Technology+Tools

Here are some tools that I have experimented with during my journey to technological saviiness. I have had a lot of fun with some of these tools, but I am now in the process of selecting tools that have educational merit for my students. I am interested in quality of learning, not quantity.

Here are some I've tried:

__Xtranormal.com:__ This site is a video site that allows anyone to create personal, educational, or other types of movies using pre-scripted characters and voices. I think this is a great tool to create short, informative video clips on topics that you would normally teach the students anyway. It engages the students because it is a type of cartoon, but students are still hearing the same information. I tried this out on my students in first and second grade and they loved it! I wanted to be sure the students were actually listening and learning, so I questioned their learning right afterwards. I got some pretty impressive responses that provoked further discussion on the topic. The best part about this is that I asked for the "educators discount" and received 5,000 free "points" on my account for educational movies.

My recommendation: Definitely worthwhile for short snippets!

My movie: []media type="custom" key="8408382"

__NGA Kids Jungle Interactive ([]):__ This site is from the National Gallery of Art's webpage (which has lots of great resources). I was interested in this particular interactive application because it had to do with a couple of projects I have been doing lately on the French artist Henri Rousseau. Rousseau is an amazing artist who painted endless lush scenes of a jungle that he never had the pleasure to see. This interactive tool allows children to create their own jungle using pre-created object such as plants, trees, flowers, birds, and animals. Students can choose whether it's day or night, raining or sunny, etc. I wasn't sure how educational relevant this would be so I decided to try it out with my kindergarteners as a test. I borrowed a laptop from the library, hooked it up to my projector, and had the kids take turns adding jungle details to the scene. This was fun, but I asked myself later: did it enhance the students' learning about the artist studied? The answer to that question is unfortunately, no, not really.

My recommendation: Use it if you have a lot of extra time, but not worth taking up valuable class time.

__Animoto.com__: This is a great tool for creating a slideshow to music. It is different than a typical slide show in that it allows you to embed music as well as a different format or style for the pictures to come and go from the screen. It also allows text. This would work very well for me as an art teacher for artist studies to introduce students to new artwork.

My recommendation: Great to use as a presentation tool.

My slide show: media type="custom" key="8411496"