Discovery+Education

I attended a Day of Discovery, presented by [|Discovery Education] yesterday, and I learned so much that I wanted to share.

Great Sites to visit:

[|Discovery Education], of course. They have combined the video streaming that we are accustomed to from APTVPlus, with a lot of other cool features. You can edit the movie segments, save and organize your downloads for future use, find information based on the Course of study, puzzlemaker, clipart, even sound effects. There are so many exciting features that the only way for you to grasp it all is to go explore it on your own. If you don't know your school's passcode, you will have to contact your school's technology rep to get it.

[|Wallwisher] is basically a wall with sticky notes on it. :Sound familiar? I thought it would be a great way for students to learn to organize information that they have brainstormed. You can project this on your smartboard, and the student can manipulate the sticky notes right there on the screen.

[|Wordle] is a great way to take an article, such as from an encyclopedia, and condense it down to the most-used words, and use those words to form a word cloud. It also works great for speeches, even student work. It allows you to see which words are used the most by simply putting the most frequently used words in larger type. This would be a great way to show young students how often they repeat certain words, then train them to not use those words.

[|Blabberize] allows you to put the words in someone/something else's mouth...an animal, a person you did a mock interview with, an historic feature. What a way to make history come to life! It's not hard to use, but you do have to have a way to record your information, or else have the program call you on the phone so that you can record the information that way. I can easily see small groups taking the last 10 to 15 minutes of class to write their short speech about themselves posing as an historic figure, recording it, and using Blabberize to make an image of that historic figure speak their words.

[|edu.glogster] allows you a scrapbooking-style method of organizing all of your media resources for a particular lesson. It's all available to you online, on one page, and you can make it as creative as you want. This site would also be a great way for students to create a research project that includes podcasts, a movie that they made, sound effects, images, and any other form of technology that they used to present their information, and it's all on one free site!