HTML Blog 4-28-14

INTERACTIVE DESIGNING

It is an absolute necessity to ENGAGE in whatever you do today in the classroom with your students at any grade level while at the same time educating and making them aware of their responsibility to digital citizenship.  There are many resources available for the 21st century teacher.  This evening we experienced hands-on VoiceThread and Prezi two very different ways to present material for your class.  The VoiceThread is a straightforward tool that you can use to have conversations with your students if you were to get your school to become a member.  The cost for the year is approximately $89.  With this application your students can build their own presentation or they can participate with one that you created for them to interact with.  It can also be downloaded onto your phone and you can begin to immediately record with your picture.  It gives you face time with your students even if you are not there.  It is a wonderful instructional tool.

The Prezi is a visual template which allots for the content to be linked.  It can be presented anywhere and anytime.  It is for Windows, MAC, iPad, iPhone and can be presented from desktop, across the table or across the globe.  You do not have to have an Internet connection.  All the Prezis are accessible and up-to-date in one place regardless of where you created them.  It is faster and does not depend on the speed of your Internet connection.  You can then tell a multi-dimensional story.  It has a quick Zoom/Pan feature which adds to your professional look and makes your presentation more interesting.  you have flexibility because you can move around freely from the overview to the details in the presentation going to wherever your audience takes you.  You can even appoint a team leader for a particular assignment and change the leader for each group.  I feel this would work in our diversified classrooms wherein we have different leveled ELLs.

Integrating this type of presentation applications into the classrooms gives teachers a chance to experiment more and provide information that is very current and engaging.  A Student has more control as to when to move from one slide to the next or to repeat as needed.  I feel this gives them more control over their learning experience.  They are empowered.  We are just guiding and supplying the information they need to learn for a particular topic in any subject.  Both VoiceThread and Prezi gives you that freedom to incorporate technology to the fingertips of our students and get them communicating with each other, exploring their prior knowledge while stretching for new knowledge.  It  even keeps them from cyberspace harm because we are able to monitor the activities and have them conduct themselves as digitally smart citizens.