Friday, July 13, 2012

The 3 Web Tools reviewed were: 1) StoryJumper, 2) Screenr, and 3) Poll Everywhere.

1) StoryJumper (http://www.storyjumper.com)

Purpose: The purpose of this free web tool is to give children, care-givers, and teachers fun and easy-to-use tools for writing and illustrating stories. It creates a virtual book of one's writings that allows a viewer to digitally turn pages and read a created story. The interface is extremely intutive and is very fun to use.

Educational/Professional Uses: The StoryJumper web tool is highly fun and motivating making it a great resource for teachers to use in having their students write stories or read other's stories. It is very interactive with lots of options and possibilities in the story creation process. Additionally one can even purchase a hard bound "real" version of a created story. In the professional realm this could still be useful in making presentations or must-read material that is much more exciting and dynamic. Because the StoryJumper tool lets you upload your own pictures, limitless possibles are available to the user.  - Highly Recommended

As a quick example, I created a short story with StoryJumper:


2) Screenr (http://www.screenr.com/)

Purpose: This free web tool allows a user to easily capture (record) a portion of one's computer screen. Screener allows a user to easily and simply start to record without having to install anything. It works seamlessly and easily. With an account users can then published a saved screen cast via  a link or an imbed within a webpage (facilitated via an iframe).

Educational/Professional Uses:  
There are many uses for both educational and professional implementations. Quick tutorials, simple messages, video notes, student displays of mastery of content,  daily messages from management, etc. The uses and possibilities go on and on in that it is simply and easy to do, requires only a few seconds for processing and can then be linked up or embedded anywhere. The videos will even work on mobile devices. The only restrictions placed with the free version are that it only captures part of your computer screen and the time is limited to 5 minutes. - Highly Recommended

To further explain and showcase Screenr's capabilities I created this short video through Screenr:


3) Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com)

Purpose: This free web tool would allow an instructor/facilitator to conduct polls via multiple means. In additional to regular web interaction (clicking) audiences of Poll Everywhere could interact and participate via text message or twitter. This is all done in real time and is shown via animated results movement.

Educational/Professional Uses: Adding the capability to add a poll virtually anywhere within a website is a great addition in that this adds more engagement to the learner and allows the educator/professional to gather information.  The fact that the polling is done live and is animated further enhances the engagement and enhances the event with realism and immediacy. It was very easy to use and implement although having more options to change the look and feel of the poll would be advantageous. This might be a feature of the paid version. - Highly Recommended


To further illustrate this web tool, please participate in the poll below
(this is an example of a web only version)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Brent,

    Storyjumper sounds similar to Amy's webtool - Storybird. I'm not sure if Storybird allows the suer to upload pictures to insert within the storybook templates but being able to "personalize" the story books is definitly a huge booster to kids! This sounds like a fun site. Thanks for attaching a sample of the book you created.

    Bobbi

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  2. I love your review of Story Jumper! Your book was great! Are you published? haha But really, I think it's awesome that students could create these books and then their parents could really buy them! That's amazing!

    I also like your Poll Everywhere tool. Very useful for college classes or even 9-12 where students have a 1-1 student/computer ratio. I could also see this used on a teacher's website for student or parent polls. Nice!

    Thanks!
    Amanda Mitchell

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