Technology is constantly challenging teachers and students. Today's students learn in a different way than yesterday's students. Students are no longer looking at chalkboards and taking notes with pencil and paper. With Evernote, teachers can upload their notes and the entire class has access to them. Evernote can also help the students stay organized when working on projects and assignments - be it alone or in a group. It is also a great resource to maintain a portfolio for class, work, or personal reasons (decorating, wedding planning).
I have become used to working on group projects without ever meeting my group members. Amanda and I communicated through email and it was super easy to get everything done. The only problem I had was uploading the PPT. When the voice-over was added, it made the file too big to send or upload. Amanda really helped me out with getting Dropbox set up.
Other topics that were assigned to fellow classmates include: Prezi, Glogster, Storybird, Typewith.me and Wordle. Out of all of the assignments, Prezi is the only one I have heard of before. I absolutely LOVE Prezi! It is such a creative way to make presentation. PowerPoint is getting a little stale, if you ask me, and Prezi is the perfect tool to kick a presentation up a notch. It helps you see the big picture and then you can zoom in when you want to make specific points. The one down side to Prezi, is that the presentation can be the main focus, instead of the speaker.
Glogster is a very interesting concept. It is basically a digital poster board and collage tool. You just drag your content to the page and make it look good. The content can be image, text, video, graphics, or sound. Once you have finished the glog, it can be embedded to a blog or classroom website.
Storybirds are short stories inspired by art that can be saved and printed out. Teachers can use Storybirds to encourage students to write and then publish their stories. Teachers can create classroom libraries, which can also be used as fundraisers for the school. It is super easy to create. Just find the art you like, and write in the text box. Students can work together or alone on a Storybird and teachers/parents can keep an eye on what is being done.
Typewith.me is a collaboration tool that allows up to 15 participants to work on a document, simultaneously, on the Internet. Once you start a document, you just send the URL to no more than 15 people and get to work. Each person just chooses a color so they can be identified. There is a chat feature that allows you to talk with other collaborators. The document can be saved at anytime, which allows the user to go back and look at the document before changes have be made. It's just an easy, no nonsense tool that is completely free. It can make group work so much easier to have everyone on the same page actually seeing the changes that are being made. That way, someone doesn't have to email the document back and forth when changes have been made.
Finally, Wordle is a tool that generates "word clouds". The words that are repeated frequently will be bigger and more noticeable. It can customized with a desired font, color, size, etc. Word clouds can be used for project enhancements. Wordle is a visually pleasing application.
This assignment has opened my eyes to FREE resources that are really useful to teachers, students, or even professionals who work in a group environment.
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