Socrative

What is it?

Socrative.com is a website focused on student assessment. It allows you to create a variety of quizzes for students to take before and after a lesson. Questions can be true/false, multiple choice, or short answer. All questions are teacher-created, however, at the end of the quizzes students take a "what did you learn/how well did you learn it?" questionnaire that the teacher cannot modify. The teacher is then able to evaluate each question individually and each student individually. Students can also be grouped into color coded teams to compete with their peers.

My thoughts:

I believe this is an invaluable tool in the classroom. The interface is user-friendly for both student and teacher. It is casual enough to prevent students from getting test anxiety and the friendly competition is a nice (and optional) addition. If students know that it is more for progress assessment, they are less likely to freak out about it, especially if it is done regularly.

Animoto

Animoto is an excellent resource for creating videos without having to purchase expensive video editing software. Although it does have some limitations, it could be very useful in the classroom, particularly in classes of younger students or students who do not have lots of experience with video editing.

About Animoto

Animoto allows users to create video projects that are a happy medium between a slide show and a full-fledged home movie. It is relatively simple to use and easy to stylize - it comes with a number of preset themes to choose from, so students can customize the look and feel of their video. After choosing a theme, students can select pictures and video clips to add to their project, where each one is a separate "frame" or slide. It is also possible to add text as captions or notes to the frames, or even as a frame on its own. The project can be personalized further with the addition of music, giving a great degree of freedom in terms of what students are capable of doing with this resource. Students can adjust the pace of the transitions between the frames, and even add a "call to action," where they can add a link to a website. It can also be accessed through a mobile app where you can add pictures or videos directly to a project, increasing accessibility. Animoto even has a beginner's guide for people who have not used the program before, so all students should be able to create their own brief presentation.

In my classroom, I could have my students use Animoto presentations to share research with the class. For instance, if I was teaching a lesson on the solar system, I might have students group up to research a planet and show what they learned with their classmates. Animoto provides a simple, engaging, and customizable way for students to create a quality video project.

StoryBird

What is StoryBird?

StoryBird is a place where anyone can create a visual story in a matter of seconds.  StoryBird collects artwork from artists and animators around the world.  They allow anyone to access these images and create a story using them.  People of all different backgrounds, jobs, and ages have created over 5 million stories, thus making StoryBird one of the world's largest storytelling systems.  The different sections of StoryBird are create, discover, learn, connect, sell and chill.  The two biggest parts to StoryBird are the create and discover portions.  The create option is where any one can make their own visual story using the images and artwork on the system.  This can be used for fun, work, school, etc.  The discover option is where any one can go into the system and find stories about different topics that others have made on StoryBird.  This can also be used for many different purposes.  They have a specific page for professional writers and artists to either publish work through StoryBird or use StoryBird to create their work.

How can this be used in middle grades science? 

Story Bird can be used in any most levels of education.  It allows students to create a visual story with captions.  The teacher could require the students make their story on a specific topic or a general topic and let the students be creative.  I love the idea of using StoryBird in my classroom, because it gives students the freedom to be creative and use what they know to create a story.  I would use this type of assignment with some guidelines.  For example, I would have the students incorporate at least "x" amount of facts into their story and create a topic that forces the students to make their story about something that is at least somewhat relevant to the unit.  Another interesting thing about StoryBird is that it will allow the analytical, visual, and reflective learners a chance to utilize their talents and comprehension.

Final Thoughts:

This is a cool tool to use to assess comprehension and reading levels while allowing multiple learning styles to be engaged.  I have created a couple of StoryBird books and I have enjoyed each one.  They allowed me to be creative and have fun with an assignment.  One of the parts of StoryBird I didn't know about was that you can look up and read any one else's published stories.  That means as a teacher, this can be another simple tool that we borrow someone else's story for our class or our students can search and find a fun story that relates to the unit or lesson.

https://storybird.com/chapters/raindrops-3/1/

Using BOX In Your Classroom

Ever taken notes for an important class and put them into your binder or book bag? Then, a couple days down the road, they just seems to vanish out of thin air? This always seemed to and continues to happen to me.

Many students in today's classrooms really struggle with keeping up with not only class notes, but also handouts or articles that are given by the teacher. When they do take the appropriate notes, they more than likely cram them into their bags and never bring them out again. This is a problem for both the students, who are now coming to class unprepared, and the teacher, who has to deal with the fact that their students have lost the notes and may be off task.

Well, this is the decade of technology, so why not use it!! Introducing the amazing and very functional website called BOX.com. This website is the future of note taking for both the students and the teachers. All you have to do is go to BOX.com and create a free account. The account never expires and you can access it from any computer or mobile device as long as you know your username and password. All of your information is safe and secure and only accessible by you.

Organization: 
BOX is extremely functional and helpful. Organization is extremely important for note taking, and this is perfect for all those situations. Once you are logged into box, you can see all your folders or notes you have taken. I personally use this website for note taking and here is a screen shot of my homepage. Within your notes, you can also create folders for each class or subject. On my profile, I also created folders for future ideas and articles used in my classrooms.

                                                                                                        BOX Sync: 

BOX sync is a really neat feature of box. This is a simple and small download for your mobile device or PC in which enables you to download any articles or documents found online onto your box account. All you have to do, is upload an article and it automatically adds to that folder. This is great for students because once you have it downloaded, you can physically go into the article and highlight and make comments amongst the text. This is awesome for the students because they can go back and look at previous articles and review their comments or highlighted material. This is also beneficial for students during the classroom when you assign in class readings. Here is an example of an article I read, highlighted, and left comments for future discussion.

Classroom Incorporation:
BOX.com is a great website for students who have access to the internet. A plethora amount of students all around the world either have their own computer, or are given access during the classroom to use one. This is a website I would introduce on the first day of class to my students giving them another method of note taking or storing information to add to their techniques. As a teacher, you can use this to store important information such as lesson plans, classroom/student information, and any other important content. Box is imperative and very beneficial for all within the classroom. Go check it out and download now!

Google Forms

  

WHAT IS GOOGLE FORMS?

 It is a free tool from Google Drive that consists of online surveys, which you can use to do different kinds of test to collect and organize big and small information about something that you want.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

•            First: Create a Gmail account.
•            Then Follow these steps:

                              

When you create a Google Form, you have different ways to collect the information, using different type of questions

 If you are going to work with more people, you can share and make it together. This is a good way for do collaborative work.

     

For example you sent an invitation to your students about some information that you want to collect.

Then, Google Form organize and analyze the data and give the information in graphics and  with percentage.

EDUCATIONAL USES

-For Assessments: This is a good idea if the teachers do not have time to correct a lot of tests. If they want a quick answer about some topic during the class, for example about prior knowledge, students can answer using their mobiles.

-To Collect Data: When the teachers have a lot of students and they want to collect and organize information like phone numbers, addresses, parents’ emails, etc.

-Surveys: Students can use Google form to collect quantitative or qualitative data for an investigation. It is easier organize and analyze when you have a large amount of data.

-Work Together: students can make their surveys online with their partners, and work together in different laptops.

Final Thought

Google Forms is a very versatile tool that it use in different kind of person, in the schools, college, sport teams, business companies, because you can give different uses. In school is a really useful tool because you is a quick way to know the answers,  situation, data and knowledge of the students and teachers do not have to waste time reviewing papers.