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Friday, August 19, 2011

Vital 3: Cool Tools

I had seen/tried out a lot of the tools already listed so I tried out ones that I was more unfamiliar with,which were Blabberize, bighugelabs and voki.  The biggest problem that I found was figuring out how to embed these onto the blog.  If you check out my blog, you will find a voki and a talking dog (bottom of the page) that I created.  Not the best, but it was fun! 

I can really see how a lot of these could be helpful and fun to use with students!  Blabberize would be a blast with elementary age in particular although I could easily see secondary students loving it as well!  It could be used as part of a history lesson with pictures of famous people explaining what they had to do with history or a science lesson such as species.  The students could find a picture of their species and have it explain about "itself". 

I think voki avatars could be used as presentation tool.  This could be especially helpful if the students were shy about talking to the class.  This way, they could create an avatar to "talk" for them!  It was easy enough even for the elementary level students.

As far as bighugelabs, I did have a bit more difficulty with this tool as I often learn by doing with a project in hand and just couldn't get my mind wrapped around these tools.  It could be a very useful tool for teachers to present photos of the students throughout the year in various ways.  There are ways to use the tools with the students, and it certainly was fairly easy to use!