Educational value of Animoto

Whether you are looking to create an anchor video to activate students' prior knowledge about an upcoming topic or you are looking for a new, creative way to give student choice in answering essential questions, Animoto is a Web 2.0 tool that is fun and easy to use. Animoto uses pictures, video, texts, combined with music to create a short video that can capture everything from events and facts to emotion and experiences. This tool has the ability to add depth to a classroom assignment through the integration of creativity and technology.  Here is my first Animoto entitled Survivors.  It will serve as both a "grabber" to a new Webquest unit as well as a model of an assignment the students will need to complete to begin to answer the Webquest essential question.

survivors

Amoto.com
survivors

Educational Value of Wordle

        

          Look around and Wordles are everywhere. Using a Wordle can allow a teacher or a student to use technology to create a word cloud from passages of text, which can be used for endless educational purposes.  Wordles lends itself particularly well to vocabulary and reading lessons (Dabbs, 2011).  Teacher created Wordles can be used for pre-teaching vocabulary, introducing a theme or a concept at a quick glance,  to offer choice to students for choose vocabulary words to focus upon throughout a reading, lesson or unit.  Students can be assigned to create a Wordle as an assessment or project to demonstrate evidence of learning.   This particular Wordle utilizes the unit vocabulary for the WebQuest: Survivors.  The Wordle will be used first as a teaser to the unit, be used throughout the unit to review and focus on vocabulary and it has been specifically created in black and white so that students can use it to color code their mastery of vocabulary throughout the unit.  Wordle activities can help to deepen understanding and increase motivation using technology, creativity, and increase personalization for all students.

Dabbs, Lisa. "New Teacher Boot Camp." Edutopia. The George Lucas Educational 
     Foundation, 5 July 2011. Web. 27 June 2014. <http://www.edutopia.org/ 
     blog/new-teacher-boot-camp-wordle-lisa-dabbs>. 

"http://www.wordle.net." Wordle. Johnathan Feinberg, 2013. Web. 27 June 2014. 

Shepard, C. "Read180 Workshop 1: Survivors." Quizlet. Qizlet LLC, 2014. Web. 26 
     June 2014.