BP9_2010022_OneMinMsgToondoo

Toondoo is a great website to create 1, 2, or 3 panel comic strips. It can easily be applied in a school setting.



You can also see the video on youtube.

BP8_2010022_Web2.0Tool Toondoo

I’m not really sure about the luck that I have had this past week with Web 2.0 applications and the registration process. I am sure that registering for some of the sites just, well, sucked. I understand there are a host of other Web 2.0 tools available and all I needed to do was select another tool to review. I know that I have come across at least two powerful tools that could easily be implemented in classrooms from kindergarten to 12th grade and I want to share those sites. In searching for Web 2.0 tools this week, I have come across www.yackpack.com and www.tablefy.com. Yackpack allows users to set up a “pack” of friends into a message circle. It is still in Beta and according to an email that I received from support, their server is down and may take a few weeks to be back up and running. The other tool is Tablefy. Tablefy lets users create a user generated comparison table. You can insert pictures into a table and also combine tables from other users. I have not yet received a reply to my email to their support team. I can see myself using Yackpack in my classroom to send voice message reminders for conferences and to have students do oral mastery verification. Tablefy can be used in the classroom following lab experiments, where students can create tables of data and then compare with classmates. Although I was not able to register for either site, I plan to keep my eye on them and use them as soon as an opportunity arises for registration.

Finally, I came across another site to use with my students and again I have registration issues! This time I was able to easily resolve the issue and complete a simple registration for Toondoo. Toondoo (http://www.toondoo.com) allows users to create, publish, share, and discuss their own comic strips. Within Toondoo, users can use templates with scenes, objects, characters, and clip art to create one panel to three panel strips. Users can also upload their own images and “toon” them into the strip. The very creative and artistic users can do their own drawings.



Toondoo makes it easy to move from one panel to the next with images because they can easily be cloned, flipped, rotated, and resized. Toondoo characters can express different emotions and postures at the click of a button. Much like in ComicLife, users can select and manipulate the speech bubbles. The biggest differences between Comic Life and Toondoo would be the cost (paid vs. free) and in sharing the artwork. Toondoo allows users to mark work as public or private as well as “re-doing” options to allow others to make changes to your comic strip.
Perhaps it is just me, but I could not find an UNDO button within the easy to use Toondoo Creator.

As far as using this tool in the classroom, physics of toys comes to mind. In each Physics class or Physical Science course, students explore in some fashion how toys and games work. If students (and teachers) are going to get nostalgic about their favorite toy racetrack car, why not bring back the nostalgia of comic strips? I would love to present Newton’s Laws of Motion within comic strips. Force and motion problems can be shown step by step within a 3-panel strip. Because comic strips can be shared, I can complete 2 of the 3 panels and have students fill in the missing panel and save or email their work. After learning about each of the 3 laws of motion, students can create their own rendition of a comic strip to summarize the laws. I can see myself creating a Toondoo strip and giving it out as a study guide to the laws of motion. Learning formulas for problems would be less of a pain by demonstrating them in comic strips. Plain black and white worksheets are overrated. It would be great to spice up guided or independent practice with color comic strips.

By jbstar | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

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Thinking of comic strips always brings me back to reading the comics section of the Sunday paper. That was a great tool to help me learn to read. Integrating Toondoo into a physics unit not only teaches the math and science concepts, but could easily reach students that struggle with reading.

bP7_2010022_ReflectiveMedia1

www.wallwisher.com is a fantastic site to use in a school setting.



View the video on youtube.

Take a look at this wall.

BP6_2010022_Web2.0Tools Wallwisher

I usually walk away from a teacher conference with 4 things: new knowledge, a host of ink pens, brochures, and sticky notepads. Attending just one conference a year can result in enough sticky notes to entirely cover a whiteboard, two or three times. Needless to say, I help out my school budget by not spending money on sticky notepads. There are so many activities that I incorporate in a brick and mortar school setting to use the sticky notes that I can actually justify picking up more note pads each time I attend a conference. Now that I am teaching in a cyber setting, the need for sticky notes has changed. I can’t use the notes for exit quizzes, diagramming, and labeling anymore, yet I still yearn for the learning benefits of being able to move around these colorful tabs of paper based on a particular topic. I think I have met my virtual sticky note match at www.wallwisher.com.

Wallwisher is an online notice board maker. Once a wall is created with a topic users can double click to generate a virtual post and use up to 160 characters to type their message. Using this in the classroom would force students to be concise with words and not spare meaning. They can even post an online video or website link on the sticky note. The creator of the wall can move any sticky note around, while the creator of the sticky note can move its own note. The wall owner gets to choose the extension for the URL, background, and whether the wall is public or private. The creator also has the option of approving posts before they are seen on the wall.

In studying ecosystems, students must distinguish producers from consumers. With food chains, organisms are given a ranking to determine where they fit in. This is called a trophic level. A wallwisher board could help students identify producers, consumers, decomposers, and scavengers along with trophic levels for each. During class, students can post names of organisms under each sticky heading. This would actually create a chart that students can reference in future lessons.

To assess learning, I can move around the heading sticky notes or ones generated by students. Once I have moved some out of order, I can display the page and have students find what is out of place and explain where it belongs.

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http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/trophiclevels

Using sticky notes on the whiteboard during parent night has always helped me focus on questions and ideas that perhaps were not explained in detail. Not only is wallwisher a great tool to use to organize concepts, but it can be used to post questions from students or learning coaches. I would accept general questions only rather than questions specific to a student. I can envision setting up a wall at the beginning of the school year to collect questions. Parents and students can bookmark the page so they can refer back to it for answers or to post new questions. Sometimes it may be easier to open a bookmarked page instead of logging into the school based email system.

I smile when I think about being able to implement sticky notes in a virtual world. This idea saves my back from hurting when lugging around tons of note pads, and I’m a bit greener!

BP5_2010021_Flickr

Last October’s edition of Interface Magazine of New Zealand presented a lesson plan that uses Flickr. The lesson is called 5 Card Flickr Story (Interface Magazine, 2009). It is based off of a card game named 5 Card Nancy, which was created by Scott McCloud (cogdogblog, 2009). From my search, 5 Card Flickr was a feature available in Flickr previous to August 2009. To play the game now or incorporate it into a lesson, students should search for the tag 5cardflickr. Once five photos are displayed, students are to create a story to connect the five random pictures. This activity would spark creativity and enhance writing skills.

It would be pretty awesome to see pictures uploaded by classroom students for the story game. Students can add to the Flickr pool of pictures when tagging uploads by adding the tag 5cardflickr.

I can imagine modifying this simple, yet powerful game for an end of year science review or beginning of the year prior knowledge check. As images are uploaded to a class group throughout the school year a tag for 5cardflickr can be added. This would eliminate scrambling to add the proper tag to all of the pictures at once. Having groups of students pick 5 random images from the school year to create a science based story linking concepts covered would be an excellent way to review concepts for mastery. To use this at the beginning of the school year, I can choose 5 random science content images and see if students can come up with a meaningful anecdote. If they can create connections that means I can spend more time on concepts where they have no prior knowledge.

I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of using Flickr in the classroom, and even more excited about 5 Card Flickr activities. I can not wait to start building a set of photos for a class group.

References

Cogdogblog. (2009). Fivecardflickr: A PHP/MySQL Web Site for Telling Stories with Photos from Flickr . Retrieved 02 10, 2009, from Project Hosting on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/fivecardflickr/

Interface Magazine. (2009, 10). LESSON PLAN 42: five card flickr story. Retrieved 02 10, 2009, from Interface Magazine: http://interfacemagazine.co.nz/downloads/INTERFACE%20Lesson%20Plan%2042%20-%20Five%20Card%20Flickr%20Story.pdf

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Bp4_2010021_Web2.0Tools

As a science teacher, I am always looking for ways to reach students hands on, other than through labs. Some content seems difficult for student to grasp when introduced through lab inquiries. One such topic is cell division or mitosis. In theory, students may understand the concept, however they many need a transition lesson before attempting to point out each stage in mitosis. In the past I have had students create flip books to bridge the gap between theory and lab practices with cell division. Flip books are a great tool to use to help students individually learn the stages of mitosis. Through Sketchfu (http://sketchfu.com) students can create animated drawings for each stage of mitosis and demonstrate the changes a cell goes through in order to reproduce.




Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

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Sketchfu is a Web 2.0 application that allows people to communicate through their drawings. The drawings are saved and played back from start to finish. Sketchfu allows users to regulate the speed of the playback. Users can search people, drawings, or apps to find an animated drawing. Apps are essentially groups with a common interest. To apply Sketchfu to my class, I would create an app just for the class to ensure student safety on the Internet.

While students are creating a collection of drawings from the beginning of cell division to the end, they can identify the names of the stages and the cell parts that are visible. Once they have published the drawing, students can view other drawings and add to them by labeling the chromosomes, spindles, nuclear envelope, and other parts of the cell. Students will also be able to comment on the drawings. The comment section could be used to have students narrate each segment of the drawing.

To understand what goes on in a living cell, diagrams are used regularly in class. Students need to diagram life processes and Sketchfu would allow students to do so. In reality, life processes are not always synchronous. In an onion root, one cell may be in prophase when viewed under a microscope, while the adjacent cell is undergoing anaphase. Creating drawings that are asynchronous would prepare students for what they may see under the microscope; therefore Sketchfu would be a viable option to use for instruction for multiple concepts taught during the school year.

Sketchfu is very simple to use and requires the use of a mouse or touchpad. In my sample drawing, I used a Wacom board to produce my images. If this is available to students, they may see a benefit to allow much more precision in their drawings. Outside of science class, I often encounter students and parents that have questions about math problems. With a Sketchfu account, they can complete the problem in question and I can watch the replay. This allows me to see the step-by-step account for the problem and I can identify where to help. I can respond by adding to comments and marking on the drawing space. This is highly adaptable and would work very well with a Wacom or similar board.

BP2_2010021_Educational Uses for Blogs

I currently use a blog for my classroom to convey due dates, trip information, testing logistics, and some assignment details. If parents or students have a remaining question after reading the blog, they can post it in the comments section. This allows all readers to have access to the question and answer, just in case someone else shared that question. Blogging certainly has its place in a K-12 classroom, as it is adaptable at any school age group (Huffaker, 2005). It is making a difference in my classroom as blogging is used to benefit parents and be used to explore content.

My students are enrolled in a virtual academy so technically my students are distance learners. While they are at home and busy learning content, I work to find ways to effectively manage the content they learn as well as verify mastery of the concepts. Because the students have broken the mold of the being in a traditional classroom setting, we must be unique in presenting content as well as demonstrating mastery of the content. We must work together to allow students to collaborate in learning (Beldarrain, 2006). By allowing my students to blog, I can effectively assess student mastery since blogging can be done across the curriculum. Following a science lab exercise, students can use a blog to express their findings. Because of the collaborative nature of blogs, other students can comment on the results and I would have the opportunity to confirm that students meet the lab objectives. A similar plan can be adapted for math. Students can blog about their thought process as they are solving equations and other problems. Huffaker mentions students can “develop highly personalized content.” I’m sure this will enhance the learning process and make the content meaningful to the student.


Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education , 139-155.

Huffaker, D. (2005). The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom. AACE Journal , 91-98.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net