Hi there,
I’ve moved this blog over to Blogspot, so please click through to http://elearningnomore.blogspot.co.nz/ and click the little sun ray icon on the right hand side to enter your email address on the new blog and stay up to date.
It’s worth doing as I’ll be making a real effort to post frequently!
Skitch is a photo annotation programme that’s really easy to use and gives professional looking results.
Within seconds you’ll get results like this:
You’re also able to add arrows and draw over the top of your images! This could be a great way to help someone navigate your website or follow instructions to sign up to something.
Skitch could be used at any stage of the Learning Process… brainstorm over the top of an associated image (either based on the concept, or a photo of the kids who are sharing their ideas), likewise you could do the same thing with two images to compare them, or have your learners share their thinking to apply their understanding.
If you’re looking for a straight-forward and interesting way to include information alongside a picture, look no further than Fotobabble!
Do you want to share your e-asTTle results on KnowledgeNET? Have you scanned some learning on the scanner as a PDF, and want to share it?
Use this tutorial to help you upload PDFs to GoogleDocs and then embed them into KN.
AnswerGarden is a simple tool that allows you to collect brief feedback and instantly share it with your audience.
Immediate feedback with AnswerGarden
You don’t need to sign up to use it and creating an answer garden literally takes seconds. AnswerGardens can be embedded (or planted!) into any page you’d normally load embed/html codes (blogs, wikis, websites, along with social media sites) which means it’s easy to collect and share information… too easy!
The responses it allows are relatively short so your visitors will need to be succinct… because of this, other tools are better suited when detailed answers are required (Wallwisher, for example). That said, for short answers that are collected with absolute minimum fuss , AnswerGarden trumps anything else. It doesn’t look flash, but it does the job and that’s what matters!
AnswerGarden only displays 25 answers at a time but creates a word cloud with the responses (the same idea as Wordle and Tagxedo). This means that any repeated responses will be shown larger in size, rather than simply placed over and over on the page and also makes it easy to get a feel for your answers at a glace. 25 responses will generally be enough and it ensures things don’t get overcrowded and confusing.
Have a go at typing your own responses in below – easy as pie.
via AnswerGarden: How might you use AnswerGarden in your classroom?.
Scholastic has a fun story starting machine that will help get creative juices flowing!
The process itself is pretty straight forward so both learners and teachers alike can run this story starter machine. Don’t like one of the options? Hit the relevant button. Think you can do better? Spin again to see what you get.
Apparently this site is set up for interactive whiteboards which makes this even easier to use in the classroom.
This could be a great hook to encourage your less enthusiastic writers – I’d love to hear how you get along!
Scholastic: Story Starters
DocScan is a free download from the Apple App Store (and will run all Apple app devices – iPod, iPhone and iPad). It serves as an alternative to a full-size scanner and does a more-than-adequate job of stepping in.
You might be wondering why just snapping a photo wouldn’t suffice? Although the standard camera option will record the information for you, DocScan goes one better.
It picks up anomalies in shapes and adjusts the final image (as seen below) before saving the file to your device. You are able to make a new file, or save the image to an existing one. The file remains on your device permanently, but you do have the option to email, transfer to Google Docs as a JPEG or PDF, or print straight from DocScan easily.
Source: The App
Check out this video that Maddy and Alex made, talking you through how to use DocScan…
This is a great little app to have stored away on your Apple device – you never know when it might come in handy!
Take a look at this article for more info.
Inquiry + eLearning 