, such as examples of different adverbs for English class, and you can separate them by commas or just by spaces. After you type in all the words you want you click "go" and the "Wordle" poster will be on the screen. After this you can change the pattern of the words by clicking the "randomize" button and you can customize your Wordle even further with different fonts, colors, and layouts by using the toolbar above your Wordle. If you don't want to create your own your can view their gallery featuring other Wordles that have already been created. Wordle is a very quick and easy tool to use. You can create a neat looking piece of educational art in a matter of minutes. One of our favorite things about this site is that you do not have to create an account to use Wordle and it is entirely free to use. It saves a lot of time if you don't have to create yet another username and password to keep up with. You can easily print your creation when you finish and/or save it to a public gallery. Wordle isn't the most exciting and captivating Web 2.0 tool, but it can prove to be very useful.

Sample Uses for Wordle:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** As shown in our example, Wordle can be used to create a classroom poster about different types of weather. Students may want to refer back to it later. Putting the information into a Wordle looks more fun and creative than a bullet list.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** The teacher can use Wordle to help teach descriptive words. Each student could create a Wordle full of words that describe them.====

**[|3.) Prezi]**


media type="custom" key="10704464" width="178" height="178" Prezi is a Web 2.0 tool that allows you to create eye-catching presentations using a single canvas rather then multiple slides. Prezi is a great alternative to the PowerPoint presentation and can add a lot of interesting things to your presentation. There are three versions of Prezi: Public, Enjoy, and Pro. The public version is free and allows you to use up to 100 MB of storage space, create prezis online, and download your prezi to present offline. The Enjoy version costs $59 per year and includes all the features of the free version with the addition of using your own logo instead of Prezi's, 500 MB of storage space, making your content private, and support services. The Pro version costs $159 per year and includes all the features of the pro version with the addition of a downloadable program allowing you to create offline and 2000 MB of online storage space. Once you get to the Prezi website, you click "Sign Up" then choose the version you want. Students and teachers with an edu email address can get both the Public and Enjoy versions for free. To create and account, you need to fill out your name, email address, and password. When you finish signing up you can start creating!

There are many options to choose from when creating your prezi. You may begin by choosing a template or start with a blank slate. A tutorial will come up on the screen when you begin. The tutorial only takes a few minutes and is very helpful in getting a basic overview of how to use Prezi. In our example above we used Prezi to demonstrate how we followed the scientific method during a science project. Using a Prezi for your science project presentation is a great alternative to the traditional tri-fold poster board. We started with a template and changed it a bit by adding our own text and pictures, changing some colors, and adjusting the size and placement of objects. You can add your own pictures, videos, charts, graphs, etc. You may add shapes, lines, and frames for your separate sections. You may change the colors, fonts, etc. All this can be done with the blue tool on the upper left corner of your editing screen. After you have everything looking the way you want it, you can assign a path to your creation. The path is the order in which you want to see each portion of your Prezi during the slideshow. The best way to learn to use Prezi is to create one yourself. The features are fairly self-explanatory. You can interact with our example above to see how the paths work and what a completed Prezi could look like. Another example of a Prezi presentation can be viewed at [].

Sample Uses for Prezi:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** You can use Prezi as a way to get to know your students by having them create a Prezi about themselves including their hobbies, personal photos, and family life.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** Students can use a Prezi as an alternative to a tri-fold board to present their science projects or any other sort of presentation to the class.====

**[|4.) Wallwisher]**


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Wallwisher is a very simple online bulletin board tool. The Wallwisher tool does not have very many fancy coloring or font options but instead is fairly basic compared to other tools we have reviewed thus far. All you have to do to start a wall is choose one of the 12 themes which include denim, lime, earth, red, blue, etc., choose a profile image from their selection or upload your own, give your wall a title and subtitle, and specify a couple of privacy options. Now you just have to type in your name (or alias) and your email address and you will receive an email with your new password chosen by Wallwisher for security reasons. It also asks you to choose a URL for your wall but it is optional. Once your blank wall comes up all you have to do is double click somewhere on the blank space to bring up a "sticky", which is their online version of a post-it note. There is a 160 character limit for each "sticky" but you can place a lot of "stickies" on a single wall. My favorite thing about this Web 2.0 tool besides it's hilarious FAQ page ([]) is that you can add a link to an audio, video, or image file to each "sticky".

Overall, Wallwisher is a simple web tool that needs a little more time to develop. This Web 2.0 tool is definitely still in it's early stages because of the limits on creative additions but it is easy to use although it can be aggravating because they have not yet worked out all the bugs. As this tool is now, you are limited in being able to use it for a multitude of things. In the example above, we created a bulletin board for a random day of school posing as a teacher. The bulletin board is intended to help students who were absent to catch up on the work they missed and let them know what we did in class while they were gone. The plan would be to create one of these every day. Also, parents may want to look at my Wallwisher wall each day to check on what we are doing in class and to make sure that their child wrote down and completed all the assigned homework.

**Sample Uses for Wallwisher:**

 * ====**Grades K-2:** The teacher can create a weekly wall in Wallwisher with important announcements that parents need to know. The teacher can embed it into the school website or a classroom website he/she maintains.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** As illustrated in the example above, a teacher could use Wallwisher to post daily records of classroom activities and homework assignments to help absent students catch up and help parents keep up with what their child is doing in class every day. For example, if you read a chapter in class about the solar system and watched an educational internet video about it, you can post the chapter you read as a class and post the link to the online video so that the student can watch it at home if they were absent or even if they were present but wanted to view the movie again. Please see our example wall above to see this example in action.====

**[|5.) StoryJumper]**


The following is the cover of a picture book I created using StoryJumper: To read the whole book, visit: []

StoryJumper is a tool that allows you to create and publish your own story books. You may also purchase a published copy of the book you created within the website. To start creating, you must create an account. A StoryJumper account is free; all you need is a username and password, your birthday, and your e-mail address to verify your account. After you set up your account you can start creating a book right away, or you may want to go through the 7 steps in their StoryStarter process to help you get your story together before you start writing and illustrating it with the StoryCreator. You may fill out a StoryStarter Worksheet that can be found at []. Also, you can get some ideas and go through the 7 step process at [].

When you're ready, click "create" and start creating your book. You can start by designing the cover. There are various backgrounds to choose from for each page and props to choose from to help illustrate your text. You may add pictures from your own collection if you choose. You can type in your text on each page by using the text tool on the left side menu. If you checked out the book we created, you can see all the props we were able to use, but there are much more than that. After you finish, you can read your book online and then if you like you can purchase a published hard copy of your book through the StoryJumper website. Another neat thing about StoryJumper is that you can create a classroom account or convert your individual account into a classroom account. In this mode you can make a sort of virtual classroom with all your students as participants. You can learn everything you need to know about creating a classroom account at []. StoryJumper is very easy for everyone. The tool may be more geared towards the elementary grade levels, but the upper grades would probably have a good time with it too. To get used to the tool you have to just start playing with the features until you get the hang of it. If you need help, there is an option for that. The only negative aspect of this website that I have found is that you can't create the cover page independently of the other pages in the book. You have to choose an illustration from the other pages in your book to have on the cover. It works the same for the back cover. You must choose a page from your book to put on the back cover. If all of your pages in the book have text, then that text is going to be on the cover, and that can give away your story. A word of advice I will give you is that you should use page 1 of your book for a second cover page so that you can use it for the cover also. The same thing goes for the back cover of your book. Other than that, I think StoryJumper is a great web 2.0 tool.

**Sample Uses for StoryJumper:**

 * ====**Grades K-2:** As a class, brainstorm ideas to begin a story. Decide on a few characters and a beginning setting. After starting the story, go around the classroom and have each student add on to the story one at a time. Write down the additions until you get all the way around the classroom and every student has contributed. After you finish, go to a computer lab if it is available and let students illustrate the page with their part of the story on StoryJumper. If your students have adequate typing skills, you can let them add the text to their page themselves. If your students haven't quite learned to type yet, you can add the text yourself to each page before going to the computer lab. You will need to make a classroom account to do this. You can finalize the details of the book and then share the completed book with the class. If you want, you can order a published hard copy to add to the class library.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** For the upper grades, the students should create their own stories individually. To begin the activity, you should hand out the Story Starter worksheet and let them get their story together before creating the book. You can go through the 7 steps in the process to get them started on the website above. After they organize their ideas for the story, they can go to a computer lab and create the book with the tools on StoryJumper. Discounts for published copies of the books are available for classroom accounts with book orders of 15 or more.====

[|6.) Sliderocket]


media type="custom" key="11087810" SlideRocket is similar to Power Point in the sense that it is a presentation tool. However, it differs from Power Point because you do not have to save your presentation on a flash drive or hard drive because your presentation is saved in "the cloud." If you have access to the internet then you have access to your presentation. There are several different account options to choose from, lite, pro, and enterprise. The "lite" version is for "casual users" and this version is free. The "pro version" is recommended for professional users such as educators. The pro version is $24.99 but there is a code that allows free access. The "enterprise version" is recommended for organizations. This option did not list a price the website said to call for a price. To sign up all you need to do is enter your name and email address. This presentation tool has a variety of backgrounds to choose from. There are also different text options to choose from. You may upload pictures and videos from your personal collection. Another great feature of SlideRocket is that it allows people to interact and comment on someone's presentation without actually being together. There are several chart and table options to add to the presentation. It is very simple to use, maybe even easier than Power Point. SlideRocket is user friendly; the program has just as many features as power point but without the overwhelming interface. SlideRocket has a tutorial on the website that appears before you begin the presentation. You do not have to complete the tutorial but it only takes a few minutes and it is extremely helpful for first time users. I would strongly recommend this web 2.0 tool for anyone.

Sample Uses for SlideRocket:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** The students can participate in creating a SlideRocket presentation using the alphabet. Each child would be assigned a letter, and then be required to include pictures that begin with the same letter. When all students are finished each students can present their own slide. Adjust subject matter to increase difficulty for grades one and two.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** For Black History Month let each student choose a influential African American figure from past or present and then create their own presentations in SlideRocket and then present it to the class.====

[|7.) Blabberize]


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Blabberize is a web 2.0 tool that allows you to put sounds such as voice to a picture. To begin you can choose a picture from your own collection. After you upload it, you have to use the mouth sizing tool to put over the mouth in your picture. For example, if you upload a picture of yourself, you would need to shape a mouth over your existing mouth with the tool. After creating the mouth, you can add voice. You may record your voice and Blabberize will make the mouth in the picture talk to fit your voice-over. The only drawback in my opinion is that it takes a long time to shape a mouth perfectly on your picture. I think the website should add a gallery of mouth shapes to make it easier. Overall I like this tool and would probably use it in my classroom. I think it would be a fun and humorous way to introduce a topic in class.

Sample Uses for Blabberize:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** Pick a character from a book such as "The Lonely Scarecrow". Read the book outloud into a microphone and add your voice to a picture of a scarecrow. The scarecrow can read the book to the children.====
 * ====**Grades 3-5:** Have children record themselves reading self-created poems and then add the voice to a picture of their choosing. This could be a fun way to present poetry to the classroom.====

[|8.) Voki]


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Voki is a really interesting web 2.0 tool. To start you can choose an avatar. There is a number of catagories of avatars including toon, anime, animals, etc. After you choose an avatar you can customize it's features such as hair color, clothes, and sizes of features. You can add/change jewlrey, glasses, etc. After making your avatar you can add voice by typing in the text or recording your voice. You may also choose backgrounds. The catagories of backgrounds include travel, animated, sports, etc. I think this site would be awesome for an online class. The instructor could type in their lesson of speak it into the microphone and then use the avatar to give a lecture.

Sample Uses for Voki:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** Choose a turkey for your avatar. Type in a history of the Thanksgiving holiday and show it to your students near Thanksgiving.====
 * ====**Grades 3-5:** This tool has ready-made political figures to choose as an avatar. You can choose Barack Obama since he is our current president. Obama's wife, Michelle, is actively promoting that children live healthy lifestyles. You could type in healthy eating and exercising habits and have Obama's avatar tell them to the class.====

[|9.) Windows Movie Maker]


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Windows Movie Maker can be used for many different things in an educational setting and personal life situations. You can use your photos, videos, and audio files from your own collection and compile them to create a movie. There are many different options of what you can do with this program. You can add a title page, captions, credits page, transition between the elements being used in the movie, different colors for the title pages, fonts and colors can be changed, and music can even be uploaded to the movie from your computer. This program is very straight forward and easy to understand. The organization of the tools is easy, which makes navigating the web tool easy. Overall, this tool is a great one to implement into your lessons as a teacher and to use at home.

Sample Uses for Windows Movie Maker:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** Windows Movie Maker can be used to help with teaching the alphabet, numbers, animals, tying shoes, etc.====
 * ====**Grades 3-5:** This web tool can be used for learning things in history or in science. Students can use Windows Movie Maker to create a movie-type presentation about an assigned topic rather than just a research paper (However, I wouldn't use it every time, students need to develop their writing skills too). This tool allows student to add photos, information, and music related to their topic into their presentation.====

[|10.) Glogster]


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Glogster is an online poster board. It is a great way for everyone to display their own creative style as well as express their unique ideas and perspective. Glogster has lots of different backgrounds to choose from that can fit any style. Some of the categories of backgrounds are flowers, monsters, and Christmas. You may add graphics from the Glogster gallery or you can upload your own. You can also add music and videos to your Glog to make it even more creative and personalized. Text can be added to a Glog too. There are so many different text box categories with plenty of options within them, including monsters, retro, and romantic. I think one of the greatest uses for Glogster is to introduce people to one another, but in a different way than just saying, "Hi, I'm Jim." As a beginning of the year assignment, you can have your students to create Glogs about themselves including personal photos, music, and possibly even videos. Presenting a Glog is a fairly quick and painless way to introduce yourself on a deeper level. Glogster is pretty user friendly, even for a first-timer. You can place things wherever you like on the page to create your own style and flow.

Sample Uses for Glogster:

 * ====**Grades K-2:** The Glogster web tool can be used in these grade levels with all kinds of lessons. Math lessons can be created with this tool; for instance, you can create a Glog that explains the concept of addition, add a video that ties in (like a tutorial of addition), and some examples of problems and items that you can add together. This tool can make your lessons more visual, and can really catch the attention of your students.====
 * ====**Grades 3-6:** These grade levels can use this web tool for many things. The teacher can assign students to groups and give them a topic to discuss with the class. This can be done with 4th grade Social Studies when learning about North Carolina for example. The students can pick a region in North Carolina and create a Glog about the region they chose highlighting some key features of each region and adding pictures, music, videos, etc. that relates to there region.====