Voki

Instructors can use a Voki avatar to introduce the course or topics. It can also be used to aid in instructing those who are more audio/visual learners. Voki is also a great way to get shy students involved or to share comments with students in other countries.

You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters--animals, monsters, anime etc. You can also add your own voice by phone, microphone, but can also type what you want your Voki to say. A teacher once used Voki to recite a poem to her kindergarten class.

Adiboo Discover Nature, Animals & Planets

In Adiboo: Discover Nature, Animals and Planets, children learn how plants grow, create culinary masterpieces in the kitchen, watch cartoons, and create masks among similar tasks. The game contains interactive hot spots that lead to mini-games or amusing animations, with Adiboo, an elf-like child, providing assistance along the way. "Knowledge Land" is the main focus of the title subject matter and is divided into five areas, each with its own activities and games. Kids will enjoy the quick, amusing animations accompanying each correct and incorrect answer, as well as Adiboo's songs and input on how they did, with treats including a second song.
The manual is excellent, but the game is missing a number of advertised features.The link used to return to Playland from Knowledge Land doesn't seem to work, the car intended for navigation in the Land of Knowledge is no where to be found, with an overhead view used instead.
Cost of game is $20.00

Operating System: Windows 95/98

Memory: 32MB RAM

Subject areas: science

Grade Levels: AGES 4-7

Mobile Computing Devices in the Classroom

Today's classrooms are starting to incorporate mobile computing devices in the classroom. Ipads, and ipods have more use than the average user would think. It has many advantages and disadvantages for its use.
The advantages have an amazing effect on their motivation to learn, engagement in learning activities, and support for learning processes. Being able to access the internet right from the classroom rather than having to move the whole class to the media room for internet use, can make for an easier task for the teacher. These mobile devices can help children use their imagination and help aid in the projects along the way.
However with advantages, there are also disadvantages too. These devices can get pretty pricey. I know that the parents are not going to all be able to afford it and raising money for them can be quite hard as well. Being able to maintain, update and make sure nothing is broken can turn out to be quite a headache on someone. It's a great tool for the classroom but coming up with the funding for one can be tricky.

Creativity and Innovation

This week in class has been tremendously interesting. I have learned many new things and one of them was creativity and innovation. This is one of the NETS standards. This week in my EDU 271 class, we watched a video on a unit lesson for dinosaurs. It was great to see how different technology can be used in the classroom to combine the lesson but at the same time different studies like math, science, etc. Smart-boards were used and children had hands on experience working with them. They also did an egg dying experiment that shows what a dinosaur egg would look like back then. They wanted to replicate what an egg would look like compared to the actual one.

My Credible Source

Website Evaluation Checklist

Student Name: Angela Torres Date of Evaluation: February 9, 2011

Name of the Website: WeatherWizKids

URL of the Website: http://www.weatherwizkids.com/

Accuracy of the Web Page	Yes	No	Notes
1. Can you find the author of the page? Hint: Scroll to the bottom of the page. It may be an institution.	X		Author Name: Crystal Wicker
2. Can the author be contacted: Hint: Look for an “About Us” or “Contact Link”	X		Author email: askcrystal@weatherwizkids.com
3. Do you think this person or institution is qualified to publish this webpage?	X		Why or why not? She has a degree. Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology
Authority of the Web Page
1. Check the domain of the URL, particularly the extension. Is this a commercial site? The URL can give clues to the authority.		X	What does the extension tell you? That Crystal is the main authority on this website.
2. Are there credentials listed for the author(s)? If not, try Googling the name of the author or the institution.		X	What did you find? I tried googling it but it nothing came up.
Purpose of the Web Page
1. Read over the information on this website carefully. Can you determine the purpose of this web page?	X		Why is this web page on-line? Think critically about possible opinions or bias? To allow kids to learn the world of weather and have parents get the right tools to teach them.
Currency of the Web Page
1. Can you find a publishing date?	X		When was it published? 2003
2. Can you find the date it was last updated?	X		When was it updated? 2009
3. Are the links working and current? Click on some of the links to check.	X		What do you think about the links? I think the links are great. They have great insight and work every time you click on them.
Looking at your answers, do you think this website would be a reliable, credible source of information?	X		Why or Why not? Crystal has a degree. She knows what she is talking about and has many links to discuss about weather. I could use much information off her website to create my lessons.

Oh to be DELICIOUS

This week in my EDU271 class, we had to create a Delicious account from www.delicious.com. At first I was saying to myself, "oh joy another account to remember the password, and probably would only use for this class", well I was wrong. It's a great way to set up your bookmarks with tags and an easy way to bookmark the page your on. Having your bookmarks organized can easily help you find your way back to it. You can even find people on there that bookmark sites that you have never been on, opening up new links and websites for you to enjoy. I still haven't quite found out how to find my classmate on it and their website that they have found. I am still a little lost but I think the more I use it, it will fall into place. It was easy to tag and add a web address to my bookmark. I also used the help content on delicious as well. This could be used for projects later in my classrooms at FTCC. My groups can click on my links and understand anything I have added to an assignment based on the web provided. It can help me keep up the pace of my group with adding links/web addresses to help with the project as well.

My Retrospective analysis of a goal-oriented activity

For the past two weeks in my EDU 271 class, we had a group collaboration assignment. My group was introducing "Twitter" and how it is used in the classroom with advantages and disadvantages. At first I was overwhelmed because the assignment called for a WIKI which I personally have never worked on before. I'm good at understanding once it has been introduced to me. After coming upon the WIKI page I started to play with it and see how everything works. I had four people in my group and only worked with one other person. No one else tried to get in contact with me, so I decided to start on it first. I was the first to post, but then later realized that MLA format was missing in my pieces. MLA format was difficult for me. I remember using it in one of my English classes before, but never kept it fresh in mind. If I could take a few things back, it would be to understand how to get the group discussion rolling a little better. I would sit back and take a breather and understand "it's a learning process" to understand new technology. I did keep in contact with one person and she was amazing. She took over the whole MLA format and fixing what we needed. I added information to the WIKI as well as a youtube video. I thought the video was a great addition. Learning how to put a video in was tough but if you actually look it up in google, or even youtube, you put two and two together and understand. Now that I think of it I probably could of used that for the discussion on the WIKI. =) Overall we got the project done. I seen one other person add a few things in there at a certain point. I went back into the WIKI almost daily to see what others have posted and also looked on other classmates WIKI to see what they have done. After reading some blogs, we all had the same issues, MLA, non communication in some groups, and taking on the project solo until others joined. I think for next time I will collaborate with my group more as well as learning MLA format so I don't have to rely on classmates too. I would feel more confident knowing I did my part in every which way possible.