Vine

Vine's purpose and usefulness in the classroom

• The purpose of Vine is to let users create very short videos on anything they like, where ever they are as long as they have a device with the app and an internet connection.
• Teachers can create fun short videos to engage students in specific parts or points of a lesson.
• Students can use vine in the same way, to illustrate part of a digital project or to collaborate with peers; one person or group does a video on point 1, another person or group on point 2. 

Advantages

• The tool is simple to use
• It is very easy to share videos on mobile devices or online
• Short timeframe forces many to think outside the box to get across what they want to

Disadvantages

• You NEED an internet connection
• Short timeframe can be a bother when you just need a couple more seconds
• You get one shot to get your video right or you start from the beginning

How to create a Vine video

• Download the app and sign up 
• Click the button in the upper right that looks like this 

• Press and hold the screen to start recording
• Let go to stop
• You can repeat this until 6 seconds is reached.
• Press the > i the upper right when you are done
• You will see a preview of your video, you can either hit the < to go back to the recording screen or the check mark in the bottom center of the screen to finish and share your video.

Wordle

My Wordle walkthrough


Wordle's purpose and usefulness in the classroom

• The purpose of Wordle is to give users a simple tool to create a word cloud.
• Teachers can use it to illustrate different ideas in a topic they are teaching. The more you repeat the word in the creation window the bigger it will be in the final Wordle cloud, so teachers can illustrate main ideas with supporting ideas.
• Students can use it i the same way to illustrate print or digital projects. 

Advantages

• Wordle is super simple to use, just type or copy and paste text into a box and hit create.
• It lets you customize the final product through use of different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
• It is light on bandwith and loads pretty fast even on slower conections

Disadvantages

• It uses Java which proved to be a pain to use in Chrome, and a little irritating in Safari.

Blendspace

My Blendspace presentation

My Blendspace walkthrough

Purpose and usefulness of Blendspace

• The purpose of Blendspace is to create a guided lesson or presentation, or can also be used to gather resources on a particular topic.
• Teachers can use it  to to create a guided lesson or presentation, that students can complete at their own pace.
• Itcan also be used to gather resources on a particular topic so that when students are starting research they have a narrower starting point.
• Students can create interactive presentations for peers, not only giving information in the form of text or pictures, but also video, voice, and assessing through quizzes.

Advantages

• It is very easy, very straight forward to use.
• It has tools built in to the editing screen to gather resources; you can search youtube videos or the web from the same screen and drag the thumbnails over.
•  It is free

Disadvantages

• The only disadvantage I could think of is that it does load slowly at times depending on the connection.

PowToon

My Powtoon Presentation

My Powtoon Walkthrough

Purpose and Usefulness of PowToons

• Powtoon's purpose is to give users an alternative to a traditional presentation. Like a more widely used presentation tool (PowerPoint) it is slide based, however Powtoons comes with pre-made animations and customizable animations making it more engaging and dynamic.
• Teachers can use PowToon as an alternative to their regular presentation software to create presentations or lessons on a topic being taught.
• Students can also use it to create presentation and animations, to either share digitally or present in class.

Advantages

• It is mostly free
• It is pretty straight forward and easy to use
• The interface is clean and attractive
• It is easy to share presentations digitally

Disadvantages

• There are some features you have to pay for
• It is sometimes very slow to load!

Toondoo

My Toondoo
Was having problems reseting my password at Toondoo, so used my mom's account :)

My Toondoo Walkthrough

Toondoo's purpose and usefulness in the classroom

• The purpose of Toondoo is to give users, like students and teachers, an easy way to create content in the form of a comic strip or panel.
• Teachers can use Toondoo to illustrate specific points in a topic they are teaching, or to create an illustration of a specific idea. 
• Students can use Toondoo to create illustrations of points or ideas in a project they are creating, or for use in a group project such as a newsletter or newspaper.

Advantages

• It is mostly free
• Once you learn how to use it, there are many many tools, characters, props, etc to use, and many of them have different customizations really letting users create unique content.
• It is easy to share your finished project digitally.

Disadvantages

• There are a few features you have to pay for if you want them.
• The interface can seem confusing at first, there is a lot going on!

Pinterest

Follow Maranda's board Plants in Preschool on Pinterest.

My Pinterest Walkthrough 

Pinterest’s purpose and usefulness in the classroom

• The purpose of Pinterest is to let users, i.e. students and teachers, gather resources from around the internet, organize them based on criteria they choose and "pin" them into these categories like digital bulletin boards. 
• Teachers can use Pinterest to gather resources and ideas for lessons on a topic they are teaching.
• Teachers can also use Pinterest to gather resources and activities for students to look at or complete as more independently directed work within a lesson they are learning. 
• Teachers can also gather online resources as a jumping off point for students when they are starting research so that students are not starting from nowhere when they start looking for information.
• Students can gather information on topics they are learning on, for personal use in their studies, or create resource boards to be shared with peers. 

Advantages

• Pinterest is widely used, and often users can find what they are looking for simply by searching Pinterest itself, instead of using other search engines to look for content to pin.
• Pinterest uses pictures to illustrate the pins, so it is often easy to see what you are getting, as well as making it an attractive site to use.
• It is easy to use.
• You can use premade boards, or create boards and categories you choose.
• It is easy to to share pins and boards with others.

Disadvantages

• It is image heavy, so slower connections may have a hard time loading content.
• It is widely used, which means spam content will pop up occasionally.

Animoto

seed to seedling

Walkthrough on How to make an Animoto Video

Animoto’s purpose and usefulness in the classroom

• The purpose of Animoto is to let users, students and teachers, create professional looking videos using a straightforward and easy to use editing and sharing process.
• Animoto's usefulness in the classroom includes teachers making short videos to supplement lessons or subjects they are teaching in class.
• Teachers can also use Animoto as an alternative assessment; once students know how to use it they can create videos on things they are learning to show tecahers what they know and how they understand what they are learning.
• Students can use animoto to create presentations on a subject they are working on, to share in a traditional presentation (in front of the room, with everyone watching) or share online for peers and teachers to watch independently or in small groups.

Advantages

• The editing tools are very simple to use.
• The design is clean and intuitive, two buttons to load content.
• There are predesigned templates and music to choose from
• It is free to try

Disadvntages

• To do longer videos and have access to more advanced features you need to sign up and pay.
• Videos can be slow loading