Screencasts

[] Google Sites is a free online application that by signing up for a google account you can create and display information in one place,. This includes video, slideshows, calendar, presentations, attachment and text. The nice thing about google sites you can access this anywhere just by having a google account. This is a very easy application that can be used to create classroom webpages by teachers that can be shared by anyone you select as your audience. If you make it public everyone can view it. Also it can be worked on simultaneously with others that you have invited on your webpage. It is incredibly easy and it makes working on classroom project with others very convient.

With Google Sites you can create different types of webpages for team projects, classrooms,clubs, family pages.

I think Google Sites could be collaberative with teachers and students and very easy and fun to use. With Google Sites you can embed video of class projects, post assignments, and a page for helpful links for homework help. Hope you enjoyed my presentation, five minutes is not nearly enough to show all the options that can be used in Google Sites.

[]

Above is the link to my screencast on Wonderwheel. I chose this app because I was impressed with it and I was "wowed" that I had never heard of such a cool app. Of course I was on the phone with other media specialists and teachers asking them if they knew about it. No one had ever heard of it! This app is awesome for kids and adults alike, but I believe it can be a tremendous tool for younger students as they are learning the "keyword" strategy for searching.

[]

For my second app, I chose the Timeline and searches linked by the date they were posted online. These tools give users a unique look at information and the timeliness of the posts. Both of my screencasts related to refining searches into results that were related to the topic and refining broader topics into more manageable ones.

[]

This program is also easily used for surveys. I think SurveyMonkey could also be used for quizzes, as long as “Name” is a required field. There are others listed in the article “Create an Online Quiz Using Google Forms,” (linked from our syllabus from the blog Free Technology for Teachers) but I am not familiar with them. They are My Studiyo, Fling the Teacher, and Zoho Challenge. The major advantage I see with using GoogleDocs is that 1) most of us already have accounts of some kind with Google so we don’t have to sign up for anything new, 2) students are familiar with Google so they are not intimidated by a new Website, 3) it is simple to collaborate with colleagues to create and grade – this is great for media center/classroom collaborative project creation, assessment and feedback.

The major drawbacks are not knowing 1) who actually completes the quiz and 2) what resources they use to do it. One person could do the quiz 20 times and put a new name on it each time. If it is assigned to be completed outside of class the teacher would have no way of knowing. Any student could easily be Google-searching the answers as they take their quizzes. It is almost like asking your students to cheat. I would probably be supervising the class closely as they took the quiz to make sure they were each completing the quiz with their own name on it.

Major advantages include 1) ease of grading (whether alone or collaborative), 2) access to off-site or homebound students, 3) question-by-question data with the “summary” tool (you immediately know what needs re-teaching).