Dipity, Mindmeister, and a life lesson

Stick a fork in me... I'm done. Getting this weeks assignments done was a bit more challenging than usual. Lots of family issues that needed to be taken care of over the weekend made this project hard to concentrate on and finish on time. I was able to sit down tonight and get it done. This week we looked at dipity and mindmeister.

These are both 2.0 tools that I have not even really heard of, so I was excited to try something new. I started with my dipity project. I created a personal time line. I made this to show my students and example of what to create. We talk a lot about ourselves and our experiences and I felt in some classrooms this would be a fun useful tool to show milestones about ourselves. I did like that this allows users to create their own timelines for free. I did have some trouble uploading pictures, some took 2 or 3 tries and I know classmates also had some issues accessing the site. I don't know if this was just a fluke or a regular occurrence when using the site.

All about Me :) on Dipity.

I created a bare bones mind map using mindmeister. I like mind maps and created one to show our core values which would link to different activities for each topic. However, I decided to just sign up for the basic free account which did not allow me to add in my own graphics. I found one that was similar to the one we use at school but for things like this it is vital for consistency and to show students the same image for the same idea. Ideally, my mind map would include all of the boardmaker symbols that we use to represent each of the ideas. I would have also liked to have more control of where the 3rd level of ideas went. They all got grouped together in a list. I would have had them spread out a little more making more of a web look to the graphic.

Have a great, restful Thanksgiving.

Until Next Time. 

Boardmaker Share

Here is a quick video of how to create a new account on Boardmaker share. Boardmaker Share is a file sharing community for people using Boardmaker software such as Boardmaker Plus, Speaking Dynamically Pro, and Studio. I use the site all of the time to download activities and then modify them to my classroom. I will post another tutorial on how to share your activities.

My first Prezi

Well, this week I made my first Prezi.

Gomulak-Cavicchio Solar System on Prezi

Honestly, I am not all that impressed with Prezi. Yeah, it has some cool features and neat ideas for transitions but I did not like the fact that it had to be linear, there is only one way to go through the slide show. Yes, sometimes this is good but sometimes it is fun to let the students explore where they are going. I may have had a different opinion of I had started a Prezi from scratch. I used a presentation I have done on 2 other presentation platforms. First, I created a similar presentation on Boardmaker Plus that I have actually used in my classroom. It starts with students having to correctly identifying the planets from a word bank. Then they could click on a planet to find out more. Once they were on the slide with the planet Boardmaker would read and highlight as it was speaking. Furthermore, using the symbolate tool, picture symbols are automatically added for each word and aligned perfectly. Over the summer I created a similar presentation using PowerPoint for a grad class. We were to make a non-linear presentation. I wanted to compare the two methods of presentation so I created a similar presentation. While, I was not in love with my PowerPoint, I did not hate it either. It was different. I had to find pictures of the planets and manually put them into all of my slides. A bit tedious but not insurmountable. So here I am another presentation another method. I tried importing all of my slides. That was a pain in the first place. All of the slides I took so long formatting so that the pictures were the right size and in the right place, did not transfer correctly. Prezi recognized text and images separately and not the slide as one cohesive unit. At this point, I feel confidant that I can compare all 3 equally. I have to say the winner for my current setting is Boardmaker Plus. It just fits what I need and allows me some flexibility as far as programming goes. PowerPoint and Prezi do have their advantages but Boardmaker offers more.

On another quick note. This week I am starting a temporary position for the next 3 months filling in as Temporary Classroom Skills Instructor while the person is out on maternity leave. I am excited to work on training staff but sad to be leaving my classroom behind. Hopefully, I can work more on assisting my co-workers on using some of the technology we do have. I may be posting more frequently on here as I try to add tutorials for work related items.

Until next time!

BeeClip EDU

After looking at BeeClip EDU and Glogster I chose to work with BeeClip as it seems a more realistic option to use in my current setting. It just seemed easier and there were less choices for customization which would help my students. It also worked well that I immediately thought of a unit I have planned for a few weeks from now that would work for this assignment. I work with students with special needs who need a lot of help when it comes to identifying emotions, their own and others. In a few weeks we are working on recognizing another's feelings. I created a scrapbook that shows pictures of different feelings.
I enjoyed creating this scrapbook. One thing that i did not like was that at times the button to rotate the pictures was not in the same spot, sometimes it was on top other times it was on the side. Other than that it was easy to use and add pictures. Hope the rest of the apps are this easy.

Until next time.