An Expat Educator in Asia » web2.0

Alternatives to PowerPoint in the Classroom

Paul McMahon — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:00:16 +0000

I just read this post on a newsgroup and thought that I might share it in the interests that someone gets something from it. Apparently it was posted as a list of “alternatives to PowerPoint. Not sure I would agree that they are all “slide presentation applications” but I could see how many of them would be a great alternative to kids showing powerpoint slides in a classroom.

I think it could be used as a great activity where students select from a range of tools to show their understanding to the group.

PhotoStory

Movie Maker

Tikatok – imagine a story, create a book http://www.tikatok.com/

Animoto – create videos

http://animoto.com/

Voicethread – photos with commentary

http://www.voicethread.com

Photopeach – slideshows

http://photopeach.com/

Glogster – interactive posters

http://www.glogster.com/

Letterpop- brochures, invitations etc

http://www.letterpop.com/

Digital Storytelling

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

Pixton – create your own comics

http://pixton.com/uk/

GoAnimate – cartoons and animations

http://goanimate.com/

Photo: Presentation http://www.flickr.com/photos/65736543@N00/185850189/

Class Groups on Google and Animoto for Educators

Paul McMahon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:57:11 +0000

Thanks to Jennifer Carrier Dorman on Cliotech, I was informed about the Free offering of Animoto for educators. This is a welcome extension to what is a fantastic Web2.0 tool for learning.

What I really loved about Jennifer’s post, however, was that she went on to mention how you can set up groups of students to work on web 2.0 tools such as Voicethread, Bubbl.us, Pageflakes, etc using teacher and student accounts on Gmail. Here is how Animoto describes the way that you do this:

You can register at Animoto numerous times using your own e-mail address by doing this:
emailaddress+1@gmail.com
emailaddress+2@gmail.com
emailaddress+3@gmail.com
emailaddress+4@gmail.com
emailaddress+5@gmail.com

All activity at our website under these accounts will be sent to your original, derivative e-mail (i.e. emailaddress@gmail.com). This way, you’ll be able to
give each student a unique Animoto account, while also being able to monitor
their account’s activity.

Sounds a really cool way to monitor a group’s activity on a web 2.0 site.

Hope this is useful.

Learn Putonghua by signing up to a Free Online Game

Paul McMahon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:04:39 +0000

I recently had the good fortune to listen to one of Alan November’s podcasts featuring Sichuan native Yong Zhao, now a Michigan State University distinguished professor of educational psychology and technology. Yong Zhao was speaking about a game he was creating to make learning Putonghua a fun activity for kids.

I was very interested and did a lot of searching at the time but could not find much on the game. Fortunately I read about its release this morning in eSchool News.

The game is called Zon. From the site:

Zon is an unique interactive massively multiplayer online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese.

By interacting in the Zon environment you will be exposed to Chinese language and cultural knowledge in a new and exciting way. Everything that you do in the game is another chance to learn new words, phrases and cultural info about China. Never before has learning Chinese been more fun.

Whilst I haven’t had time for a play myself yet, it looks like something teachers here should know about.

Web2.0 in Action!

Paul McMahon — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:29:11 +0000

It seems that I have not been able to write a post for a long time. Mostly the reason for this is that I am really busy with organising the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong Conference. http://21c-learning.hk

We are really trying to walk the talk with this one. We are using a tool called Eventbrite for the conference registration. This is doing a great job of handling the various levels of tickets that we have to offer to the different types of teachers in Hong Kong.

Along with this, I have written a registration database in Zoho Creator. Being able to allow the participants to select sessions in advance of the conference is a real godsend as it will allow us to inform presenters if they have little interest in their workshops.

A quick post about a Web 2.0 Workshop

Paul McMahon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:06:16 +0000

I am always learning from the local school teachers in Hong Kong schools. Someone shared today a URL that shows newscasts aimed at the student level and asks questions based on the newscast. It is here

Forever Learning

Paul McMahon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:10:50 +0000

It amazes me that there is so much out there to learn. Just when you think that you are just getting organised and that it is starting to make sense to you and you are living a nice, connected life, something comes along to shake you out of your complacency. I had one of those moments this morning when I read a post on David Warlick’s excellent 2 cents worth blog. The article, Stepping Back to the Future was about some workshop topics that he had not done for a while. In them he mentioned using Google Blog search to locate and select experts in a given field, and to use BlogPulse to map the frequency of specific conversations. As I am currently doing some workshops on using web 2.0 tools for Hong Kong teachers, I immediately accessed both of these tools and was amazed at how easy they are to use and how incredibly useful they are. For example, I used Google Blog to locate some topics on Hong Kong education and see if anyone else in the blogosphere was also experiencing frustrations with trying to get school/parents/community to look beyond the almighty exam preparation that goes on here. Lo and Behold I found Bryan Berry’s comments Improve Test Scores? Forget OLPC, Just Teach to the Test! and almost shouted alelehuia brother out loud!

I then went to BlogPulse to see what was happening in the IWB world and immediately found a post Freezeray.com – clicky-clicky! from Steve, who teaches at Bandung International School. He has shared some great resources here which I will try to pass onto my community. Additionally, I located Jo McLeay’s Blog which had some great refective comments that I can immediately use with teachers in workshops this week.

What a great world of information for the receptive learner!