Posted by: amize2 on: October 15, 2009
Of the three web 2.0 sites explored today in class, I must say that PicLits was my favorite. I believe that the educational uses for this site are great for visual learners. Teachers, or students, can use the pictures already on the site, or find images that are related to the current lesson and create both a visual and written text together. I can also see using this website to prompt students during journal/creative writing sessions. For students that are having trouble getting started, pull up a PicLit that you have created, with a few buzz words, or a sentence and let them use it as a spring board.
I am still working with Scratch. It seems like a very hands-on approach to teaching certain lessons, but until I have worked with it more I can not fully know all that it can do. I did like that there is a link to the Scratch site for teachers, Scratched. There they have resources for teachers including 10 already designed lesson plans using Scratch.
Voki was a little creepy. I could see using it on a classroom blog, perhaps leaving students information about the upcoming assignments or about questions that were addressed during class. I can see this being useful in small doses. I would not consider reading anything long using the Voki. I think it would be a bit tedious to sit down and update the voice more than once a week at most.
October 20, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I tend to agree with your assessments…Voki probably has a limited use as a blog or site avatar for parents, but it would be tedious to do more than that with it…