Week 5: Online Multimedia tools

I really enjoyed exploring this week's online multimedia tools. There's so much out there I feel both thrilled and overwhelmed at the same time!

I'm confident with both YouTube and TeacherTube, so I didn't spend much time exploring them. However, I was totally unfamiliar with Vimeo. Wow-- what a great tool. I love the design, clarity and ease of searching. I can see myself using Vimeo of sharing student book trailers, or offering extension videos/animations to books we've read in class. For example, my 2nd grade students and I explored the Russian folktale, "The Turnip." Having read the book now, it would fun fun for them to see videos that tell the story of the turnip in different ways.

I learned about VoiceThread over the summer in another class (great tool), so I focused more time
poking around various podcasts. "#edchat" to be my favorite. For starters, the length of each podcast was really appealing. When I know I only need to commit myself to 10 minutes to get the latest in the education world I'm much more likely to hit 'play' than if I have to commit myself to a 50 minute podcast. I found their topics fresh, relevant and onpoint. "Talks with Teachers" was also a podcast that resonated with me for the anecdotal approach. Sometimes data needs to be pushed to the wayside and a teacher needs to tell her/his story of challenge that eventually led to success.

I explored ABCya's Animate (as suggested by Richard Byrne). There were many things I liked about this tool including the bright colors and simplicity of tool accessibility. I think ELL students in particular, would feel confident using this tool. However, I can't realistically say I'd be clamoring to integrate this tool into a library lesson plan because of the time factor. Creating an animation can be very laborious and time consuming. Since I only have 30 minutes with my students each week I think ABCya's Animate would eat up too much class time. With that said, I would definitely still introduce it and encourage my students to use it, but more in the context of an out of school extension activity. I would certainly welcome students to share their final product with the class.