The Educational Value of Animoto

-Recently, I was asked to look into a program called Animoto. Animoto allows me to simply create videos that utilize pictures and text to get the point across to my students. Think of it as a flashier Powerpoint. You work through a very intuitive interface that allows you to drag pictures, videos, and songs and provide captions as well. The service it provides is fantastic, as not only will it edit the video for you providing highly detailed backgrounds and overlays, but the program also sets up appropriate time for the video to emphasize the point. Above, you will a short video I produced with the web service going over questions to ask when looking for a good source to cite for my students. As this is a highly visual element to the lesson, it certainly allows for students who may have trouble with absorbing written materials to see the visual associations involved with the lesson. As the software is fairly easy to use as well, teachers can easily create videos to help tailor to students individual needs in order to better understand concepts that the teacher is trying to convey. In the end, if you find you have students who need help with learning a lesson, I suggest giving this program a try, and see if it offers better success in lesson planning.

Educational Value of Wordle

- As a teacher looking for ways to approach and engage my students, it becomes ever more challenging to share information that is important to grasp without repeating and sounding like a broken record to my students. I was suggested to try an application called Wordle to create graphic representation of lessons I am trying to teach, and my results are astounding. I am working to help students understand what marks an online resource as a good resource to cite for arguments made in their research papers, and how those skills can be applied in the everyday world when out in the work force. The program pulls out the most commonly used words and arranges them in such a way that the more prevalent words are utilized as a center view or a large share of the screen is taken up by the keyword. The program itself has several galleries of Wordles that can be utilized by educators, or you can create your own to truly customize the experience for your students. What I see as valuable for students is since the program pulls out the most important words and highlights them by making the words more prominent. It allows for students to really focus on the key points of what you're trying to get across. For example thanks to the work of the Faculty of Keuka College, they posted an articulated the point I was trying to get across to students. That to find a reliable resource is going to take research of your own effort, but also to know where to start when assessing resources. The application could be used for a wealth of lessons, and it will provide a visual representation for students to grasp at the important points of a lesson being taught.  It can be used in English classes to show the appearance of certain words may lead to allusions of symbolism in a piece of written work. It can be used to identify themes in lessons taught in History classes, or challenge perceptions about may appear in primary source documents. The applications are in fact endless, and I do encourage you to give it a try if you feel that students may be struggling with grasping a concept.