Technology

Prezi.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMHBNa5KGJ0

"Prezi is a great way to present information in an engaging and interesting way. Unlike powerpoint, Prezi is not linear and allows you as a teacher to go off the path and explore different concepts. The movements allow students to stay engaged (although careful not to overdue because it can cause motion sickness). You can also embed pictures and videos into your presentation. This is also a great way for students to show projects.

Jing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTF7ryUyeuY

Jing is another great way to present information. In Jing, you can voice over a presentation and you can also use other web pages or anything else on your computer to add to your presentation. This would work great in the classroom when explaining a web page or how to conduct research. This could also be a very beneficial tool to explain homework on a webpage or blog.


Toondoo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgcYAAuBxDo

Toondoo is a great way to use cartoons to represent information. This could be very engaging for students to create projects and other ways to show what they have learned throughout and unit. I can see this being used for a student-led conference presentation creating a meaningful and authentic conference.


Wordle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhL5D9nz5aI

Wordle serves a couple of unique and awesome purposes. The simple purpose is that it is an easy way to display key words. Wordle will scramble and color the words for a nice display. It's great to display around the room and even have students create their own from their understanding of different units. Another great use of Wordle is to paste the URL of a webpage into the site and the site will create a display of the words in the page. What is really neat about doing this is that Wordle will take the words that are repeated the most on the webpage and make them the largest words. This is great for keywords and main ideas and a quick way to get those concepts off a webpage.


Skype
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sodMDs7rEEk

Skype is not only a great tool to stay connected to people far away (which comes in handy for a teacher living in Utah and with family in Michigan) and also serves a purpose in the classroom. I have recently conducted pen pals with my brother who teaches in Chicago. Skype is a great way for our students to meet face to face and even show certain things about our classrooms and even projects that are being conducted in each of our classrooms. This a great way for students to take ownership of their classrooms.