Blabberize

I just returned from the TIE Conference (Technology in Education) 2011. It is a smaller conference but a worthwhile one none the less. I did present to teachers (Animoto and Prezi, see our class projects on these in an earlier post), but I also picked up some engaging ideas for my classroom.


One  I plan to use is Blabberize. Blabberize is is a very easy application that allows you to speak through a picture. Students can manipulate the picture to say what they want it to say. You can manipulate pictures of people, animals, even inanimate objects.


How can you use Blabberize in the classroom? Any report a student has to give can be done via Blabberize, while covering standards for the 21 century learner as seen here.


To check out Blabberize click here.


As always, be sure your students are finding pictures from places that have copyright free material such as Creative Commons, here or the Library of Congress digital collection here.


Update: Here is one of my students Blabberizes. Blogger is having an update problem. When they fix it, I will add more. Also, I have including a link to all of them. Enjoy!








Link to all of my third grade Blabberizes can be accessed here.



Here is a fun Blabberize I found on the Blabberize site. A student is reporting on Mt. Everest. Students and teachers have the ability to make their Blabberized items public (for anyone to see) or private. Keep that in mind.

Skeletal System Glogsters

This past school year my teaching partner introduced her students to Glogster. It was a huge success. Our third graders love seeing one of our laptop carts come down the hallway, it always meant a cool project was going to unwrap itself. And this time it meant Glogster!

What is Glogster? It is an interactive poster making app. Check it out here. Want to see some of our work? Click here and enjoy!

Twiducate, Twitter for Your Students

My students loved when I would turn on the Tweetdeck. I follow some great groups such as #elearning, #edchat, #edtech, and #edapps. The students knew that these groups could lead to new ideas, Skypes, or collaborations. When we had free time between specials and lunch we would see what educators where talking about. When I introduced the class to the student version of Twitter, Twiducate, they were excited. Twiducate runs like Twitter but is in a very closed environment. Students can only "Tweet" to those I sign up into our group. They can live chat, share ideas, and ask questions, thus staying in touch. It is also a great place for teachers to extend lessons, post homework or just communicate with students. To check out Twiducate click here.

Fodey for Your Lessons

In the spirit of sharing some of the ways we have employed technology at our school this past school year, I bring you Fodey. Fodey is an online newspaper clipping generator that a variety of our classrooms use. It is very simple to use, requires no login, and generates a bulletin board worthy product. Keep in mind that what the generator produces is, what looks like newspaper clippings, not whole articles. To take a look at the app, click here.  

Our Spanish teacher, used it to write newspaper clippings about the Japanese earthquake.

Our fourth grade teachers used Fodey to have students write about events in the Revolutionary War: