Thing 5 - Digital Storytelling & Presentation Tools

I really enjoyed exploring the resources on Thing 5. Some I was already familiar with, and others I had never heard of. Of particular interest were the presentation tools. Both of the classes I teach rely heavily on using Web 2.0 tools to demonstrate student learning, so I was excited to try out some new ideas to use with them.

While scrolling through the list of resources, I read several of the items in the "Tools, Tips, and Resources" section and found many helpful.  I also viewed the "Power of Bunkr" demo and found it looked too advanced to use with my 6th graders. I also watched the "Don't Let the Pigeon be the Principal" and thought that was adorable! I would definitely do something like that with my classes sometime in the future.

To update my library webpage, I decided to add a Voki of myself introducing the library. You can check it out at http://www.millbrookcsd.org/middleschool/library. As part of my class's author study of Tim Green, who will be visiting our school in May, I am going to have them create a Voki of either the author himself, saying biographical info, or a Voki of a character from one of his books telling about the story. I think the kids will really enjoy this!

Another new tool that I plan to use with my classes in the coming weeks is the timeline feature on Dipity. I had never heard of this, but have been wanting to find a good timeline creating tool online that my classes could use for their author study project. I created a Dipity account and experimented with a sample timeline. It seemed pretty easy to use, although users only get 3 timeline projects for free before having to subscribe to a larger part of the service, so it will work for my class, but not sure how many students will want to go beyond 3 timeline projects...

I have played around with StoryBird and Voicethread and had a couple of students use it, but did not find them something I wanted to incorporate into my classes. One of my favorite presentation tools is Prezi. I created a simple one to use with my Digital Literacy class for a lesson on creating research questions. It serves two purposes - it serves as an introduction to what Prezi is, AND it is the tool I use for the lesson on writing research questions. It can be viewed at
http://prezi.com/hlrjblzapviq/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
After going through the research process, each student will create their own Prezi on a topic of their choice as their final project for my 10 week course. They will love it!

Thing 5 was a lot of fun - a good mix of what I already knew and things I had never heard of. On to Thing 6...