Scribble Maps

This post marks the start of Webby Wednesdays (Yay!!). Every Wednesday of the school year I will be posting a website that I have found and think might be helpful to teachers and students. The first Webby Wednesday site (drum roll please....) Scribble Maps!

www.scribblemaps.com

Scribble Maps provide an excellent place to virtually draw, mark-up, and measure on a map. The site integrates with Google Maps, which makes the format recognizable and easy and to use. You will find tools for drawing or marking on the map in a toolbar at the top of the page.


One of the nicest features I found was that the line tool also shows the distance from the start to the end of the line. This enables you to map out a path and know the distance, or to find the most advantageous way to get somewhere.

Classroom Application

Teachers can use Scribble Maps in place of a classroom map when you are wanting to mark specific locations on the map for the students to see. Since there is no registration required to use the site, students can also use Scribble Maps! Students could simply zoom in on a particular area, and mark landmarks/locations on the map using a place marker and the text tool on the site. Additionally, students could plan a route using the line tool on the map and note the distance of that route (shown automatically with the line tool), ultimately trying to find the most efficient path.

Please leave a comment and share how you are, or will be using Scribble Maps in your classroom!

Tagul

Tagul is a great tool for creating word clouds that contain word tags. Basically, you can copy and paste text in, or put in a url for Tagul to grab text from. Tagul then takes that text (or the text from the url) and puts the main words into a word cloud with the more frequently used words appearing larger in the cloud. Additionally, by default the words are all tags that link to a Google search of that word. You have edit options concerning the shape of the word cloud, fonts and colors used, and you can remove a word from the word cloud that is in the original text entry. What's even better is that the Tagul word clouds are embeddable on your web page. There is no saving or uploading of a file, you just have to copy the code from the cloud and paste it into the html section of your website. 

There is no saving or uploading of a file, you just have to copy the code from the cloud and paste it into the html section of your website. 

A Shiny New Presentation with Prezi

While PowerPoint still provides an easy and practical way to produce quality presentations that are easily operable, I have found a new (to me) presentation tool that I have already had some fun with. Prezi.com provides an all online application for creating a new style of presentation. I have used www.prezi.com to re-format other presentations, and am working to create new presentations as well on this site. In Prezi your presentation can literally jump from topic to topic, and reach embedded videos and media, as well as zoom in to finite points that you want to make. I encourage you to dabble in this tool and learn as you go. I found after creating my first presentation that I had a much better concept for creating my second. From experience I can tell you that I found my audience more captured (or enamored =) by this presentation that I had with my more recent products. While I would not use this tool for every presentation need I have I will surely continue to use it every now and then to change things up a bit.

The possibilities of Glogster

I spent my time last week at a technology conference where I was reminded of some technology tools I was familiar with and some that I wasn't. In reflecting about the conference I found I was focusing more on the tools that I was familiar with but might have skimmed over previously, not noticing or recognizing the opportunities that they provided. One of these is Glogster. For those of you that do not know, Glogster is presented as an interactive poster. At first glance I thought, why do I need this?? Don't websites, blogs and wikis provide enough interaction? How wrong I think I was. The format of Glogster makes it easy for even a novice to add text, movies, sound clips, and pics while glitzing them up in a way that is sure to gain the attention of many students. The beauty is that with the educational side of Glogster, edu.glogster.com, an educator can create an account for his/herself and receive logins for students. The students can create their own Glogs, and then the teacher is the only one that has the right to publish the projects. I find this most appealing for those students that are not comfortable with or cannot have information posted on the web. I look forward to introducing this site to teachers and seeing the projects that students create!

Getting Started

So my plan for this blog is to post the new (at least to me) technologies that I've found or learned to use with education. My job is as an Instructional Technologist/Technology Trainer for a school district. I am constantly searching for new tools to use with the teachers and students in our district. I will share those technologies that I find, and the experiences that I have with them. More to come soon...