Social Bookmarking with Diigo

This week I have been exploring some of the features of Diigo, a social bookmarking tool. Social bookmarking tools allow you to curate some of the information that you find on the Web and share it with others. I have been saving  websites on both Delicious and Diigo for a while now but I never had the time to explore all the other features that Diigo has to offer .Both resources allow you to save annotated  links to websites videos, and pictures. They also make it easy to organize and share what you have found. Although these are great features, I have discovered this week that Diigo is so much more than that.
Diigo is a personal research tool.  Not only can you save your favorite resources and share them with others, you can highlight , add sticky notes, write comments, and collaborate with others.
Teachers can register for Educator Accounts which allow them to register the members of their class and form groups. It is a perfect way to have students collaborate on projects. I have embedded a video below so you can see some of the basic features of Diigo. There are also many tutorials on the site.

Animoto

Last week I explored how to make videos using Animoto. With a few simple steps, Animoto produces multimedia videos that can be used in a variety of ways. All you have to do is download the pictures and video clips you want to include in the Animoto. Text slides can also be added. You can rearrange the pictures by clicking and dragging them wherever you want them. They also give you copyright free music to chose from. You can select a theme and Animoto analyzes the music, photos, and video clips and compiles them into a custom video. I had used Animoto before but I had never used video clips and I wanted to learn how to do that. It was just as easy as adding photographs. I was able to take the video and photographs with my cell phone.
Anyone can create a short video for free. The free  account has some limitations. The video is only 30 seconds long. Educators can also up for a free account for with unlimited videos. (Click on the Education link
 at the bottom of the page.
On the website there are examples to explore so you can get some ideas about how to use Animoto. There is a sample video that explains how to use functions in math. I created a virtual field trip of Gettysburg using pictures I took on a history trip a while ago. My students are creating book trailers of their favorite books. I even made a video of the wedding I went to just this weekend.

Here are links to a couple of the videos that I created.

http://animoto.com/play/1GnJ14EEYG0xSVZcYFH98Q
http://animoto.com/play/LpRQxqGP7X1a3saPuqO4Jw

Voicethread

This week I used Voicethread as a summarizer for a mini research project our students had done on the 1930's and John Steinbeck's novella, Of Mice and Men. I had experimented just a little with this powerful communication tool last semester but did not really use it in my classes. I went to a technology workshop a few months ago  One of the sessions was on Voicethread and I have wanted to explore some of the possible educational uses for it ever since but had not had the time. I thought that using this tool to have students reflect on their projects would be a great way to share what they learned. 

Voicethread is a web based application that allows you to have conversations about images, documents, or presentations that you download. Because it is web based , there is no need to download the application and students can easily access it anywhere anytime as long as they have an Internet connection. Once you download the object that you want to be the topic of conversation, students can participate  in a variety of ways. They can use a microphone, webcam, cellphone, or they can even type in text.  With an educator account, teachers can create classroom accounts. The creator of the account can also set permissions. It can be can be open and  anyone can read or post on the Voicethread or it can be closed to group members only. 

We used the Voicethread to reflect on our research assignment but the possibilities are endless. It could be used as activator to establish prior knowledge of a subject. It could be used to communicate and collaborate in almost any subject area. In the workshop that I went to, the teacher said that she had her students create accounts and used them to do a course reflection at the end of the year. There are many other possibilities as well. Lesson ideas can be found at http://VoiceThread.com/Library Just click on the browse tab.

Here is a link to the Voicethread that I started this Friday. Students should be adding reflections over the weekend. 

https://voicethread.com/share/2835248/