This week we utilized two wonderful programs online. The
first is Diigo, a social bookmarking site, which is a wonderful too for
educators. Diigo is a way to save all the neat blogs, games sites, lesson plan
ideas, and curriculums. I know that I am always finding ideas online and have a
ton of bookmarks on my school and personal computers and I never have what I
need on the computer I need it on. I also am very good at bookmarking a site
and going back to it and finding out I have no idea why I bookmarked it or I
can’t find what I liked on the site. Social bookmarking with Diigo solves this
problem and makes bookmarking, I think, easier. Being able to highlight and put
stickies on the sight you are bookmarking is so wonderful, no more searching
for what you need. Plus, you can access your bookmarks from any computer. The
social sharing of bookmarks is a nice feature, but not something that is high
on my priority list.
The other site we utilized this week was Zaption, a cool way
to make presentations and quizzes using YouTube videos. This is my favorite
site thus far, it is beyond easy to use and makes for nice listening activities
with the ability to ask questions and put in discussion breaks. I constantly am pulling up YouTube videos in
class to give students a visual experience to go along with listening
activities. I usually will point out instruments or musical elements by
speaking over the video or pausing. This means each class gets a different
experience, because I will sometimes get distracted and miss something I wanted
to point out or I will pause to late and have to rewind (rewinding can be
difficult in YouTube). By quickly adding in speaking points, discussion
questions or multiple choice questions I can eliminate all the fuss and have
well organized videos for my lessons.
The other nice part about Zaption is students can access the
videos outside of class as assignments or “show-n-tells” at home. I can also
easily give quizzes without collecting and having to grade tons of papers. The
other nice feature is being able to create simple sub plans that can be
accessed from any computer. Many times when I am out, the principal with have
my sub travel to the classroom instead of using my room. She does this because
the students’ behavior in my school is very rough for subs to handle and my
room has the most valuable material in the school, which she doesn’t what the
students to break. Usually the subs show a movie from my collection, but now I
can set up listening activities that the sub can easily access and show to the
class, it’s almost like I will be there with the class.
Here is a link to my Zaption tour for you to check out:
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